Being in a host city for the Olympics is an experience. There are so many inconveniences¹ abound, but being able to see the actual games live and in-person makes you forget about all of that. I got really good² seats for the track and field events on Sunday, August 17th. We got there a bit early, so we walked around the Olympic Green, stalked the Fuwa³, and took pictures. Because I uploaded a buttload, I don’t want to bog down this page with a billion huge photos. If you click the thumbnails, you should get a larger version of the photo.

Basically, it was six straight hours of pure, unadulterated excitement. They covered women’s 100m hurdles, men’s hammer throw, men’s long jump, women’s triple jump, women’s 3000m steeplechase, women’s 400m hurdles, women’s 400m run, women’s 100m dash, men’s 1500m run, men’s 10,000m run, and a few medal ceremonies from the night before’s events. And I used to run two of those events, so bonus points! Any photo you want me to elaborate upon, just ask.

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¹: … such as avoiding the subway/bus for safety’s sake, not being able to get train tickets to other cities, clubs/bars closing down, quiz night cancellation, et al. Funny how most of those things aren’t even directly related to the Oly games. Seriously, QUIZ NIGHT? What gives? Not to mention, every time I’d go to the Olympic flagship store to buy souvenirs for friends (and ….. er, myself), the crowds would get worse and worse each time. The crowds are enough to give anybody the worst case of claustrophobia. I even sympathized with an employee who had been screamed at by hordes of little kids. And they even veiled the huge Fuwa displays as the Olympics neared just so people wouldn’t take pictures in the middle of the store, causing major traffic jams and holdups. As if that store needed anymore!
²: FIRST TIER, baby. It really comes in handy because you can actually see the athletes. It doesn’t come in handy when you want to see every single event upclose. For example, the 100m dash was on the direct opposite end of the stadium, so I could only check out the huge screens on the side. If major neck craning isn’t your cup of tea, second/third tier would probs be the way to go.
³: Oh, I love those Fuwa. On the top of my wishlist is a giant Nini Fuwa for my room this year. Granted, it’ll probably take up half the space and shipping charges would be up the wazoo, but it’s so hard for me to say no to giant Fuwa. Anywho, I highly, highly insist that you watch this Fuwa promo that’s been way overplayed here but much adored. Then I insist that you watch this little gem.

Anyway, Olympic frenzy is well and alive here in Beijing. The Opening Ceremony last Friday was very A+, by the way. Zhang Yimou did a really great job that I even sat through all four hours. (Yes, including all 200-some countries.)¹ If you missed it, I recommend that you look it up on YouTube; it’s really something spectacular! As for events, I’m most excited for swimming, gymnastics, diving, and track/field. (Unfortunately, CCTV is absolute crap when it comes to airing them.² And even worse, I have to miss most of those events because I’m in class during the morning and afternoon. What I wouldn’t give to stay on the couch and watch TV.) And speaking of, I got track and field tickets, Fuwa merch³, and Beijing 2008 flags —- so I’m set!

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footnotes:

¹: I’m mostly talking about the actual performance, since the procession of all the countries took … a while, to say the least. I thought it was cool how they went in order by taking the first Chinese character of each country name and going by number of character strokes, but I think that novelty eventually wore off. What can I say, it made a really interesting Chinese lesson; now I know more country names than I ever did before.

²: Case in point: Saturday night, I was frantically flipping through CCTV because swimming took place from 6:30-9:30 pm. And none of the CCTV channels were airing it at the time, so I refreshed the Olympic pages on the Internet every five minutes just to find out if swimming was indeed happening. They finally started airing it at 9:30pm, but the excitement was kinda lost, since I had already gotten all the heat results from the Internet. Sigh! And they aired the fencing semifinals but didn’t air the fencing finals, which is such a shame because HELLO, USA MEDAL SWEEP?! At least Sunday morning’s swimming finals got aired at the right time.

³: Fuwa are SO cute. I want to buy out the entire Olympic flagship store, because they have everything Fuwa-related. Chopsticks, towels, crystals, backpacks, you name it. Betcha can’t guess which one’s my favourite.

Yep, those are fried scorpions.

July 4th onwards: Rained out, American food for the fourth’s sake, flooded Tiannamen at night, non-flooded Tiannamen in the morning, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Beijing opera², Client live³, terrible service at McDonald’s⁴, fell asleep shopping, KFC covered in plastic bags, last⁵ big splurge at Pizza Hut, yet another week of classes, a visit from the parents, Quanjude roast duck and fried scorpions⁶ going swimming for the first time in months, visiting the National Operahouse⁷, visiting the Bird’s Nest and Watercube, shopping in Wangfujing, buying all the Chinese HP books, Houhai, my brother’s birthday, another week of classes, getting Olympic tickets, and getting horribly ravaged by a midterm.

Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, the Shanghai Internet connection makes me want to bash my skull in. And I’m definitely not counting on Internet for the next few days, but I do promise photos when I get back to Beijing! Now I must post the rest of the entries and take a long-overdue nap, for I have a terrific headache.

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footnotes:
¹: I highly, highly suggest that you look up Guilin photos on Flickr (or even Google images). Osmanthus blossoms and reed flute caves, hello.
²: The thought of Chinese opera hurts my ears, but not once did I break out that iPod like I thought I would.
³: I was serendipitously reading my friend’s Beijinger and noticed that Client happened to be DJing at a nightclub that same night. And so plans were set!
⁴: No, really. Since when do you get ketchup packets thrown at you?
⁵: Hah, yeah right. And forget about any Western notions of Pizza Hut, because it’s actually a legit restaurant.
⁶: Supposedly the best roast duck restaurant in Beijing, but then again I don’t have much to compare. And fried scorpions are tasteless.
⁷: Site of the Olympic Opening Ceremony

HAO CHU:⁷
Carrefour: (n): supermarket on steroids. I’ve been there thrice in the past week, and let’s just say that American stores have nothing on Carrefour. You don’t get escalated ramps for your shopping carts or guillotined turtles⁸ or fish flopping out to the aisle⁹ like you do here.
KFC: Don’t hate, but how bad is it that I’ve eaten there twice in less than a week? Fries and fried chicken, how I’ve missed thee.
Kiwi floats:¹⁰ I regret not getting a photo, but one of these days I will! Oh, and I got it at McDonald’s of all places. More on that later.

Anyway, Tiananmen photos! I put them at 500px for the sake of loading time, but you can click for a larger version.

The area near Tiannamen was flooding because there was so much rain! And there were these three girls who actually stepped out in the deep puddles to take pictures with the Asian-touristy pose. Nothing like a waterborne-disease breeding ground for a photo op.

I’d go on about the weekend (which was great!) but I think I’ll just make a bunch of entries about it over the course of the week.¹¹ But here’s a quick summary: I visited Tiananmen (twice!), the Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven. I watched the Beijing Opera.¹² I went to this really nice bar/club and Client¹³ was there (!). I went shopping for 9 hours straight. And I think I might just have a cold. More later!

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footnotes:
¹: harm; disadvantage; read: BAD
²: Props to whoever coined this term! I thought it was like, one of the cleverest things ever. It refers to China’s Internet censorship; they mass-block sites like crazy. Let’s just say that I am no fan of this.
³: I was agonizing over the Page cannot be displayed message, and then a Google search of “facebook china blocked” led to sites that were last updated Jul 01 2008. Cue multiple headdesk-ing and raging equivalent to KA;SKF;LEAK F;LEKFE;ARRRRGHHHHH!!!!!!
⁴: I tried to go on a different proxy site, and when I typed in the URL, I got Site Error 30: You’re in china. WHAT — THE.
⁵: I first wrote out “I’m itch so badly”, like the “i’m die” macro. Goodness, all this Chinese makes me sound like a lolcat.
⁶: Most of these bites were acquired during a taichi session. In my defense, it was outdoors, I was barefoot, and I was wearing a skirt. And not to mention, I’m really prone to bug bites.
⁷: benefit; advantage; read: GOOD
⁸: There are cutting board stations around the meat section, where butchers prepare the poultry. Anyway, there was a butcher preparing turtle meat …. and I turned my head to see what was going on and he beheaded the turtle with one downward motion of the blade. And the severed turtle head kept twitching on the far corner of the board. No joke, those turtles really have some life in them.
⁹: They have live fish on display for people to buy, and one poor fish decided that hanging onto life by a bin of ice just wasn’t cutting it. It flopped out of the box and onto the aisle, much to the chagrin of the people nearby.
¹⁰: Kiwi soda and ice cream. They even have the kiwi seeds!
¹¹: Yeah, a lot did happen over the weekend aka I ended up taking 83825938 photos.
¹²: …and did not use my earphones once. I even had the iPod out just in case.
¹³: Electroclash musicians. They did “Down to the Underground” with Pete Doherty and “Pornography” with Carl Barat.

SATURDAY, FLICKR STYLE:⁸

Yeah, I definitely ziplined across that.

That is not I, but rather some random guy that happened to be on the zipline. But you get the idea.

(larger size)

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footnotes:
¹: No kidding. When they mean “climb” the Great Wall, they really / truly / honestly mean climb the Great Wall. There’d be tower after tower after tower … and the steps! The steps varied from giant to tiny to literally everything in between. Basically, if somebody missed a step and tripped and tumbled backwards, it would be the ultimate domino effect, considering how big our group was. And there would be these ramps, which weren’t a hassle to walk, but there weren’t any walls on the side in the chance that I happened to fall off. Considering how intimidating that wall was, that chance was pretty darn high. And it didn’t help that people nearby were talking about the daily death toll of Simatai. Haha, that was pretty comforting to hear when scaling the sans-side-support ramps.
²: The zipline is basically a trolley. Over the Great Wall. A trolley. Over the Great Wall. A TROLLEY OVER THE GREAT WALL (!!!). The wall overlooked this beautiful lake that literally looked like jade. I was harnessed onto a cable that ran above the lake, and I would glide along the cable. The view was amazing and totally worth the climb down and the 40 RMB.
³: Basically, we were looking in the Beijing guidebook, and when we saw a photo of a guy in a Columbia sweatshirt, we were pretty much compelled to go there. Funny how things work out that way.
⁴: I credit the amazing food (cucumber and tuna rolls, tiramisu-in-a-spoon, samosas in mango chutney, strawberry tartines, et al.), but in all honesty, I did meet some awesome people.
⁵: Yeah, I thought of Hendrix too.
⁶: Xing = Star. Star Ba Ke (when said aloud) sounds like a certain all-too-familiar coffee chain that starts with S and ends with tarbucks.
⁷: Oh, I kid you not. SEVENTY.
⁸: If I killed your feed / flist or just your browser in general with the dialup-unfriendly pictures, feel free to e-shout at me.

YOU GUYS. The wine flavoured Pejoy is really good, and I mean really, really good. Pejoy is basically reverse Pocky¹, and I’ve bought so many boxes of tiramisu, cheesecake, matcha green tea, red wine, and chocolate. Not to mention, I’ve bought so many snacks² in addition to this. If only American prices weren’t so inflated.

This Saturday, I’m going to the Great Wall³, provided the weather is nice enough to go. It’s been so rainy this week!⁴

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footnotes:
¹: Um, if you don’t know what Pocky is, I am terribly sorry because you are missing out. They’re these snack sticks dipped in icing. It’s a rather simple concept, I know, but if you’ve had it, then surely you know how good it is! And Pejoy, which I somehow can’t seem to find in the States, is the snack stick with icing inside. Which is an equally brilliant concept. Basically, if you are totally unfamiliar with Pocky/Pejoy, then I suggest you go to an Asian supermarket, go to the snack aisle, and buy it!
²: Snackwise, China is amazing. Lay’s potato chips come in flavors like cucumber, aromatic crispy chicken, Italian red meat, and lychee. LYCHEE (!!!). The Chinese tend to get rather creative with the snacks, which can be both delicious and … bizarre.
³: SiMaTai portion of the wall. I heard it’s steep.
⁴: The bright side of the rainy weather is that the afternoon isn’t humid at all. I can tell when it’s going to rain, because the weather is breezy and nice. The haze makes it a bit hard to tell, since you can’t see the ominous storm clouds lurking in the sky.

View outside the plane. The thing with Beijing’s skyline (or lack thereof, I suppose) is that it’s hazy … like crazy (rhyming skills, let me show you them!). Seriously guys, good luck finding the sun if you ever venture out here. Until we were really close to ground level, the view from the plane was completely white.

My classes are intense like none other², and I hardly have enough time to spend in the computer lab. We do one ke wen³ per day, with about 40 new vocab words to learn. Every morning, we have a ting xie⁴, followed by a review / discussion of the new ke wen. Some of the questions that I get asked⁵, I can’t even answer them in English, go figure. After the lesson, we have a drill session, which is a discussion session of sorts that integrates our newly learned vocab. Again, questions about current events … and dream lovers.⁶

After the lesson, we have an hour for lunch. The cafeteria food is pretty good⁷, and it’s really inexpensive! Same applies to most food here, which you can get for less than 1 USD.⁸ I kind of dread going back to overpriced, stingy portions of American food.

After lunch, we have 40 minutes to prepare for our tutorial.⁹ The tutorial is two-part: one part is conversational and the other part reviews whatever I’ve prepared in the past 40 minutes. I’m not really sure what to make of them, since I rotate teachers every day. In one tutorial, I was quizzed on the next lesson’s vocab out of the blue. Needless to say, I failed quite miserably. But most of it is just small talk, so it’s not as hard as the morning lesson.

… and after all of that, I’m done around 3 pm. I’d type up a lot more about my (mis)adventures here but I’m terribly hungry, so I will post later! Hope all of you are doing well ♥ ♥!

P.S. I do apologize if the photos are making the LiveJournal flist or feed load slowly.

P.P.S. Several blogging sites are banned in China, such as LiveJournal and Tumblr.

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footnotes:
¹: Bad = grainy, compressed, over-sharpened, et al. Grainy can be good in some cases, but not this one.
²: Either that or I’m lazy. Or both. But seriously, lessons then drills then two-part tutorial??? My brain does not like.
³: Lesson / unit / text, whatever you want to call it.
⁴: Dictation — the teacher reads off a sentence in the text, and we have to write it word for word in Chinese.
⁵: “What do you think of China’s one-child policy?” “What kind of policy would you enact to reduce Beijing’s highway congestion?” “Do you think China’s industrialization is shortening or widening the gap between the rich and the poor?” — asked in Chinese, of course. Which increases the difficulty of answering by tenfold.
⁶: Yeah, no kidding. One of the questions involved us describing the ideal qualities of our “dream lover.” (class: Wait, what.)
⁷: But then again, I’ll eat just about anything. Except most things involving tomatoes. And onions. And leeks. Which I suppose does make me a fussy eater now, but shhh.
⁸: No really, I kid you not.
⁹: Preparation = reading the next lesson and studying the vocab. Unfortunately, 40 minutes doesn’t even suffice when reading just the first page.

a different kind of little red book

I leave for Beijing in 24-some hours, and I am crazy excited to the point where boredom is simply inexcusable for the 13-hour flight. I have a new red journal to write! I can’t wait to write about daily happenings and fill up the pages with doodles. NEW JOURNAL — now how is that not exciting.

I am attempting to fit everything into one suitcase (under the 50 lb limit), one backpack, and one purse. I would totally take advantage of this two-suitcase-limit-for-international-flights-only but we all know that I am going to come back with like, six cases the size of baby hippos. Sorry, baby hippos, but I don’t think that you’d want to be forcefully shoved onto a plane compartment. We’ll see how my packing prowess measures, as I attempt to fit heaps of clothes, anvil-sized books, a laptop, tangled-up electronics, toiletries, and whatever else I deem necessary.

Riiiight. In my defense, it is 3:18 AM and I should have better things to do. Like rest my eyelids. Or exercise my dream interpretation skills.

In other words, I have ZZZZZZZZZs to manufacture.