Rabbit, rabbit.
This morning, I had this extremely boring dream where I was back in Seattle and doing the stuff I usually did everyday (like count the airplanes flying overhead yuk yuk). When I woke up, and realized it was just a dream, I wasn’t too happy. Especially considering it was someone knocking at my door that woke me from my wistful reverie. Reed was there, talking about his awesome dream involving murder, bullet dodging, espionage, and snipers.
I wish my dreams were that cool.
These past few days have been hot as a proverbial mutha in an oven. It’s not “hot” hot but more “humid-as-hell” hot, which makes it that much less bearable. Walking around feels like swimming, and biking feels like… biking in a swimming pool full of water.
At least I’m keeping up-to-date on all the latest crazy American hit movies that are making there way into my DVD player thanks to crazy foos in theaters with video cameras. Thanks, whoever you are, for keeping me from ending this humid misery here by impaling my eye with an ice pick!
As you can probably tell, I’m just about ready to go home. Home, where people all speak the same language. Home, where I can get decent food. Home, where I can sit down when I move my bowels.
If you don’t know, squatters are the form of toilet in use here. It consists basically of a porcelain hole in the ground where you do your business. Luckily, our dorm rooms have good ol’ sit down toilets, but the majority of the rest of the country does not. The Man tries to tell me it’s more sanitary than sit down toilets. Well The Man has never tried using one of these things! It’s an art form to maneuver your pants/shorts around in such a way as to not get fecal matter in em.
We spent last weekend at some peasents homes close to the Great Wall, which we also climbed. I’m guessing we stayed there in order to give us some sort of inkling as to what real peasent life is like in China. Judging from that experiance, I’d say peasents have cell phones, nice gardens, TV’s, and even DVD players (These weren’t exactly “poor” peasents). A few of the people in the village worked in Beijing, and spent their weekends a 3-hour drive away, which could explain the noticable amount of material goods. But this isn’t to say that everything was clean and nice and dandy either. Chalk it up us a character building cultural learning experience, I suppose.
The Great Wall (at Simatai) was, well, great. Great and steep and difficult to climb. Up near the top were some drink sellers, and not-so-surprisingly, shafted us weary tourists with near-American prices on drinks. Of course, we still payed for them. The seller guy had a small enclave where he slept. Apparently, he lived up there, selling drinks, and only going back down to restock his inventory. On our way down, we were so tired that we payed rip-off prices for a lift down in mini gondolas. They don’t charge you to go up, but they’ll charge you to go back down, I suppose.
I’m too lazy/bored/stupid to think of anything else. Maybe I’ll upload some pictures next time.
-f.w.
Something disturbing that I notice here is that: I am among the taller half of the population. It’s quite a morale boost to spend your day towering over the rest of the masses. Of course, Reed is like the friggin’ tallest guy in China. Still, it’s not a bad thing. There are numerous advantages to being the same/greater height than many adults. Such as awesome dominating power and control. Yeah, that’s right. I’ll whup anyone with my tai chi skills.
Before Jimmy shaved his head, many people asked if we were twins. I know asians all look the same, but c’mon! You guys mix us up back at home! You’d think members of our kind would recognize the subtle differences! I don’t look that much like Jimmy!#@$
Part of the whole twins thing, I think, stems from the one child policy here. Since my mom is here with us, and since she looks like a local, they believe that she too is bound by the policy, and thus the only way for here to possibly have two children is for them to be twins. But we’re not. If I had a penny for every time some freshman (sophomore now, eh?) called me “Jimmy” I would, have, like $0.07. And that goes quite a long ways here in China. I could get __two__ pieces of gum. Two, I said!
Man, this DVD player we got is cool. I’m seeing something like 2 movies a day, and someone in our program got a DVD of Reign of Fire. Wonder if it’s anygood.
Oh yeah, Reed got his bike stolen again, even though it was locked to Angee’s bike with a Kryptolock. Angee thinks that he didn’t lock it completely, but the adeptness of Chinese bike thieves is something to be feared. So sometime this week, we’re gonna try and set up a sting operation. It’ll be sweet – we got, like, two-way radios, and binoculars, and camo gear, and we can be all tactical and shit. I wonder if we can make citizen’s arrests in China? If we can’t, we’ll claim we’re members of the Red Guard, and that the bike once belonged to Mao. Then we’ll claim that, in addition to stealing bikes, the thief also was selling drugs, porn, and peddling American Rock and Roll to corrupt the youth. Yeah, that’ll work.
We’ll also try to get it on video tape. That’d be, like, Totally Sweet. I’d flip out (http://www.realultimatepower.net)
Oh yeah, and we’re probably (maybe) gonna get to work on next year’s movie. I can’t reveal anything except for the following: Reed and I will likely be in it. There. Straight from the horse’s mouth.
-fw
Wow, it��s hot here. Yesterday, we hit 40+ Celsius, or 104+ F. For all ya damn yanks.
Luckily for me, I��ve picked up a regionless DVD/CD/VCD/SVCD/DQERD/TLA/SAS/GIGN Player for about $75. AND the local minimart happens to have the entire Studio Ghibli (http://www.nausicaa.net) Collection of (pirate) DVD��s, and they��re subtitled. I am so happy, I am about to bust. Robert – all our subtitling has been for naught :0
BTW, MIB2 is pretty funny. Especially if you’re paying one US dollar for a crappy movie you’d never go near in the states. Woo!
Also, I think I might have a source for, eh, “real 100% authentic” computer games. So if anyone out there -would like to try out a new, completely legal 100% authentic game-, drop me a line. Same for any movies. But no guarentees.
The classes that we’re taking here are pretty bad. It’s not that I don’t enjoy drilling, tests, quizzes, being the youngest in the class, or even being terrible at Chinese compared to college kids who have been taking the language for several more years than I have. Oh, no, that’s not a problem at all.
It’s because the air conditioning is always shutting itself off, as if it has a mind of its own.
AC: Hahah! Now I make your room livable and cool, but you Humans are mere bugs! Tremble at my power!
Students: Thank you, oh AC God for a cool 18C Climate!
AC: Your offerings anger me! Roast like Beijing Roast Duck, Humans!
Students: Aiee!
Or something like that. I think the heat is gettin’ to me head.
At least things are slightly looking up. This Thursday, we’ll finally be outta Tai Chi class. Although getting up at 6:29 every morning for the 6:30 class is just tee-friggin-rific (Keep in mind I get up later when going to school during the normal school year), I just can’t stand doing it anymore. What’s worse, the 120 Yuan deposit we each gave for the class (we get it back if we attend every class) is gone because I was lazy the day after we came back from Tianjing. 120 Yuan! That’s, like 12 DVD’s!
My pop’s coming tomorrow night with a laptop, so you can be regaled with pictures (Jimmy got his head shaved. Then, in his never ending search for baldness, the cheap electric razor he got cut the top of his head up into ribbons. It’s quite a sight). Maybe then, you won’t be as bored when you read this. If anyone is reading this at all.
Aw geez, forget it. I’m gonna go to the school main computer lab to play 400×300 software mode CS (http://www.counter-strike.net) against terrible Chinese kids who think they’re the proverbial “shiznit.” With a name like “AzNWarrior” or “F***YouAndYourFamily” (Absolutely not kidding about that one), how can you lose?
-fw
Arrgh. Weird formatting stuff just because I’ve been copying and pasting from Word.
This weekend was… extremely tiring and crappy. I’m barely awake now, typing this stupid thing out, feeling like I’m drifting in and out of some insomniac’s bizzare dream. Which reminds me: Have you ever zoned out and just stared straight ahead, discarding information that your eyes are sending to your brain? You know, when you’re deep in thought/tired/mentally retarded, and you think about stuff with your eyes open? Whatever you do, make sure your blank gaze doesn’t fall upon the following categories:
Even though you’re not comprehending what you’re seeing, staring at the above still may cause social awkwardness.
On Friday, most of the college kids went “clubbin’”, i.e. standing around a humid dark room with repetitive electronic music blasting through speakers half drunk off your ass and blindly copping feels. Jimmy wanted to go, but I advised against it, due mostly to the fact that he:
So the four lame highschoolers stayed behind. To hell with it, we thought, and decided to make the most of the evening. We headed to the mini mart and stocked up on chips, soda, and ice cream, and then headed to the Wuming Lake on campus. Little did we know that this picturesque lake where we planned on blasting loud music and having a wild good time was also the home of Beijing University’s Biggest Damn Makeout Spot. Seriously, every 10 yards sits another couple. After circling the lake looking for a place to sit, we found one and proceeded to play bad music and be fools (obviously, we weren’t in any mood to make out, although Reed did open an ice cream bar incorrectly getting melted vanilla ice cream all over his pants). Not surprisingly, the couples in our immediate vicinity moved away after the third repetition of some Japanese anime theme song. We paid Angee 5 Yuan each for him to ride back to our dorms in nothing but his boxers. I followed closely behind him blasting loud music. Let’s just say the oncoming car with high beams on wasn’t exactly Angee’s ideal situation when he’s half naked.
We sure got a lot of stares that night.
Speaking of stares, Reed seems to get the brunt end of it. I’d equate the stares he gets from people here to stares one would get walking around in Seattle if one happened to be thirteen feet tall and had bright green skin and four eyes. I guess white people aren’t very common in China.
The next morning we woke up man, to a seven hour drive. Well, a fourty minute one to the Tian Tan Temple. Luckily, it happened to be the lamest temple in China. Whoo!
On Sunday, the four of us headed to Tianjing to do some filming. We first went to a church, an elementary school, then a high school. Let’s just say that the filming at the high school was less than ideal, and that Angee coulda stayed here, and that the train we caught back to Beijing was hot, 2 hours long, and late. And we have homework the next day. And Angee and I have to get up at 6:30 to do Tai Chi.
Not fun. This morning, I just said Screw it and skipped Tai Chi. Looks like they get my 120 yuan deposit.
The food is bad, I’m tired all the time, the classes suck, and it’s hot as hell.
Five more weeks.
-Freddie “GetMeOuttaHere” Wong
Yeah, I know this sucks without pictures. Still, Happy 4th of July (By the time I put this up, it’ll probably be the 5th for you)
Yesterday, we met up with our "language partners" i.e. college students that already go here who are paired up with us crazy Americans so we can practice speaking the language the other person is more comfortable speaking. I get paired up with "Richard", a computer studies major (Jimmy gets paired up with a forty-year old. Whee!). We hit it off immediately when I find out he’s got m4d ch1n3s3 d1vx pirated movies, and the connections to some, err, software. We talk about computers, movies, computers, movies, and then I head over to his dorm room.
Basically, the "hotel rooms" that my fellow CLERC students are living in are friggin palaces. Six of them share a room half the size of ours (Liberal usage of bunk beds here). There’s no A/C. There’s no TV, but that’s okay Richard tells me, because they can watch TV from their computers, which, due to space constraints, are placed on little mini desks right on top of the bed. He tells me that sometimes, they get up and immediately start surfin’ the net until they become so hungry that they have to leave.
C’est la vie, eh?
He’s a real interesting guy, and our conversations drift freely between Chinese and English (probably really weird sounding if you don’t understand one of the two). If you think wimpy Harvard’s acceptance rates are phenomenally low, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Harvard this year had a 10.5% acceptance rate, the most selective of the Ivy leagues. From what my buddy tells me, he was one out of one hundred from his province accepted to Beijing University. There were a total of 200,000 applicants in his province alone, making for a nice 0.05% acceptance rate in that province alone. The college selection process is also different here: instead of the myriad of tests we have to/ought to/had better take in the US (AP’s, SAT, SAT2, etc.), there’s only one test here. Then, the top students are the ones who have the honor of just going to college. No guarantee they’ll get in their favorite.
Something to chew over eh?
There are a lot of people here too (understatement alert). This makes for a pretty massive pool of job applicants. To make up for it, many stores here compensate by throwing the consumer around a roundabout process just for the apparent purpose of filling more jobs. For example, in the hallowed Minimart on campus, there are approximately 5 attendants per section (sports, clothing, etc.), and 3 behind a glass display case selling the more expensive things. The attendants see me approach and immediately follow me around asking me what I’d like to purchase (extremely unnerving, especially if you’re used to the employees of stores not giving you a rat’s ass, even if you ask for it (it’s usually on aisle 3)). They follow me around wherever I go, and make suggestions as to what I should purchase.
Employee: Hi! What are you looking for today?
Freddie: Uh, I need a pen.
Employee: Our pens are here! (Beckons)
Freddie: Okay?- (follows)
Employee: As you can see, we have quite a selection.
Freddie: Yeah (Starts looking)
Employee: How about this one? (Holds up a pen) Or this one? (Holds up another) What will you be using this for
Freddie: Writing, conceivably. Could you stop following me around?
Employee: Nope!
Freddie: Okay. Here, I’ll buy this one ?C the cheapest pen I could find here.
Employee: Goodie! Now my family can eat tonight!
My memory might not have reported that conversation as accurately as it really happened. The lady will then write you a ticket stub detailing the items of your purchase. Then, you walk to a cashier, who will stamp mein papers and take the money. Then, I walk back to the original lady, and give her a copy of the receipt. As far as I can tell, the only reason for this is to just fill jobs. Most of the ladies stand around and chitchat all day, anyway. But they’re still pretty sharp. Reed’s estimated and mastered the technique of going to something and looking long enough so that you get a good enough glimpse at it, and yet not attract the seller ladies.
Btw, I see that MIB2 is out. Damn I want to see that. Guess I’ll just buy a pirated DVD.
That’s all for now.
WAIT! Hahahahha I almost forgot. We’re watching this show that comes on every Friday called “English Party” (Might as well be “Engrish party”). It’s the funniest thing I have ever seen. Ask me for the tapes when ya see me, eh?
-fwong
Classes are "meh." Here’s just random stuff. This time it’s gonna be:
Cars and Transportation in Beijing
Reguarding car brands, the types of cars I see in China are an interesting mix. The cars are mostly of Japanese make, with a few Chinese made cars thrown in for good measure. As for luxury cars, there’s only one type: Volkswagens and Audis. That’s right. Total, I’ve seen two BMW’s (X5 and a 328I) and one Mercedes (The Smart Car (http://www.pistonheads.com/roadtests/index.asp?storyId=3420)). The Audi A6 appears to be the cream-of-the-crop when it comes to luxury in China, and I have no idea why the Audi is preferred over BMW or Mercedes. In the states, the Audis tend to run slightly higher than BMWs. Maybe it was marketing by VW that dominated the industry, but I have no idea. I see a ton of Passats, Jettas, and even Santanas (http://www.imperium.de/907/santana/).
Interesting thing to note is that cars and bikes coexist. Although I’m sure some of you already know this, I have a sense that you do not truly fully comprehend what I mean by that. I mean that, cars will get within inches of hitting you if you’re on a bike. There’s no such thing as pedestrian right-of-way here. When crossing the street, it’s like playing frogger, in that you hope to the next open space when you can. Of course, the end goal isn’t tasty flies (or whatever the hell you tried to win in that damn game). Just more dusty streets reekin’ of sewage. WIN. Even at crosswalks, there’s no guarentee that cars won’t speed the red. The bus brakes are screeching like fingernails on 1,000 chalkboards at once, and use of the car horn is both encouraged and obligatory. I can just imagine the license exam they have here (is there one?):
Instructor: Now turn right here
Student: (Turns)
Instructor: No idiot! You forgot to lean on your horn, and hit one pedestrian minimum! Failure! You get to be a cab driver now!
Student: No! Now my dream of becoming Chairman Mao’s chauffeur will never come true!
Instructor: Mao’s dead.
Student: NO!!!!
Hell, Jimmy was just clipped by a taxi side mirror. He said it "hurt," and I believe him.
Just this afternoon, Angee, Jimmy, Donald (The only other high schooler here), and I headed out to a McDonalds right outside the university campus to grab food. I’m lucky to be here typing this, instead of being SCRAPED FROM THE PAVEMENT. Crossing the road consisted of me looking for cars, praying to Jesus/Allah/Buddha, and yelling "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK" as I crossed. I was nearly run down twice. That’s life on the edge for ya – a five minute bike ride to McDonalds.
Oh yeah, something interesting happened yesterday: I went chinese Paintballin’! Woo! I had more experience than most people there thanks to Joe M and Garfo. I dished out some 0wnijj. It was a tiny indoor arena. They gave you only 20 shots per round for 50 Yuan. The guns didn’t even have hoppers (kind of a MASSIVE RIP OFF, in chinese currency). Angee went buckwild, and popped a guy fifty feet away in the face by shooting THROUGH the legs of a statue! I can’t say I had such a spectacular shot, but I got two goggle shots, the first being a reaction shot when he popped his head out, and the other with my last round from fifty feet away. It was fun, even if there were some foos who I capped who didn’t call themselves out. I’m looking for a better place to go 
By the way, the computer lab is most open at around 2:00 in the afternoon here, or around midnight your time. I know for a fact all yall are gonna become insomniacs just so you can talk to me
Can you think of anything else to say? Email me. As for me, I’m outta here.
Fw0ng
Okay. Part 2. Lessee�� where��d I leave off? Oh yeah:
Some things I need to clear up first. If you��re reading this, as always, pass it on to as many people you can:
The Bu Hao DVD��s and VHS tapes could not be completed in time for my trip. Consequently, we��ll be selling them (if you bought them already, you��ll received them) at the beginning of the coming school year. If you already paid, we hope to ship a copy out to you before school starts. Special features:
DVD:
Directors Commentary, Teaser trailer, real trailer, original Bu Hao short film, Production notes, ��What is Bu Hao?��, Painball (hilarious short thingy we shot. It��s worth it), extended outtakes, and the pre-show speech.
VHS:
Both trailers at the end
Now, back to our story:
Angee wanted some Sprite, but none of us knew exactly how to say it. I tried asking the waiter for ��white colored coca-cola�� to which he responded ��Oh! Pi2 Jiu3�� or ��Oh! You want beer!��
Kinda disturbing how easy it is to get alcohol here eh?
There��s technically no legal drinking age here, and the only deterrent we have is that our head prof told us to refrain from the schnapps and liquor. It doesn��t help that the rest of the cigarette smokin�� beer drinkin�� college kids are out partyin�� all night either.
But don��t worry about me: Coca-cola is about $0.35 a can here (Although I swear it tastes different)
I forgot to add that on Saturday, we visited the Summer Palace. It��s massive, but nothing special as I��ve been there before.
So we went to sleep. The next day was World Cup Sunday. Angee was pretty pumped up for the game. He had asked around, and had found out they were gonna be playing the game on a big screen in one of the school cafeterias. We get there one hour before the game starts, and it��s already pretty packed. Thankfully, my mom brings some KFC, and it��s a veritable World Cup partay. Once the game started, there were about one thousand people packed into the cafeteria watching it. The cheers when the ball looked like it was goin�� in were loud. When Ronaldo finally scored, the entire room went crazy. It was probably the loudest room I have ever been in, and the best World Cup watchin�� party I��ll probably ever go to.
We leave, and find that Reed��s brand new $18 bike had been stolen. We do a bit of searching around the area (apparently thieves will move your bike to a farther location and then steal it later under the cover of darkness. Of course, it was already pretty dark.) but fail to find it. My bike had been attached to Reed��s, and the only reason I still have it was this crappy metal bike lock (Before the game, Jimmy had taken my keys and gone ahead, so I had to pick this very same lock with a hairpin and a small luggage key). I don��t know whether Chinese bike thieves here just plain suck at their job, or if they thought they were taking too long. Luckily, Angee brought his circular tumbler bike lock, which should deter all but the most skilled of thieves.
Sadly, the next day (Monday) we take the placement test. Even for me, I thought it was extremely difficult. The listening comprehension section required you listen to something, and then pick the correct response from a pool of CHINESE CHARACTER��D answers, which made it that much more difficult. Imagine my surprise when I got thrown into the 5th Class. (There are 6 classes, 1 being ��I-know-no-chinese�� and 6 being ��I-know-so-much-Chinese-I-Don��t-Even-Know-Why-I��m-Here��). Reed, Angee, Jimmy, and I are amazed beyond words that we weren��t thrown into the first class. We had listened to some of the college students here, and they were pretty much fluent. There are two types of classes: listening and speaking, and writing and reading. I��m put into 5 for the listening class and 4 for the speaking. Jimmy goes into the 4th class on both. Angee goes 3/4, and Reed goes 3/3.
So today was the first day of classes and it was fairly boring, but there��s only four hours worth of classes, so I guess that��s good. In our Writing class, we had a 10 minute discussion of the ins and outs of Chinese beers. Felt kinda left outta that one. We basically have the rest of the day off. Angee and I chose to do Tai Chi as our extra activity, and that starts tomorrow bright and early at 6:30 am. Yay.
Now for some random stuff:
There are loads of police officers here. Whenever we pass, we shout ��POPO ALERT!�� or ��LOOK OUT! POPOS!�� I think they��re beginning to catch on that Popo = them, but we��re still making fools of ourselves (stupid americans.)
There��s also this minimart, that goes underground, and has EVERYTHING. There��s a supermarket. There��s shoes. There��s sports equipment. There��s electronics. There��s clothing. There��s a bakery. There��s no bathroom. The restaurant in the minimart is great too. We can get a good bowl of noodles for 5 Yuan. It��s become our favorite lunch spot. It kinda feels like they��re making service extra slow for us because we��re stupidamericans, but we get that a lot. A favorite pastime of several waiters is to call out the others and listen to us butcher the language. The ladies working in the sports department laughed their collective asian asses off when Angee attempted to express his need for a small ball air pump. Luckily for us, they don��t quite understand what the upraised middle finger means.
Alright. I can��t think of anything else for today.
Today is the… uh… lemme check. I’m still a bit screwed up from the time zone change. Ah right. The 1st. Rabbit, rabbit. I’m updating this from the Beijing University library computer lab, which costs 1 yuan for 10 minutes approx. (1 yuan = 12.5 cents). Anyway, here’s what’s been goin’ on (damn, this is gonna be massive.)
Reed, Jw0ng, and I took off for China on the 25th last month. After goin’ to the airport and sayin’ hi to my grandpa (he works there), we headed to the security checkpoints. My mom was accompanying us, as she has some loose ends to tie up here in Beijing. Tum tee tum. Reed asks to have his 1,000,000 rolls of super-professional-uber-film hand checked by the security dudes (cuz he don’t want no x-rays to be frontin’ with his super-professional-uber-film). The security dude was pretty ticked off about that one. Then, Jimmy puts his bag on the scanner, goes through, and waits patiently on the other side. The security guys see something and freak out. They ask to check his bag, and make him sit down. After sifting through the contents (and asking permission to open every��single��pocket��of his backpack) they pull out a��..
Ready?
A FRIGGIN�� SWISS ARMY KNIFE
Yessir, Jimmy was dumb enough to try and bring a SWISS ARMY KNIFE on the AIRPLANE on his CARRY ON. They freaked out because Jimmy is so INTIMIDATING and could possibly hijack the plane with his intimidating build. Twenty minutes later (it takes a long time to hand check 1,000,000 rolls of film), we are heading to the plane and it��s off to�� Canada. Vancouver, actually. We transfer to another plane.
Once in Vancouver and after getting�� lunch at the Vancouver Burger King (**** 1/2 by the way), we got on the plane to China. The flight was nice and boring (no crazy turbulence unfortunately), and was mostly uneventful save for the FIFTY KIDS SITTING NEAR ME WHO WERE IN PERPETUAL ��CRY MODE��. Good thing I brought ear plugs. Reed managed to entertain this little Asian kid by teaching him to turn on the reading light and then raise both hands like a foo cornered by da popos. Then, we taught him how to slap himself in the face a bunch. It was pretty cool.
10.66 hours later, we��re in Beijing. The airport here is spotless, but the outside is really dirty, dusty, and smelly. The Chinese government owns the airport, and I guess they��re just puttin�� their best face forward for the foreign travelers. We load our massive bags into a taxi and head off to my recently deceased grandfather��s apartment. The exterior of the building looks like a dump, but once you get inside, it��s pretty nice. That��s how things are here. Exteriors ain��t pretty, but the interiors ain��t bad. We take a 15 hour nap, and are up bright and early the next day at 6:00 am.
We��re studying with a Chinese language program called CLERC (http://www.nanhai.com/edu.html), but that doesn��t begin for a few days, so we��re doin�� a bit of sightseeing. We hop on the Beijing subway (which is extremely complicated with a full two lines, one of which is a loop, and the other is a straight line) and headed off to Xiu Shui Jie, or the Silk Market. Stalls line the streets here, hawking off fake brandname goods from Tommy Hilfinger, to Rolex. Reed picks up a nice Folex, and I get some t-shirts. Jimmy, on the other hand, gets ripped a new one when he buys a fake Gameboy Advance game for 3x as much as it would normally sell (it��s still half of the price in the states). If Alan��s reading this, Jimmy got BoF2. He also wishes he got your bag in the first place. After buying that stuff, we get some lunch, and head back to the apartment for another 10 hour nap. Reed and I wake at 11:00 pm and grab some McDonalds.
The spread of western culture, i.e. rock music and the McDonalds, is interesting to note. Integration of dishes, such as sweet taro pie (yuck) are pretty common. Since the weather is hot like a mutha here, McDonalds sells more ice cream than it does anything else. Some of the bigger restaurants even have small order windows outside that sell only ice cream. Another interesting thing to note is the relative cheapness of the food. A Big Mac meal, about $5 in the states, here costs 17 yuan, or just over $2. That��s still pretty expensive for the average Beijing dude, and much more expensive than an average Chinese meal, but for us, it��s supah cheap. Of course, they seem to compensate by making the portions really small. Super sizing here is still smaller than a regular size back home. Maybe that��s why we don��t see a bunch of obese Chinese people walkin�� around, but that��s a trend that could very possibly change in the near future. In terms of fast food, McDonalds and KFC are the only restaurants that are here. Dairy Queen also exists, but only to sell the ice cream part of their line-up.
The next day, we head to a super commercialized district of Beijing. Stands selling sodas and sweets line the streets, and there are massive billboards and telescreens playing commercials. In one of the malls, we discovered a paintball place. Gonna have to go there and show em how it��s done We also pick up some cheapo dart guns, and some fake VCD��s off the street before heading home (The Bourne Identity and Sen to no Chihiro, the latest Studio Ghibli flick (http://www.nausicaa.net)) There��s also this place near the apartment that has the World��s Tastiest Lamb and Chicken skewers. It��s good stuff, mon. What��s not good is the smell here. It��s cigarettes and sewage. Good times.
In the evening, we head off to Beijing University to meet with the other CLERC dudes. We immediately figure out that��
WE��RE THE YOUNGEST PEOPLE HERE
Save for a couple of other High school��ers, Every Other Person Here is going to college. We��re immediately branded as juniors, and we immediately brand them as fogeys. Good times. Jimmy and I share a room, and Reed and Angee share a room. We stay in cable tv equipped A/C��d rooms (I believe it��s a small hotel on campus for visiting people to stay). The campus itself is friggin�� massive. We later buy bikes (steel framed ones for about 150 yuan, or under $20 US each). As you can tell, things are pretty cheap here. You can buy a dish from the cafeteria for a mere 1 yuan, and rice for .5 yuan (If you haven��t figured it out by now, divide by 8 to get the US amount). You can literally eat like a king for about $2 and be stuffed like a turkey filled with stuffing. In comparison, you get a meager amount of food for that same amount at the fast food joints.
On Saturday, we eat at a Korean restaurant. Jimmy gets Kim Chee fried rice. It is too spicy for it��s own good. Angee and I get noodles. They smell like shit. Reed gets tuna fried rice. It��s okay. The restaurant SUCKS BALLS. The waitress doesn��t speak Chinese. She��s in China. I have no idea how she survives.
Shit. I��ve been here for 40 minutes, and I still haven��t got up-to-date yet, and I gotta go. I��ll update this later I guess.
Next time, on Freddie��s Dead Journal:
Watching the world cup with hundreds of screaming fans,
Getting owned on the placement test,
The meaning of life.
