Winter Wonderland

Hello again, to all my readers who have been patient and have managed to stay loyal thus far. As you all know, after returning home for Christmas break and spending some quality time with my family, I came back to Beijing to begin my second semester in China. However, what some of you may not know is that I came back two weeks early, and had the opportunity to travel with two friends of mine, Caitlin and Lenore. This blog entry is to tell you about that experience and all the time leading up to the opening week of orientation at IES. 

The three of us met on January 19^th at Beijing Downtown Backpackers’ Hostel, which would be our home for the next week and a half. We shared a room with three other people, who were cheap travelers like ourselves. The hostel proved to be a great place to stay. We had laundry services, free breakfasts every morning, decent and clean beds, our own bathroom, a lounge, and even an internet room. Even better, the hostel’s location was fantastic. Stationed in the middle of a street called Nanluogu Xiang, we were surrounded by funky little stores, boutiques, and an ample supply of cafes. I found out that many artists who can’t afford to be in Beijing’s art district, 798, often set up shop in that ally, which quickly made it one of my new favorite places to visit. Even better, the street was surrounded by hutongs, traditional Chinese homes, which gave you a secluded and native atmosphere over all. 

Every day, after a hearty session of sleeping in, we’d go out and explore Beijing a bit. We hardly ever had a definite plan, just a general idea of what we wanted to see and where we wanted to go. This proved to be a fantastic experience. One of my goals this semester is to make Beijing more like a home, and that’s exactly what I started to do during my first week back in China. I started to move away from the more typical tourist activities and famous sites, choosing instead to go to places where more locals frequent. 

One of the first things we did was go to Houhai Lake and rent some ice skates. It was so cold in Beijing that all of the rivers and lakes were frozen, each with about a one-foot layer of ice. I had a great time skating around, although I quickly learned what a difference a zamboni really makes and often tripped, stumbled, and flailed.  Of course, I feel flat on my butt once, but in my defense the ice was uneven and the blades of my skates were off center. 

Another day we decided to go to the Beijing Zoo and Aquarium, which turned into a full day experience. Anyone who knows me knows I looove zoos, and I was interested to see what Beijing’s would be like. To be honest, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I heard stories that the animals’ facilities were not that good, and to some extent that was true. It was heartbreaking to see beautiful, big cats in cement cages about the size of an average classroom, and the dog section was also a bit depressing. Yes, you read that right. The dog section. I believe I’ve mentioned that within the inner city of Beijing you are not allowed to have a dog over one foot tall. That could explain why in one part of the zoo there were cages and cages of big dogs. I saw St. Bernards, huskies, golden retrievers, old English sheepdogs, cocker spaniels, etc. While the whole situation was really funny, it was kind of sad to know that the dogs would never have anyone to play with. Now, don’t get the wrong idea. I though the zoo was very good considering the crowded, hectic nature of Beijing as a whole. The zoo was overall very large and we actually didn’t have time to see it all. Their aquarium was also excellent, and I loved that they actually had four large green sea turtles. Of course, if you go to the Bejing zoo, there is one thing you absolutely have to see: the pandas. I was actually very surprised when I saw them. Whenever I’ve seen pandas, I’ve always been bored. They’re nearly always asleep, curled up in a ball so you can’t anything but a black and white blob. Beijing’s were roaming around, eating bamboo and carrots, and were overall very active. They were so cute! It made me realize why the Chinese are so obsessed over them, and why one idiot got killed by one last semester when he decided to fulfill his lifelong dream of hugging a panda in person. Nope, not joking. Look it up online. 

Besides those two major places, there were a couple of other sites we stopped at. We explored the Lama Temple, which is a huge, beautiful Tibetan Buddhist temple, saw the Drum and Bell Tower, and also went to the Beijing Dinosaur Museum. Note to Beijing visitors: don’t go to the museum unless you’re very bored. The quality was pretty bad, but we made the most of it by taking goofy pictures with the dino bones. By far the best part was a large wall painted with a scene taken from prehistoric times. Mammals long since extinct fought over food, mammoths roamed across plains, saber tooth cats lounged on rocks, and towards the bottom of the wall in the bushes, pandas socialized and ate leaves. Wait…pandas? Prehistoric pandas? I raised my eyebrows and seriously questioned the validity of the museum. 

At night we also went out and about, frequenting some of our favorite hangouts and finding and exploring new ones. Live music soon became our activity of choice, and we all found and fell in love with a little bar called Ginko. The atmosphere was great, the music was free, and, best of all, we quickly became friends with the bartender, Terry. When he wasn’t busy, we’d sit and chat, teach each other Chinese and English, and, when the owner wasn’t looking, enjoy all the discounts and specials he gave us :). Always get to know the bartender if you can. 

While all of our exploring was a lot of fun, by far the main event that we were looking forward to was Chinese New Year. IES was especially helpful and provided us with homestays to celebrate New Year’s Eve. This proved to be a fantastic experience, since Chinese New Year, like Christmas, is mostly celebrated within the home as opposed to on the street. Lenore and I shared a family, and got to see firsthand what China’s biggest holiday was like. Our family was from Beijing, and all of the family members crowded into the grandmother’s tiny three-bedroom home to celebrate together. All together there was a grandmother, two aunts, a nephew, a niece, an uncle, a set of parents, and a son. Needless to say, we did a lot of socializing :). Dinner was prepared in the kitchen, and Lenore and I had the opportunity to help out. Our job was to help make jiaozi, which is a traditional Chinese dumpling and is commonly eaten at New Year’s. Our host dad rolled out the dough, which in my opinion is the hardest job. Each piece has to be a perfect circle, the dough thick in the middle and thin on the edges. Lenore, our host mom, and I put in the filling and pinched the dumplings shut. Closing dumplings is also hard, since there’s a certain way you have to do it in order to get a pretty shape and prevent it from falling apart once it’s steamed. Our New Year’s feast was HUGE. We all ate till we dropped, which wasn’t hard since everything was delicious. There was lotus root with hawthorn jelly, cold meats and spicy dipping sauce, fried shrimp and chicken wings, a whole fish, pickled vegetables, and a mushroom dish with blood jelly. When we were all stuffed, Lenore and I left with our new parents to their house where we watched the New Year’s special on TV. CCTV, the main TV program in China, every year puts on a four hour program full of dancing, singing, comedy acts, and plays that is hosted and performed by some of the biggest stars in China. Everyone watches it, and it lasts until the wee hours of the morning. After a while, Lenore and I could tell our homestay parents were getting sleepy, so we made our exit and went to the Drum and Bell Tower Square to see the stroke of midnight. 

It’s hard to really describe just how magnificent the turning of the New Year was. Through out the day, actually, throughout the whole week, fireworks had been going off pretty much nonstop. However, once midnight hit, the whole city changed. My location for the event was fantastic. Lenore and I raced down the street as midnight approached, dodging fireworks and sparklers and firecrackers. A couple times boomers were launched a little too close to me, causing my ears to ring for hours afterwards. Once midnight hit, the whole city lit up. The sky glowed as everyone left their homes and lit fireworks off from their courtyards, roofs, sidewalks, and doorsteps. Traffic stopped as strings of firecrackers 8-9 feet long were set off. Car alarms chimed everywhere as boomers were launched, sending vibrations strong enough to set off their sensors. I’ve never seen anything like Chinese New Year. It was like watching an hour and a half of the biggest Fourth of July grand finale you’ve ever seen. Being at the Drum and Bell Towers for this event was especially spectacular. It was so beautiful to see the ancient towers light up as fireworks of every shape and size surrounded them and to hear everyone cheering. Ever since I was a little girl I have wanted to see Chinese New Year’s, and as I stood in one of the oldest centers of the capital, watching the fireworks explode around me, it really hit me: I was actually, finally fulfilling my dream. Yes, I’ll admit that I cried a bit, but that’s ok. Chinese New Year’s is something I will never, ever forget and is by far one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen. 

Now, technically Chinese New Year’s is not just a single day, but weeks of festivities. New Year’s Eve is the biggest of all the events, but things continue long afterwards. In the following days, one of the most popular activities to do is to go to temple fairs. Temple fairs are…well…fairs at temples. It’s that simple. Usually there are traditional dance and singing performances, stands where you can play games, knickknacks and art you can buy, food stalls, and maybe some activities such as paper cutting and painting. They’re incredibly popular and an intricate part of the New Year’s celebrations. For that reason, our homestay family met us the next day on campus and took us to the festival at the Summer Palace temple grounds. We got to explore a bit, listen to music, have tea, and watch people skate on the frozen ice. Lenore, Caitlin, and I only stayed for a little while, though, since we were due to catch a flight to Harbin, China. 

Harbin is a city in the north of China and is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Russia. If you picture China as if it were a big chicken, Harbin is located right around where the comb would be. It’s not much of a city, really, but it does have some great ski places and has tons of Russian influences in its architecture. Since it’s so far north, of course the weather is F-R-E-E-Z-I-N-G. Every day I wore under-armor (kind of like sportswear long johns), a thick long-sleeved shirt, a turtleneck sweater, a sweatshirt and a ski jacket. I was still cold. During the night it was almost impossible to go out and do anything since temperatures would drop so low. Later I heard that temperatures would range between -4° to -40° Fahrenheit. 

We were fortunate that the budget hotel we stayed at offered a great, cheap tour that hit all the major sites in Harbin. The only drawback was that it was entirely in Chinese, and our entire group was composed of Chinese city slickers who stared at us the whole time. Regardless, we saw some amazing things. We visited the Sophia Church, which was beautiful and designed in a Russian orthodox style. We also went to the Dragon Tower, which is probably one of the most random buildings I’ve ever been to in my life. There was a small prehistoric exhibit (with more pandas smuggled into the scenery), a Confucian room that for some reason displayed meteors, areas where you could play with cats and dogs, an aquarium, an Olympic hall, a movie area, and, my personal favorite, at the top of the tower you could buy a pigeon for 3 RMB and release it off the building (of course I did it). Needless to say, we left a bit dazed and confused. Our other small excursion was to a frozen section of a river, where we could take dog sleds or sleigh rids across the ice. We were mostly distracted by a section where the ice had been cut away to make a large, open pool. There was actually a man swimming in it, as if he weren’t cold at all. I thought he must be a special kind of idiot. 

While all of these activities were fun, our primary goal in visiting Harbin was to see its legendary Ice and Snow Festival. It is by far the most defining feature of the city and occurs every year from late January to mid February. During the day we saw the first half of the festival, the part dedicated to snow. That consisted of an entire park filled with snow sculptures ranging in sizes. Some were small, maybe the size of a fountain, while others were several stories tall. Regardless, all were extremely beautiful and intricate. There was a life-size train that you could walk into, a replica of the Finnish parliament building, small villages, slides and cafes made from snow, and statues of dragons, maidens, musicians, lions, and everything in between. It was absolutely beautiful and completely unforgettable. The night was dedicated to seeing the ice section of the festival. While various ice sculptures and ice lanterns were scattered throughout the whole city, there was another park completely dedicated to the festival. Inside it was a mini-city made entirely out of ice. Each building was constructed in a different architectural style, and each block of ice had a light frozen inside it, making it glow at night. Muslim mosques, German cabins and castles, French arches, Chinese temples, and pagodas from Thailand lit up in fantastic colors of every neon shade. Most had ice slides stretching off of them that you could ride down, and many also had pavilions that you could climb up to and see. As you strolled around the buildings, you could also watch reindeer and horse-drawn carriages wiz by and even catch a glimpse of people carrying arctic foxes, which you could pet and take pictures with for a small fee. Although it was an amazing place to be, we could only stay for an hour. It was so cold that our cameras were freezing and breaking down, and I experienced a new kind of pain in my toes and fingers. 

The last thing we did before we returned to Beijing was visit Harbin’s tiger park. Supposedly it has the largest concentration of tigers of anywhere in the world. We rode in an armored jeep and drove through the park, watching tigers walk around the car and roll in the snow. Even better, you could feed the tigers, and by “feed” I don’t mean you throw chunks of meat out your window. You throw live animals. Your choices consist of a chicken, a duck, a sheep, or, if you wanted to spend the money, a cow. Caitlin, Lenore, and I felt a little guilty about buying an animal for the slaughter, but we figured it was an experience we shouldn’t miss, We decided to pool together and splurge for the cheapest food option: a chicken. Dubbed Sanders Crispy McNugget, our brave little chicken rode in the van next to us and waited for the inevitable. When we reached an inner part of the park, we received a brief warning and Sanders was thrown out of the car. He was air born for about five seconds until a tiger leaped on top of the car and skidded across the surface after him. There was a puff of feathers, and then he was gone. Our jaws dropped as we witnessed National Geographic firsthand, and quickly lamented not buying more chickens. Or perhaps a sheep. Yes, it’s sadistic and bloody, but…it’s also awesome. 

That concluded our stay in Harbin, and we took a plane back to the capitol. I think I may have hit a new record for the length of this rant, so I’ll cut things off here. I’ll tell you all about classes and the orientation process next time, so stay tuned if you can!