YEAY! I GOT IN!

Hi There.

I apologize for not blogging about anything for ages but blogger seems to be blocked half the day and really slow for the other half. I finally got in but we've done so much in the program since i last blogged that trying to recap in chronological order seems futile at this point. Im just going to simply post about the different sites we've visited on what seems like a rigorous pilgrimage rivaling the visit to mecca (ive done it, trust me, this trip is definitely second place...actually...mecca was easier at times) haha!

So...

Two of the first sites we visited that i never got to write about were the summer palace and the temple of heaven.

Here's the temple of heaven:





















The temple of heaven was basically an alter to the heavens. The Chinese symbolism for heaven is round therefore this is one of the rare instances where the footprint of a building is round in nature. The temple today isn't an "active" religious site but it is a Taoist facility by definition. The emperor's reverence of heaven and ritualistic ceremonies tieing themselves to the divine pre-date Taoism, but the shift was eventually made.

We had to sketch this site but i haven't had time to figure out the scanner for the class yet, hopefully ill post my sketches before we come back.

That's all for now!

Ehsaan

Tiananmen, Grand Theatre and Owen's Grandparents!

Oh my!

Its only been 5 days and we've already seen SOOO much. This program being called "intense" is somewhat of an understatement. We get up early, listen to lectures that are hard to understand at times, and then get on a bus and walk around until its dark outside, then do it all again the next day. FUN!

But seriously...it kind of is fun. Lots of cool people and lots of cool things to see. I truly feel like were making the best use of our time, every minute is accounted for, no time for bullshit or what I like to call farting around.

The first major landmark we saw was Tiananmen Square. Its quite impressive, you walk, walk some more, walk even more, then you go underground and come back up some stairs and your soon surrounded by hundreds of feet of nothing but open space.

High density is an understatement for Beijing, so i guess you understand the magnificence of a plaza so big it can fit over a million people at once.

Tiananmen is surrounded on four sides by new age buildings that represent the power of the Chinese Communist party, the most notable is one that houses the remains of Chairman Mao.

The weather has been SUPER overcast the whole time, so my pictures haven't turned out too great, but worth seeing nonetheless.

here's a picture of one of the buildings...and me:





















Close to Tiananmen is the new Chinese Grand Theatre which is more often referred to as "The Egg." Its a massive white oval built on a shallow pool of water. You actually enter from stairs crawl under the pool and end up under the egg. Were planning on getting tickets to see a show one of these days but word has it the only show now is Chinese Opera, the Chinese students didn't seem interested, i wonder why...

here's a picture of it, its so big the whole thing doesn't fit in the view...
















After the egg Owen took me a few blocks away to visit his grandparents home. They live in a courtyard house in the Hutongs around that area. Hutongs are small alleyways that are characteristic of the old neighborhoods of Beijing. Owens grandfather is an engineer and he remodeled his home to include a second story and rooftop patio space, the first one in the entire area. You can actually see Tiananmen from their new balcony space, and the roofs of everyone else's house.




















So yeah, we've been to The Summer Palace, Behai Park and the Temple of Heaven but that will have to wait since its already 1:30 in the morning and were going to the Great Wall tommorow and the Olympic Village.

So...

Much to come...

Stay tuned!


Ehsaan

Food in China!

Ni How!

So far, we've seen lots of buildings but for some reason I'm more interested in blogging about the food we've eaten so far. I was kind of worried that finding things i could eat would be difficult but I've been pleasantly surprised.

Breakfast is the coolest at the university. When we first arrived it was 5 in the morning and we later went to the dining hall and had breakfast that looked much like lunch: rice, pickled and cooked vegetables various breads and stews. There were also these really cool breads that were stuffed with red bean paste.

tasty...

The next day we went to the other breakfast stand (there's a lot of places we can use our meal cards), they have much more interesting things there...

here's what i had the second day:
















Its bread fried around an egg one side, normal fried bread on the bottom and lettuce with some special sauce inside. It was really good, especially with warm soy milk or jasmine tea.

the next day i had something even better:















It was basically a crepe cooked right there on the spot that was mixed with green onions, various sauces, egg and crispy bread...mmm.

For lunch and dinner we usually go to the restaurants on campus, there's a normal one much like the Chinese restaurants back home, you sit down, order a lot and everyone shares. There's also a market place where you an get small stuff to snack on and an "American style" restaurant that's really not too good. I got a tuna sandwhich from there one day and it ended up being really small and surprisingly sour, but still edible.

The most exciting thing about the city is the AMAZING amount of halal/Muslim restaurants all over town, with over 80 million Muslims in China, its not very surprising the capital is dotted so abundantly. We went to a place walking distance from the campus several nights ago. The food was "chinese" in nature but very different at the same time, definitely middle eastern influence. I think the owners were either Turk, Turkaman, Uzbek or something like that. Maybe even Mongolian, but they definitely weren't speaking Chinese the whole time we were there.

The main food they specialized in was lamb. In fact, most people might not know it, but all lamb in China is usually halal because its all comes from the Muslim regions of China (from what Owen has learned). We ordered mostly lamb kabobs grilled on small metal skewers in bit-size pieces with plenty of fat (donbeh)...mmm.

There was also this dish that had small flat noodles in tomato sauce with bell peppers, it tasted like ravioli and was amazingly good. We also had kidney kabobs, not too bad to being with, but weird aftertaste.

I guess that's all the food for now.

Ehsaan

Its China Time!

I'm finally here!

Its actually been a while, couple days or so, but free time seems to be very rare in the program as we've come to learn, and jet lag (although mild) demotivates blogging with extreme vigor.

So when we arrived in the airport i was extremely pleased that we landed in the new terminal intended for the Olympic visitors that are already starting to show up. I have yet to find out who designed it but i remember reading somewhere it might be Norman Foster. Regardless...it was very neat being inside.

Here's some pictures...






























here's a rendering of the whole terminal that was just recently added...















Some people argue its looks like underwear, others say it was intended to be a red dragon, whatever, i guess good art always causes controversy. We were told Beijing will be extremely sunny, humid and hot. We arrived at a Beijing definitely hot and humid but also extremely overcast. Our director explained its common to rain during the summer in Beijing, and have some misty days, but nothing like what were experiencing now, weather reports predict an entire week of overcast weather still to come...and more rain. Its not such a bad thing, considering we've already knocked out three major historic sites during the cool weather: tianmen square, the summer palace and the temple of heaven.

Our program is in correspondence with NCUT (north china university of technology), a very prestigious university in Beijing that has a comparable enrollment as cal poly but has a much denser environment, same amount of students, much smaller campus. Each one of us has a Chinese partner that's suppose to help us out on campus and show us our way around town. I was first motivated to go on the trip by my chinese American friend Owen at cal poly. Hes a good friend of mine, we're with each other all the time, some people think were a couple.

This is him sleeping on the plane...
















He's fluent in Chinese so i don't really need a Chinese partner. When we were assigned our partner, we realized she wasn't too interested, come to think of it, we really haven't seen her after orientation day. Haha! But instead two other students that weren't assigned to anyone have started hanging out with us, they're really nice and we've hung out a couple times already.

Here's us playing pool...

















This is Monica, her real name is Wang Fu Li, but for some reason we call her Monica. Shes nice, and good at 8-ball to say the least.

I guess that's all for now, ill post about our first three trips soon.

Zai Jian for now!

Ehsaan