On religious enclaves, student life, and current events

I mentioned Christianity and Buddhism in a previous blog post, but this past week I took another excursion with Japanese friends to the most well-known Muslim enclave in Beijing, 牛街Niujie (Ox Street).  Getting off the subway on the way to Niujie felt very much like I was just in another area of Beijing until I started to notice Arabic writing alongside all the Chinese signs.  The beginning of our walk down Niujie was marked by a large, green building with distinctly Islamic-looking architecture, otherwise known as the Niujie Mosque.  We bought a ticket to look inside and found ourselves in a much more hyridized Chinese/Arabic kind of setting.  Even the imams and mosque staff all looked like ethnic minorities of mixed ancestry.

The big green mosque.

Outside the prayer room.

Main worship hall.

Imam tombs.

Classrooms

 After forgoing breakfast that morning, we found exactly what we wanted to find as we continued to make our way down Niujie: halal street food!  I don't know most of the names of what I ate, hence the lack of captions.  It was all delicious, nonetheless!

At the end of Niujie, we found a hole-in-the-wall free-entry museum called the Xuannan　（宣南） Cultural Museum.  Some of the historical descriptions were full of apparent Communist influence in its rhetoric.  It was all very interesting to read and look at.  Also, definitely a good deal for free-entry.

Peking Opera headgear.

Acrobats

 Even though I tend to highlight, and sometimes rave about, all the interesting things I see throughout China and Beijing, I am still living the daily life of an exchange student here.  And I must say, exchange student life in Beijing is pretty awesome for a number of reasons.

1. Getting mail is so much more awesome because you know it traveled overseas.
2. You find out that your dog recognizes your voice over the phone.
3. Random excursions where you go rollerblading for hours and don't care that so much time as   passed because who cares about school work?           
4. Days with beautiful weather are so much more precious.
5. You don't feel like a tourist when you want to take pictures of your food.
6. Being a judge for the School of Chinese as a Second Language's performance competition and giving your own class the highest score.   
7. Winning first place!                                                 
8. Feasting on baked goods made by the program director's wife as he warns us about avian flu.

Okay, on a more serious note, the avian flu is infecting and killing more people in China every day but still seems decently contained in Beijing.  China seems to know how to handle such things much more efficiently after enduring the nightmare SARS was.  We are also all equipped with N95 respirators!  But should the situation get worse and the virus mutates to spread human-to-human, there is a slight chance we will all be going home.  Its also been troubling to hear of the explosives going off recently in the US and experience everyone's reactions to such things strictly via internet.  Something about being outside my own country makes me a little more concerned about incidences within it.  From China, to my fellow Americans, take care 保重! 

My Time in Xian

And I commend joy, for man has no good thing under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.  Ecclesiastes 8:15

I spent last summer in Xian with a bunch of American students there at a university doing a cultural exchange with Chinese and was surrounded by tears when I left because of all the people we were leaving behind.  But lucky me, I knew I would be studying abroad in Beijing, just a train ride away from Xian.  So when 清明节Tomb Sweeping Holiday came along, I immediately made plans to hop aboard China's high-speed rail network (the largest one in the world) from the modern capital to the ancient capital.  The whole thing felt like dream retreat from Beijing life.

My train at the Beijing West station.

Traveling at 300+km/hour.  Saw many scenes of development from the train.

Greeted at the Xian North station by my friends Emily and Henry.

Stayed with my friend Miriam and was greeted every morning with wonderful western breakfasts!  Nice change from the banana I normally eat on my way to class.

肉夹模rou jia mo is a pork burger and Xian specialty.  I had one almost every single day last summer.

My friend Linda brought me to the beautiful Qujiang Pool Park on a romantically rainy afternoon.

Linda and me.

Linda and friends.

We stumbled our way across these rocks and managed not to slip in the rain!  Worth the instagram?

Beautiful meal of colored noodles after a day of walking in the rain.

Saw the largest LCD screen in China near the 大雁塔 Wild Goose Pagoda.

Change of scenery.

So happy to see them!

And meet up for lunch :)

Where I stayed last summer.  Felt surreal to go back.

Visited the Bell Tower near Xian's ancient city wall.

And got a really good view.

Celebrated Miriam's birthday in good Chinese fashion with KTV

Lots of reunions :)

My friend brought me to a hipster Chinese cafe where there was DIY jewelry and interesting-flavored drinks.  We sat there for hours being obnoxious and playing cards.

Some evidence:

You could say I didn't really do Xian much justice since I was there to see people more than to visit tourist attractions.  Xian has an extremely rich history as an endpoint of the Silk Road and home of the Terracotta warriors, but I guess I've learned from being abroad for almost three months now that I actually enjoy normal things which happen to me on a day-to-day basis.  Sometimes life is better when I don't need to think about planning a good vacation, so I was really lucky to have had friends in Xian who welcomed me and created the vacation for me.  It's sure a lot easier to get attached to a place when you're acquainted with the people there.  Thank you Xian friends, hope to see you all again soon!

Farewell to the Ancient Capital

On my way back to Beijing! A sneak peak of what I did in Xian.

My Concentration Exercise

If you've ever experienced adjusting to a new culture, you know how difficult it can be.  For me, almost everything was different-language, culture, politics, grocery shopping.  When you can't speak the language, when you have no family or friends to connect you to the community, it undermines your confidence, no matter how strong you are.  You perceive the world as a child does-overwhelming, strange, and big...  --Chai Ling, A Heart for Freedom

Yesterday, a visiting professor in my educational psychology class told us he tries to write for 1-2 hours a day as a concentration exercise.  It inspired me to write and publish an extra blog post this week, but I mostly ended up reading things on Wikipedia.  (I tend to keep a running list of things which I want to look up on Wikipedia.)  Hmm...perhaps that says something about why I thought a concentration exercise would be good for me.  I did, however, manage to find some interesting things which I thought I could incorporate into a blog post while sharing about my time here.  Hopefully some of you out there are Wikipedia nuts like me.  Here goes.

• The city of Dongguan in the Canton province is one of China's special economic zones and where my mom's side of the family is from.  I learned that it is "China's sex capital" and home to the largest, yet almost completely vacant, mall in the world: New South China Mall.  Pretty much everything I think is wrong with China seemed to be epitomized in what I was reading about this city.  Previously, I only ever thought of Dongguan as that annoying place in the mainland where we always went to visit my maternal grandfather.  Maybe it will feel different to go back with my new-found Wiki knowledge.

• I have gone a few times to a Mandarin speaking Bible study and last week the leader told me about John Stuart Leighton and how he founded Yenching University whose campus was later replaced by my current school of attendance, Peking University.  I did some VPN protected Google searching and found some New York Times articles about him along with a video series from China's CCTV.  He was a Presbyterian missionary, American ambassador to China, university founder, and, well, a pretty interesting person in my opinion.

• I recently met one of 20-something Uighur students at Peking University.  China's ethnic minorities have always been interesting to me, so I had to hide my excitement at having met a Uighur for the first time.  I'm hoping to be able to visit Xinjiang Province, where Uighurs are from, at some point while I'm here.  I also met a PhD student in sociology preparing to do field work in Inner Mongolia to study educational disparities between Mongolian and Han Chinese.  Inner Mongolia is another place I wish I had more time to visit.  Our EAP director is always telling us, "China is a continent, not a country."  Sometimes it feels like Beijing, in itself, is a country feeding my wanderlust for its continent.

• I once wrote a paper on China's 户口hukou welfare system which registers people by hometown and creates all kinds of social issues for the many internal migrants in China, so I've already made many visits to the Wikipedia pages I'm currently referencing.  There is, however, a big difference between writing a paper on something and then experiencing it for yourself.  I recently started a volunteer position teaching English to a class of first grade migrant children through an NGO which creates community centers for them.  It was an interesting experience for me to walk into a Beijing slum and then use Chinese to teach English to children whose Chinese is probably better than mine.  I wish I could show pictures of my cute first grade students, but I'm following protocol and protecting their privacy.

Speaking of pictures, sorry to keep you waiting with this text-heavy post.

Studying for mid-terms means I've  spent some long hours with my trainchinese app.  I'd say I've made pretty good progress, no?

Revisited yang yeom chicken with some Korean friends.

Easter choir director: "He is risen!"  Congregation: "He is risen indeed!"

Easter Buffet :)

Enjoyed traditional Xinjiang food at the halal fast food restaurant where Muslim students dine.

 

So hopefully I helped you learn something new today.  The more time I spend here, the more I realize there is so much to China I wish I could experience and learn about, yet so little I have time for.  It makes me feel like such a tourist at times, and yet also helps me realize there are many things back in the States which I take for granted but can actually be quite fascinating if I look at them through a tourist's eyes.  And to think, I am still so young and the world is so big!  Maybe I am just feeling extra optimistic about the world right now because I just finished mid-terms and am going to Xian tomorrow.  More travel awaits!