Getting a cab back was tricky—we had to downgrade to a three-wheeler. It was probably the jankiest car I will ever travel in. It only had three wheels and the motor groaned when it tried traveling faster than 30 miles per hour. When you are in China, you usually want to avoid these “unofficial” taxis like the plague, but since I was with my Chinese friends I figured I was in safe hands. We arrived…
After visiting the Great Wall in Dandong, we took the bus back to town. The bus didn’t have any seats left, so we sat in the bus-equivalent of a trunk, behind the last row of seats. I’m not quite sure if that’s legal, or safe, but I chalk it up to a “when in Rome” sort of situation. Apparently the ticket taker asked my friends if I was American. Most of the people on the…
We left the hotel to go to the train station to buy tickets to Dalian. We also bought 6 kuai tickets (roughly one dollar) to get to the Great Wall. Dandong is the start of the Great Wall in China, and it was especially cool for me to visit there because 1) I’ve now seen the Great Wall in five different places; 2) I’ve visited the farthest west part of the Great Wall (the fort…
The following is a reflection I wrote for my film class, Moving China. Our assignment this week was to visit the Nanhu Peasant Market in Beijing and film and edit a video (which I’m in the middle of right now). For those of you who wish to see my films, I’m sorry to inform you that I cannot post them until I return in December, but no doubt I will keep you posted on the…
(There are four blog posts to Day Nine…feel pumped) I might as well mention what I talked about in my presentation on Chinese music. I talked about the importance of music in Chinese history (in case you didn’t know, it’s very important). The characters that make up the word music in Chinese mean “tone”(aka the essence of music) and “happiness.” Throughout Chinese history, music has been used mainly for entertainment and ritual. Music has been used as a…
(There are four blog posts to Day Nine…get pumped) I woke up this morning, still cold from the previous night. I was feeling a little weak from being sick, and a little nervous for my presentation. I packed my stuff and went downstairs to eat a little breakfast, and mentally review my presentation one more time. Eventually all the students came down and gradually filled the spaces in the common area. I ate my fried…
After the day I had yesterday, last night my mind and body felt like pudding. We climbed the Great Wall yesterday, which is actually quite a climb from where we started. I didn’t count the steps but it easily racks up to a couple thousand. One thing about climbing the Great Wall is that you are always climbing—once you think you’ve reached the top, you spot an even higher tower daring you to climb it….
Americans sometimes wonder how the obesity epidemic has gotten so out of hand. What are other countries doing right that we are getting so wrong? In two words: portion control. The week before I came to China, I travelled to DC and spent five days hanging out and going to restaurants with friends. It seemed that wherever I went and whoever I saw, getting food with them was so required it was assumed I would…