Beijing Hospital - Part Deux

Making progress on my tour of Beijing university hospitals, I paid a visit to the Beijing Language and Culture University Hospital this past Friday - having been the recipient of a large Japanese elbow to the lip during basketball practice (the elbow belonging to my friend and teammate). Here's the play by play: I was guarding Fumi on the low post; he fronted up to the basket; I backed off to try to throw him off balance then came back to contest is shot; I didn't see anything that happened after that, but something big and heavy slammed into my face. I came away with a sore jaw and deep cut to my lip that required 8 stiches . Doc said it should heal up in a week, but I'm going to the Beida hospital to get it checked out again today. Right now I'm just taking it easy and trying to keep my situation moisterized like P-Diddy. I'll post updates on my recovery and spare everyone the post-op pics.

I'm Back

Mmmmm, I just had some mad good Cantonese for dinner.

Hello! Sorry for the lack of updates as of late. I want to say that I’ve been too busy to post, but that would be only half true (the other times I’m just too lazy). I think I’ll ditch the weekly blog and just write whenever something interesting pops into my head (which hopefully means I’ll be posting more frequently?)

So the past few weeks... I finally settled on plans for the October holiday and actually got around without any major transportation difficulties. I visited a few sites in Shanxi Provincefor a few days with friends and friends of friends from PKU. For a more detailed (and far more eloquent) account of our trip, check out Shelley's blog linked on the left (I'm not going to tell you which it is). The cities we visited – Datong and Taiyuan – were incredibly dusty and chaotic - the dust largely attributable the coal mines in the area while a total disregard for traffic laws created the chaotic atmostphere. I thought the main tourist sights we visited were pretty interestersting but nothing too remarkable. I really enjoyed exploring a broken down section of the great wall. There was nobody there but us and a group of curious kids. Here are some pics:

Rachael in the Yungang Buddhist Grottoes - one of China's UNESCO World Heritage Sights and home to thousands upon thousands of Buddha sculptures (I wonder if anyone has tried to count them all)

The six of us in front of the Hanging Monastery near Hengshan, one of the 5 holy Buddhist mountains.

Shelley admiring the sunset from the Great Wall ruins.

Where I live

Not a whole lot going on these days besides classes and studying. I'm in class for SIX hours a day every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Somehow, listening to a teacher for that length of time is much less tolerable than it was 4 years ago. Sigh. I've still found time to join a couple of IM teams. The international students all play for the "International Team" - go figure. The volleyball team I've joined consists of Japanese, Korean, Singaporean, Hong Kongorean people - and me. I don't think news about the team's existance reached any other Americans (maybe we were too tall to hear the converations - SNAP!). The basketball team is a lot more diverse - a couple of Italians, a handful of Japanese and Koreans, a few of Americans, and a Mongolian to boot. We played for 2 hours straight on Sunday night. The most fun I've had balling in a long time.

To make up for the lack of interesting things in my life at the moment, I've decided to share some photos around Beida campus. This is my room (in its natural, i.e. messy, state):

That's Nobu watching 24 on his laptop. For the past 2 days, I've not walked into the room and not found Nobu watching 24 oh his laptop. I figure if the season is 24 hours long he'll be done by tomorrow morning.

This is my building - Shao Yuan Building 3.

I bought a bike a couple weeks ago. They say if your bike isn't stolen in the first couple of weeks, chances are pretty good that it will be stolen in the next couple of weeks. After that you're supposed to be safe though. I never have trouble finding my bike since it's the biggest one in all of Beijing:

The mini-mart where I buy groceries:

"No Name Lake" in the northern part of campus (that really is its name):

Random-ass Cervantes statue:

Hooray for Communist Effeciency

So the National Day holiday is coming up quick (National day, October 1st, is roughly equivalent to our Independence Day and marks the founding of the P.R.C). The good news: I have a week off for the holiday. The bad news: so does practically the entire country. Imagine literally over a hundred million people crowding bus and train stations, all vying for precious hotel rooms and clamoring for a glimpse of famous sights around the country. There are three golden weeks in China during which the entire country goes on holiday (the other two being the May Day and Spring Festival celebrations). One of my teachers here told us a saying about the golden week holidays in China that roughly translates into the following: during golden week, adults look at the backs of heads while children stare at butts.

I understand having these sorts of national vacation periods back in the day when the government wanted to build national spirit and the people stayed in their town or village singing songs and such (I have no evidence that that is what happened back in the day, I'm just using my imagination). Nowadays, it seems like everyone and their uncle is planning to go to Inner Mongolia or some other "remote" destination.

I'm torn between wanting to take advantage of my only vacation time till Christmas and my aversion to large masses. If anyone has suggestions on good, low key National Day destinations, hook a brother up.

Welcome to PKU

My first week in Beijing has been a strange of the mundane and manic. I’ve spent the better part of the week being shepherded through various registration processes with other foreign students or herded among long lines of impatient Beijing residents. All in all things have been running pretty smoothly, albeit excruciatingly slowly at times. On registration day, I waited in a series of lines for 4 hours, the end product of which was having my image plastered on the PKU Office of International Relations website as that guy:

You know that guy. That single token black guy set among a smattering of other, generally happy people. He shows up in all campus brochures, usually sharing a joke with a friend or slapping five with one of his classmates. I remember walking into the registration building, seeing the huge “Welcome to PKU” poster featuring a carefully assembled spectrum of the peoples of the world, and thinking to myself under no circumstances did I want to be that guy. No photos, no interviews, nothing. Go find some other guy... Apparently I had no say in the matter.

I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad. It seems every race is somehow “tokenized” in campus photos. There’s always the token Asian, sometimes the token Latino as well. Even white people can’t escape being tokenized. You’ll never see more than one blond in the same campus photograph. That would tip the racial balance too far to the Caucasian end of the spectrum. However, regardless of the fact that everyone has the potential to be tokenized, no one wants to be that guy. All I can say in my favor is thank goodness I that serious academic black guy instead of that smiling let's play frisbee black guy.

Despite the tokenization, I've been having a great time so far, meeting international students from around the world and running around Beijing. This weekend my zanny Japanese roomate, Nobu, and a couple of friends went to "play" in the mountains near Beijing with a friend from my last time studying in Beijing.


I say "play" because the Chinese have a single word, 玩儿, which describes all forms of fun activities, regardless of the age of the participants. Little kids playing hide and go seek - they're just 玩儿ing. Going to the bar - I'm going out to 玩儿. Grown-ass people falling off of bamboo rafts:


they're just 玩儿ing too.

My Beijing friend was my host sister while I was studying at ACC. She and about 15 of her friends and co-workers organized an outing to 野三坡 (Yesanpo) - a scenic area about a 4 hour train ride outside of Beijing by train. According to my host sister's boyfriend, Chinese food is the best in the world and all Chinese people's first desire is to satisfy their tastebuds. He set about to justify these statements during the weekend. Our rough itinerary: Arrive in 野三坡 - eat and drink, go to sleep. Wake up in 野三坡 - start planning dinner, eat breakfast, go out and 玩儿, eat dinner you planned in the morning:


go to sleep. Return to Beijing - eat and drink.

It was mad fun, I got to eat some tasty food, ride some horses, and see some ridiculous fireworks. Not ridiculously beautiful or extravagent, but ridiculously loud and dangerous.


Dudes were lighting things which I can only describe as small bombs, throwing them into the river, and creating massive explosions of light and water that set off car alarms on the opposite shore. It was all good though. Everyone had fun, nobody got hurt, only a single guy who had a few too many shots of rice liquor stripped down to his boxers and tried to get into the water.

That's it for now. I think I'll write one long post each week, with a few goodies in between if my days are that interesting. Off to class in T-minus 25 minutes.

Countdown to Beijing...

No, I'm not talking about the 2008 Olympics. Thanks to a generous grant from the Harvard-Yenching Institute, I'll be getting my study on for the next ten months in the second city I've ever called home (the first being NYC). I don't know what it is about Beijing that I find so appealing. The architecture is sterile, there's horrible smog for most of the year (you know it's bad when you can see the "fog" rolling into your open window), and most residents have no qualms about staring awestruck as I walk down the street (What? You've never seen a six-and-a-half foot black man before?). I just remember experiencing a long, lingering feeling of comfort returning to Beijing last summer after a month researching and volunteering in Jiangxi. I'm still not quite sure what classes I'm going to take, whether I'll live on campus or find my own apartment, or a host of other things. Still, every other time I've been to China, I've come back with amazing memories and a fresh perspective on life.

I'll try to keep posts brief yet frequent and photos numerous. Tomorrow I'm getting one of those tele-marketer type headsets from RadiaShack so I can Skype like it's hot. If you're not up on Skype, then get with it. The Yenching institute is not that generous and I can't afford to be calling you all. However, all incoming calls are welcome as are other forms of correspondence. I promise to reply in time.