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.