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.