For better or for worse, the following as some of the things I sense. Despite some of the negative connotations of some, I’ve fallen in love with every single on of these.

• Walking down the street and seeing all the vendors packed together. I smell roasted sweet potatoes. I walk five feet more – now it’s candied crab apples. Next, the bitter metallic smell of chestnuts warmed by hot stones. Jianbing being sold from the stand attached to the back of a bike. All the sweet aromas swirl together as I continue walking passed, causing my stomach to pang with a hunger I didn’t even know was there.
• The thin layer of dust that covers every surface. My shoes track it into the floor of the lobby (which is cleaned every ten minutes). It filters through my window and settles on my desk. It reminds me of how much time had passed while I’ve been here, and how much I miss my friends.
• The feel of bodies hitting mine as a subway car comes to a halt. Or just the jostling during the mass exodus that occurs at every stop, or just standing crammed up against each other in between stops.
• The sickly sour smell that accompanies every bathroom that assures you that, yes, indeed, that is urine.
• The rust on every bike tire and chain in China – and the friends, and girlfriends, and new acquaintances that pile on bike racks as a precarious escape from walking.
• The biting in my nostrils every time a car passes by. Unrefined gasoline never smelled so good.
• The excess amounts of fat attached to every piece of meat I get from the dining hall. After some time, I’ve given up on trying to remove it. As my teeth slide effortlessly through a chunk of translucent gelatinous matter, I think about what I’ve been missing all these years. Maybe Chinese fat just tastes better…

• Hilary Duff is my idol.
• You know, I can cook red bean soup. The girls always want me to make it because it’s sweet. They come over all the time.
• I like to get over my discrimination of other races and cultures through my girlfriends.
• I want to marry a black woman.
• I went to the Great Wall today. It was horrible. I had diarrhea the whole time and I had to keep going to the bathroom.

I’ll keep them coming as they make their appearance, but after the first few incidences, I might be steering clear.

Enter August. Out of a four possible chairs, he sits in the one farthest away from me (just in case things go south, I suppose), and we strike up a conversation. Well, as much of a conversation as one can manage when we don’t really speak each other’s respective languages. We stumbled over words, we laughed, we asked our questions slowly (including the question to request that we speak slower). All in all, a good language exchange.

A week later, he offered to show me around the local shopping market, Carrefour. If you want to know what Carrefour is like, imagine a super Safeway and Walmart merged together, then add an extra floor. If I hadn’t had a guide, I would have been lost to the belly of consumerism. Never to be seen again. Luckily, I emerged with a hair dryer and a new friend. The totally trip took three hours simply because we walked so slowly because communication took so much effort. We each brought our pocket dictionaries and relied on the constantly.

At this point, I’m viewing August as a nice boy who is really good for practicing Chinese. He’s kind of adorable in that stereotypically Chinese way: short, shallow-chested, baby smooth face. No interest what so ever, and I’m thinking that he’s on the same wavelength. We’ll be friends, and we’ll be good for each other’s language.

Last week I get an e-mail, “Do you have time to watch maple leaves?” – Stop. It’s that short. I thought that free communication would lend itself to more descriptive, but perhaps this somewhat cryptic message was intentional. I send a reply, “Sure, how about Friday?” In retrospect, I should have asked for more details.

We meet Friday for what I think is going to be a brisk walk around Wei Ming Hou – the famous lake at Beida. We start walking in the other direction, and I think to myself, ‘Well, maybe he didn’t mean Wei Ming Hou. Ah, but we’re close to the Summer Palace. I hear it’s really pretty there.” We get in a cab. I ask, “Where are we going?” and he says something to the effect of “We’re just going to the bus stop a few stops away from Beida.” Okay, great.

We arrive at a bus station, and we board a bus. This is when I really begin to question where we’re going, but now I’m a little too far in. He’s already paid for a cab ride, we’ve obviously had a misunderstanding, but hell, I’m in China. Just roll with it. At least you get to practice your Chinese. The bus is slowly moving further and further away from the center of Beijing…

I ask again, “Where are we going?” “Let me ask.” He replies. Language barrier and all, I feel like this is a huge warning sign. He eagerly comes back from talking to the ticket lady, and presents me with the knowledge he’s gained: “It’s about an hour from here.” WHAT?! My inner monologue is screaming. AN HOUR AWAY?! Where the fuck is he taking me… Okay, Laura, no turning back. This will be an “experience”.

We arrive in the mountains. Our unintentionally clandestine location is Phoenix Mountain, a pretty park outside of Beijing. I know nothing about it. We begin to walk down a paved path lined with conspicuously manicured foliage. China’s parks are never left all-natural. Because, seriously, where’s the beauty in raw nature (Yosemite, I can’t wait to return to you!). But I can do paved strolls through parks. Nice and quick. I begin to anticipate an hour, two hour walk. Manageable. We begin to walk further. We meet some people, and August asks something about the trail. The informer says something about going up… Little did I know.

We spent five hours hiking. We crested the range, summated the mountain. And I accomplished this all on the existing nutritional content in my stomach plus a Hostess styled egg custard pastry. Earlier in the morning, I was contemplating wearing heels. I don’t even know what would have happened. The hike was gorgeous, but way too long, especially when I had to spend all of it speaking Chinese, or a bastardized form of Chinglish. Total overload. We returned home at 6:45 PM, almost nine hours after I had left.

During our nine hours together, I learned many things about August. He likes to cook (because all the girls love it when you cook, well, he does have a point), he used to play baseball in Taiwan, and now he’s a Kung Fu referee. When he was in the Taiwanese army, his Sergeant made him write love letters for him. The fruits of August’s labor came to fruition twice. I didn’t ask for details. He thinks that if you drink alcohol, that automatically means that you’re going to throw up. Therefore, he doesn’t drink. He also asked me about pot.

Upon returning to Beida, I rushed up to my room and was greeted by a group of Stanford students in the hallway making dinner plans. Never have I been more excited to speak with a native English speaker. And next time I know, maple leaf watching isn’t exactly what it may seem.

P.S. Some things you may be wondering about: August is the name he chose for himself, because that’s the month he was born in. Also, I did not see any maple leaves.

But China has a funny way of screwing with your head.

It’s not just me; every other girl in my program has experienced the same thing. When we arrived in China, we looked around with searching eyes, and we were met with disappointment. Three and a half weeks have passed, and the goggles are descending over my head. I look around and think to myself, ‘hey, he’s not bad looking… oh! And neither is he.’ I have even ventured to think that there are even some attractive men here.

Whether we’re just learning to appreciate the Chinese male form, or we’re just getting desperate, China has started to look better with every day.

Okay, enough on that.

I have to apologize for my blogging lag, but my absence is excused. I’ve been really sick the past few days. Wednesday morning greeted me with chills and a headache. Things progressed to Thursday, where I sat in the bathroom with a trashcan balanced on my lap. On Thursday morning, I lay in bed and spent five minutes debating the pluses and minuses of moving my blanket. In the end I decided it was too much effort.

China may yet kill me, but I’ve survived this round.

China’s arsenal includes:

1)      Illness – as demonstrated by the above anecdote. Thankfully, I’ve received all of the appropriate vaccinations, so chances are reduced, but I must restrain myself from buying food from street vendors. It just looks so good.

2)      Paranoia – I was so scared about this last episode, I asked a friend to check on my every two hours while I slept to make sure I was still breathing. I just don’t know what to expect here.

3)      Traffic Accident – Although I’m making great strides, no pun intended, crossing the street is still like playing Russian roulette.

4)      Squeezed to Death – Subways are crowded, need I say more?

5)      Murder – No, not from the hands of the Chinese! But there are only 22 of us in this program, and I’m sure tensions during the Red Guard simulation may get high.

6)      Machine Failure – At our dormitory, we have a revolving door with hair-trigger motion sensor that will catch your heels if you’re not careful and elevator doors with a vendetta.

As I think of more, I will continue to add them.

Still recovering from the excess fat I’d just consumed, I went on a trip to the convenience store to pick up some hangers from my room. Sadly, most of my clothes lay carelessly strewn across my room. 

That’s when I saw them again, while I stood with hangers in hand.

They filled in, one by one, as I was coming up the stairs. We were the only ones in the staircase, so there was no avoiding them. The leader of the pack did the characteristic ear-prick as many foreigners do at the sight of another foreigner. His eyes zeroed in. He spoke: “Hola!” 

Thrown instantly back to Spain, where I greeted every passerby with an energetic greeting so I could feel like three years in high school language classes weren’t wasted, I immediately threw back an upbeat, “Hola!” and continued to walk up the stairs. Not possible.

I was pounced upon by about eight men in red, polyester jackets, speaking rapidly. The only words I could pick out were “puedes” and “espanol”. “Lo siento! No puedo! No puedo!” I said as quickly as I could. A few faces fell. Some kept going, more slowly now. 

I inwardly strained to find the words to say I’d been in Spain earlier that summer, but Spanish escaped me. I started putting the Chinese word for summer in front of the sentence, but I realized that was wrong too. Both on counts of vocabulary and grammar. I gave up.

The obvious leader spoke a little English, so I asked him what they were doing here. “Kung Fu Tournament”, he replied. “And you?” “Estudiar…” A chorus of “Estudio”s chimed in to correct my mistake, but all in cheerful smiles. I started to search for something to say in Spanish. The only words I could think of were ‘good luck’, but I wasn’t even sure if that was right. Slightly stuttering, I meekly sputtered out, “Buenos suerte…?” Obviously the correct thing to say, the pack of Venezuelans energetically replied with “Buenos suerte”s directed at me. Having reached the limits of my language ability, I decided to make my departure and headed out the door with an “Adios”. 

I stepped back into China, immediately surrounded by that layer of dust that covers everything. I stepped onto the hard packed earth outside the convenience store that begs for grass, but instead is only adorned by discarded wrappers.

Wait, what’s going on, I was just back in Spain a second ago. And now I’m in China… 

The disorientation lasted for a good half an hour. Having been to such completely different places, with completely different people, and having the two converge unexpectedly in a flurry of broken language – it was a bit too much to handle.

At least I know that my Chinese has begun to totally own my Spanish.

It all started with an unfortunately experience with a bird. Three times over. Three other girls and I went to an outdoor restaurant to eat chuar – a Chinese dish that comes on a stick and is covered in spices. They assured me that this was the best restaurant that they have encountered while in Beijing. What they failed to mention was the vendetta one bird would have for me that night. Three well placed bombs found their way from the branches above into my hair. After the second time, which I definitely thought would never happen, I moved. The third delivery found itself directly in my part.

According to Chinese tradition, getting shit on by a bird is good luck. I told myself I better be pretty fucking lucky to make up for this – and I was.

I met with my mother to go to Xi’an the next day. The following are a few of the people we met and the places we went, all with a little bit of luck.

Upon arriving at the airport, the next person in line at the taxi stand was Jianhong, our taxi driver for the next few days. He spoke absolutely no English, so we had to completely rely on my (extremely poor) Chinese abilities to get around. He was patient, spoke slowly, and repeated himself often as I looked through my dictionary to find words.

I met David, a waiter in the Western restaurant of the hotel we were staying in. At 24, he’d learned enough English to leave his life as a farmer and work in an expensive hotel in downtown Xi’an. Excitement spread across his face every time my mom and I entered the restaurant for our daily continental breakfast. Finally, someone willing to practice English, or Chinese in my case. David in turn introduced us to Brian.

Brian is a local Xi’an tour guide. He was responsible for inviting us to an 18 dumpling, traditional Tang Dynasty Song and Dance show. Some pictures are below. We joined his tour group for the dinner, all of which were from Holland.

We went to visit the Terracotta Soldiers, a mosque in the middle of downtown Xi’an, and a few museums. Also, I got a traditional Chinese dress called a qipao made for me.

Okay, I’m starting to feel really bad for the laundry list, but bare with, it’s almost over.

Tonight, we went to a “Kungfu show”, which ended up being a cross between a light show, interpretive dance, and show fighting. Highlights included a flying love scene with fog and bubbles, bricks being broken on a man’s chest (pre-broken, of course), and fighting with a slow-motion sequence.

Alright, now, here’s some pictures from Xi’an. As a preface, these are just some samples, but Xi’an had some of the worst translation I’ve seen thus far. Enjoy:

Plans were as follows: nice dinner with the group (eating dumplings filled with soup – in Annie’s words “like an explosion of yumminess in your mouth”), drinking hard liquor that costs 30 cents for five shots, karaoke, being in a Chinese bar at midnight (faulty intelligence reported epic celebrations including flag waving and national anthem singing), dancing, eating, then traveling to Tian’an Men Square for the sunrise flag raising ceremony.

Of the night, karaoke was probably the most memorable. How could twenty people in a room signing the best of the 90’s at the top of their lungs be anything else? Unexpected discovery: Patrick can sing Mariah Carrey better than Mariah, and in her range. Dancing in club named Babyface was a close second, but it was just another club. However, we did see a trio of Chinese hipsters wearing white blazers that had mastered the dust-your-shoulders-off move. I also saw my first obese Chinese person, and she was clad in a dress that really displayed this unfortunate fact. After living in America, it’s remarkable how few overweight people exist in China.

At 4:00 AM, the remaining members of our group arrived at the subway stop near Tian’an Men Square (I think it roughly translates to the Gate of Heavenly Peace – oh, the irony!). Hundreds of people streamed through the streets on their way to the square to await sunrise and the appearance of the PRC flag. Vendors selling red flags approached us by the dozen, and of course we had to buy them at 1 kaui a piece. So, at four in the morning, a group of Americans sporting Chinese flags joined the masses in migrating to Tian’an Men Square.

A tight cluster of bodies surrounded the closest entrance to the square, and we threw our bodies into the street lit chaos.

To set the scene, one must first understand Beijing at night. An orange halo sits on the horizon of the city and skyscrapers. Every light fills the heavy air with a soft glow. Even the moon glows orange. Darkness is an impossibility; one can never escape the light. I close my curtains at night, and my eyes barely have to adjust.

It may have been night in Tian’an Men, but the square still glowed: with street lights, with the energy of the people, with the light from the LCD displays of cell phones and cameras. The only indication of reduced visibility was looking at the square from afar. It appeared completely empty, but as we walked closer, we realized that the empty square was a teaming swarm of people that was packed so tightly they looked like a solid wall.

After joining the growing mob, we moved as close to the human gate as possible. The Chinese military snaked their way in between bodies while getting from one unknown destination to another. They walked single file, with a line of olive green, flat-topped hats cresting above bobbing black heads. As we got close enough, we saw that most of these “soldiers” were just boys. Fifteen-years-old at the most. And their faces were already dead with formality.

Throughout the rest of the night, groups of soldiers marched back and forth, seemingly with no purpose. By the end of the night, not only did the soldiers traverse the mob in single file, the barricading soldiers would part the crowd so that soldiers lined up four wide and twenty long could march with coordinated foot and arm movements between us. Back and forth, a new group every ten minutes or so. Not long enough at accomplish anything or have any purpose. We began to think that this display of military muscle was all for show. Also, the military presence may have been to prevent incidents like the one to follow:

At the gate to the square, small groups of people slowly trickled across the street to enter Tian’an Men at the permission of the correct authorities (though out the entire night, a constant flow of people kept leaving the square – and we still don’t know why). Every once in a while, a brave individual would venture into the street without permission, just to be sent back by the police. Then, one guy dashed across, and no one did a thing. The crowd saw and reacted.

People started scrambling to break through the soldiers and the police. Voices were heightened. Hands at my back pushed me forward, and the crowd surged with the national desire to be in Tian’an Men. Within a minute, soldiers with angry eyes glaring over megaphones shoved people behind an imaginary line. “Hou le!” screamed over and over again. “Back! Now!” Sadly, my unprotected feet came under the fire of the heels of disappointed Chinese. More screaming. More hands, and legs, and feet pressed against bodies. After the soldiers had succeeded in pushing us back further than where we’d started, the megaphones and pushing stopped. Disappointment replaced anger. Then they stopped letting people through.

In the half-light of the orange glow, I looked at the faces of the remaining Chinese around me. Some quietly chatted, some took out phones to take badly lit pictures of the soldiers on the front line, others stared blankly at the unattainable square. After asking a twenty-year-oldish girl if there was a chance of getting across, to which she shrugged her shoulders, we stuck up a conversation with her. She was from the Hounan Province. People around us were from across the country, from villages and cities. Recycled suits with holes and designer jeans surrounded us on both sides. And all were here for the same piece of anticipated cloth to be strung up on a pole.

Around 5:30 AM, delirium overtook our small group. After staying up all night, asking for sanity is just too much to ask for. Becky began practicing her Chinese, giggling and asking us “What’s your name?”, “What’s your name?”, and “When is your birthday?”. This was in between her broken declarations that she wanted a Chinese boyfriend so that she could improve her Chinese. The people around us started laughing, either because of the ridiculous content of our questions or our butchering of the language. We were a cluster of noise and laughter amongst the somber Chinese. The sky slowly began to lighten, but it lacked the contrast and drama of a proper sunrise because the square had already been so well-lit.

Fifteen minutes before sunrise, Annie’s friend showed up with orange juice and a thermos full of spiked hot chocolate. Our ranks now equaling seven, we anxiously anticipated the flag raising.

Ten minutes before: More soldiers push us back. Knee-high white gates are pulled in front of the crowd, and soldiers line up to create a barricade between us and the square. More shouting and pushing, but this time they were a bit nicer about it.

Five minutes before: The gate to the south of us breaks down, and a couple thousand people run into the square. They ran so quickly, with the desperation of avoiding the soldiers that would place them outside the square again. At our gate, talking bubbled as jealous onlookers commented on being at the wrong entrance.

They started the ceremony about ten minutes behind schedule. We hear the band strike up the national anthem, and in the building daylight we stare over a huge floral display of the Friendlies (the official mascots of the Beijing Olympics) to stare at the flag pole. My heart begins to race with the adrenaline of anticipation or of fatigue.

I see a flash of red. We all nudge each other. “There it is!” “I see it!” We start shouting and hooting. I’m clapping my hands.

Immediately, several Chinese jolt around and start shouting at us in Chinese. I didn’t really understand what they said, but I got message: We don’t do that. What?! They don’t cheer when they see their flag? Bashfully, I dropped my hands and continued to watch the flag rise.

The flag completed its journey up the pole and rested peacefully with a slight wind brushing against it. The reaction of the Chinese public: five seconds of clapping and then they all began to leave. And the clapping wasn’t even enthusiastic. As AJ commented today, there’s been coffee house crowds louder than this group of hundreds of thousands of people. I heard the clapping, and, before I could really process what was going on, it stopped. I got completely disoriented, caught in this absurdly real instance of cultural differences. I finally snapped back into it when the people around me began to push past me to leave.

Our group swam against the river of dispersing Chinese to finally step on Tian’an Men during National Day. The remains of the night’s celebration lay discarded as casualties of war throughout the square. Newspapers, lonely single shoes, and bottles of urine were the most popular. Old women bent down to collect empty soda cans for money. I even saw one go after a bottle full of yellow liquid (you can imagine its contents), unscrew the cap, empty the entire bottle into the square, and then deftly place the now empty bottle in her collection bag.

Annie’s friend, Reid, guided us as we connected with some of his friends. He’d brought a long, thin pole of plastic, and on top of the pole he placed the PRC flag. As we walked through the thinning crowd, he marched confidently forward with flag raised to broadcast our location to his friends. Excitedly, I waved my flag at arm’s height in suit. Needless to say, we attracted a few stares. Some even took clandestine snapshots.

At one point, our celebrity reached a climax. We paused for a few moments to let Reid’s friends catch up with us. I saw a mother and her seven-year-old daughter blatantly peering at us from fifteen feet away. I smiled. Immediately, the striped shirt clad girl was pushed forward by her mother to be placed by my side as a camera was pulled out. A lot of nodding was passed between us as I gave my consent to be photographed. I proudly pulled out the flag and peace sign as I grinned over her daughter. People around us noticed the spectacle, and got excited. More people started coming over to us, pulling out their cameras and posing with us. Then, as I found out later, Reid yelled out in perfect Chinese, “It’s free! For the next ten minutes, we’ll take pictures with everyone!” This revved up the excitement to a new level, and people we lining up. People eagerly pushed others out of the way to take more pictures. Whole groups would have each member of their group individually take pictures with each of us. It was wild, chaotic, and I’ve never felt more popular.

After that, we met with Reid’s friends, and our attention was pulled away from gratifying hundreds of Chinese. All of them were ex-pats. New friends by the names Mathew, George, and Tanya went to breakfast with us at a restaurant a few subway stops away called “Grandma’s Kitchen”. We returned back to Beida exhausted but rich with experience. I was so exhausted, I felt sick. I fell into bed and dreamed of red.

Me, Reid, and Annie celebrating with the Chinese

Truth be told, it was actually really interesting. The choreography was beautiful, and the percussion was always interesting. Story lines were lacking in character development, but then again, so are our operas. I guess that’s what happens when you attempt to distill an entire tale into fifteen minutes and add music and dancing. Something has to be left behind.

However, a few moments from last night really stuck out in my mind that I felt people back home might find amusing:

- In a short performance titled “Stabbing the Clam”, a woman danced around in a giant clam costume for about 15 minutes. The scene began with her completely engulfed in the clam, but then, rising from the sea foam, the clam sprouted legs. Then, at a particularly strong gong strike, the clam opened to reveal a woman dressed in red with a “pearl” on her neck. In Peking Opera, there’s a lot of stylized makeup especially on the eyes, causing the wearer to look perpetually surprised. This makeup is paired with the actors accentuating the surprised look with overly open eyes. Up and down the woman went, open and closing this giant shell attached to her arms. She scuttled about, hunched over, so it really did seem like a running clam with legs, punctuated with intense astonishment on the face of the actress.
- Sadly, it seems like some of the charm of Asian countries or people is their butchering of translations. The establishment last night caters strictly to a foreign crowd, so it would be perfectly within their abilities to perform correct translations. However, all of us felt that the misspellings and poor grammar were kept to add to the mystique. But last night, it went a bit too far with the phrase “kkkFellows”. Are you serious! we eyed at one another across the room. The other audience members were equally taken aback, if the smirks throughout the auditorium were any indication. I don’t think they were aware of the implications of their words, but Jesus, really! Kkk? That’s one typo mistake that’s a bit too loaded. I just wonder how many performances have been given with just those words scrawled across the main stage.

Last night was very beautiful, but the levels to which the art form has been reduced (gift shops, candied nuts on the table, intentional typos on the subtitles) really makes me glad I’m not a member of this country and watching my cultural heritage mangled.

Yesterday was also the first day of classes. And what is the first day of classes without getting absolutely trashed? I ask this question facetiously, because there’s only one answer: That’s not really the first day at all. So, after returning from opera, me, Patrick and Chika decided to crack open a bottle of wine. First obstacle: getting the bottle open. Apparently they use synthetic cork in Great Wall wine, and it didn’t help things that we only had a cork screw from a Leatherman. In went the corkscrew, then the pull, then the corkscrew ripped through all of the cork, just to leave the cork in its original place – between the wine and us. Fifteen minutes of trial and error resulted in a triumphant Chika and a table full of cork remnants.

Half an hour passes as we demolish the bottle’s contents. But, between the three of us, one bottle of red wine wasn’t enough to satiate us. A late night booze run was in order. Obstacle #2: everything on campus closes up at 10PM. So, we had to walk twenty minutes to the south gate of the university until we found a 24 hour convenience store. Our choices were between Chinese beer, Bacardi bottled mixed drinks in every flavor possible, or bottles of an unknown substance with labels in Chinese. Like every other foreigner in search of mean of intoxication, we looked at the universal communicator: Alcohol content. We discovered that one of the mysterious bottles contained a substance known to us only by reputation: baijiu. 56% alcohol content. We grabbed a bottle, some diet Cokes, and walked back to the dorm.

Needless to say, we finished off the first day of class in true style. Baijiu did the trick, and within minutes of returning to the dorm, we could feel it kicking in. But beyond getting drunk, a couple other things were achieved last night.

The three of us decided that we’re going to do what we can to improve China while we’re here. We see so much poverty everyday, and that’s just scratching the surface. We want to help and we want to leave a legacy in our wake. Now we just need to figure out a project that the Chinese government will allow. I’ll chronicle whatever we decided to do in the coming weeks.

Fall quarter is off to a magnificent start.

At the custom line, I proceeded down the “nothing to declare” path, and a man with no trace of a Chinese accent barely looked at my declarations paper and said, “Thank you. That’s all. Just go ahead.” I expected a bit more hassle, or at least some imprint of the foreign country I was about to enter, but I was disappointed on both counts. I got more disappointed upon my first steps in China.

Why? The first thing I see, directly outside the customs gate, is a Starbucks Coffee. I’m sorry, but seeing my former employer greet me as I was about to embark on an exotic adventure didn’t seem appropriate. Right next to Starbucks: KFC. What the fuck. Apparently the Chinese are very fond of KFCs. They have a double-decker restaurant immediately outside the university. The face I was least expecting to greet me was Col. Sanders.

As we piled into the van Beida sent to us, a woman grabbed my bag and began to help me put it into the van. A bit bewildered and unsure, I let her do it, thinking she was part of the van service. Half-way through, I realized she was just pushing her way in so that I would have to tip her out of obligation. I’ll be damned before I pay someone else to pick up my bags, so I pulled out 5 yuan (a bit short of 50 cents USD). I gave her the bill and immediately pushed past to take refuge in the enclosure of the van. “Pianyi!” she shouted after me. Cheap! She said it like it was an insult. I was upset about my 5 yuan.

The passage to the airport to Beida was uneventful. Just like every other metropolis, there were few distinguishing characteristics. The major road ways had Japanese cars (just like America) and bad drivers (just like America). The only hint that I was traveling in a developing country was the smoggy gray sky, huge neon signs with characters posted on rooflines, and the brief glimpses of many bedraggled individuals riding bikes on main city streets.

We entered the university from the South Gate, and our van driver took the student population by storm. We traveled to our dorm at a comfortable ten miles an hour, which doesn’t seem like it’s that amazing until you realize that he was going through crowds of a density similar to the intersection-of-death before 11 AM classes. I’m surprised no one died.

Check-in was painless. I brought my bag to my room. Pictures will be forth-coming. It’s pretty luxurious with a common room, a bathroom, and individual sleeping areas for me and my roommate. The last fact is going to take some getting used to – I’ve always slept in the same room as someone else throughout my college career.

Next step: check in at the Stanford center. We arrive and are greeted by Leigh Wang, the program coordinator. We receive 3 different IDs, our food stipend (1300 yuan), and then – what is a Stanford program without free stuff? Our booty:
- a briefcase with “Stanford Program in Beijing” scrawled on it’s side
- a Beida daily planner
- guides to local life
- a bottle of clean water to get us started
- a Beida mug
I went back to place my gifts in my room.

The door won’t open.

Luckily, the guy down the hall is also having issues with his key, and brings up one of the workers. She has two huge round key-chains, more like key-discs, with her. After showing the guy down the hall how to enter his card into the key lock, she politely laughs, and then comes down the hall to help me. She tries the key, and recognizes that in my particular case there really is a problem. She begins to talk to me – in rapid Chinese. I stand there for a second, thinking I might be able to decipher her message. The guy down the hall walks over after the third time she explains her-self, and he witnesses the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh time she attempts to communicate with us. We stood there dumb-founded. We think she’s going to take my key and fix it down-stairs, so I decided to stay put and see how it played out. Sure enough, she returned with a working card. The experience was humbling to say the least, and I have a long way to go before I can get by in this town.

The members of our intrepid van ride reunited to find food. After stumbling around the university perimeter, we found ourselves at a yellow bun-hut. We received our order after a complicated ritual of gesticulating and nodding. It was actually really good, and it cost three dollars. I couldn’t even finish my meal – there was just too much food.

The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful. We checked out the mini-mart a hundred yards from our dorm and were awe-struck. The mini-mart rivals a combination of Stanford’s convenience store x2, plus a BIG 5, a bakery, RadioShack, and Wet Seal. Not so mini. I returned to my room in order to decorate and talked with some program participants and a random girl from down the hall named Wen Lei. At 11:30 PM (8:30 AM PST), I called it quits.

Some initial impressions:
- You can feel the smog. It has a weight of its own, and an aroma, but so far I kind of like it. It gives everything at night a halo of golden or florescent light.
- I don’t dress conservatively enough for this place – I haven’t seen one person in a tank-top yet.
- I took a shower and any repeated contact with my skin is now resulting in hives. I don’t think that’s normal. I hope I get over it.
- As I walk through the university, I keep seeing “waiguoren” faces, and I smile at them. I’m trying to reach out and feel some companionship because I feel so out of place here. They don’t look at me. I think that they have lost the connection with feeling like a foreigner, because they’ve made China their home. I hope I can be in that place by the time I leave.
- Crossing the road isn’t as bad as it looks. Just make sure you do it with lots of other people.

And, some key players. More will come as I meet them:
- Annie – my roommate, and a fellow Stanford student. I think I know her better than she knows me, cause what she doesn’t know is that we did 2005 Gaities together. I was in the pit, she was on stage. This means I saw a lot of her, and she doesn’t know who I am. (She played Paris Hilton, if you’re searching for her main role.) First impressions are that she’s a confident, artsy, and fun girl. I’m looking forward to it. She also has the speaking level of a third-year Chinese student and she spent the summer in Beijing. Hopefully she’ll help me out a bit.
- Drew – Drew and I go way back to the epic orchestra tour of 2005. He’s actually the reason I got interested in taking Chinese and the reason I applied to Beijing. Thanks, Drew. He’s a sweet kid, likes to talk, likes to party, and is super passionate about Chinese studies.
- Becky – We met during Admit Weekend as we fountain hopped, and I think she took a picture of me in my bra surrounded by a group of men standing in the Mem Aud fountain. Then we lost touch. We remember each other, which is a good place to start. She grew up in the Virgin Islands, laughs a lot, and has impeccable fashion. She should be good times to come.

First, it might be good to mention that I barely escaped a deal-closing encounter that definately would have prevented me from going to China. I’m feeling lucky to simply feel the pressure of the keys under my fingertips, because today, I almost died. No hyperbole. I almost died.

My mom and I were driving to Portland to say goodbye to my grandfather. Peaceful cruising at 70 mph. I was reading my assigned reading (only 250 pages to go in 2 days) and we were listening to counting crows or something equally pacifying. Then some asshole in the fast lane decides to slam on his brakes, resulting in a complete halt. My mom swerves into the shoulder to avoid him, then over-corrects as she tries to get us back on track. Big mistake. We enter a spin that took us across three lanes of crowded traffic and 440 degrees. One of the only images I remember is looking out my window and seeing a white sedan two feet from slamming into my leg. I don’t know how the hell we didn’t get a scratch, but after a few nice burn marks on the pavement, we ended in the right hand shoulder.

A red bug had pulled into the shoulder with us a few yards away. They backed up, so my window was even with theirs. “Wow! You’re such a good driver!” the middle-aged WASPy couple exclaimed. They kept giving us thumbs-up. Under normal circumstances, I would have thought the sight was ridiculous, but I’ve never been more comforted. We asked what had happened; adrenaline clouded our immediate memories. “That car just stopped! Then you went to the side to avoid him. We’ve never seen such good driving!” Another thumbs-up. Notice the absence of mentioning the uncontrolled spin. They made sure we were okay, and they took their leave down the highway. We took a few minutes to collect outselves, and pulled onto the highway (a bit more cautiously).

Following that little adventure, we pulled into my grandfather’s nursing home, took him to lunch, and failed to mention our close-encounter. We’d barely escaped death, we didn’t want to chance fate again by telling the 94-year-old man about how his only daughter and granddaughter almost met the Grim Reaper.

Now, back to getting ready for China. After dropping off our patriarch, we proceeded to RadioShack to buy voltage converters and a laptop lock. Then to the King of Consumer Goods – Walmart.

Here’s my abbreviated shopping list:

1) vitamins – because apparently you can’t get calcium in Beijing? damn lactose intolerance

2) immodium (48 count) – I figured between this and the traveller’s diarrea medication, I should be set. There’s a few unaccounted for days in there, but I figure I can always bum off a friend. If Morocco has taught me anything, it’s to be prepared.

3) tampons – because ones in China are “lower-quality”. Sorry, I don’t even want to know what that means.

4) half a gallon of Purell – I can’t even begin to express the amount of emphasis placed on the poor sanitation of bathrooms during orientation. I may be over-doing it, but if I’m reduced to wiping my ass with my hands, I want to make sure I can eat with them later.

Other items included standard toiletries, but where’s the fun in describing those. I have one more full day of American soil left, and I’m going to spend as much of it preventing getting soiled in China. I also found out today that I can’t board my plane without an ISIC card (which they strictly told us not to get). I’m making an emergency trip to Pacific Lutheran University tomorrow to get one. I sure hope they can do it in a day.

So, next entry will either be from China or from Washington, depending on whether I can board my plane. I’m hoping for a painless voyage. Cross your fingers for me. On that note – Zai Jian!