The Goat, Tombs, Walls, Holidays & Guck no more...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! 

It is hard to believe that 2014 is over.  SO much has happened during this crazy but wonderful year of the Horse!!  Time flies and yet drags on.  It flies by overall, but drags on as we anticipate getting home to see family and friends!!!!

Now we are entering the year of the Goat!  Here is a little info that may interest you:

Ming Tombs & Great Wall

Before the weather turned too cold, I organized a little out & about for 14 of us to visit the Ming Tombs (a collection of imperial mausoleums built by the Ming Dynasty emperors) and after that, a trip to the Great Wall - Mutianyu.  It was the most perfect day ever!  A beautiful blue sky and just a little crisp, late Fall weather.  On the Great Wall, we hiked and hiked until we came to the part of the wall that is called, “the wild wall.”  This is where the restored portion ends and the years of deteriorated wall begins.  It is a bit rougher hiking with lots of overgrowth, missing steps and broken side walls dropping off to dizzying heights, but it is AWESOME!!!  We love hiking the wild portion of the wall! 

MING TOMBS     

GREAT WALL - MUTIANYU

The Nativity & Christmas

We had a unique experience the Saturday before Christmas.  One of our Chinese teacher friends and her 11 yr old daughter Grace invited us to attend and watch her performance in the Nativity play at the big North Cathedral (Church of the Saviour) here in Beijing.  The cathedral was built in 1694 and is pretty amazing.  The Nativity play was awesome and kicked off the season with a great reminder of the true meaning of Christmas.   

Although we had to work through the Christmas week, we did have our regular Thursday off, which just happened to fall on Christmas Day!!!  Lucky us!  On Christmas Eve we went straight from school by train for 1.5 hrs to pick up our American smoked ham.  Yay!  It was absolutely delicious, along with all of our traditional favorite foods.  We had 14 people for dinner in our little apt and once again, they ate and ate until most of the food was gone. We especially love feeding the young Princeton In Asia teachers, all who are about 22-25 yrs old and love a home-cooked meal whenever they can.  We have a great mix of friends here from the young pups to our oldest friend who is 82, a retired Chinese teacher that still lives here on the old campus with his dog, Tony Blair.  His previous dog had a funny  name also but I can’t remember it right now.

Wind, Cold & CDC Text

The wind in Beijing is a double-edged sword.  It cuts like a knife and makes a cold day even colder (25-34F), however, it also blows all the guck out of the air and we rarely curse the wind, but sometimes while walking my 20 minutes to the train station after classes with the wind blowing me off my feet (usually 20 mph) and cutting through my body and freezing my ears off, I do quietly complain to myself.

Gotta love random text messages, especially when they come from the Center of Disease Control (CDC).  I received this one the other day:

“As the weather turns cold, the high incidence of the disease has entered the winter season. Beijing CDC to remind you, seek immediate medical attention after the illness, medical science, civilization and medical attention when medication is reasonable, safe, timely and appropriate.”

Technology & Air Filters

I’ve decided to rename the modern day technology that allows us to receive email, surf the net for any random piece of information we desire, Google any topic or recipe, connect visually with family & friends from far across the seas, download music and other entertainment, etc.  I hereby now declare that the wonderful, functioning, reliable modern technology that we used to know and love in the U.S., called the internet, is now more accurately renamed to the “intermittent net”, which reflects the most infuriating situation we have here in China…NO INTERNET!!  We have had a horrible time with any stable signal for the last couple of months.  Very frustrating.

After a couple of months here in Beijing and noticing that the air quality seems to have a direct effect on Jordan’s ability to shake a nasty cough, I finally did what I should have done the first day we moved to China 1.5 yrs ago and bought some air purifying-filtering machines (i.e. a small fan with a heavy duty filter strapped to it).  After only one week of running them 24/7 in the apt, we noticed there was:

1. A LOT of GUCK gathering in the filters and turning them black, giving us a horrible feeling about what we had been breathing before putting these filters in place, and…

2. We noticed a unique symbol developing, similar to one of Jordan’s favorite modes of transportation. We definitely miss the Harley!!!

Alternate Entertainment

Since we have little to no internet (see previous comment on “intermittent-net), we have opted for a few more out & about types of entertainment.  At the beginning of December we went to the theater to see “Sound Of Music”, which was done by the London Theater Troup.  It was wonderful. Then last Saturday we went to see Riverdance… something we have ALWAYS wanted to see!  It definitely did not disappoint.  It was absolutely phenomenal!!!   

Well, that is about all the news for now.  We leave tomorrow morning for the north country to see Harbin and the renowned Ice Festival for 3 days.  Then we get our fannies back to Beijing and fly out Monday morning for the U.S.A.!!!!!!!  Wahoo!!!!!!  Can’t wait!!!

APEC, Guilin, Thanksgiving & a Mirror

In November we were given an unexpected break for 6 days!  Beijing hosted the  26^th annual gathering of APEC Leaders (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) from around the world.  APEC is the premier Asia-Pacific economic forum.  Their primary goal is to “support sustainable economic growth and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region, champion free and open trade and investment, encourage economic technical cooperation while enhancing human security,” amongst other things.  Sounds pretty cool huh!  We were just happy this was the year for it to be held in Beijing because that meant VACATION time!!!    

As you may be aware, we have a little bit of a smog/horrible air problem here in China.  There are days we can literally “taste” the air.  Not good.  It is generally worse in the winter months due to the fact that they burn coal to heat the city. So, in order to have favorable and cleaner air during the APEC meetings, various measures were taken to ensure a “good showing” of the capital city!  Factories were closed down, transportation was restricted on certain days for certain vehicles/license #s, etc.  This was again really good news for us as we experienced some beautiful blue skies and fresh air.  Before the week was over, *netizens coined the phrase “APEC Blue” to satirically refer to “something that is fleeting.”  We all knew the “Apec Blue” skies wouldn’t last, but it was GREAT while it did!!!

*net·i·zen - a user of the Internet, especially a habitual or avid one.

GUILIN

This little  surprise holiday gave us an opportunity to take another quick trip within China.  However, I had to get very creative with our mode of travel because as soon as this holiday was announced, we were competing with 1.3 billion other people to get flights!  Argh!  But not to worry…creativity is my middle name.  So, together with one other couple from here in Beijing (they teach at a different university but we get together frequently), we took the bullet train from Beijing to Xi’an, stayed one day in Xi’an, visited all of our favorite places and ate lots of our favorite foods,  then flew from Xi’an to Guilin the next evening.  Guilin is one of the most beautiful places in China and a top tourist attraction.

We boarded a boat early the next morning for a trip down the Li River (漓江 - Lí Jiāng).  The river trip took us 52 miles down the river to Yangshuo, another beautiful location.  Here are some of my pictures of the cool mountains!

                                               

                                               

After arriving in Yangshuo, we boarded a bus that took us high and deep into the mountains to the Longsheng Rice Terraces (龙胜梯田).  This place is amazingly beautiful!!  We then hiked for an hour to our hotel that was deep in a village in the top of the mountains.  We literally hiked up into the clouds!  The people that live in these villages farm the terraced fields.  The terraced fields are built along the slope winding from the riverside up to the mountain top, no space wasted.  They plant rice in the terraced fields.  It is absolutely breathtaking any time of year.  The terraced fields were mostly built about 650 years ago.  This area is called Longji, which means Dragon’s Back. 

                                     

Hiking up, up, up to our hotel in the village!  We went hiking the next morning for a couple of hours to see the beautiful terraces.  There were moments when the fog would clear and we could see everything.  Then a minute later it would roll back in and become very misty and serene! 

A picture in front of a picture of the terraces, just in case it was too foggy to see anything.  Which it wasn’t!  We had occasional glimpses of incredible views!

                                                

Beautiful fields after the harvest.  Kind of looks like snow but it is water.

We wanted to do a hike to Half Moon Arch but it was raining and very slippery.  Plus, you can see from this sign that they really don’t want you to climb it!

THANKSGIVING

We had a great Thanksgiving!  We tried to create a little bit of “home” by making all of our family favorite traditional foods.  It took a bit of hunting and searching all over the city of Beijing to find the necessary "Thanksgiving" ingredients, but we finally rounded it all up and in the end, it was pretty close to perfect!!!  We had about 14 people (CFAU foreign teachers and Chinese friends) here for Thanksgiving dinner.  Everyone ate and ate so I think it was a success!  

Out of the mouth of babes... 

Last week at church the Primary teacher was asking the kids what the Wise Men brought to the baby Jesus.  One kid said, “Silver!”  Teacher said, “Close!  It was gold but maybe there was some silver also.”  Another child said, “Frankincense.”  Teacher said, “Right!”  Last child said, “A mirror!”  Teacher chuckled.  I laughed out loud!

Crowds, Travel & Funny Stuff

NATIONAL HOLIDAY TRIP

National Day is celebrated every year in China on Oct 1st.  The PRC (People's Republic of China) was founded October 1, 1949.  The holiday lasts for one week and it is the top travel time for everyone living in China.  It is a CRAZY time and commonly referred to as "People Mountain People Sea" (Ren Shan Ren Hai 人山人海) because of the vast number of visitors to every nook and cranny in China. Huge crowds everywhere!!! 

So, doing our part to add to the huge crowds of travelers, at the beginning of October we took a trip to Guizhou, a province in the SW part of China.  You can see on the maps below where it is located in regards to Beijing.  It is a beautiful area of China with magnificent landscapes and interesting cultural diversity. 

I've probably mentioned this before but there are multiple ethnic groups that populate China…56 different minorities to be exact!  The Han Chinese are the largest ethnic group with about 91.5% of the population (1.2 billion).  The other 55 minority groups account for the remaining 112 million people.  China is the world’s most populous country, with approximately  1.35 billion people in total.  Crazy huh?  Our little city of Beijing only has 21 million!  

We flew into Guiyang, the capital city of Guizhou.  For the next 3 days we traveled all around the province seeing the lifestyles of one of the largest minority groups in this area, the Miao people.  Within the Miao minority there are several different Miao groups, distinguished by their manner of dress, etc.  For example: short-skirt-Miao, long-skirt-Miao, red-skirt-Miao, blue-skirt-Miao, etc.  We visited their villages and observed their daily lifestyles.  It was amazing to see that they were still functioning without modern plumbing and basic electrical necessities.  The Miao people are well known for their jewelry making talents, mostly silver.  When a baby girl is born, parents start saving money to make and collect fancy silver ornaments that she will wear for her wedding.  Here are some of my favorite pictures of Miao people of all ages in their traditional dress—

 

Our welcome party playing bamboo instruments

 

            

 

Traditional Miao villages are built on the mountainside.  Corn hangs out to dry everywhere, letting the community know that the family has received a good harvest that year.  

 

 

A large number of the Miao people migrated to different parts of SE Asia (Thailand, Laos, Vietnam & Burma) and then after the Vietnam War they migrated to the United States.  They changed their name from Miao to Hmong and now the largest number of them in the US live in Minnesota, California and Wisconsin.  Our visit to Guizhou was wonderful!  Very interesting!!

SCARED SPEECHLESS

Halloween came and went with a few funny moments.  The best moment was when I played a joke on all my students by showing them a video on the pretense that they were watching the segment with a listening quiz at the end.  They were told to concentrate intently on the screen.  I told them the story that you will read before the video and embellished it slightly.  It was WAY fun!  The students literally flew out of their chairs screaming and one girl in the front row who was just getting ready to take a drink from her thermos ended up throwing it over her head, all over the students behind her.  Here is the link….a little late for Halloween but nonetheless funny!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1ZkgUA84hA

CHINGLISH 

Have I mentioned that there was a note posted near our elevators for a month and a half that read, “Phone is wrong.”  We laughed about it every time we passed it.  Our in-house phone system mysteriously stopped working one day and lasted until one of the teachers in our building told the administration that she would have to start charging them for phone calls that she couldn’t make from the house phone unless it was fixed.  The next day it mysteriously started working again.  So strange! 

SPECIAL TREATMENT

We had a unique experience in September that I forgot to report on.  We were invited to a reception in the Great Hall of the People.  This great hall was pretty GREAT!  The Great Hall is located at the western edge of Tiananmen Square, a very beautiful area in Beijing, with lots of official government buildings and the Forbidden City.  We love to ride our bikes around that area, which is about a 30 min ride from our apt.  The Great Hall functions as the meeting place of the Chinese parliament.  It is also used as a place to hold special events…very special events.  Like the reception that we were invited to! 

The reception was held on the eve of the 65^th anniversary of the founding of new China, the establishment of the PRC (People’s Republic of China).  Prior to this China was called the ROC (Republic of China).  This reception was held in honor of all foreign experts (foreigners working and living in Beijing).  The official welcome speech that we read in English while one of the highest members of the Communist Party Mr. Liu spoke to us, basically said, “China would like to attract more highly skilled workers from overseas and wants to learn from other nations.  China’s achievements in the past 65 years are the result of not only the hard work by the Chinese people, but also outstanding contributions made by foreign experts.”  Wow, who knew we were so important here in China!  He also mentioned that as foreign experts we should continue to serve as goodwill ambassadors for China and help enhance the world’s understanding and friendship toward China.

FUNNY

We are still enjoying our time here in Beijing, even though we miss you all terribly!  Teaching the students are the best part of the experience.  They are kind, hardworking and dedicated to life.  We learn from them and hopefully they learn from us.  They crack us up a lot also.  To get the class more involved in openly discussing topics I give the presenter a soft rubber ball and they can throw it “to” anyone in the class to get their opinion.  Once in a while they get a little nervous and end up throwing the ball wildly, beaning someone in the face, forehead or nose.  It shouldn't be funny, but it is. ;)

Still happy in Beijing....but missing family...and friends!