I am studying at the Beijing Language and Culture University, which is among the best universities in China for foreign language study. Hence it's in their interest to have a lot of foreign students milling about and learning Chinese, and there are many of us here, to be sure! My class has a lot of fellow Americans, but we've also go a few Spaniards, a Swede, a German with a New Zealand accent, a French gal, a Brit, and an Ecuadoran. There are a lot of college students, but there are also a few businessmen, an English teacher who's working in northern Beijing, and myself. This, if not precisely representative of the whole program, does show the fact that while Americans might be the single largest nationality, there are a lot of people from other countries. Most of us live on campus, but I'm particularly fortunate in having a faculty apartment all to myself, thanks to my dear friend and roommate at UCSB, Wu Ti. Her grandfather used to teach at this university and her family still has the apartment, so I've got a gorgeous place all to myself, a mere 10 minute walk from my classroom!
Wu Ti and her family have been absolutely wonderful. From picking me up at the airport to helping me shop to taking me to fantastic restaurants and showing me various sites, they've really been spoiling me to no end, and Wu Ti has really helped me negotiate the ins and outs of Beijing and various bureaucratic necessities. After several days of class my Chinese has drastically improved, but it's still far from adequate to deal with a lot of needed tasks. There wasn't really any orientation on this program, and our one class trip to the Great Wall was not organized in the least, though I think we all made out OK, so I've been extremely lucky to have a Beijing native show me around. My meimei, or little sister, has really been acting like the jiejie, older sister, on this trip!
The campus, like most of Beijing, is strikingly modern; the university is 60 years old this year and there's construction going on all over the place (in all of Beijing, in fact), but the main road of the campus is lined with beautiful trees, so walking to class in the morning before it heats up is quite a pleasure. I've got class for 4 hours in the morning and afternoons free. Sometimes I do venture out, usually with WuTi, for an afternoon jaunt, but sometimes I stay in. The pollution really is quite awful, though a good rain can drastically alleviate it, revealing blue sky and lighter air. The heat is pretty bad, too, but it's bearable, especially if you're used to humid summers. Summers on the east coast and then in Japan have prepared me well!
So far, I've seen a few of the great sights of Beijing. Tianamen Square seems like a very ordinary stone plaza, with tons of people milling about, but there's Chairman Mao's benevolent? face and huge red characters saying "Long Live the People's Republic of China" staring across the road at you. The Great Wall, of which we saw the Mutanyu section, is called the Changcheng or "Long Wall" in Chinese, which is certainly a more accurate name. It's a fairly simply constructed brown brick wall, but it goes on seemingly forever through the mountains, with watchtowers at very regular intervals. It's got beautiful scenery, and we were fortunate enough to have blue sky that day.
Probably the coolest thing I've done so far, however, was to get a little outside of Beijing to see the two of the 13 Ming Tombs- tombs of the Ming emperors. These are buildings much like you'd expect traditional Chinese architecture to be, and they too have great pine trees all around them. We were able to go down into one of the tombs and see the different chambers, with huge red boxes and several ritual implements. The other tomb contained a museum devoted to the greatness of the first Ming emperor, Yuanzhang. We also walked down the Holy Road, formerly the emperor's path toward the tombs, where he would show respect to previous emperors. The best part about this pleasant promenade was the many statues of animals (and a few statues of ministers) lining the walkway: elephants, horses, lions, kirin (a mythical beast), all depicted both kneeling and standing. WuTi and I had a lot of fun posing with the different statues! Best of all, we went to a hot spring afterward, which had scores of baths, both inside and outside, of all kinds! It was great, but of course I don't have any pictures.
That's it for my first update; stay tuned for more reports from the big and bewildering yet bountiful city of Beijing!
