It's snowing!

Aside from some flurries that were more like sleet than snow a few weeks ago, Friday was the first snow of the year in Harbin! The weather report had falsely predicted snow several times, so when it said that it was supposed to snow everyday from Friday to Monday, I was skeptical. But it has been snowing pretty constantly since my one on one class on Friday, and there are about two and a half inches on the ground now. Just as I was asking myself why I lugged my snow boots all the way here from Chicago, I'm glad I have them because I don't think they have the concept of plowing sidewalks here, and I don't expect it to melt any time soon.

The largest snow storm in 50 years happened in Beijing on November 1st; many people think the government induced precipitation to help deal with the drought that northern China has experienced this year. It's unclear how it is snowing so much at this time in November, but leave it to the Chinese government to not be transparent about it and offer mixed messages.

See this Wall Street Journal article:
"Blizzard Renews Storm Over China Making Snow"

Christmas!

As the first day of November, I am officially declaring it the Christmas season! This may seem premature as even commercial America usually counts Black Friday as this landmark, but with a high of 20 degrees today and a low of -2 last night, I think it's justified. Plus, I'll be missing two weeks of lighted trees covered in snow and storefront windows decorated for the season on M St and Michigan Ave, so I need to make up for it. This Sunday morning that was supposed to be dedicated to the studying that I didn't get done yesterday has consisted of listening to Christmas music on youtube -- take that China :) -- and sipping my Seattle's Best french roast...mmm.

Honestly, I don't feel very much guilt for my "slacking off" as the week after midterms was originally supposed to be our fall break were it not for the cold that's been going around. I can truly say that last week was the longest week of classes since my first week in Harbin, which was most likely the hardest week of my life, as pathetic as that might seem.

So Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and I'll even add in New Year's!

Toothpick Tower

"Building Collapse Kills One Worker in Shanghai"

Laura showed me this article, and I thought I would post it. This happened last June, but it's still incredibly ridiculous. A development company in Shanghai had built a series of apartment buildings in a very desirable part of the city and was selling the condos for 18,000 RMB/sq. meter (quite a high price for China). Many of the buildings had already been occupied as they were finishing construction on another with the same design. One Saturday morning there may have been a high wind or maybe the ground settled a little, and the entire 13-story building just tipped over. Apparently they had poured a slab of concrete and stacked a low-rise apartment building on it!

In the pictures you can see the short pegs that were supposed to hold the building into the ground. It literally doesn't take any training as an engineer to know that that is not a secure foundation. While this is definitely an extreme case, I'm reminded everyday of the outward show that China puts on with its new buildings, military parades, and knock-off name brands. It's too bad that there isn't very much of substance behind it all.

Two-Week Break

Now that Cortne (see her blog) has recommended my blog and I haven't posted in two weeks I feel like I should write something really interesting and bitingly satiric. Hmm...not so much comes to mind, as we just started classes after a two-week break due to "swine flu prevention," but I can give you a little update on my life.

I stayed in Harbin for most of our break, which was incredibly relaxing. I was one of about 10 students left in the dorm, and we finally had an opportunity to live in Harbin without the overbearing burden of studying and homework. I really am happy that I didn't decide to travel and sleep on hard train beds and in youth hostels, although I'm sure it was interesting for many of my classmates to see other parts of China.

Many days I walked to HIT's front gates and hailed a taxi to go to Zhongyang Dajie, which costs less than a one-way fare on the L, especially with the CTA's new price increases (the Tribune has such stimulating articles these days). But back to Harbin, when I actually think back on it, I'm not sure how I spent that much time on Zhongyang Dajie, but I can say that after the last two weeks, I am quite familiar with most of the places on Harbin's "Central Avenue," as the Chinese call it when over-translating in an attempt to put as much English on their signs as possible. Okay, enough with the run-on sentences. Really, it's quite easy to find myself regularly going to Zhongyang Dajie since it has some of the best coffee shops in Harbin and the only place I can buy real bread. Of course, there's the added benefit of there being no honking cars since it's a pedestrian street.

After waking up to the sun shining through my window for two weeks, the sound of my cell phone alarm on Monday was not pleasant to say the least, and two days in a row of almost solid classes have left me exhausted. However, I'm starting to get used to the routine again. Up for next week: preparing for midterms on Thursday and an oral report of my one-on-one paper to a panal of professors on Saturday...yikes!

Chinese Water Torture and Close Encounters with Kim Jong-il

Last weekend, the CET students and our roommates took a weekend trip to Dandong in Liaoning province. To give you an idea of where Dandong is, on a map of Asia, it's hard to tell whether the city is in China or N Korea. In fact, N Korea is just across the river from Dandong. I got different answers from different people as to where the actual border between the two countries lies. Some said that half of the river belonged to N Korea and half belonged to China; others said China claimed the entire river, and I even heard that as long as you had one foot in the river, even if the rest of your body was on Korean land, you were still in China. I don't think the Korean police follow the last one.

After getting a quick glimpse of N Korea, we got on our tour bus and drove out to Qingshangou where we stayed the night and watched a traditional Manchurian dance performance. It seems like that dance performance was the only reason we drove so far out of the city, which was slightly annoying, but all in all it was fine. That night we roasted a lamb on a spit and some of us sang karaoke; I just watched. The real memorable experience in Qingshangou was taking a shower the next morning. To activate the hot water, you first had to fill up the heater, then turn it on, wait about half an hour, and be sure to remember to unplug it before turning on the water unless you want to get electricuted (of course the sign reminding you of the crucial last step was only in Chinese). After completing these steps, especially the last one, there must have been something wrong with the hot water heater because the water was freezing, and the water pressure was little more than a drip. I now see where the Chinese must have gotten the idea for the water torture.

Sunday we hiked through the mountains of Liaoning on our way back to Dandong, which was really beautiful, especially when we got to the highest lookout point. It was much more rustic than our hike in Yagou, and I think I enjoyed it even more after sitting on the bus for a few hours. Back in Dandong, we checked into our second hotel, which was exponentially nicer than where we stayed in Qingshangou. There was actually a piece of tile dividing the shower from the rest of the bathroom, so the entire floor didn't get soaked when I took a shower. It's kind of sad that I had forgotten how nice that was.

Monday morning we took a boat ride on the Yalu River; yes, I may have technically entered N Korea, but I didn't get a passport stamp. Wherever the official border between China and N Korea stands, there is no question that the north side of the river is China and the south side is N Korea, as China attempts to clearly assert its superiority. Along the Dandong riverbank is a row of skyscrapers with neon lights and a relatively well-kept river walk. The bridge that only goes from the Chinese side to the middle of the river (thanks to US bombs) is equipped with some kind of lasers that light up the sky all night, and there is a large spire in the middle of the city with a green beam that continuously swivels back and forth in the direction of N Korea.

Compared with most cities in China, Dandong is quite small, but at least the riverbank of the city is one of the most developed areas I've seen in China. There is no question that the sole purpose of developing that area is to show off China's power to N Korea, and frankly, I think it's incredibly arrogant. This is just another instance of the Chinese spending money for an outer show and not dealing with the inner problems of their country. I'm sure the utter poverty of the farming villages a few miles inland that we saw from the train could be easily confused with N Korea, but that's supposed to be a secret. The problem China is that when the entire world is focusing on your economy and your country has over a billion people, it's hard to keep much of anything a secret.

English Translations

Here's something a little more positive...some English signs I've seen in Harbin that I thought were pretty funny. I'm sure American signs in Chinese are just as bad.

"Chinestern" Culture, or A Lack Thereof

This Saturday, our CET excursion was to the old synagogue in Harbin and St. Sophia's Cathedral. This cathedral is now a history and architecture museum but remains one of the greatest examples of Russian architecture in Harbin. In fact, when I told my one-on-one professor that I was going there this weekend, he said he was planning on taking me there himself, as my one-on-one study topic is the architecture of Harbin and how it reflects the city's history and culture (in case I didn't mention that in an earlier post).

I'm sure many people would call St. Sophia's the most interesting thing in Harbin, but what we did after visiting Harbin's historic places of worship was actually more interesting to me because it gave me a true insight into Chinese present day culture. Cortne, Laura, Dane, and I went back to Zhongyang Dajie where we had gone on our scavenger hunt to check out the Europlaza mall that we had read about in the small Harbin guidebook CET had given us. I have to say I think it was nicer than most malls I've seen in the United States. It seemed so out of place in this city.

While it was really surprising to see Versace and Burberry in Harbin, what was even more strange were the Chinese high-end brands (I used to think that was an oxymoron). "Prich" seems to be the Chinese version of Ralph Lauren, and it's seriously not a knock-off.  The clothes are in the same price range, and they appear to be of the same quality. Unfortunately for the Chinese though, they don't have the same international recognition as American and European designers. Chinese Lacoste is called "Crocodile," once again the same prices; a polo was 800RMB (about $115USD). On the second floor, I thought I was walking into a Holister until I saw the sign "Who.a.u," but the clothes in the store could easily have been in an American store.

This was such a cool find not because I needed new clothes (I discovered soon after arriving in Harbin that I had already brought too many) but because of the way the Chinese were so eager to embrace Western fashion. At first, it was really quite funny to see brands like Crocodile, Prich, and Who.a.u, but as I really thought about it, it wasn't funny at all. It's actually kind of sad. These are Chinese brands, but they have English names. In fact, there weren't hardly any Chinese signs in Europlaza, and the few that were there all had an English translation. Even more evident than the language difference, was that all of the models on the walls were white. I didn't see one Asian model.

The Chinese are so infatuated with the West that they are rejecting their own identity and culture, a product of thousands of years of Chinese history. What's kind of ironic is that they don't really fully understand Western culture. They see Western clothes and buildings and attempt to mimic them, but they don't understand the values of the many cultures that make up the Western world or the fundamentals upon which "our" society is built. This isn't for a lack of mental capacity; it's simply because if you don't grow up in a given society or culture, you can very rarely ever come to fully understand it. I fear that Chinese society is becoming more and more superficial, not only as it becomes more materialistic (because Americans are about as materialistic as people get) but also as the Chinese lose a huge part of their heritage and replace it with the little more than the shiny exterior of the West.

H一N一

Aside from the heat sensors as we walked through in the airport and the occasional mask wearing Chinese person, I haven't come in contact with the seemingly over publicized swine flu situation in China until this week. Last weekend two cases of swine flu (H一N一) were discovered at Heilongjiang University not far from HIT, and the last I heard they had spread to 48 cases (numbers stated in Chinese statistics). Harbin is now considered a high-risk city for the H1N1 virus. The woman who cleans our dorm came around with a thermometer for every student with the instructions to take our temperatures twice a day, and at any sign of a fever to go straight to the hospital. She looked at me rather strangely when I asked what normal human body temperature was in degrees Celcius. Anyway, I assumed this was similar to the sign in our dorm lobby that says we must show ID every time we enter but IDs are never checked. I think I was wrong.

The police have closed off our campus to all people other than students, faculty, and staff. Students must show a student ID card, and faculty have been issued documents (compete with the university's red stamp) allowing them to enter the campus. Similar to our staying in a hotel before moving into Dorm No. 6, this policy doesn't seem to really prevent the H1N1 virus from spreading.

China received quite a bit of criticism for it's failure to properly deal with the SARS virus in 2003 (I believe it was 2003; SARS on wikipedia is blocked), so it seems like they aren't messing around this time. The difference is that SARS is actually a serious disease. The H1N1 virus is the flu. The flu as in "I didn't come to work yesterday because I had the flu," or "summer is over, it's almost flu season." HIT is considering canceling students' fall break, prohibiting them from going home to celebrate the 60th aniversary of the PRC's founding. I'm not sure whether or not that would affect our break, as it does not start until October 17th, but I can say that if the Chinese government's overreaction to a disease that amounts to little more than a cold stops me from visiting Dalian or another Chinese city (still in the planning stages), we will miss out on a big part of this study abroad experience.

Personally I'm not at all worried about the flu, and no one reading this should be. That's not why I'm writing it; I just think that the Chinese reaction to the situation helps fill out an image of China, as compete an image as can be created without sitting on a plane for 13 hours.

Chinese College Students

I've had quite a few conversations with Chinese college students in the last few weeks, mainly with He Wei and some with Cortne's roommate Song Yang. I can't say that I have a full image of the way Chinese youth think or how they have been educated in the Chinese system, but I can say that some of the things I've seen are very interesting.

In many ways, their lives are exactly like those of American college students. They come from all over the country, live and eat on campus, go home for holidays, study late into the night...sometimes, prepare for the GREs to go to graduate school in the United States, and even access the same websites as American students (no comment). In fact, they are probably more like I am as a student in the United States than I am as a student in China. Here I eat at restaurants much more often due to the difference in food prices, and I study quite a bit more because you can't get away with not doing the reading when your class is one on one with a professor and the reading is in Chinese! HIT students seem to study even less than I do at Georgetown. I think they must really cram for tests a few days before because it seems like they go for weeks without studying and then one night stay in the library all night (okay, maybe it's not the library). Anyway, in many ways this university isn't very different from most American universities.

However, there are definitely differences between American 20 year-olds and Chinese 20 year-olds aside from the obvious food they eat, language they speak, and clothes they wear. First of all, you can pretty much assume that every student you see walking around campus is an only child. In fact, almost all Han Chinese born after 1979 when the One Child Policy was instated are only children. I personally don't believe that this policy will be around for another 30 or 40 years, but if it were, it's really strange to think that the Chinese would not only not have siblings but wouldn't have closely related aunts, uncles, or cousins either.

While the effects of the One Child Policy are rather concrete and easy to see, there are far more implicit influences on young Chinese that I think greatly shape their view of the world. For example, about a week ago I was eating lunch with He Wei, and he mentioned how it was interesting that we would be in China for the 60th aniversary of the founding of the PRC (October 1, 1949). I responded that it was also exciting that it was the 20th aniversary of the Tian'anmen Square protest. He was rather surprised that I knew about that because he said most Chinese people our age don't know about it. It's really crazy to think that people in this country don't know about an event that was so publicized all over the world. It occurred to me that if there were another protest in Tian'anmen on October 1st, 2009, I might not know about it because I would be in the country where it happened. Shoot me an email if Beijing goes up in flames, will you?

I know I shouldn't be surprised at the altered form of history that is taught in Chinese schools, but when you actually come in contact with the results of it, it really makes you realize that this isn't the same as America. I even see it in the classrooms of the international students building. Each classroom has a world map and a map of China. The world map has China in the middle (China is the Middle Kingdom afterall), and the Atlantic Ocean is called the "Big Western Ocean," but the map of China is especially interesting. Taiwan is shown as a province of China, no different from any other province, and the body of water east of China is labeled as the Japanese Sea. Japanese Sea is crossed out and Eastern Sea is written over it in pen. This is the case with every map in every classroom. I mean, is that really worth the effort? You can still see that it says Japanese Sea under the pen marks.

I suppose it takes time for things to change, and things in China definitely are changing, but if Chinese children and even college students aren't taught about their own history and the world around them, it will be a long time coming. For now, I just find myself saying, "真的吗中国，真的吗？" ("Really China, really?")

Laundry

Last Monday I wore the last clean shirt that I had brought with me to China, which posed a serious problem. I would either have to re-wear clothes for the rest of the semester or dare to attempt doing laundry in Dorm No. 6. The fact that I'm writing this post on Friday may give you an idea of how long it has taken me to make this decision.

When we first moved into the dorm, there was a large red bucket under the sink in the bathroom. At first I thought it was where the water from the sink drain went (that should tell you something about the state of the bathroom in general - for a great description of our bathrooms, check out Cortne Edmonds' blog "Of Applesauce and Broken Mirrors," also on blogspot). When I found out that the bucket was for washing our clothes, I only hoped that they had a lot of tide-to-go pens in the chaoshi because I have no idea what goes on inside a washing machine, and I definitely was not capable of doing it myself. Unfortunately, instead of tide-to-go pens, you can buy washing boards at HIT's chaoshi, washing boards like the ones you see in museums or old movies. I remembered how I've been told that when asked what the most important invention of the twentieth century was, great-grandma Castle said the washing machine.

Fortunately, it turns out that the floor we live on does have a washing machine (one washing machine and not one that could be easily identified as such but still an electric appliance that supposedly washes clothes). Dryers, on the other hand, are basically nonexistant in China, but it was a huge relief to know that I would only be using the red bucket under the sink to carry my clothes to and from the laundry room. It appeared that the laundry machine ran on coins, but no RMB denominations seemed to work. I then remembered that we had been told to buy tokens at the front desk in order to use the machine. When I went downstairs, the guard said the tokens were 两块五一个, but I heard 两块五个. Thinking that I could do five loads of laundry for 2 RMB, I was shocked at how cheap it was. Then I realized that it was 2.5 RMB for one load, still a seventh of the cost at Georgetown (although that does include drying). Anyway, I gave him a 10 and got four tokens.

After using the washing machine and carrying the clothes back to my room the problem of drying them arose. He Wei had dried his clothes on the shower rod in the bathroom, but since it was the morning, I wasn't sure who else wanted to take a shower, so that didn't seem that the best idea. Plus, I didn't have nearly enough hangers to hang up my wet shirts and undershirts from the first load (let alone the other two that I would do), so I had no choice but to lay them out flat around the room. My clothes covered my bed, desk, chair, and part of the floor, but I finally have clean clothes again! They are definitely a little stretched out though. It will be nice to get back to the United States and put them in a dryer. I clearly need to do laundry more often in the future though, but I doubt that will actually happen given my schedule.