and Hello, You!

My, my, my.

When we last spoke, I believe I had just gotten back from Xi'an, and had about two weeks till Spring Break.

Those weeks went by rather quickly, the second one especially stressful. Finally getting my phone situation sorted out (kind of), applying to this stuff on campus, I can't even remember. It's documented somewhere but I'm not going to waste typing space.

Two weeks after getting back from Xi'an I had my midterm on a Friday, and my grade ended up being rather disappointing based solely off of several stupid mistakes.

Then off we went to Chengdu, Sichuan for a week of spring break. That was a blast.

Chengdu was kind of like a dirty Hawaii, except no ocean in sight.

We took a 30 hour hard bed train to get there. The couple riding on the bottom beds was super friendly, and they only flipped into another dialect a few times. I think I've finally realized why in English (and kind of in Chinese) all the different languages of certain areas are referred to as "dialects" and not "languages," (dialects would be the wrong word because they indeed are not mutually intelligible). My guess is that for one, the writing is exactly the same. But then for two, Chinese people think they SHOULD be mutually intelligible. Even though they know when they can't understand each other, they still feel like they're speaking the same language - the language of China. More on this later.

First night in Chengdu we went out to eat some hot pot, which is the specialty of Sichuan. I didn't really get to partake because all the meat is together in the pot, but I did have my own cute little pot where I was able to add spice to my liking. I watched as my friends tried duck tongue - but none of us knew what the word was in Chinese at first - so we were convinced that what my friends were eating were praying mantises.

The hostel was gorgeous and cheap, and it was fun surprising the management with our speaking Chinese. It was weird to see that many Westerners together for the first time outside of CET. It was the usual hostel crowd, like stepping into the Astor Museum Inn, only in Chengdu. Except I found it odd that everyone was eating the hostel food and not venturing out where things are cheaper and obviously better. Then I realized, they can't speak Chinese! How do you order food in China if you can't speak Chinese?! Well, I could happily tell you that you POINT to PICTURES that they have for the convenience of I don't even know who. And a lot of restaurants do have English versions, but I've never been clear as to why, because there isn't one place in China that I've been to so far that has many foreigners - except that one bar. I think it'd be kind of hard to travel to China without knowing any Chinese.

Anyway, the second day (Sunday) we woke up bright and early to go to Jiu Zhai Gou, a huge park in China where Hero was filmed. But at the bus station they wouldn't allow us to buy bus tickets. "Foreigners aren't being allowed in, it's way too dangerous. You can fly in if you want."

But then the bus driver ran up to us and was trying to get us to buy his ticket. Other people gathered around, as they do... all the time, whenever we're having a dialogue about getting some help. They kept shaking their heads and saying not to trust the bus driver.

As we were leaving a shady looking dude came up and said that we should look at his bus for the 9 hour trip. He said, "Take a look, I'll take you guys, we'll work something out." But we kept insisting that he asked his boss if it was all right if he took foreigners (though we never really planned to go with him, we were curious). Finally he called, and he looked surprised and disappointed. "Actually it's too dangerous, we can't be taken responsible for whatever happens to you guys."

But we had heard the route is fine! They kept saying that it's because the route still hadn't been cleaned up from the earth quakes.

Back we went to the hostel, and now it was maybe 8:00 AM. We opened up our lonely planet and checked out what was in our proximity, and discovered that we were within a few hours of one of China's four sacred mountains - Emei Shan (Mt. Emei) - famous for its Golden Summit, and the "playful monkeys" that line the trail. Hey man, let's do it, we figured, and we'll be back to Chengdu by Wednesday at the latest.

By that afternoon we were basically lost hiking around the base of the mountain, just trying to find where to buy tickets and where the main trail was. We went and asked a guy who looked about thirty, who said, "I myself am not too clear! Hey, maybe it's this way." After learning we were American he started asking us about how we felt about Obama, etc. Turns out that the Chinese are in love with Obama because they see him as the economic savior of America. I hear he has something like a 90% approval rate here.

About fifteen minutes in he said, "Hey, I'm going to go [hike] with you guys."

We found the tickets, and started up the stairs. We talked about all kinds of things that now I have absolutely no memory of. That's what happens when you don't journal. Every thirty minutes or so there'd be a rest stop where there'd be big glass jars filled with water and pineapples on a stick. Another reason why to love China - the fruit.

In the second or third hour, while we were resting a bit we said, "Well hey, what's your name?" He told us his (Song) and then gave us all the histories of all our names. Mickey's name, Li Hai'in, meaning Eagle of the ocean (a very bad ass name), Rebecca Russell's (and this is her actual Chinese name) being Mei Fang (I mispelled it many times on this very blog) - Fragrant aroma, and mine meaning Sincerity... or really, to be frank. Apparently many workers on the great wall had my name.

The whole day I was simply amazed at the beauty of the mountain. It was so lush. All I had seen for a few months was the cold winter gray of Beijing. I always love the way it looks when you're in a forest and you can see layers of canopy, something about that has always put me at great peace. I remember during sophomore year of high school one of my friends had her birthday party at Bur Mill park, and some friends and I ventured off to hike around in the woods. We came to a stop and I realized it was the first time I had felt connected to anything other than my studies in a long time. That summer I ended up making a lot more visits to the park, but now it's been two years since I've seen Bur Mill.

At one point we saw some whities. What were they doing here?! There was a rounder, bearded Australian man, followed by a stringy Welschman and one of the most beautiful Chinese women I've seen ... in all of China. As is the custom in China, when you meet a foreigner, you ask them why in the world they're here! Immediately, no introductions. "Hi! What are you up to?" Turns out they'd been searching for rare birds, Emeishan having 300 kinds. They also informed us that Jiu Zhai Gou was not accessible to foreigners right now because there are a lot of Tibetans living within it... and the Chinese government didn't want us getting into contact with them, I assume. Worried about our safety, my butt.

I asked the Australian what types of rare birds were there, and he wasn't able to give me an answer. Maybe I needed to pay him. They seemed to be regarding us as some kind of stupid American college tourists, or something. It aggravated me. I would get back at them, just you wait.

At one point we realized we were slowly but steadily going downhill, which didn't make sense, but I was enjoying my time anyway. Then we came to a lake surrounded by mountains, and we encountered plenty more people. Then the landscape really started looking like King Kong. Thaaat was cool.

We realized that the 3 hours or so we had hiked had largely been a waste of time, as we had basically just gone to another entrance to the base, which we could have gotten to by bus. No worries.

A woman with a cane approached us and said that as it was starting to get dark we'd need to stay with her in her hotel. We largely ignored her. She kept talking to us, and interpreted our ignoring her as us not understanding. She turned to Song, "It's so hard to talk to them when they don't understand!" In chorus: "We all understand what you're saying." Her: "Do you really understand?" In chorus: "Yes. We really understand."

That is super annoying. When we got here for orientation, our RA had us watch a clip from Harold and Kumar II, where the parents of Harold and Kumar, Korean and Indian Americans, respectively, are being interviewed. Rob Cordory refuses to realize that they in fact are speaking in clear English to him, which makes for a pretty funny scene. Our RA told us that we should realize this very scene may happen in China - people will refuse to understand that you are speaking Chinese to them, even if you speak VERY WELL. No way, I thought. If you're speaking Chinese, they'll know! It must just be if you're speaking quietly, or something.

Not the case. Sometimes I'll talk to people for a minute or so, and I know that my grammar, tones, and accent are pretty solid, and after having a conversation about real topics, they'll pause to say, "So can you understand me right now?" When I say, "...Yeah. I still understand you." they get excited. This is after I said sentences like, "Though I know America isn't necessarily the safest place in the world, it's my home and it's where I'd like to live."

Okay, so this woman started hiking with us too because she decided she was going to make sure she got some foreigners to stay with her that night. We checked a monastery for prices on sleeping with them, and it turned out their digs were more expensive, so with the lady we went.

That night she cooked us dinner, and we all ate with Song. Turns out he's a philosopher and was super excited when I told him that was my major. Sometimes what he said made me sad, "I like to come to this mountain just to have some time to think about things. I'll be thirty soon," he said, and I realized that he probably had no family of his own to speak of. Then I kind of realized maybe the context in which he met us. That night we all gave him our contact information, and he said he'd like to keep up with us through the years, we can practice our Chinese and he can learn about how his American friends are doing, and have "a cultural exchange."

He left the following morning, and we all ate this disgusting effing breakfast that still makes me want to puke but at the time it was fine. It was like a sweat watery oatmeal with boiled eggs in it.

The real hike began - which was a weird hike because the entire mountain was paved with stairs. Apparently the volume of Chinese people is too high to not pave every single mountain in China.

I was definitely the slowest hiker throughout most of the day, but I was pretty positive! Everything was so beautiful and I had enough time to think about the way I go about things in life that during it I kept emphasizing that even though maybe I was having a rougher time the experience was good. I kept imagining my mom there and what ever she'd say to me. The experience reminded me of family vacations and made me really miss my family.

I started feeling uneasy, and every time I thought about what we ate for breakfast I started to gag. That meant I couldn't really snack when everyone else was, and at one point during one of the easier parts of the hike, while I was walking, I started feeling super duper sleepy.

Then, even though at no point during this hike did I feel too sore to go on, I felt too tired to go on. I literally just could not move my feet much faster. At one of our rest stops I was explaining this to Mei Fang and she said, "I know just what to do." She walked off and then I heard the very clear sound of a drumming woodpecker. There is a story behind this, but I've always loved trying to find woodpeckers. I wouldn't call myself a bird watcher, but I certainly had a stage of my life where one of my favorite things to do would be to take out the North American Birds book from a tall book case in our living room and look through all the woodpeckers and talk about them with my dad. Mei Fang came back over with an orange and I pointed out what looked like a pileated a few trees away from us. "Huh." we said together.

She said when she was hiking volcanoes in Guatemala, the locals would all bring lemons to sniff to help them get up the cliff. Figuring any citrus might help, she used Mickey's key to scrape off some skin of the orange and handed it to me. I also ate an apple.

And that was that. I was cured. I don't know if it was mental, or what, I really don't think it was, but as we started our hike up into winter, every time I got tired I'd sniff that orange like it was my job and just keep on going.

Oh - the monkeys - yes. When I was at my most exhausted point, and after I had just walked passed by some monks who responded to my "Hello!" with, "Praise Buddha," my friend Jiajia (her name is Emily but I have never called her that out loud unless on Skype) turned around and said, "Monkeys!"

Turns out these sacred/endangered Tibetan Macaques or whatever they're called are exactly what you'd expect out of a monkey. They're cute and they want your stuff. Except maybe these monkeys were cute from afar, not up close. There was a man who worked there holding a cane whose sole job was to beat the monkeys off of hikers. I was watching the monkeys from afar and trying to catch my breath, when he signals to me angrily, "HURRY UP!"

I practically ran. When we ate our lunch the guard silently stood three feet away from us, his cane in hand, magestic, yet still funny to me.

Okay so YES. We had started our hike in summer, it cooled down to spring, and when we were nearing the top there started to be a good amount of snow. We finally heard a road in the distance and then once again we met our friends: the Australian with the Welschman and Chinese woman.

"You hiked up this entire mountain today?!" The Welschman had been stoic and a little offputting the day before, now he was beaming at us. The Americans can accomplish something! I don't know. "That's at least 30 kilometers." We shrugged. I don't have really any hiking experience whatsoever but I'm pretty sure that's not a very impressive hike.

Then as they were about to go, I said, "Oh hey, I don't think I saw one of your rare 300 birds, but I did see a pileated woodpecker today!" The change on their expressions was hilarious. The Australian started to laugh, and the Welschman's pleasant smile faded quickly into what looked like a mix of fear and disbelief.

"A pileated woodpecker?" He asked like I wasn't supposed to know what that was.

"Yeah, at least it looked like the ones in North Carolina that I've seen. Maybe it's a different type of bird here."

"How do you know it was a woodpecker?" Come on, dude.

"Um, it was doing... its woodpecker thing, on the tree and not on a branch, drumming. And I'm pretty sure it was pileated because it had a red crest and a black and white wings." Then he almost sounded desperate.

"What about the breast. What color was the breast?!"

"I think it was white, I didn't see." Then he sighed.

Apparently the red breasted pileated or whatever it's called is pretty big doins... apparently, it was what the guy had been searching for, and had not found.

"He's pretty angry at you, all right!" said the Australian.
"I probably didn't see it! I didn't see the breast so it's probably just some other bird!" They both shook their heads. That's how we left them. ha-ha, that's what you get!

We did come to that road, and after again walking past some monkeys who ended up stealing Rebecca's water bottle and enduring the bad ass intimidation attempt of Mei Fang, we caught a gondola to the Golden Summit, which was not unlike the world of Narnia.

We were all exhausted and covered in sweat, only wearing tennis shoes, which didn't work well with the ice and snow. The sun was starting to set and we needed to find some place to stay, badly. We had read we could stay in the monastery, so again we hiked to where the fog was so thick there was probably nothing more than twenty feet visibility. Turns out only monks can live in the monastery. Crap.

We all collapsed at a table and Mickey went to go find somewhere. If we couldn't find some place to stay, we'd have to go back down the gondola and find a hotel there, and that would be another hour or so of wandering, which was something we all couldn't do. We just didn't have it in us (though I guess we would've had to!)

Mickey nearly ran back excited. He'd found a hotel AND haggled down to a good price. Though the hotel had no running water apparently there were electric blankets.

I set my backpack down in our room and the second I laid down on the bed I was incredibly nauseous. I've never felt nausea like that, it was awful. I had only eaten breakfast, a PB sandwich, and an apple that day, which I think didn't really help whatever situation I was in. I had enough energy to take off my sweaty clothes and pull a blanket over myself, but then I just kept shivering and writing and oh my god it was awful and I sound like such a whiner. I couldn't get up to get dinner and instead laid in bed from 6:30 PM to 6:00 AM, when I got up with everyone to go watch the sunrise.

Then I got sick. Gross. I would not type this usually but it's worth saying. When I finally did throw up, I checked my phone to see what time it was... and that was when I learned that UNC had become 2009 NCAA National Champions.

Me, Rebecca, and JiaJia finally got down to the bus stop and took an hour bus ride all the way down from the summit to the base of town, and then another bus from town back into Chengdu. All exhausted but in super good spirits, we checked back into the hostel. I took an incredibly appreciated shower and did my favorite thing to do when the weather's good and I feel clean: changed into a dress.

The rest of our time in Chengdu was relaxed and just wonderful. The city is in Southern China and people in Beijing like to make fun of Chengdu-ers because "all they do is hang out in tea houses and play majiang." You know what, it's true, and it's awesome.

We: went and got Chinese massage, went to the biggest market I'll probably ever see in my entire life, hung out in a tea house for four hours eating snacks and telling ghost stories, went to a touristy corner of town where I ended up buying this fabric I saw all over the place that I fell in love with, constantly stopped at fruit stands to try new things, went to the panda reserve, ate in a restaurant that was pretty much in a car garage, went to see a beautiful outdoor museum with statues of characters from the Three Kingdoms, and that's pretty much it! I enjoyed my time there so much, though during the last two days the air pollution was so terrible as I was walking I literally realized that I was going to be getting a cold from it. And I did.

Random things:
At the massage the man stuck his fingers in my ears and twisted them around. I started giggling nervously and kept asking him why that was necessary.

I was eating a fruit once and found a tiny caterpillar looking thing in the core. Mortified I resolved myself to go back to the stand and talk to the woman. I had no purpose, I just needed to have words. We got into an argument, and she won, because we were coming from completely other sides of the world. It is now hilarious, and it was even funny at the time. Our argument was in good spirits but was also incredibly bizarre. For this story ask me in person, it cannot be typed.

Most dialects of Chinese outside of Beijing don't have retroflexes, which sounds to me like they all have speech impediments, which is fun. I tried out my Sichuan accent and that was really fun. A dude from Yunnan told me I had a strong Beijing accent, which in some cases is not something to be proud of. But I am.

We got back and I realized that I DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME LEFT IN CHINA. I am so in love with Chinese people and the way life is here, though I am also... missing home a lot. But it's a healthy missing home.

The week after spring break I re-evaluated my study habits. For some reason, even though I'd been studying hard, my grades just weren't as great as they could be. I kept making 88s on things which is the most frustrating grade in the world. So then I reformatted my study time. now every night I do all my homework and then read all my dialogues exhaustively, usually for about an hour and a half. So now it's to the point where I'm doing 4-5 hours of homework a night. I love this program but I'm pretty sure it's not as relaxed as other study abroad programs. I don't really mind, I've gotten pretty accustomed to how my study life is. I go to class, then eat lunch in the cafeteria with everyone, then have my 1-1 or 1-2, then study all afternoon in my room. At one point maybe a few of the Chinese roommates or Tan Qing and her boyfriend will come back and I'll talk to them, and that's always really nice.

Every night there are one of two restaurants that we go to. That's my favorite time - I almost always go with Mei Fang and Mickey, generally Tan Qing and Li Xuan, and sometimes Jiajia, Guang Nan, or CETers who we might see walking there. We do... happy crappy. Every night. I love it.

So last Friday my test went way better, and I think this week it also went well.

There's a roommate here who pretty much serves as everyone's tourguide through China. He's incredibly friendly and loves teaching us about Chinese history and things like that, and he likes hearing about American phrases (though usually we just tell him how you'd say it, but use Chinese). He taught us how to play Majiang yesterday and I had the most fun time. I'm going to try and buy a set, and tonight we're going to have a majiang night in our room.

I've been typing this for about an hour, so I'm going to go now!

OH I met Tan Qing's family but I'll just talk about that later!