Cell Phone Issues

today i attempted to buy recharge minutes for my cell phone (in china, most plans are prepaid). unfortunately, i don't yet know much cell phone policy vocabulary, so when my phone failed to work after recharging i had about an hour long confusing discussion with the salesman. from my understanding, a long distance conversation i had with my dad on his birthday had actually racked up a debt (i didn't know this was possible), which i either had to pay off or avoid by switching numbers. he convinced me to buy a new number from him because it would be cheaper than settling the debt - i don't yet know if he did me a favor or duped me. he works at the university's store, so i'm going to hope for the the former; i get tricked enough as it is.

Tiananmen Square

This is actually an old one, but it's from a really fun night we spent at Tiananmen Square. We got there just before sunset and saw the lowering of the flag with a huge mass of other people. We walked around and got to see all of the standard Beijing sites. As usual, us foreigners were quite the spectacle - at one point, a pair of Chinese twins asked to take a picture with me and a friend of mine (these strange requests have actually been repeated a few times in various places). I can't imagine how weird we must look that people ask to take pictures with us; or, more commonly, furtively take pictures when we don't appear to be looking. A friend of mine named Lei Zhen (Thunder Earthquake... a.k.a. John) has it worse - several Chinese children upon seeing him have run away or began crying. He doesn't seem too bothered by it, saying seeing us must be like how an American child would feel seeing an alien right out of Independence Day.

Datong

This picture is taken from the courtyard of a Buddhist Monastery in the middle of Datong. I think at the time, the Backstreet boys were playing at an outdoor fashion show nearby (we actually convinced them to let one of our friends walk down the aisle). you run into a lot of similar bizarre contrasts - especially in the ways that the west and east combine.

a chinese sunday afternoon

for various reasons, studying in beijing means being in a state of perpetual exhaustion. i think my closest friends on the trip and i all went to sleep at about 9p last night and slept 13-14 hours each. this afternoon we went to "Panjiayuan" which is an enormous flea market filled Mao-memorabilia and dubiously "ancient" pieces of art. most of us didn't buy much - i think we mainly wanted to hone our haggling skills and people watch a little. we took a rather long taxi back (maybe about the length of a 40-50 dollar taxi in America) and i think i had my best Chinese speaking experience. The cab driver and I talked about the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the respective GDP's and populations of America and China, the difficulties of studying English and Chinese, and even American politics (the driver was particularly fond of Hillary Clinton or, in Chinese, He-La-Li.

random observations

this is my first post and i don't really feel like recounting every thing that has happened in the past few days, so i'm just going to list a few funny things i've encountered:

when you go to the bathroom at a nice restaurant or a karaoke place there is often a man there who attempts to massage you while you pee. i really can't imagine who would find this pleasing. strangely, this is also one of the few times when you are expected to tip in china - needless to say, i have not tipped any bathroom masseuses.

chinese bar owners think that the best way to attract foreigners is to say that they have prostitutes at their bar. if a group of us walk down a street several people will grab hold of our arms and claim to have a "lady bar". the funniest part of these exchanges is that they usually say that the prostitutes only cost about 100 kuai, or less than 13 dollars. the fsp group has found this pretty funny, so we've taken to measuring the cost of random objects in terms of how many women they could buy.

for some reason, i get a really strange feeling whenever i see a fellow waiguoren (foreigner). it's really a novelty to see a person who looks like you - i definitely didn't expect this kind of strange nostalgia.

bargaining is a really funny staged practice. often both the buyer and seller will smile or laugh while they go through the motions of offering and counter offering prices. also, ANYTHING can be bargained for - from food to chairman mao watches.

just about everyone i've talked to in our group has "la duzi" or diarrhea. i think that might be a part of life for a while.