St. Joseph's Cathedral

Every Tuesday we only have 2 hours of class (instead of 4), and for the second half of class we're given a mission to go somewhere we've never been by means of bus and learn some new vocab. This past week I chose to go to St. Joseph's Cathedral.

Last year they held service everyday of the week, but since the government disapproved, they had to change it to only two services once a week on Sundays.

 A couple weekends ago I checked out one of the servies. The place was packed with people (mostly elderly women). Every seat was taken and there were a bunch of people standing. As far as I could tell, it seemed like a traditional Catholic service. They read from the Bible, sang some hymns, and sprinkled people with holy water. I couldn't make out most of what they were saying cause we have never really studied vacab to relate to a church setting, but I think they were talking about he importants of the Sabbath day. 

Beijing!

Beijing is the kind or city I could definitely see myself going back to. Beijing is a lot more developed than Tianjin, and there seems to be a lot more people who speak English.


It's about a 2 hour bus ride to Beijing by bus and a 30 min. ride by speed train.


We got ourselves some famous (cao ya) Roasted Peking Duck. It was delicious! really fatty and oily, but really good! the other food was just (mama huhu) so so. After they were done cutting off the meat, they gave us the gizzards, which is pretty much just rest of the duck disassembled with a buter knife. That was kind of a wild card, you never knew which part of the duck you were gonna get! We made a game out of it. You would pick a piece out of the disfigured pile of bones, and after eating off the meat (or whatever it was) off the bones,  you got to guess what part of the duck's skeleton you uncovered! 

Then we went on to see a Peking Opera. They preformed "Farewell my Concubine,""The Drunken Concubine,""...,"and "....." (this blog is a work in progress)

Our Hotel was downtown Beijing and way nicer than our dorms.

PEARL MARKET


The best English was spoken at the Pearl Market. It's basically a big building filled with tons of fake copies of name brand everything. electronics, shoes, clothes, bags, purses, scarves. You name it, they have a fake copy of it. And they are not shy about letting you know they have it. Except they try to play it off like it's the real thing.




If you show any interrest at all (or get within a yard of their booth), they will shove whatever they have in your face, pull on your clothes, and tell you how famous and how great the quality of their product is.

This is where we got to practice our bargaining skills. Their favorite phrases to try and get you to buy things were something a long the lines of, "Because you are my first customer, and you're my friend, and we are like seeesters, i give you this price (types in an outrageous price on calculator). Because you are so beautiful, you need a beautiful bag! Other people give you this price (types in an even more outrageous price on calculator), but i give you this price! (types in regular outrageous price)." Our teachers told us, to avoid getting scammed we should set an outrageously low price (about 1/4 the original price they ask). Before I bought anything thought I would test the waters, so pretend to want to buy a small purse. The lady did her little routine and set her price of 400 块. I laughed and started waking away. She yelled at me to come back and to name my price, and I proceeded to laugh again and say she didn't want to know my price. But she insisted (they always do) and I typed in a whopping 50 块 on the calculator (and that was generous). Her face had a disgust look on it, followed by a "You tell me that price, I kill you!" "How about this price? (300 块 )." I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head. She had a partner in crime with her who was being all sassy and just kept saying things like "Are you crazy? This a good purse! I can't believe you!" We talked back and forth for a while, and I pretended to walk away a couple times (they always firmly grab your arm to stop you from leaving and beg you to come back by lowering their price again). She kept lowering her price and I wouldn't budge. About 8 min. in I got her down to 55 块. Again, I didn't actually want the purse, I was just playing a game of how low I can get her to go. After more threats and a mix of insults and complements, it seemed like she wouldn't budge, so I started to leave thinking that was as low as I could get her. They kept saying things like "It only 5 块!" Once I finally escaped her death grip and walked away I heard her yell, "Fine! You I give it to you for 50 块!"


Victory.


I turned around and said I didn't want it anymore. So I figured that if she settled for 50 块, then there is a chance I can go even lower! I went to the next booth that had the exact same purse, to see if I can do even better. I let the lady do the same routine and after she set her price I thought I could save some time by telling her someone already offered me 50 块 for it. She seemed slightly flustered and angrily responded with "Who say dat? Who say 50 块?" then quickly changed the price to 40 块. I realized that was a quick shortcut, so I said I had another person offer me 30 块 ( i know, not so smooth). She caught on fast and said "First you say someone give you 50 块, then you say 30 块! Next you say someone give it to you for free!" I had lost my game face at this point and just started laughing at my situation. My friend (who is a bargaining disaster was originally ready to settle for 150 块 and eventually gave in at 40 块) I settled for 40 块, but I have my suspicions that I could have gotten her to go lower.


I eventually got some pearls. My laoshi (teacher) said I got them for a decent price.




TIANANMEN SQUARE...


GARDEN

We didn't have the time we wanted to go into the Forbidden City, so we went in to the Garden that was to the side of it.

TEMPLE OF HEAVEN

Tianjin Zoo!

The zoo was an interesting experience. They had a lot of the pretty standard animals: bears, giraffes, elephants, lions, tigers, and a plethora of small birds, reptiles, and rodents. The main attraction was, of course, the pandas. They had regular pandas and red pandas.

This guy was my favorite.

He was huge.

Baby lamb playing with a stick.

And a lot of fun to watch.

 People would throw some things at the bears to get them to fight.

The zoo landscaping was really nice. Lots of flowers and trees, but the animal exhibits were kind of sad. Almost none of them had trees or grass in them, and it was way to easy for people to throw things at the animals to make them move or interact some way. A zoo like this would not exist in the states, PETA would have a fit.





Besides the trees and flowers, the park itself seemed kind of run down. It looked like it was really nice when they first buit it, but have never kept up with any of the maintenance. They had some big tacky animal statues for decorations.

As we were strolling through the park, it started to downpour on us when we we were in middle of a courtyard, the furthest point from any shelter. So we booked it to the elephant house. Since the city is so polluted, it's acid rain. Every time it rains, it just feels dirty. It makes your skin feel sticky an gross, and if you get some in your eye it burns a little bit. It's not the kind of 'let's go out side and try to catch raindrops in your mouth' kind of rain.

The elephants had one of the saddest exhibits. They were in a small dirty room, with a small window, a bucket of water, and some hay.

Red Panda

cat house

oh yeah, they had dinosaurs too!

Running, a foreign concept

I recently ran outside with 2 other students and we found out that running outside around the city isn't easy.

First, there is the traffic. Dodging traffic is like a giant game of frogger. Not only are you dodging cars, motorcycles, and bikes, but also people. There are a variety of intersections that some how mesh together to from a giant maze. I'm surprised there aren't more car accidents. There are one-way streets, 5 way intersections, roundabouts, 6 lane roads etc.

Not only do you have to dodge people while running, but you also have to deal with their constant staring. People like to stare and take pictures at/ with us when we are just walking, so when they see some westerners running down the street it's like the circus came to town. In China it's considered impolite to stare, so when we are walking and we look back at the people staring at us the generally quickly divert their eyes. When we're running though, the sight of three westerners running down the street must have been too tempting of a sight, cause they stared at us with no shame.

As a joke, when we started running I was going to count how many people would stare at us, but that game quickly ended when I realized it was every single person (talk about feeling like a panda at the zoo).  People were shouting at us asking why were were running, and some kids thought it was hilarious! When we started to pass them they thought it would be funny to try and jog with us, but they didn't make it far cause they started bursting into laughter.

Before trying to run outside, I asked my tutor where the gym was. She had no idea. In fact we ended up asking several people and almost none had a clue where the gym was. I asked her why no one knew where it was and she said people in China don't usually workout. I asked her why they don't workout, and she responded with "Chinese people don't need to workout because they play pingpong and badminton" They obviously have a different definition of working out than we do.

My final obstacle to over come on my run was the air quality. In any major city in China you're bound to have some heavy air pollution. Since our lungs haven't quite adapted to the air yet, after about a mile, we were out of breath and our throats were burning. That has definitely been the most interesting run i've been on.

Lesson 2: How to get Home

Trying to get back to our hotel was more challenging than you would think. First, we had to get over the language barrier and communicate where we wanted to go and for how much. We had 5 total that were trying to get home, and considering it was China, we thought it would be ok to fit 5 people in a 4 person cab, but they were having none of it. Not only would we have to take 2 cabs, but they also wanted us to pay 40 块, when we original only payed 10 块. We've been told that they would try to scam westerners, and it is completely true.

After ditching the cab divers, an old man approached us with his "car" or what we dubbed "motorcycle with a box." We didn't know how to say how to get back to our hotel, but we did have a card with our hotel address on it, the only problem was that he couldn't see the card cause he didn't have glasses. So we asked some random person on the street to tell him where to go.

After we clarifying where we needed to go, we had to determine the price. Every time he set a price it changed. It ranged from 10块 to 90块. He would tell us 10块, then when we got in the "car" he would say 90块 under his breath. It was only when he thought he would lose our business that he settled for 10块. 

It was dark and we were going into the vehicle of a strange man, who couldn't understand us, and who we couldn't understand because of his dialect (don't worry mom i'm still pretty sure it was safe). I wasn't too worried, even he closed the door and "locked" it with a bungee cord.

There aren't many traffic rules in China. Most of the communication is through the horn. 2 beeps if your passing, 1 beep to tell someone your about to hit them, 1 long beep if you're annoyed with them.

This thing wasn't the fastest on the road, in fact some people were passing us on bikes. A lot of the main roads in the city are 3 lanes. At some point i looked around us and there were headlights in all directions (including in front of us because we were going the wrong way on a one way road) accompanied by a symphony of horns. We eventually made it home safely after breaking almost every traffic rule. But overall, it was a good time.