The City of Fuxin

So, after four weeks of living and teaching in Fuxin, I finally have a chance to write about the city this blog was created for! The first thing I noticed was the size of the city and the height of most of the buildings. While the citizens call it a small city (or medium at best), Fuxin is actually about half of the metro area of St. Louis, but with a greater number of tall buildings. After all, the sheer numbers of the Chinese population mean that building upwards in any city is a necessity. Now, the city perhaps isn't quite as modern as the bulk of our major cities in the U.S., but it's a large city and the building look fine all the same. Only the really wealthy areas have the super-modern look. In a few parts of the city there are large roundabouts where several of the main streets intersect. The Latern Festival took place just a few days after we arrived in Fuxin, and one of these areas was decorated with all kinds of lights that night, as you can see below.

Notice the man on the left who is thrilled to be taking a picture of me. I bet he thinks he's sneaky. But he definitely wasn't the only one trying to take pictures of us.

Year of the goat!

This night at the Lantern Festival, dozens of people were practically surrounding us to take pictures. I usually find it more comical than bothersome. While I don't usually mind when people are trying to take pictures of or with us, staring is a different thing entirely. Usually the people wanting pictures are smiling and excited to see us.

This guy at the mall made me a free, fresh-squeezed fruit smoothie.

But in my day to day, there are an awful lot of people that give me passing stares. I understand their curiosity, so it's really nothing to get angry about, but it can be annoying after a long day. (In fact, as I was writing this is my notebook in a café a few days ago, a family was walking by the door and stopped to stare at me for a few moments through the door frame.)

The delicious coffee I had the first time I went to this particular café.

On the other hand, going shopping is something that never ceases to entertain me. Just have a look at the following pictures to get an idea of what I mean.

Now I can buy snail extract instead of having to get it myself!

I do like my brain vessels in good health.

I also like my food to be both fashionable and green. Even when it's a drink, and not food at all.

I haven't purchased any of this yet. I don't have any plans to either. (It's also just sitting in a box on a shelf, not refrigerated.)

The funny signs, labels, and bad translations seem to be endless. The menus in most restaurants, if they have English, are also very funny. The next two pictures are from a Korean barbecue place.

I'd rather have a familiar mix of beef, personally.

They really don't want us knowing how they produced this dish.

So over the weeks I've gradually been learning to get around and have been able to try different kinds of food. At the Korean barbecue we cooked food on a small grill in the middle of the table. The two students I tutor every Sunday took me there for dinner, and even though the menu was awkward the food was very good. I've had western food a few times, and those restaurants are the only places to have real coffee, instead of instant, though I have had some luck finding a few genuine cafés. At the café across the street from the campus where I teach, I made a friend named Rain about two weeks ago who said he was interested in a language exchange, which I had wanted to do since arriving. Now I have someone that I can learn some Chinese from! I haven't learned a lot yet, but we only study English/Chinese a few hours per week. What I have learned is helpful, and he has also introduced me to a few of his favorite Chinese foods.

This is called Kung Fu Fish. It was cooked so that by simply grabbing with the chopsticks, the meat would come right off. No cutting necessary.

My Chinese is extremely limited, but at this point I can finally order a few things without having to just point and hope they understand. Learning Chinese is slow, but it is going well. I can even recognize a few Chinese characters now.

I'll try to update soon with some more pictures of places I've seen in the city. Until then!

Beijing Part 2

Feb. 28
The last full day spent in Beijing started as a snowy one. My day started when I was fully awake at 3:30am. After a call over FaceTime with Beth, I had some time to do some stretching and listen to some music before getting ready for the day and having breakfast. By the time we headed out for the day's tourism, I was feeling alert and ready to go.

The snow made the morning's visibility fairly low, but it made the drive out to the Ming Tombs a scenic one. The Ming Tombs are the tombs that were built and put into use by the Ming dynasty (in case you didn't get that from the name). Once we finally arrived, I enjoyed the snow-covered architecture of the above-ground structures at the site. The trees were planted in eye-pleasing patterns and the snow made it that much more enjoyable.

This was a piece on one of the giant doors underground that separated the tombs.

This stone elephant was one of two chairs for a stone table. 

After all of the sight-seeing here, it was finally time to load up and head to the Great Wall. We had lunch before a bus ride that lasted about an hour to get us to where we would begin our climb of the wall. Approaching it from a distance in the bus was amazing in itself because you could see it climbing up and over the hill tops miles away. But nothing was quite like finally arriving and getting to climb it for myself. As the Great Wall is broken up into different sections, we were climbing to the highest point of just our section of the wall.

This stone with engraving was near the base of the wall.

The view from bottom up, just before beginning the ascent.

Rear view from the way up.

It's quite amazing to see it so far off in the distance.

This is a picture from inside one of the many towers.

A bit further up.

You can tell by my attire that it was a bit chilly up there. The wind was especially cold as you fought against it while climbing.

Finally at the eighth tower, the highest of this section of the Great Wall.

The full view from the highest tower.

As I'm sure you can imagine, I was fairly exhausted after making my way all the way up here and then all the way back down to our bus again. However, the views of the mountains and the wall made it completely worth doing. We went to dinner after this and headed back to the hotel, ready to sleep.

Mar. 1
It was finally time to leave Beijing and head northeast to Fuxin. It was a crisp morning when we left the hotel, but after we had all of the luggage loaded onto the bus with us, we departed on our eight hour bus ride to the city where we'd finally get to settle in for the next several weeks. That afternoon we arrived in Fuxin and eventually met with the principal of the Experimental Middle School. My teaching began just the next day, along with me beginning to familiarize myself with what the Chinese call a "small city." I'm writing this two weeks out from that day, so you know I've been busy! I'll be catching up on my experiences here and finally sharing what I know about the city of Fuxin with all of you. Until then.

Arrival - Beijing Part 1

Just a week ago today, I arrived in Beijing with my group from the University of Missouri St. Louis, Although this blog is primarily for the happenings during my stay in Fuxin (pronounced foo-seen, more or less), the few days that I spent in Beijing before heading up north were very eventful and gave me a lot to think about. From the moment we stepped outside of the airport I starting taking notes, so the following is everything I have to share with all of you about my first few days in China.

Feb. 26, 2015
As soon as the doors opened to the outside, I smelled smoke, and quickly checked the corner to the right of the doorway for a smoker, who was non-existent. I quickly scanned the area as we walked to our bus and I didn't see a single person smoking anywhere. I immediately wondered if this smell was the smog of Beijing. (After traveling a few days I either became acclimated to the smell or it really wasn't as strong at it first seemed)

Most of the buildings I saw on the way to the hotel, which was a relatively short drive, looked very modern. I saw guards outside of what appeared to be government buildings, many of which also had lion statues out front as well. I would continue to see these statues all over China, a symbol of power.

There were two things I saw on our ride that really stood out to me. The first was the large collections of apartment buildings under construction, often more than a dozen identical buildings adjacent to each other. This is something I witnessed all over the city during the next few days, and even on the way to Fuxin.

The second thing that stood out to me even more than the first was the seemingly endless plots of land dedicated to rows upon rows of trees that the government is trying to go. My professor's husband informed me that Beijing suffers from desertification and that all of these patches of trees, which I saw literally all over Beijing, even outside of the city near other monuments, are an effort to fight the desertification of the region.

Our dinner this first night was mounds of Chinese food, of course. It was very tasty like nearly all of the Chinese food I have on the day to day now. We also got to partake in the world's most consumed spirit - a Chinese drink called baijiu. It's a very strong drink with upwards of 40% alcohol, sometimes as high as 60%. The Chinese love to toast as well, so we had to take care not to have too much of this powerful drink. After our dinner we finally got to retire to our rooms after a long time traveling, and since I didn't sleep on the plane, I was happy to try to get some shuteye.

Feb. 27
After waking up a few times during the night, the rice and noodles for breakfast were delicious. I drank yogurt through a straw because I didn't feel like stabbing it with chopsticks and there were no spoons.

After breakfast we headed out for the Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City, and after our bus driving being in reverse in the middle of the street once, driving the complete opposite direction, and making a few u-turns, we were on our way. On our way there it was explained to me that all of the apartment buildings under construction in the area are part of a government project for large housing and commercial needs.

As we got deeper into the heart of Beijing, I started seeing people doing Tai Chi in nearly every available park in the city. It was very interesting to see. On the same note, nearly every last bit of space in Beijing is used for something, there were even small parks build under some of the city's numerous overpasses.

Finally departing the bus we headed down a large walkway that took us towards Tienanmen Square. Some of the trees were wearing multicolored, knitted sweaters, which I found hilarious. The square itself was interesting to visit, but I was now noticing the behavior of the Chinese people around me, and how warmly they seemed to act towards each other. Even as I write this today, I can't say that one Chinese person has been rude to me in the slightest, they are all very welcoming. Something else rather funny, however, is that a lot of Chinese people are fascinated by those in my group and often want to take pictures of us or with us. I noticed many people taking pictures of us as we walked by without saying anything to us. Even more wanted to get pictures with us, though.

On another note, Beijing is a very westernized city, as are many aspects of China I have seen so far. Surely there are things that set it apart like its architecture, language, and diet, but there are many things that make us not so different. The Chinese are making just as much of an effort to take part in 21st century global society as anyone else.

Very cold but even more excited, we arrived at the Forbidden City for a quick run-through of some Chinese history.

It's a very pretty place, all of the statues and stone and metalwork was intricate and amazing.

After our run through of the Forbidden City we headed to lunch where we had quite the feast. I had Peking duck, which was exceptionally tasty. We ate in one of the many private rooms on the third floor of a restaurant. As we walked by the other rooms, I saw the Chinese people laughing, talking over each other, smoking; just enjoying themselves. A few of them waved at us as we walked by.

Some of the dishes were very well presented.

Next we visited the Summer Palace, a collection of imperial gardens next to a lake. It was very visually pleasing.

After the Summer Palace we headed back to the hotel for dinner and called it a night. The next post will be for the last day I spent in Beijing, seeing the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall. I'll have it up soon!