Nanjing

First off, I haven’t been doing much with my blog up until now other than putting the stories from these emails on the blog. I’m going to change that some starting now. This semester, one of my assignments is to write a ‘journal entry’ about my experiences in China three times every week. These journal entries are all about issues that I’m having over here and what some of these experiences have taught me about China. So, I’m going to be putting every one of these assignments onto my blog, and I’ll tag some of them on to the end of these emails under the label “Assignments – Journal Entries.”

So if yall want to see more of these little tidbits about problems I’m having here in China, how I’m seeing Chinese culture, check out my blog at:

www.free-roaming.blogspot.com

Also, I don’t know how many of yall have been checking, but I have not updated my picture site much. The Chinese government had been working even harder than normal for a while to prevent me from getting access to those sorts of things, so for a while, it was difficult to upload pictures. Now, I’ve found a way around the “Great Firewall of China,” so I’ve updated my picture page. Check it out, there are a ton of new pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/agenbite.lee

For those concerned, I finally had to get a haircut. All of my mormon friends like the hair cut, which means I look like a good mormon missionary. So it’s a bad haircut. You can see the results on the above picture site, in the folder titled “Suzhou.”



And now for something completely different: This email is going to kind of be light on content. A lot has happened, but most of it may be even less interesting than my normal emails, so I’m not going to bother yall with it unless I get really desperate for stories. My parents are coming soon, so I thought it would be good for them and yall to get a little introduction into where I’m studying.

Nanjing is located just a few hours from Shanghai along the Yangze River. It’s an old city, considered one of the four ancient capitals of China. Unfortunately, everytime someone tries to build their capital here in Nanjing, they screw up, so it has become known as a kind of unlucky place to make your capital, with only short dynasties making their capital in Nanjing.

The most recent idiot to make his capital in Nanjing was Chiang Kai-Shek, the megalomaniac who ruled China from 1927 until 1949. He fought the Japanese and sat next to FDR and Churchhill in some of the conferences towards the end of World War II. But his regime was less than successful. He tried to eliminate the Communist all the while the Japanese empire of the 1930’s was expanding into China. In 1937, the Japanese invaded most of China, Chiang Kai-Shek’s government was forced to leave Nanjing and set up a government in exile in inner China, several thousand miles upriver on the Yangze. At this time, the Japanese entered Nanjing unopposed and slaughtered several hundred thousand innocent civilians, raping women and skewering infants on bayonets. This marked a low point in human history.

Before that, one of history’s bloodiest civil wars was focused on this area. A Chinese guy, Hong Xiuquan, read a pamphlet from a Christian missionary and studied the bible. He then had a vision that he was Jesus’ little brother and that he had to purge China of its demons. Long story short, he built up his own government, took over the southern half of China, and almost toppled the dynasty, leaving some twenty million dead in the wake of the conflict.

And there is a lot more history, but I’ll skip it I’ve been told that my emails can often become to “dissertation-like.” Now, Nanjing is no longer the capital of failed dynasties. Instead, Nanjing is the provincial capital of one of the country’s richest provinces, the breadbasket of China. It is also a center of education in the country, with only Beijing and Shanghai being able to challenge Nanjing with having more famous colleges in their city. And that’s where it comes to me; I’m at Nanjing University, one of the top five schools in the country, studying Chinese government and culture. The city has become a major center of commerce, my apartment sitting in the shadow of the seventh tallest building in the world, the Nanjing Greenland Financial Center.

TV Superstar - How to watch

So as I said in the email, I would explain how to watch the whole show for those who wanted.

I would just like to reemphasize two things:
1. Your browser may tell you that this website is dangerous, but I have not had any trouble with it so far.
2. You may not find it all that interesting if you don't speak Chinese. I don't really have a big part in anything after the first one.

First Video
http://www.showdv.com.cn/play_j.asp?vid=60953

Second Video
http://www.showdv.com.cn/play_j.asp?vid=60954

Third Video
http://www.showdv.com.cn/play_j.asp?vid=60955

Fourth Video
http://www.showdv.com.cn/play_j.asp?vid=60956

Happy Watching,
Lee

TV Superstar - How to watch

TV Superstar

A couple of emails ago, I mentioned that I had some exciting news, but I couldn’t share it with yall at the time. The news is that a couple of weeks ago I got invited to participate in a local game show. By game show, I mean a real, straight-up crazy game show with slimy fish and buckets dropping things on people. Although I didn’t win much money, just $75, and I didn’t even get to participate in any of the real games, but I still had a lot of fun. And don’t worry, it looks like I’ve already been invited on to do another game show, so maybe I’ve got another chance.

One day, I was getting my bike fixed and talking to the repairman about Chinese politics. Two TV directors just happened to be driving by and they noticed me talking with the repairman. They pulled over their car and asked me if I wanted to participate in a gameshow where I could win $1000 and I needed to speak Chinese.
This email is mostly about the game and its structure, so that when yall watch it yall can try and understand.

There are 6 players, all of us foreigners (2 Atlantans, 1 Kenyan, 1 Brit, 1 German, and one Spaniard). There were main three games that we could compete in to get money, but only two people could compete in each main game. How did they choose those two games? You had to win a kind of musical chairs to compete in the main game.I didn’t win any of these, so I didn’t get to compete in any of the main games.

These games were pretty crazy. The first game had one of the contestants with two of his friends on three stairs. On each of their heads is a bucket helmet. They have to pour water in to the bucket helmet, and then pour it into the helmet of the guy on the step below him, and again into the guy with the bucket helmet below that. The final guy was to pour the water into a giant measuring cup, the team with the most water in the measuring cup won. Contestants are also made to stand in buckets of water with little fish in them that nibble on your feet. I asked them what the point of the little minnows that you stepped on was. They said, “They make the game more fun.”

The second game was on a giant treadmill. The contestant got on the treadmill, and two of his friends were down below with fishing poles and a marshmallow on the end. The friends had to take the fishing pole and dangle it in the person’s mouth so that the contestant could eat it. This is going on while the person is running on a giant treadmill that keeps speeding up (if you fall, you drop into a giant pit of playground balls). The person who eats the most marshmallows wins.

The final game has contestants carry a pole with two buckets on either end of the pole (a traditional rural carrying mechanism still used in China and Vietnam today). A friend of the contestant had to put a live fish in each bucket, a total of two fish. The contestant then had to walk across a slippery, 15-yard long trampoline. Finally, dump the fish in a bucket at the other end of the trampoline, run back and do it again. Of course, if the fish jumped out of the bucket you had to pick them up off the trampoline and put them back in your bucket, all while trying to keep balance on the soapy-trampline.

But then, once you win $100, $200, or $300 they make you gamble with it. After each of these main games, these twelve very scantily clad ladies come out, each of them carrying a small scroll. The winner of the main game takes a hula-hoop and throws it around the one of the girls and then they open the scroll. The scroll is basically like rolling a dice. Your money could be halved or doubled. You might have to give it to your opponent or an audience member. Whatever the scroll the model is holding tells you to do, you have to do it.

I’m not going to lie, it was crazy. I didn’t participate in any of the main games, but I got to be interviewed and I did kind of sing a Chinese song for the intro (lip-sing, we had tapped it earlier that day). If you watch it, I’m dressed in a golden, Chinese shirt and singing with the German dude.


Instructions:

When you go to this website, your browser may say it’s dangerous or it’s infected with malware. So far, neither I nor anyone I’ve given this to has had any problem. I think it is just an issue with the Chinese site.

Those of yall who don’t speak Chinese probably won’t notice it, but the sound does not match with the video, so when you see me say something, my voice will come about ten seconds later.

The show was about 90 minutes and online they have divided that up into 4 videos: the website below will take you to the first video, which has most of the cool stuff:

http://www.showdv.com.cn/play_j.asp?vid=60953

The other videos are not of much interest unless you speak Chinese. If you want to watch the other videos, please check out my blog for further instructions:

www.free-roaming.blogspot.com

Finally, I’ve noted the times of some points of interest in the first video:
Minute 1: Nationalistic show
Minute 2: Lee lip-singing a Chinese song with a German dude.
Minute 3-4.5 : Other contestants introduction.
Minute 8.20-10: Lee loses musical chairs.
Minute 12-14: Lee gets interviewed by the host, has to do a Chinese tongue twister.
Minute 15-22: First competition, with the bucket helmets.
Minute 22-25: Gambling the prize money.

If you watch the next video (how to find that on my blog), then you can see what the winner actually gets, but it’s hard to figure out what’s going on unless you speak Chinese.

I’ll probably write another email on this later, but until then...

KKorean Odyssey

When we Last saw our hero, Lee, he was in the ancient Silla capital of Gyeongju, in the south of the country, near Pusan. Lee had already been spent five days in this nation of 50 million people, the world’s 10th largest economy, and, though he knew they were there, he had still not yet seen a Krispy Kreme. Will Lee find that sugary treat before he has to return to the Kremeless land of China? Now, for the exciting conclusion of the KKorean Odyssey:

Hey Yall
I left Gyeongju and went to a city called Daegu, where I had to transfer on his way to Sokcho and Seuranksan National Park. Nothing interesting in Daegu, but while I was trying to find the right bus station, I saw a women hurrying off to work. As she scurried down the subway stairs, I noticed she was wearing Krispy Kreme uniform. Before I could ask here where the Krispy Kreme was, I was accosted by a Korean Jehovah’s Witness, handing me “The Watchtower.” Before I could get away, the girl in the uniform had disappeared.
Sokcho, the place I was going to, is a small city on the eastern coast of the Korean peninsula, too small to have a Krispy Kreme. Sokcho is quite close to North Korea. In fact, it was a part of North Korea before 1950, but it became part of South Korea in the deadly back and forth that costs the lives of millions of Americans and Chinese at the end of the Korean war. While there, I went to hike in Seuraksan National Park.
Originally, I wanted to hike to the top of the mountain and sleep in a shelter in the park, but it was raining, so they actually closed most of the park. Instead of climbing a mountain, I climbed into a gorge and then climbed a smaller mountain. The park was really pretty, mostly made up of a series of prominent granite mountains surging out of the Sea of Japan.
When I started the hike, I meet up with these two local taxi drivers who also happened to be hiking the same route. They couldn’t speak much (any) English, so we had to communicate through charades. Nevertheless, they were really cool and let me share in their lunch (kimchi and rice) while the cold rain sprinkled down on us.
That night, because I couldn’t sleep on the mountain, I decided to stay in a Jjimjibang. A Jjimjibang is kind of like a spa or a sauna attached to a clubhouse. When you arrive, men and women are separated into two different locker rooms. Here, you strip down butt naked and put your things in a locker. Then, you go into the main room which is filled with showers, several jacuzzis, an ice pool and a couple of saunas. I would sit in one jacuzzi for ten minutes, then jump into a hotter one for another ten minutes. The trick though, is to go from there to the ice pool, which is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, leaving your body totally numb (and comfortable) after a minute or so. Then it’s back into the hot jacuzzi.
After about half an hour I would pop out of the pool room back to my locker, put on the pajamas they provide and go into the common area, where men and women can come together, watch tv, play games, sit in the common saunas, go online or sleep. It’s here that I would lay down on a mat in the middle of the floor and get some sleep. The next morning I would get up, do the jacuzzi thing all over again, and then head out to do some sightseeing. The pools and the place to stay cost about $6 for the whole night, so the way I looked at it, it was a cheap hotel with an awesome bath.
But before I could go sightseeing, I wanted to try to get to a Krispy Kreme. I had found one on the map, just outside of Sinchon Subway Station. Just two more days left in Seoul, so I decided to try and hit the hot now then. I bought a ticket for Sincheon Station, traveled about 45 minutes, changing trains twice, but when I got to Sincheon I couldn’t find the KK. I asked someone, they looked on my map and informed me that I was at the wrong station. I had gone to Sincheon Station, the KK was at Sinchon. Damn Dipthongs!
Despondent, I regrouped, eating breakfast at a bakery and deciding to take the subway to the southern suburbs of Seoul to see a giant fort. On subways, people regularly come by and try to sell things, sometimes the crazy people just come and yell, only to leave a minute or two later. This time, an old lady came in, yelling and waving a book. I thought she was another crazy, so I tried to mind my own business. When she was done yelling, she came up, stopped just in front of me and shook my hand, saying in English, “thank you.”
As she went into the next car to yell again, I realized the book she was waving was the Bible. I was a little disturbed that she thanked me. I guess she thought that, because I was white, she owed me something for bringing Christianity to Korea. That’s not particularly good for Korean Christianity if they still think its that white man religion.
The next morning was my last day in Korea. I double checked to make sure that I was going to the right station. I bought my ticket, and in fifteen minutes, I was at the right station. But, when I got to where it was supposed to be on the map, it wasn’t there. I asked around, but no one seemed to know where it was. I walked across the street, anxious, but then I noticed a sign for Coffee and Doughnuts.
Found it!
I bought half a dozen, for $7 (more than my accommodations the previous night). At first, she just grabbed them from the pile of glazed doughnuts, but I quickly let her know that I wanted the hot ones. After I scarfed down the six doughnuts, I went and did the only healthy thing you could do after eating KK: I climbed a mountain.
Korea was a pretty cool place. I was surprised at how much it was like Japan, where I had spent a summer in 2005. I meet a lot of cool people, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, American. Also, during my ten days of travel, I spent a grand total $30 on accommodations because I stayed in these Jjimjibangs, airports, or at the dorm of a Chinese friend. Pretty good for a country where a cheap motel costs about $30.
Best,
Lee
'He will tell you history and no lies.'" Book 3, line 24, Homer’s Odyssey

Korea

So I had wanted to email yall earlier, about something that had happened while I was still in Nanjing, China. Unfortunately, that email will have to wait until I can find the video of what happened online.

As my subject title may imply, I'm in Korea. There was a break throughout China for a little over a week. I wanted to do some traveling, but this is the busiest time of travel for China. For one week, almost half of the country is on break, and anywhere that you might want to go is going to be crazy busy, oceans of Chinese people at every tourist spot.

So I decided to leave the country. I've been in China since June, so I kind of need the break anyways. China was starting to get to me too, so its probably best that I left.

So, I left Nanjing on October first with just three shirts, two pairs of pants, three pairs of socks and three pairs of boxers, along with a few other things, some books and my ipod. My flight left from Shanghai only, 2.5 hours away from where I'm living in Nanjing. Unfortunately, I had an overnight layover in Beijing, so I had to stay the night. I found a comfy spot to sleep and got to Korea the next day.

Korea's a pretty small, but there is a ton of stuff to do. Since I've only got nine or ten days, I'm having to split my time carefully. I'm doing three places: Seoul, the capital and the center of Korean culture. Gyeongju, a city called the "museum without walls" because its scattered with so many relics from its time as the first Korean capital in the 6th Century. And finally, Sokcho and Seodraksan National Park, a cool collection of granite mountains shooting out of the ground not far from the East coast of Korea.

Flying into Seoul I spent a day there, seeing some palace or something. Like some many things in this country, the palace looks like they were trying to copy China (60% of Korea's vocabulary comes from Chinese, 20% from English and 20% from Korean). While exploring that palace, I ran into some cool American teachers, so I tagged along with them for the rest of the day.

The American teachers and I went to eat at a little back-alley Korean place, and then, they took me to this park in Seoul where jam bands meet semi-legally most nights. That night, it was one of the most famous bands on the circuit, a reggae-tapdancing band. I know it sounds crazy but, it was one of the cooler things I saw that day. I thought the band's bongo drummer looked higher than a cloud flying a kite for most of the songs, but then I saw him tap dance the rhythm section on a Bob Marley song, and it was a lot of fun.

In Gyeongju, the 'museum without walls,' I biked around the countryside, passing by tombs that were a millennium and a half old, climbing up to see giant stone buddhas and a giant temple. While there, I stayed with a Chinese exchange student from Nanjing, who I meet on couchsurfing.org, a site that lets you meet up with people while traveling and stay with them for free. I'm practicing my Chinese more here than in China.

I'll tell yall about my rainy hiking with some Korean cab drivers and the rest of my trip later.

But there is something I should mention. Some of yall may know of one of my other loves, a love that my fiance puts up with with only a slightly disguised disgust: hot-now Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I generally don't eat them in the US, because I'd get crazy fat, and when I'm in Asia I don't generally have the opportunity. But Korea has about 50 KK's and I've made it my mission to scarf down a dozen hot one's before I leave the peninsula. Dunkin' Doughnuts are all over here, but I haven't yet seen a KK. The closest I came was I saw a lady with a KK jacket on, but I didn't have time to find the store as I had to catch a bus. I'll update yall on my search.

Nanjing

I apologize for it having been so long since I wrote. I’ve been in the middle of moving and getting used to a new environment, Nanjing. I’ve also been starting classes, so that’s sucked up a lot of my time.

I noticed that a lot of people asked me what I was doing in Qingdao and what I would be doing in Nanjing, so I guess I should probably go ahead explain that pretty well.

In Qingdao, when I wasn’t at the museum teaching kids about Halloween or eating at ‘Brothers,’ I was always in the Qingdao Center, an office that The Ohio State University maintained. The office sits over the bay where the 2008 Olympic sailing event was held. During the day, you could watch small sailboats sail into the bay beneath the entire Qingdao skyline, a fairly impressive skyline as that Qingdao was one of the largest ports in northern China. At night, when I was staying back to study, the bay would be lit up by the Olympic colors, a fountain below would spit out tall streams of water in the center of the bay and tourists in the May 4th Square below would take these small kites shaped like lanterns, and put a candle inside the lantern-kite. The candle would heat the air in the kite up like a hot air balloon, and, when they let the kite go, it would float up from the square and meander into the sky, along its way, bumping into the window of the office as I tried to read an article on the May 4th Movement.

It was in this office and the conference room next door where we had class. In the morning, I had a Chinese class that focused on this test that I have to take in October. It was kind of boring, and most of the people were online while the teacher talked about grammar or something. In the afternoons, I meet with a ‘tutor.’ My ‘tutor’ was a retired professor, and I think he’s a little famous in the academic world. He writes articles about Chinese political thought and literature. Most of the times we meet, I would read one of his articles, and then critique it, pointing out things I thought were wrong. This was quite intimidating. He was an expert, and I was trying to read his articles in Chinese, find problems, and then point out his mistakes using my inadequate Chinese. But it was really great for learning, particularly for my Chinese arguing skills, and it’s really gotten me used to talking about political topics that I’m studying in Chinese.

I should probably tell yall about Nanjing too. I’ve now moved to this city on the Yangze River, just a little ways from Shanghai, but quite different culturally. It’s a pretty old city, older than Beijing, a former capital of about six short dynasties. It’s known as one of China’s ‘Ovens’ because of the summer heat, but since I’ve been here, its been cloudy and rainy on and off, mostly with pleasant weather. I think I got lucky and missed the heat of August. The cityscape is pleasant since its full of trees that shade the road, keeping it cool or protecting you from the rain as you pedal to class.

Maybe I’ll tell yall more about Nanjing in another email, but I should explain what I’m doing here. I’m here at Nanjing University. Unlike my studies two years ago, I’m not really studying Chinese. I’m studying political science and historical stuff in Chinese. The two classes I’ve decided to take for credit are “Modern Chinese Political Systems and Thought” and “Research on China’s Ethnic Minorities.” I’m also sitting in on a couple of classes, “Yuan Dynasty,” “Chinese Political Systems,” “America-Chinese Relations,” “China-Taiwan relations,” and “Historical Source Research.” We also have two other classes that I’m required to take with people from BYU, Arizona State, and University of Oregon, all students participating in the Flagship Program, the program I’m in. One of these classes is on Chinese Media, and the other is a Writing Class.

My living conditions are much better. I know some people expressed concern over my previous apartment, but my apartment now is decent enough. The toilet is not a squatter, and the bathroom is clean. My bedroom is actually pretty big, and it’s got a TV, not that I watch it. It’s actually a pretty nice place.

I guess that’s it for now. I should have some more things to tell yall in the coming weeks, and I suspect that they’ll be more interesting, but I won’t say more.