A Staycation of sorts

Well I'm back from vacation again. (I know it seems like all I do is go on vacation here... but I promise it's not all fun and games; we do work sometimes). Anyways this time it was our free travel week and I was joined by my dad in his first visit to Asia! We decided to tour Beijing for the beginning of the week because even though I'm living here I rarely get a chance to do all the things my Fodors guide deems its top picks. After our time in Beijing we planned a trip to Chengdu in Sichuan province.

Beijing was a whirlwind of adventure, pretty gardens, palaces, and monasteries. Some of the highlights included the Summer Palace and Old Summer Palace, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, an acrobatics shows in the nightlife area of Sanlitun, and a hutong tour and necessary Starbucks run at the most beautiful Starbucks on earth in Houhai. Unfortunately, with every good comes some bad and in this often overwhelming and confusing city I knew we couldn't get away with perfection.

The downside came on our trip to the Great Wall. We had decided to do a bus tour with numerous other visitors to the Badaling sections of the Great Wall. We chose the bus to save some money on a cab ride which would have been exorbitant and we selected to tour Badaling because, despite its reputation for being overrun with tourists, it is know as being the easiest section of the wall to traverse and has a cable car to take you up to the top. Now, something you need to understand about Beijing is, just because the website for a tour advertises going to Badaling because of its cable car does not mean the driver will actually take you to the section of the wall with the cable car. He did not. When my father and I returned to the bus after surmising from the wall workers that indeed there was no cable car in the vicinity, the tour guide regarded me with shock. "Oh you mean you actually wanted to go up the wall, but you're in a wheelchair." (not his exact words, but extremely close and emanating with the feeling I was predominantly left with after our half-English/half-Chinese discussion). "The part with the cable car is very far away so I just take people here instead. Go on have a look around." At what the ice cream stands and stores selling "I climbed the Great Wall" t-shirts? - I'll admit I almost got one out of sheer irony. He also said that if I had informed them ahead of time of being in a wheelchair than he would have let me know that this trip wasn't suitable for me.

Now I know this isn't the tour guide's fault, but he is very representative of the overwhelming attitude I've received from people in Beijing. He honestly could not fathom that I would want to go to the top of the wall and that I couldn't accept that it was not possible. Nowadays when I book tours I usually refrain from mentioning that I am in a wheelchair, because I've had too many encounters with people saying that the bus is not equipped for someone like me (as long as there is a place for me to sit or squat, I'm good to go.) or making up some other excuse so they don't have to deal with what they presume to be excess unnecessary complications (excess unnecessary complications - story of my life). Clearly though, he could see from the beginning that I was in a wheelchair and it would have been nice of him to mention that we were not going to the easy section of Badaling. When I posed this question to him he said he just assumed I wouldn't want to climb because it would be too difficult for someone like me... Anyways, after a partial refunding of our money, and a walk around the base of the climb, dad and I continued about our day annoyed about the waste of time and money, but vowing not to let it ruin the rest of the trip.

Stay tuned for Chengdu updates in the next post: think spicy food and pandas!

You can't study abroad in China if you don't like Chinese food!

One of my favorite parts of the Alliance program is all the extra classes and excursions we have that are already included in the tuition fee (so now they feel like they're free)! One of these includes the Wednesday night cooking class, a highlight for someone like me who looks forward all week to grocery shopping day and aspires to someday own a Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Every week we attempt to recreate Chinese delicacies in our poorly equipped kitchen (read: no ovens and the stove is essentially a large hot plate). This week's class was the pinnacle of Chinese cuisine: Jiaozi!

For those of you not as versed in Chinese food terminology, jiaozi are essentially steamed dumplings that can come with a variety of meat and/or vegetable fillings. As a group, our sampling of various jiaozi has ranged from the ordinary (pork and chopped onion) to the more extraordinary (egg and tomato, pig intestine). Since our cooking class was just going to make a pork and cabbage filling, I assumed this would be a less adventurous task, but quickly realized how mistaken I was.





Surrounded by jiaozi-making veterans, this newbie was introduced to just how many steps there are: 1. chop onions, garlic, ginger, cabbage into impossibly small pieces, 2. mix together with meat, cooking soy sauce, etc. (but only stir in one directions), 3. mix flour with other dough ingredients, 4. knead furiously, 5. roll out dough, 6. chop dough log, 7. roll dough pieces into balls and flatten as thin as possible without tearing (very unsuccessful at this part), 8. fill pancakesque dough with filling and wrap, pinching corners so dough does not leak out/explode when boiling (a real challenge for my poor fine motor skills that resulted in many stegosaurus shaped jiaozi). 9. eat and eat some more (preferable with a sauce mix of soy sauce, vinegar, and chili sauce. 10. decide it's probably much easier to go down the street to the jiaozi place where they only cost 4 1/2 kuai for a whole baggie full.

Westward Journey

My Alliance classmates and I have returned from our journey west along the Silk Road. We left Beijing and via various overnight trains and rocky tour buses, we trekked all the way west to Xinjiang Province. Along the way, we hit Xi'an, Jiayuguan, Dunhuang, Turpan, and Ulumuqi. Thankfully we took a plane back to Beijing or we would have had to add a 40 hour train ride on to our 9 day journey. This trip was amazing and followed our plan of studying minority cultures and religion perfectly. I hope I can recount it all to you fairly well as we did not have any internet service on the road for immediate eyewitness accounts.
Our journey began with the first of several hard sleepers (the term for a Chinese train bed that is nowhere near as luxurious as the soft sleeper, but pretty much feels like my dorm bed in Beijing - similar to a massive pile of plywood nailed together haphazardly). After arriving in Xi'an (meaning Western Peace) we had a funfilled day of seeing the Western start of the Great Wall, touring the Shangxi History museum, and sampling the first of our many rou jia mou (Chinese hamburgers). The second day in Xi'an was spent at the Terra Cotta Warriors (incredibly impressive, but probably loses something after you see it the first time). We then boarded another train to Jiayuguan.
Apparently the town of Jiayuguan is known for a very significant part of the Great Wall, known as the Jiayuguan Pass... and nothing else (except for a very 1980s roller disco!) On to Dunhuang.

Dunhuang is a very chill city, similar to a sort of Asian Amsterdam. It was definetely my favorite of all the sites we hit on our trip. The next day we to the sand dunes of the Gobi Desert and rode camels and other desertesque activities. More rou jia mou was eaten. Afterwards we went to the Mogao Ku (caves that are a renowned repository of Buddhist art) and saw several big Buddhas. One final train train later and we had left Gansu Province and entered Xinjiang Province.

Turpan is known in China as the hottest, lowest, dryest, and sweetest of all cities. The hot and dry was evident in the desert area and Flaming Mountain, the sweetness in the grapes (sampled and picked directly on a family vineyard!), and the lowest part in the bouts of elevation sickness that struck many of us. Filled with more dried fruit than I'd ever had, we boarded one more bus to Urumuqi.

Urumuqi was our final stop west, a place where Uighurs and Kazakhs become the majority and Islam is the religion of choice. Pork is a dirty word here (literally, we have to call in black meat if we are forced to mention it at all.) However, all that means is a new kind of rou jia mou made of beef and lamb to taste. In Urumuqi we saw the breathtaking Heavenly Lake and got to have teatime in a Hazakh yurt (my first time ever in a yurt...) The next day before we boarded the plane to come home... erm... I mean... back to Beijing (yes I typed home first) we went to the Xinjiang International Bazaar Market where several of us bought Pashmina scarves that cost less than the Pashmina fakes in Europe! Hard sleepers, hamburgers, and Hazakhs, all in all this was a successful, enjoyable, and educational trip, but I'm glad to be back in Beijing.

Dearest Blog Audience,

Please accept this and subsequent entries as my heartfelt apologies for having not posted in some time now. I do have an excuse, as I just returned last week from a 9 day trip traversing China's portion of the Silk Road via train and bus. But, hold your horses because that's not what this entry is about.

It's even better!

I realize that I never got to share with you all my experience as a spectator at the Paralympic Games. I attended several Wheelchair Basketball events (including the Women's Wheelchair Basketball gold medal game!) and the Wheelchair Rugby finals. Going to these events was both and exhilarating and confusing experience.


It was so exciting to be able to see so much public support for disabled athletes and to be able to see many of my friends and U of Illinois teammates playing on the international stage. The Paralympics seemed to be the place where there was significantly more support for independent individuals with disabilities than anywhere else I have witnessed in Beijing. Locals cheered with more vehemence than I have ever witnessed before (particularly the perpetually straight-faced middle aged Chinese businessmen and the staunchly sourpussed Chinese grandmothers). The air was filled with cheers of support for all the Chinese team and others. In my opinion, this was exactly the kind of support I expected for a sporting event of this caliber. However...

There still exists a mentality here that I am very uncomfortable to accept. An excellent portrayal of this was my subway experience on the way to Paralympic events. Because of the Olympics, several new subway lines were built that were touted as fully wheelchair accessible. In theory this is the case, but the Beijing perspective of wheelchair accessible is quite different from that in the U.S. Upon arrival at my closest subway station, I purchase a ticket and am immediately hounded my several employers questioning my about my destination. I tell them and am escorted to the elevator. The elevator then has to be turned on by a key of which nobody is quite sure of the location. Several minutes later, the key is found and I am taken downstairs where several men are waiting with portable ramps to allow me access to the subway itself. So begins the baton relay of Beijing public transportation, I, of course, being the baton. I am escorted onto the subway, taken to my transfer spot, and greeted by more employees who show me to several staircases. To get up these staircases is a ragtag combination of key operated lifts (which also must be tracked down) and a strange tank like contraption that I get strapped into and then literally walked down the stairs in. I have never seen such a contraption in use before and apparently neither has the general Chinese public, as evident by the large audience staring at and cellphone videoing me (be sure to look for me on YouTube soon). This is fairly typical for China, opting to use excessive manpower to complete a job rather than just install a keyless elevator that I can use myself.
On the one hand, I can see how this process enables people with disabilities to use public transportation; on the other hand, the word enabling takes on an entirely different meaning here. This system makes the subway employees into enablers, enforcing the idea that people with disabilities cannot live and travel independently. I was treated with the uptmost respect by the subway workers, but they were not able to fathom my American lifestyle. I was continually asked where my friend or aide was and received horrified looks when I replied that I was traveling by myself.
I wonder if the Chinese are only lacking in exposure and that is why this perception persists? I sincerely hope the Paralympics will have a large effect on revolutionizing the Chinese perception of people with disabilities, just as the Olympics did so much to aid China with technological and environmental advances. Jiayou Zhongguo.

Schoolwork, Silk worms, and Scorpions

Well it's been a little while since I've been in Beijing. I've started classes which are very interesting and very different from American classes. While the majority of my classes at U of I have been mostly hour long classes with a lot of the work being done at home, Chinese classes are much more intensive during class time, requiring constant participation. The benefit of this is in many of the classes the workload at home is somewhat lessened. I am of course taking Mandarin classes, continuing my lessons from the States at the 300 level. Chinese class is three hours per day most mornings. In the afternoons I alternate between my Chinese Sociology class and Chinese Foreign Policy. So far, I like all of my classes (barring the occasional dry reading which is something that seems consistent from country to country).

In other news, a group of us recently went to Tiananmen Square and Wangfujing area. Tiananmen was very moving, as it's been a part of historic protests and demonstrations for centuries. There is a giant tribute to Mao centered on the building, showing the Chinese fidelity to the Chinese Communist Party. This gave me a new perspective on why many of the Chinese people are so satisfied with their government. Wangfujing was equally interesting, but in a completely different way. This is a place where you realize that some people in Beijing truly do eat everything: scorpions, silk worms, honeybees, seahorses, pretty much anything you can think of. I of course could not let the chance to immerse myself in Chinese culture pass me up. No, the scorpion did not taste like chicken, more like burnt, fleshy popcorn. Mmmmm...

Beijing Welcomes You

So I have to admit I've been a little remiss with this whole blog idea. However, I fully attribute my lack of communiction to the awesomeness that is Beijing (NOT laziness). Let me recap what I've done so far to catch you up to speed. I arrived in Beijing last Wednesday (Sept 3) and was immediately thrown into an 5 day intensive orientation program. We were oriented to the school (Beijing Language and Culture University), the program (The Alliance for Global Education), the city, and our expectations for the semester abroad. I hope that I haven't come with too many expectations, but it doesn't really help that everyone who has ever been on study abroad while in college has told me that it should be the absolute best time of my life. While I know I will have an unforgettable experience, I don't want to get my hopes up too much insofar as wheelchair accessibility in Beijing has been abysmal, making it difficult for me to be as independent as I am used to being in my daily life. That's not to say I didn't expect it to be such; our program director Bing told me that in his experience (10+ yrs working with study abroad programs), I am the only American student who uses a wheelchair fulltime for mobility that has come to Beijing for study abroad. While he congratulated me on this fact, I felt more disheartened and appalled than proud. I now feel an added responsibility to my time abroad. While I wish to explore the city fully and increase my language competency through immersion, everything I do will be done through the eyes of someone with a physical disability. 10 years from now I don't want Bing to be telling someone else that he is only the second person in history to be doing something this "revolutionary". It might sound trite, but I really do want to open the door for other individuals with disabilities, so they won't feel quite as much like a fish out of water as I do right now. I think with the right attitude and the ability to take everything in stride, this is a definite possibility.

Re Title (Official Song of the Beijing Olympics): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvSRkY4eEfM