Prélude

Inner Mongolia

Happy National Holiday, everyone! This past week two friends and I went to Inner Mongolia for our October break. Inner Mongolia is a province of China, just south of the independent country of Mongolia.

An arid province, Inner Mongolia is usually known for its horse-riding, yurt-living nomadic peoples roaming the beautiful grasslands. We were lucky enough to see horses, yurts, the grasslands, and much more.

Inner Mongolia has had Han immigration for centuries, so the population is actually about 80% Han Chinese, and about 20% ethnic Mongolian. Since most of the population is Han Chinese, we didn’t have any trouble getting around with our Mandarin. Many people also spoke to each other in Mongolian though, and Mongolian script was everyone. It’s really beautiful, as you can see below:

(In Mongolia, because of Russian influence, they use Cyrillic to write Mongolian.)

Under Genghis Khan and then his grandson Kublai Khan, the Mongolian empire (Yuan dynasty) was established. Though we tend to remember Genghis Khan for his cruel wartime tactics, Mongolians tend to remember him as a unifier. Pictures of a benevolent-looking Genghis Khan are everywhere:

Mongolia has also been heavily influenced by Tibetan Buddhism, which we could see in the Buddhist temples and Tibetan prayer flags everywhere.

And, in case you're curious, Mongolian food is heavy on potatoes, mutton, and dairy products, all of which we ate in abundance. It’s cold there!, and high-calorie food was just the ticket.

On our trip, we saw the grasslands:

Desert:

And Hohhot, provincial capital:

Details to come.

Beautiful Bangkok (1/3)

Trip to Thailand, Part One of Three

สวัสดีค่ะ! (Hello!) This year for my Chinese New Year break I headed to Thailand with my mom. I'd had Thailand recommended by many people for its accessibility, diversity of activities, friendly people, and delicious food. Thailand did not disappoint on any count; in fact, I'm beginning to think I chose the wrong Asian country to live in.

We started our trip in Bangkok, which sounded rather intimidating to me, but since we stayed in the older, more laid back area, we had a lovely time. Our hotel was adorable and within walking distance of the places we wanted to see.

First up was the Chatuchak market - 6,000 stalls and counting. It was shoppers paradise. We had only just arrived, and lots more trekking around the country to do, so we didn't buy much. Instead we walked around, marveling at the beautiful goods and delicious food.

I could write odes to Thailand's food. It is just incredibly delicious, and will be my go-to answer if anyone asks me my favorite type of food in the near future. Pad Thai is just the tip of the iceberg. We ate mostly from street carts during our stay, and will sorely miss them when we leave.

(A Tuk-Tuk, ubiquitous three wheeled golf cart masquerading as a taxi. They're fun, if you're ok with the potential for adventure.)

In Bangkok we also visited the Grand Palace - easily the most beautiful site we saw, in my opinion. It's terribly touristy outside, with friendly-seeming Thais approaching you to helpfully inform you that the Palace is closed for the morning, but they'd be happy to show you around elsewhere (like a fake gem market.) Luckily we were well informed of the scams before we went.

That didn't hurt our impression of Thai people though. The vast majority are incredibly friendly and helpful. "Land of Smiles" indeed.

中秋节快乐！

"Friends are the family you choose."

-Anna Doherty

Happy (late) Mid-Autumn Festival! During my October break, there were not one but two holidays: National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival, a traditional Chinese festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival was October 3, so I celebrated it in a small town in Hunan, where I was visiting a friend. We had the good fortune of making friends with some locals who invited us to celebrate the festival with them. That meant playing traditional Chinese music, singing, drinking tea, and eating moon cakes.

The Mid-Autumn Festival centers around the moon. One traditionally gives "moon cakes" to one's friends. Moon cakes are little cakes filled with different flavored paste fillings: fruit, bean, meat, peanut- you name it! Many of them have an egg yolk in the middle, to symbolize the moon. I'm not such a big fan of the egg yolk; I like the plain fruit-flavored ones the best.

One is also supposed to gaze at the moon on this night, and think of friends and family in other places who are also staring at the same moon. This festival then was particularly poignant for me, as I am separated from most of my friends and family right now.

Below I've posted a video from our night. You can see and hear the traditional Chinese music - be forewarned! It's very different from Western music.




This festival was a good time not only to think of loved ones in far away places, but also to appreciate the people I have around me here. For example, when my 2 day stay in Shanghai turned into 2 weeks, I felt like such an imposition on the friends I was staying with. They honestly didn't think anything of it though. My friend said to me, "So many people have helped me. I'm happy to help you out too."

I think that when you move so far away from everything and everyone familiar, you have to construct a new support structure, one that plays the role of "family" in your life. So all of us ex-pats support each other whenever we can - when I needed a place to stay, my friend in Shanghai opened her home to me without a thought.

Similarly, when I traveled to Guilin (on my way to Hunan,) a friend there let me stay with him. And when his money ran dangerously low because his employer was a week late in paying his (first!) salary, I was happy to cover meals. And when I arrived home in Quanzhou at the end of break, though they were both 2 provinces away, it was my friends in Guilin and Hunan that checked in with me to make sure I'd gotten home okay.

So don't let me fool you into thinking I'm too brave or independent, because I've got lots of help.

Settling In

I'm starting to get into the swing of things around here. This is my second week of classes, which I've really been enjoying. I especially like teaching writing to my undergraduates. English was usually one of my favorite classes, so it makes sense. I'm excited to see improvements in their writing - because of what I taught them!

I hope everyone is staying well; I've heard the swine flu is in full swing in the US. Here it's not yet very widespread. There has only been one case on campus, but he was immediately taken to the hospital. Now all the foreign teachers are required to have their temperature taken before we leave the building every day. I'm not sure for whose protection it is, but we can just report a tempterature that we take ourselves in our room, so it's not really any inconvenience. I heard that during the SARS crisis they completely closed campus for two weeks - no one in or out! I'm hoping nothing so serious happens for the swine flu here.

Katherine, another foreign teacher, moved in next door to me last weekend. She's from Toronto, but born in Quanzhou, so her family showed me around the city. We went to the beach for a seafood restaurant they really like, and then we visited a tea house a little outside the city proper. It was really beautiful, so I've included a couple pictures.



I've also been cooking my own meals. I love cooking, so I couldn't resist showing a few of the dishes I've tried to make. Apologies to the non food-obsessed. :)


Fish balls and baby bok choy - the first meal I made for myself here! There should be rice too. Rice cookers, I would like to add, are magic. Really. Perfect rice without any fuss.


I tried to make quail eggs into a dish. The dish didn't work so well, but i think the eggs look really neat.



Carnations - a gift from Katherine's family. They looked so neat, but when I added them to the soup...

It looks pretty good, no? But you can't see the flowers at all. The petals shrunk into near invisibility. (The soup was still delicious.)

上海！ (Shanghai!)

ChHappy Thanksgiving all! 10 of my friends and I went to Shanghai for our Thanksgiving break, and I had a fantastic time! Shanghai is a fantastic city - very cosmopolitan and Western. It's already gone on my list of cities I'd like to live in.


Here's a picture of the skyline - the pink building on the left side is the Oriental Pearl Tower - it's a very famous icon of the city.


We ate Western food pretty much over meal except Thanksgiving, oddly enough. This was our Thanksgiving dinner pretty standard Chinese fare, actually. No turkey, or even poultry to speak of. (And definitely no pie, which was the saddest of all.) It was delicious and cheap though, and we enjoyed ourselves.



I actually have some pictures of myself that I thought I would include this time. Here I am enjoying a steaming dish of rice and soy-braised beef. Yum!


We did some serious shopping while in Shanghai. There was an incredible range of options, from the Western brand name knock-offs, to very Chinese jade and pearls, to 9 story malls filled with familiar stores from home. This picture is from one part of a giant street of shops we spent the day at.


Gingerbread lattes at Starbucks are lovely, but we couldn't resist picking up some street food for breakfast on our way to the metro. Shanghai has a great metro system, actually. It was extremely convenient, clean, cheap and easy to understand. I had it figured out by the second day, and the well-translated English signs everywhere were a big help.


As you might expect a city of 17 million to be, Shanghai was extremely crowded. It was also filled with Western ex-pats. It was an off role reversal - normally when we travel in China, we Westerners are stared at by the Chinese people. Here in Shanghai though, we Westerners marveled at the huge amount of other Westerners, while all the natives didn't even bat an eyelash.


Shanghai at night is also quite a sight - lots of gorgeous architecture.


The Oriental Pearl at night - much less gaudy, in my opinion.



One last picture of me, with some of my friends. We're staring at the Oriental Pearl, actually, having just crossed under the Huangpu river via an underwater tunnel.

General China blog

I have been trying to load pictures, but I have not been getting good enough internet lately. I have decided to skip the pictures for now and post anyway. I hope my words alone can keep you all interested!

I thought I would update you all on my life here. It's still quite warm - it gets up into the 80s most days. Occasionally in the evening I need a sweatshirt, but mostly it's just plain gorgeous.

I'm sure you've all been curious about the following:

Chinese bathrooms: not so great. I'm not a big fan of the squatting toilet. On the bright side, there really shouldn't be any bathrooms in the US that will bother me, save perhaps at the State Fair.

The food: great, and not to mention super-cheap. I do miss Western food sometimes, and there are certainly days when all I really want for lunch is a sandwich, but for the most part I like Chinese food just fine. I'm a big fan of bubble milk tea - it's cold tea sweetened with milk, and these little black tapioca balls at the bottom. Odd at first, but extremely addicting. You can buy it at pretty much every other eatery, we find. We have also recently discovered the wonders of street food. There are street vendors along most of the streets selling extremely delicious, ridiculously cheap, and horribly unhealthy food. One night last week we were wandering a street we hadn't been to before, and there were no restaurants in the vicinity, but there were street vendors selling fried rice, dumplings, and other fried lovely things that I don't know the name of. It ended up being one of the best dinners we'd had yet (for about 75 US cents!)

Other students: Living in the international students' dorm, I've met a lot of other foreigners studying abroad in China. Our group often hangs out with a group of students from Holland and another group from Korea. It's especially neat to spend time with the Koreans because the common language tends to be Chinese! They can speak a bit of English, but we actually tend to communicate better via Chinese. It's really cool!

A typical day for me: I have Chinese language class for 3 hours every day, and culture class for an hour and a half Tuesday through Thursday. My homework load tends to be very manageable, and 2 to 3 times a week I try to work out with some of the other people in my group. One guy used to be a professional trainer, so he designs some great workouts for us. It's really fun to work out with everyone, and it's nice to get some exercise.

This Thanksgiving we're going to head to Shanghai for the long weekend, and I hope to have some cool stories to tell.

Da Jia Hao

Da jia hao! (Hello everyone!) I'm currently at an adorable little cafe (with wireless internet!) that could be sitting in Chapel Hill. It's so lovely - they even have really good coffee, which is a rarity in China.

Life is going well. My classes aren't too bad, but they do require daily studying and homework. I had my first test on Friday, and it went very well except for the listening comprehension. It's a definite weak point for me.

China is quickly turning me into an extreme cheapskate. The other day we decided to go to the restaurant downstairs in our dorm instead of the dining hall, and I remember being a bit put out because that meant lunch would cost me 10 yuan instead of 5. (I recently bought a very expensive dictionary, whether you count it in yuan or dollars, so I’m trying not to spend too much money on food.) Of course, once I reminded myself that this meant the price of lunch was increasing by about US$.70, I was fine. (It’s about 7 yuan to 1 US dollar.) Now, not that 5 RMB is the price of most meals in China, but that fact that I can get lunch for about 70 American cents points means I’m going to have a hard time buying food in the US.

We went to a Pizza Hut for dinner, and at 50 yuan per person, it was one of the most expensive meals I’ve had here. (roughly US$7.00) The prices were so “expensive” because it was actually a nice sit down restaurant – appetizers and everything. It occupied the entire top floor of a building downtown (21^st floor, perhaps,) so it boasted an impressive view of the city.

I’m not the only cheap person in China though. They had a salad bar that costs 28 RMB, which is a lot for China, although it’s also the only place I’ve yet seen that offers salads. A woman there was really getting her money’s worth out of it though! She was starting to stack up pieces of watermelon when we ordered, and by the time we got our food, she was still there, with layers of watermelon cubes and cucumber slices about 9 inches high! It was incredible. One of the girls wanted a picture, so she and a couple guys went over, and at first they tried to take it without her noticing, but then they asked if we could take a picture, and she was fine with it. She even posed with her tower for them. I don't have the picture, otherwise I'd post it.

There is a large Buddhist temple just off campus, and they have gardens there as well. These lily pads are probably a couple feet in diameter.


This is also from the temple complex. I actually haven't been to the temple proper, as it started to rain while we were exploring, so we decided to come back another day.



I think this is all the program participants. I think this is from the day we visited an old military fort, but my camera ran out of batteries. At some point I hope to get someone's else's pictures.

KFC and McDonald's are incredibly popular here. There are some slight menu variations, for example McDonald's serves taro pie instead of apple, and you can buy egg custards at KFC. The Chicken McNuggets taste the same though!

Australian Cuisine

In reality, Australian food is very similar to American food, albeit with a more British influence. Morning Tea and Afternoon Tea are official meals, which I love. I have fallen in love with scones with jam and cream. Scones here are a bit similar to a Southern biscuit, but without the heavy salt and grease.

Crumpets, another "tea" food, are also fabulous. They're like a cross between pancakes and English muffins - extremely good toasted with butter and peanut butter.

Bangers and mash, a very British dish, is also a popular Australian dinner. (It's sausages and mashed potatoes.) Even more Australian, I think, though is a lamb barbecue or roast. It would be roughly analogous to an American Sunday pot roast - a classic.

Below is one of my favorite Australian foods - the Lamington. It's sponge cake dipped in chocolate and coconut. It's so fantastic!

Sometime they have cream in the middle: yum-o! (As an Aussie would say.)


Those are meat pies. Pies in Australia, much like in the UK, are generally savory. The only sweet pie they really eat is apple pie.


The quintessential Australian product: Vegemite. It's concentrated yeast extract, and it tastes about how you might expect concentrated yeast extract to taste. I can't say that I enjoyed it very much, unfortunately. It's a bit of an acquired taste, I think. Australians enjoy Vegemite sandwiches, and it functions much like peanut butter in the US.


I am going to miss these. Tim Tams are fantastic - they're a bit like chocolate covered oreos, so as you can imagine, they're wickedly delicious.


I know this isn't Australian, but I had to post proof of Krispy Kreme's transpacific move. As far as I knew, Krispy Kreme was just now making it in to the northern part of the US, so I was floored when I heard they have it here. It's extremely popular, needless to say.

The only food I have heard of that is not available in Australia is the graham cracker, which means they don't make s'mores! It's a tragedy, really. Roasting marshmallows just isn't the same.

Many foods are the same but are called different things. For example, raisins are called sultanas and bell peppers are called capiscums. Lots of brand names are different as well - Rice Krispies become Rice Bubbles, etc. And people might look at you funny if you ask for a Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwich, as Jelly is Jello here. (You'd have to ask for Peanut Butter & Jam.)