PRE-India adventures

 I have just arrived in India and am so excited!  I arrived this morning around 5 am -- and it sure felt good getting off that plane, as I arrived about 28 hours later than my itinerary!  When I got to the airport on Saturday, they said the plane was about 2 hours late...ok, no big deal...but then 2 hours later, they announced that they were giving us all dinner in the terminal.  When they did so, a rumor began circulating that the plane was not coming at all...which ended up being the case.  They trooped us all back through customs (1 passenger at a time, with an enormous cluster of people trying to get through all at once, of course) to get our Exit stamp CANCELLED and then onto buses to go to an airport hotel.  They pretty much forced us to share our room with someone, and I was really lucky that I ended up with a really nice Chinese girl about my age named 'Lena' (her english name).

The plane was then scheduled to leave at 12 noon the next day...we got free breakfast and lunch...and then the plane was moved to 4.  It felt like the wait would never end, and meanwhile Max had arrived in New Delhi at the scheduled time (the night before) and was waiting for me.  He had managed to come sans suitcase, so he was without me OR any of his stuff (which is worse?...don't answer!)  When I heard the plane was postponed again, I was fed up, and went to the airport to see for myself.  Lena accompanied me, and we actually went into the Ethiopian Airlines office and talked to the manager himself.  He showed us the emails he had received (the plane had gotten a flat tire) and now the delay was finding crew.  He seemed really nice, if extremely stressed out.  He assured us that we could get a refund if the flight did not leave that day.

 As the afternoon wore on, it became evident that the replacement flight was not going to arrive - at this point I was desperate to get to India and Max, and I ended up canceling my Travelocity reservation (with a full refund, thank goodness!) and buying a last minute ticket on the internet for the regularly scheduled Beijing-New Delhi flight yesterday (which was still on time).  It ended up being 2 hours late, but I finally made it this morning and was so happy!  And my flight did not end up leaving until 3 pm Beijing time today, which means I STILL would not be here!  And I've had a full day in New Delhi (posts to come).  So the moral of the story is, sometimes being aggressive at the airport works out, and don't fly with Ethiopian airlines in Asia, really far away from Ethiopia and their spare tires!

Happy New Year!

Chinese New Year is just around the corner -- New Year's Eve is Wednesday, Feb 2 -- and people all over Beijing are beginning to celebrate.  While officially Sunday is the last day of work (a make-up day for the holiday) many students and other employees have already left the city to travel home for the holiday.  Decorations are going up all over the city, including my apartment building's lobby:

People are selling cheap decorations all over on the street, and there are random bursts of fireworks every night.  I can't imagine what it will be like on New Year's Eve, as the Chinese seem to love 1) color and 2) noise, and fireworks were invented here and are all made here!  It must be crazy!

Also, the government seems to be putting out more 'news' than usual about China's wealth and might - check out this link for a hilarious 'oops' on (inter)national television: http://gizmodo.com/5745307/did-china-try-to-pass-off-top-gun-as-air-force-footage

Unfortunately, I will not be here to usher in the new year, as I'm heading off to India tonight for a 2-week vacation.  I have always wanted to travel to India, and I am much much closer than I am from home, plus the tickets are much cheaper!  I will be traveling with Max, my boyfriend, and we will see parts of north-central India including the capital, New Delhi, and the Taj Mahal in Agra.  I will try to post occasionally but no guarantees as I've no idea about the internet/electricity status where I am going.  So if you don't hear from me soon, no worries, I will post many stories upon my return!

Happy New Year!

Mystery Fruit

Its been a while since I posted about exotic fruit; sadly my trips to the grocery store have gotten more mundane and less amazed as I have adjusted to many of the strange sights and smells.  Actually I don't think I've actually posted pictures from the Carrefour here, which I will try to do sometime before I leave. Anyway, on my last grocery trip I stumbled on this mystery fruit which I just had to try due to my never having had it before.  I got lucky with durian and dragon fruit, why not this?

Here it is before cutting it open:

And here it is open:

The consistency was a mix between an apple and a pear, and the taste was somewhere in there too.  The white flesh on the inside was fairly sweet but I made the mistake of taking a nibble of the green on the outside, and it was very bitter.  I actually had a bad taste in my mouth for about an hour after eating!  I still don't know what it is, anyone know??

"Tiggelaars in China" photo album

Finally!  I've managed to get the best pictures from Christmas with my family into an album; click here to see pictures! Once you go to the page you can click on 'Slideshow' to have the pictures automatically scroll.

Yesterday I went back to Harmony House to play with the kids, along with my partner, Wang Xia, a Chinese girl who works at the China CDC.  The kids were very young, from 1-4 years old, younger than any child I have worked with in the past.  Wang Xia was also a little surprised at the age of the kids, but we managed with excitement and enthusiasm to entertain them pretty well.  We played 'Ring Around the Rosie', colored, and read very simple picture books (in my case, in English and broken Chinese).  The kids were mostly happy to see us, some disturbingly a little too much for their age, which tells me they are used to having strangers around them often.  Only one little girl seemed scared of me - and she started crying everytime I looked at her!  Other than that though, everyone had a great time.

Some of the Harmony House children.

Wang Xia with a little boy who wrote with his feet due to deformed hands - pretty impressive!

After coming back to Beijing, Wang Xia and I got lunch together before she went to her English class and I returned home. We had a pleasant time, discussing our experience in the orphanage, and somehow the conversation wandered onto the topic of Chinese education.  She told me that life is very tough for high school students because they have no lives outside of studying (school from 7 am to 10 pm!) but that the system means everyone has a chance to go to university.  She told me that her parents are both farmers but she has a Masters degree and will be a scientist because she worked hard in high school and did well on the college entrance exam. She did not like the way of life of high schoolers, but seemed to think it was the only way to insure everyone a fair chance. This is interesting to think about because I normally consider that our system of high school also allows everyone a chance at college, but there is certainly less stress put on the students and we have opportunities for outside activities.  But does everyone really have equal chance to succeed?

 On the way home from lunch, I realized that this was the first time I have ever hung out with a Chinese person all on their own, just as friends. The language barrier is sadly HUGE when it comes to making Chinese friends, as due to my poor Chinese, all potential friends must be relatively fluent in English. And that sets the tone for our relationship - it is limited to their vocabulary and comfort level in English. I wish I knew Chinese, because I feel like its impossible to really make friends or understand the culture here without it, but it was an impossible task for 10 months.  I feel like for many foreigners here, it is considered an impossible task no matter their duration of stay, and hence the 'expat' (expatriate) areas of town, stores just for expats, clubs/bars just for expats, and activities, like sports clubs and game nights just for expats. It is perceived as impossible to assimilate, and so instead people clump together with other people like them and recreate a foreign world here in Beijing. This kind of shuts out the Chinese world, even though it is all around us.  Perhaps a necessary survival mechanism, but still, sad...

Visa, Subway, and brownies!

Today was to be my last day of rest before returning to work after my bronchitis, but at 10 am I got a call from the Indian Embassy saying that my passport, complete with Indian visa, was ready for pickup!  I bundled up against the cold and headed off, and surprise of all surprises, the pick-up was easy!  It only took 15 minutes and I was walking out the door, Indian visa in hand!

I was ecstatic, and stopped by a Subway sandwich place on my way home to celebrate.  My first experience with Chinese Subway was at an arena, and the quality was horrible, but today I was reassured immediately upon entering by the familiar sights and smells.  I managed to order successfully (the steps of making a Subway sandwich are the same everywhere!) and sat down at a table grinning like a maniac at my sandwich - my first real non-homemade sandwich in China! A guy sitting nearby caught me grinning and laugh/smiled at me.  I must have looked pretty silly, looking that excited about a sandwich!

And tonight, I decided to attempt making brownies to take the office tomorrow.  A friend of mine here just bought a mini oven and so has gotten me thinking about oven recipes, and I wanted to show him what brownies are.  And now I know that it is indeed possible to make brownies in a casserole dish - since that was the only oven-friendly pan I have! And my taste-test (see below) proves they are good!  I can't wait til tomorrow!

My Chinese homemade brownies! Mmmm...

ps. Today is the first day I have really felt good all day long.  Hooray for recovery!

My Latest D.I.C. Moment

Last week I received a telephone call from a student in my work group to tell me that I was supposed to give a presentation at a meeting between the Chinese CDC and CICAMS next week.  I was a little unclear what my topic was but after some conversation she agreed that it was supposed to be about the survey I developed and which just finished collecting data in Shanxi Province, about how HPV screening and screening results affects women's emotions and their desire to get screening in the future.  I thought little more about it until I received an agenda for the meeting over the weekend, which listed me as talking about a different topic, one that I have never worked on, and in fact another student in the lab is doing for her phd project, in the same place in Shanxi Province. I thought that a mistake had been made, accidentally mixing up the two survey titles in Shanxi, since they were running at the same time and were approved on the same IRB application.

However, today when I told one of my bosses about the mix-up, I was told that no, in fact, I am supposed to talk about Knowledge and Attitudes about HPV among Chinese women, a topic that I know nothing about and have never worked on!  And she hadn't really thought about it until I asked her today, but all the survey results are in Chinese (not that I would be allowed to see the results anyway) and there is no translated version of them, even tables and figures.  She told me that she would send a Chinese powerpoint she made last year about the project to another student who would translate them for me so I could give the talk.  And this is supposed to happen in a week!

I feel uncomfortable giving a talk about something I know nothing about anyway, but it will really stink if the student whose project this actually is, is there.  She actually stood up and 'corrected' Adam's answer to a question at the last talk he gave in front of the entire room (even though his answer wasn't wrong), which was uncalled for and not very nice, so I am nervous what she will do when the talk is actually in her project area!  The results will be from the project that preceded her own, not her actual results, thank goodness, but still, she will know way more than I do about the topic, and it is a waste of my time to do a huge literature review for a 15-minute presentation next week.  Why they want me talk about this and not her is beyond me, although I imagine it has something to do with being the foreigner in the room.  Boo....D.I.C.!

Chinese Bugs

I'm sorry for the long blog silence -- I caught a cold on the way to or in Harbin, and it hit with a vengeance on my return, which then took advantage of my asthmatic lungs to progress to bronchitis and another bacterial infection on top of that!  So I've been pretty much lying around sleeping and trying to recover for the past two weeks.  I was reluctant to go to the doctor, mostly due to the effort it would take, but after I began feeling achy/miserable again at the end of this past week, I decided it was time.  I went to the International SOS clinic, which our scholarship pays for, and I don't think it was the typical Chinese doctor experience.  When Lara lived with me, she was seeing a Chinese doctor for her ear, and it sounded like she had a lot of communication difficulties, the doctor was never in, and they gave her medicine with no english labels or instructions and didn't bother to try to translate for her.  (hence why I was nervous going to the doctor!).  However, the International SOS clinic seemed just like any busy clinic at home, my doctor was from Australia, and everyone spoke English.  It was comforting when I was feeling less than chipper to not have to deal with communicating in a foreign language.  There's no way that regular (i.e. non-rich) Chinese people could go there though; the cost of my consultation alone was more than the Chinese students in my office make in a month!  Whew - thank goodness for insurance!

the last of Harbin

The last adventure of the Harbin trip was getting home from the train station.  We arrived at 11:30 pm and it was almost midnight by the time we got off the train and out of the station, and we were not prepared for the massive taxi line.  The line was HUGE, taxis were few, and it was surrounded by touts trying to convince people to take unofficial taxis or random cars instead for exorbitant costs.  It was not a pleasant situation to be faced with so late at night when all we wanted was to be home and in bed.  After waiting for about 10 minutes with no movement in the line, we decided to walk to see what we could find instead...and were continually confronted with taxi drivers only willing to bargain and not use the meter.  Its funny, up til this point I had been struck at how 'safe' the Beijing taxi drivers seemed, never trying to cheat me, drive around in circles, or not use the meter, but this experience taught me that they just haven't had the upper hand before.  Once the supply-demand curve swung enough in their favor, they were all about taking advantage!  We ended up randomly getting on a bus we saw which was the last one of the day, and fortuitously, it went by my metro station, close enough to my apartment to walk home.  Definitely not something I would have counted as a factor before when considering train schedules, and it could have been a lot worse, but talk about a stressful end to the trip!

Click here for more Harbin pics!

Harbin, China

Harbin (aka, the coldest place in China)

A few days after my parents and sister left Beijing, I left it as well, to travel to Harbin for the New Year's Holiday.  Apparently Chinese people do not consider the Roman calendar New Year to be nearly as important as their own in the beginning of February, but are willing to tolerate celebrations for the sake of a day off work. ;)  I traveled on Friday with Simon, the Fogarty scholar with whom I also traveled to Mongolia, and his friend MoMo, with Adam, Alison meeting us 1.5 days later and Alberta (another Fogarty scholar in a different city) and her boyfriend met us our last day.  Harbin is in the northeastern part of China, the part that stretches up next to Russia, and it was abominably cold!  The worst I saw during the day was -15F, with a wind chill of -21F, which is about -35C!  Yikes!  And the temperature dropped further at night! (and it got dark around 3:45pm) The coat that I bought on the recommendation of one of Lara's friends and my ski pants were actually up to the task, keeping me quite toasty, but my feet were the weakest link, becoming painful blocks of ice after a mere 20 minutes outside.  

An ice slide on the main drag of Harbin's nightlife.

They have a huge park full of Siberian tigers...very majestic! 

On my first day there, I went skiing at Yabuli Ski Resort, known as the training ground of the Chinese ski team.  I think the national team must train on a different slope that I was on, as it wasn't that steep and there was only one lift, but for 4 hours skiing, it was good fun.  All the snow was real, and the scenery was amazing for the first several hours before the visibility got too bad to appreciate it.

Despite the hardships of the weather, Harbin was amazing for its snow and ice attractions.  Every year, there is a Snow and Ice World which draw tourists from all over China during the winter.  The Ice world was a fairlyland of castles, pagodas, and mansions, completely made of ice blocks, and some several stories tall and several blocks long!  The ice blocks were made with holes for LED lights, so the buildings were all lit up at night with changing colors; it was very beautiful.  There were also numerous ice slides and toboggans which were very amusing!  

The gang from left - Simon, MoMo, Alison, and Adam.

This picture and the one above are the same structure!

The Snow World, was a big park next to the (frozen) river with huge snow sculptures.  Since we visited a few days before the actual opening, we got to watch workers carting in the snow in big truck-sized blocks, and shaping the sculptures with picks and other tools.  There were amazing sculptures, ranging from a huge bust of Michaelangelo's David to Pinnochio to Marco Polo and his caravan. We went tubing down a huge snow slide, and walked on a completely frozen flat lake!  The sculptures were really impressive, and we also thought it was interesting that there were so few Chinese themes in their subjects - I don't really understand why, since it seemed like things were for the most part geared at Chinese tourists, although there were a number of Russians as well.  Actually on our second day we were spoken to in Russian 3 times by different Chinese people! 

We got to see some of the construction.

Overall this was a memorable, pleasant weekend vacation, but I am certainly not sorry to be returning to the milder climes of Beijing!

Tiggelaars in China

My parents and sister came to see me for part of their Christmas vacation, and it was really fun!  They were here for 10 days, which is not really long enough to get over the culture shock of such a drastically different place and people, so I think it was quite a tiring trip, but we got to see lots of cool places and monuments, had some interesting food, and it was great to have loved ones here during the holiday. It was also interesting to experience anew the shocks and amazements of just arriving to China, which I only vaguely remember now due to the 'different' or even 'bizarre' having become commonplace. Their reactions to various things  - i.e. baby's bare bottoms, people spitting, people EVERYWHERE, horrendous traffic, whole pigs in the aisle at the supermarket, etc. - were reminders of how much I've adjusted since arriving here!  

 Here is a brief recap of their trip to China:

Day 1 - Forbidden City, Tianenmen Square, Wangfujing street, and Chinese food for dinner - an accomplishment!

Day 2 - Temple of Heaven, Pearl Market, and introduction to work.  My workmates professed astonishment at finding my parents so young, and it was fun to show everyone around where I work and the people I see everyday.  We took an overnight train to Xi'an in the evening.  The small size of the compartment was a surprise at first, but its cozy accoutrements were also noted with pleasure and I think overall this was a fun part of the trip.

Day 3 - arrival in Xi'an, arrival at the hotel after some difficulty with a dearth of real taxis, and our lucky transfer to the nicest hotel in the city.  No kidding.  I think its the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in, with free internet, swimming pool, and western buffet breakfast to die for, for less than the cost of a Super 8 at home.  Sweet!  We went to see the Terracotta Warriors which were very impressive. I also introduced Mom and Rebecca to the pleasures of Chinese foot massage...mmm...

Day 4 - Xi'an day tour - the old city walls, bell and drum towers, and Big Goose Pagoda, complete with kitschy music and fountain light show after dusk (which was nevertheless very cool). 

Day 5 - trip to Emperor Jingdi's tomb on outskirts of Xi'an, with little miniature terracotta figures from 200 BC, much smaller than the famous warriors.  These were also domestic servants, civil servants, animals, etc, so very different.  Then airport, and home to Beijing on Christmas Eve.

Day 6 - Christmas in China!  It was great to have my family here for one of my favorite holidays, to have someone to rejoice with for the real meaning of the season as opposed to the rampant commercialism existent in Beijing, and to take comfort from some of our favorite holiday rituals and food, even if filled with improvisations due to limited availability of ingredients in China.  We also went to an acrobatics show in the evening which was very dazzling.

Day 7 - To the zoo to the see the pandas, who actually were quite active and enchanting, walking around, eating, and wrestling with each other.  Then on to Prince Gong's mansion in my attempt to show my guests a Qing dynasy house plus a taste of Peking Opera; turns out the opera was only for tour groups and the house kind of looked like every other Chinese building we'd seen so far.  Oh well, Peking Duck with my bosses and Adam, Alison, and Shangying and Grace, 2 Chinese students, plus hot chocolate with Adam and Alison afterwards, wrapped up the day nicely.

Day 8 - Great Wall!!  We went on a tour sponsored by the same hostel Adam, Alison, and I used for our hiking trip, but this time we went to Mutianyu, a different part of the wall.  It was much more developed, with a chair lift, a gondola, and a toboggan down, but the views of the wall and surrounding mountains were still dazzling!  Ming Tombs in the afternoon, not so impressive but still cool.  Then back to Beijing for some real pizza with Alison in a little Chinese courtyard, all the better for our 45-minute delay due to my getting disoriented with the map!

Day 9 - Olympic Park and Water Cube, which was as amazing the second time around.  I love the architecture of this building!  We went to the Silk Market on our way home, and while I'm sure we still got gypped, we managed to find a vendor who at least was not offensive and was quite friendly, making us all feel better about the whole deal.  Many gifts and souvenirs acquired.  Home to pack and hot browns for dinner.

Day 10 - up at an insanely early hour to send them off to the airport.  My apartment seemed quite empty after they all left, although I was exhausted that night from being a tourist!