Apologies for the hiatus… it was due 1% to my difficulties in accessing the blog site, 40% because I had nothing to report, and 59% (because “nothing to report” has never really stopped me before) to laziness.
I can’t really put my finger on it, but there is something very different about this trip to China. Two years ago, everything was new and exciting, and things were in flux everywhere. Neighbourhoods were being knocked down in preparation for shiny skyscrapers. Foreigners were around, but still pretty rare; no one really came to China unless they had a pretty good reason (and usually a very interesting backstory). Our hotel faced a sewage canal, and was basically surrounded by hutongs. I had a roommate who was a treasuretrove of China knowledge, who could enlighten me about Five Year Plans and the Great Leap Forward whenever I wished.
Today, those skyscrapers are buzzing (or soon to be) with new homes and offices; I’m not sure anyone remembers whatever hutong was there before. Foreigners are EVERYWHERE, and it’s mostly because China’s now cool because of the Olympics. Our hotel is in a business district, with the attendant high prices and bad food. And I find myself in the uncomfortable position of knowing more about China than many of the people I associate with… and not just the things I know because I’ve been here before, but even the history and (especially) current events. This is shocking to me because so many people here are either Chinese or studying East Asian Studies, and because I have no particular education in this subject (other than what I learned from my former roommate, M; James Fallows’ blog; and the China Digital Times).
China’s different; this group is different (younger, and — dare I say — on the whole, more frivolous)… and (of course) I’m different.
This is not to say that I’m not having fun (because I am) — but I haven’t stayed out until 6 a.m. yet, and a cab ride home, bleary-eyed and in the sunlight, might be kind of fun once or twice.
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Our class trip to Xi’an from Thursday night to Monday morning was… just like you would expect a class trip to be. I skipped out on my class trip (to Qufu — the birthplace of Confucius — and Taishan — a mountain) last time, and opted instead for a fun-filled trip to Hangzhou and Shanghai with friends. I kind of regretted missing out on Taishan, but now, really, I don’t. Not much is worth the hurry-up-and-wait (and-wait-and-wait-and-wait).
But I did get to see the Terra Cotta Warriors, which I had regretted not seeing last time. Not to mention a bunch of “educational” crap I really could have done without. Oh, and the food was terrible. Buffets with gift shops. Yum.
Also, the train: we took hard sleepers. Luckily, they weren’t actually “hard”, but they were six to a (very tiny) berth — three on each side. I had a middle bed both ways, which wasn’t too bad. On the way there, our berth had a wall with a (curtained) door; on the way back, no wall, and no curtain (so you basically slept open to anyone walking by, who you hoped wouldn’t steal the stuff you had to store on a rack across the narrow hallway).
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For those of you who have Facebook (and if you are my Facebook friend), I posted an album of my first week here with D. The delay was (again) mostly due to laziness, because I have to convert all my .raw photos to .jpgs before I can upload (annoying).
