Today we were invited by our school to go to the Capital Steel Factory in Beijing. First, we took a bus with the seventh graders to a museum. We had a few guides walk with us and translate signs and tell us information. These guides were students who had very good English and were chosen by their teacher to help us. Their English is much better than our Chinese The museum featured steel and iron sculptures made from remaining material after the factory closed. Most of the sculptures were horses and impressionistic takes of Beijing.
After viewing the sculptures, we went to the retired steel mill. It is the former location the ShouGang company steel mill. At it’s time of operation it was the biggest steel mill in China; producing over 10 million tons of steel per year. Since the mill was so old we needed to wear hard hats to protect from pieces of falling metal. Inside, we were able to walk around and view the enormous size of the factory. You could’ve also seen the labor that the workers had to do and how tedious it could be. After this we walked to a train which took us around the steel mill. It showed all the trains it took to transport iron from on place to another.
Luckily, it was a nice day for a small train ride in a Beijing noon. This excursion will set standards for the rest of our other, bigger trips.
-posted on Saturday, April 16, 2016 at 6:16 AM
We have been in Xi'an for a two days now. We still have two days left. Today our schedule is packed. Our excellent tour guide Carlie Chan brought us to his hometown of the Pangliu Village, west of Xi'an. There, we visited the local, rural school. When we arrived just in time for their morning exercises. The school was very small and only had about 100 kids. Our guide explained that because of the One Child Pollicy, the population in the school had gone down. There are only about 18 students in each class, so the classes are small.
The school follows the typical curriculum set up by the government. The kids at the school were way more excited to see us than I would have expected. All of them ran up to us and said hi. In their school they have a private library, funded by all the other exchange groups from all over America. Even still, their library was still small.
One thing I have really noticed while in Xi'an is the big divide amongst land types. In America you have your suburbs which last for a large radius, than you have major cities, spread out, and in the mid-US there is farm land. In Xi'an you have the city than on one side there are farms, on the other there is just a dusty, incomplete towns. Unlike most U.S. towns, there are many bricks for building lined up along the street. While there, the area reminded me of poverty, that I've seen in the US. However, I realized that the town thrives under its own conditions . It's interesting how so much money is put into Xi'an but none is going to the small towns that border it. Charlie said that they are planning to turn these towns into suburbs in the future. Maybe they were planning on building the most economically strong places first than build places for families.
Visiting Pangliu Village made me realize that people that don't seem to have much, use their resources well, so that the students and villagers thrive.
-posted on Saturday, April 23, 2016 at 5:30 PM
Today on the way home, Lydia's mom asked if I need a lunch for tomorrow's school field trip. I did, so she took me to what seemed to be a small market on a quiet street. The entrance, like most Chinese stores, was small with small booths selling small things on either side. Inside, it was really warm, which I found odd, because it needs to be cold to keep produce from rotting. Even though it was a small market it had a lot of unusual things; they must be staples of a weekly diet in Beijing. Inside everything looked so different than it does in America. It made me dizzy and confused. Everything is individually wrapped. Each strawberry has a small wax paper around it. Each small cake has an air sealed wrapping and then a wax paper covering it and finally it is put in an individual plastic box. I saw every package, that I couldn't read in, every direction. As I walked around the market there were so many new products. There were also products that are fake copies of an American products. Seeing the fake products made me homesick for the first time. In this market you could buy almost any food from crackers to tentacles. Seeing some of the foods made me uncomfortable (such as the squid tentacles). Nothing in this market tastes like anything in America.
For this entire trip I have been trying to tried to only eat new foods. Today I have broken that streak I bought stuff that I recognized. I believe that it because in this large and new world and I am just a small part of it. When you are scared of something new you revert back to what you are used to. Next time I go shopping I will try something new and not be scared to become bigger than one person.
When we were buying food, Ms. Li would point to almost anything she thought I might like for lunch such as: Blood Pudding, Chicken Bologna, and Chocolate milk. To be fair I did end up getting the chocolate milk. For the rest of the stuff I would say "umm..." and Ms.Li would understand. I did this many times. In the end I didn't get my lunch from the store I went to 味多美 (Wei Duomei) and got a hotdog wrapped in puff pastry. In the end, even though I didn't get my lunch from the market, I still had the experience of going to Beijing grocery store.
-posted on Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 12:00 PM
This week one of Lydia's friend asked me if I wanted to play badminton with him. Lydia is my host sibling. She and I have gotten along since we first met in Wayland. We mainly go to school together and talk at her house. I am pretty good at Badminton and I like the sport, so I accepted. I was looking forward to it.
The next day, I walked into the classroom and I found all the people playing had their own equipment. I felt naked, not carrying anything with me. There weren't any rackets in the gym, probably because they would have been damaged or stolen and it would be expensive to replace them. Up until lunch period I was psyching my self up to play, but I was nervous. I guess it's because I've heard that people play badminton really well here; and I didn't want to lose.
Finally, the time had come to play. A short kid in my class handed me a spare racket and asked me to be on his team. Playing with him was great. For the first time ever it felt like I was playing with someone my own speed. He and I were equally good at playing. It is more fun to play a game where everybody is equal. After we played for half an hour, most kids left. Some bigger kids who were bigger and better than us injected into our match. I tried my hardest to play well, but I felt myself getting tired. I also noticed that my partner was getting tired. He started to feed them easy shots. We ended the game after that.
In the end I had a fun time, and I made a new friend. I've seen my new friend around the school to say hi, but we haven't played badminton since. Hopefully, we will play again. Maybe when I return to the US, I'll have a couple of tricks up my sleeve and will be a better player in my family.
-posted on Saturday, May 7, 2016 at 7:00 PM
This Journal Entry is on the topic of religion. Some topics will refer to Chinese religion. I have only visited China for 5 week and have done only little research on the topic. Most parts are observations, some may be just a coincidence and not be true.
One thing I'd like to point out is there are many degrees of religious practice within any religion. Just as Christianity has Catholics, Methodists, Protestants, etc. There are some who follow the suggestions of their religion closely and others of more loosely follow their religion. In Islam those who are strict pray five times every day, and where head scarves most of the time. Today our exchange group visited the Lama Temple. The Lama Temple is a Buddhist monastery where people come from all over China to worship. There were monks there that wore wool robes and had shaved heads. One thing I noticed is that there were people from every social class visiting. There were elderly people wearing old clothes and praying just like every other person and there were younger and middle aged, people, too. I think that in China it is harder to tell who is religious and who isn’t, unless visiting a place of worship.
Buddhism has a prayer routine similar to that of a Muslim. People bow and reach across the ground towards a statue. The person turns 90 degrees every time he/she finished a cycle of the routine. A Muslim, on the other hand, would only face Mecca. Buddhism is a polytheistic religion; there are many Gods in Buddhism. Each God/Goddess becomes more important when someone with more authority starts to worship it. Guanyin is a perfect example of this. Guanyin was a Buddhist goddess. She was the Goddess of mercy. She started off as a man. Eventually an emperor started to worship and pray to him, and he became the modern Guanyin. It’s interesting how in Buddhism you can choose which god to worship. In other polytheistic religions you worship all Gods, maybe at different times of the year. In America most religions are monotheistic.
Unlike in China, people who worship are supposed to be well dressed. Even old people dress up. If you don’t dress nicely you might be looked at like you need money. Also, in most religions in the U.S. most people go to worship on a specific dates. Christians go on a Sunday, Jewish people go on a Saturday, and Muslims worship on Fridays. Sometimes Muslims pray every day. They still do it on a regular basis.
In most religions in America such as Christianity and Islam, everybody in the place of worship, pray and listen to sermons in the same place. At the Lama Temple everybody was scattered. There would be one person at one statue and then six others near a building on the other side of the palace. In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam you are taught that there is only one God, and you should never believe in more than one God. In Buddhism you can believe in as many gods as you want, as long as they are a Buddhist God.
Personally, I believe in the ways of a Christian. I don’t think that Buddhism is the right religion for me. There are some philosophies of Buddhism that make sense that don’t relate to God that I can follow. Such as karma, I believe in karma, but not as the God. I think that I have felt karma in the sense that I have done something bad and in return something bad has happened to me. Usually, it is just a coincidence. I find it interesting how Buddhism has grown and changed China.
-posted on Saturday, May 14, 2016 at 9:45 PM