Thoughts on China

There has been lots going on in China lately. I've been very busy with traveling and school. The classes we are taking in Beijing are much more difficult and work intensive than the two we took in Singapore. China itself is much more difficult than Singapore with getting around the city, communicating, ordering food, finding places... China is very tough.

Good news: I've finally seen the sun and a blue sky!

Bad news: It was terribly hot, and now I prefer the cloudy cooler days. Luckily those are more common.

Last weekend a big group of us (me, Caroline, Hannah, David Schwartz, Chris Morris, Adrienne, Sara, Jen, Gabby, and Kristi) went to the Beijing Art Museum. I was expecting to see traditional Chinese artwork, like landscape paintings and scrolls, but instead the museum was more like the High Museum in Atlanta that has a different exhibit every few months. The Beijing Museum was featuring this futuristic exhibit... it's hard to describe, but it was really strange. There was a long hallway of hospital beds that moved on their own, there was a big computer generated head (kind of like the Wizard of Oz) that had conversations with you, and there was this creepy body morphing video. The things I liked seeing where a big harmonic wave, strings that vibrated when you talked, crayons that sang songs when you wrote with them, plants that grew without soil, a big dark room with light beams that you could stand in, and a waterfall that was apparently fake, but looked, smelled, and sounded like real water. On the upper floors of the museum, there was an exhibit called Dresden in China, which featured some German abstract paintings that were pretty neat.

After the museum, we went to the Silk Market!!!!! It was CRAZY! First of all, it was inside, and it was 8 stories high, and there were so many shops all crammed in there, and there was a lot of people, and it was so loud, and I loved it! It was so exciting! That place is going to be complete MADNESS when all the Olympic spectators arrive! We spent HOURS at the Silk Market, bargaining for so many items! It was so fun! 

One floors was all clothes (polos especially, and soccer jerseys), jackets (fire engine red Ferrari jackets, and Adidas jackets), luggage (Coach, North Face), and shoes, shoes, shoes. I got some Puma underwear and a pair of charcoal and pink Puma shoes! Another floor was all Chinese collectables, like scrolls, old coins, chopsticks, fans, figurines, and lamps. I bought some old Chinese coins with holes in the middle that I can make into earrings and necklaces. Another floor was all SILK of course! 100% Chinese silk items, like kimonos, scarves, and neck ties of all colors and designs. Another floor was dedicated to bags and bags and bags. Purses, wallets, clutches, wristlets, backpacks galore! Prada, Longchamp, Tod's, Coach, Gucci, Burberry, it was all so exciting! Anther floor was all of the tailors that makes suits and dresses. That floor was very overwhelming, and the prices were very high. I was very happy that I'd gottena suit made in Bangkok. It was cheaper there, and the fabrics were nicer. I also already knew the drill, so I helped the guys and girls in my group pick out some styles and fabrics. I wanted to get a dress made, but it was way to expensive. My favorite floor was he top floor- the legendary PEARL MARKET! Real pearls, everywhere! It was heaven! I may have bought a ridiculous amount of beautiful jewelry for an awesome price :)

Long story short, I'm definitely going back to the Silk Market at least three more times while I am in Beijing!

My typical day in Beijing is as follows:

1. Wake up early in the morning to go running around campus with Caroline. We haven't touched water in 19 days... it's very depressing. I don't like running much, but Beijing is very flat, so I can run longer distances without getting tired out from all the hills like in Atlanta and Singapore. Also, Beijing is not as humid as Singapore, so that makes running more enjoyable too. The air quality has not been too much of a problem when running outside. My biggest problem is actually my tennis shoes. After Caroline's and my awesome Ascics got stolen in Malaysia, the only shoes we could find that were big enough to fit our feet were these Adidas shoes that are not very supportive. Caroline's knees are bothering her because of it, and the bones in my legs below my knees are in lots of pain, especially my fibulas. It's kind of weird, but it's painful. 

2. Shower. There is only hot water during certain times of the day, and luckily one of the time slots is right when we finish running. Sometimes it does not matter though- half of the time my shower does not even work... that's right, water doesn't come out of my shower head at all when I turn it on, or it just dribbles. 

3. Breakfast. I eat breakfast from the food I buy at the campus store or the Wal-Mart about a 15 minute taxi ride away. Usually for breakfast I have peanut butter on a piece of wheat bread and some raisins. There is no cereal in China, not even at Wal-Mart, and I cannot keep yogurt or jelly because there are no refrigerators on campus.

4. Ride bike to class, which is so enjoyable! I love riding my bike everywhere! It makes everything so accessible! The only issue is that all of China rides bikes, and they ride SO SLOW. And they ride slowly in the MIDDLE of the street, just randomly stop in front of you, or ride in big packs that take up the whole road. This is quite frustrating for me, so I've made a game out of passing and weaving through as many people as possible on the way to class. It's quite fun :) Oh and other things that makes bikes go even slower- when there is a person riding side-saddle on the back of your bike, reading the newspaper while riding your bike, and my favorite, holding an umbrella while riding your bike when it's rainy AND sunny! There are umbrellas everywhere in China, all the time.

5. Class. We are taking an Industrial Engineering course called "Supply Chain: Manufacturing and Warehousing".  Some of the material is interesting to me, and some of it is not at all. I do not like learning about how factories stay within constraints, like time deadlines and quality standards and cost factors, but I like manipulating different parts of a factory's process to determine how they can lower the production costs and thus make more profit. We learned "Explosion Calculus" this morning, and right now, we're working on a spreadsheet with real data from a beer brewery in China. They brew five types of beer that take either 2 weeks or 3 weeks to ferment, they have three fermenters, and there is a loss of sales if you do not meet demand, and there is a holding cost if you have too much inventory. It's very fun for me to look at the demand for the different types of beer and determine how much to produce of each type each week and see how it changes the overall profit. The hardest part of the project was coding how to calculate the profit, taking into account the setup cost, holding cost, lost sales, etc. but now that we have that part done, I'm having lots of fun manipulating the data to find the best production policy!

6. Lunch. I look forward to lunch because I get very hungry, but then I realize that the campus food is not good, and I get disappointed. Campus food is very cheap, but it is not as good as in Singapore. Maybe it is because I have trouble ordering because I cannot read the signs, and I cannot talk to the servers of the other students. Usually I choose a food stall that has the food displayed so I can point to what I want, but I'm sure that if I could just order a dish, my meals would be a lot tastier. Today, I got a classmate to help me order dumplings, and they were yummy!

7. Class again. I'm taking this class with 29 GT students, 9 students from the National University of Singapore, and 12 local Chinese students from Tsinghua University. On the first day, we went around the room and introduced ourselves. Each Chinese student has a Chinese name, and they have picked for themselves an English name. All of them got their names from the dictionary! Even Troy, my Chinese-American friend from Tech, chose his name Troy from the dictionary. His real Chinese name is Duo. So, introductions went like this: "Hi. My Chinese name is Wen Jun, and my English name is Sarah" and "Hello. My Chinese name is Wong Zhe, and my English name is Frank." There is also a Simon, Betty, Grace, and Fish. Yep, her English name is Fish. Also, one of the exciting things about having class with Tsinghua students is that two of the girls are volunteering at the National Aquatic Center (the Water Cube!), and they have offered to give me a tour!!!! I'm so pumped!

8. Weight room. After the afternoon class, Caroline, Gabby, and I ride our bikes to the weight room. This is my favorite part of the day because it is timed out perfectly! When we arrive at the gym at 4:15, there are no classes going on in the dance studio, so we go inside and pull out the mats and stretch and do abs. I like this because we do not have to stretch and do abs out in the middle of the weight room and be starred at by the old Chinese men. The Chinese guys are fascinated with us three girls because no Chinese girls ever lift weights. I don't like being watched by them though, or pointed at, or whispered about. After stretching and abs, we lift weights. Sometimes we run on the treadmill for 15-25 minutes depending on how much we ran in the morning. We are finished with our weights by 5, which is right when the classes in the dance studio start that come free with our gym membership! Aerobics is on Mondays, Latin Dance is on Tuesdays, Pilates is on Wednesdays, and Yoga is on Thursdays at 5 PM. Caroline and I stick around on Wednesdays and Thursdays too do Pilates and Yoga until 6 PM. It's a lot of fun and a good change from the workout routine that we have at Tech. But, even though I like the gym, I still miss swimming, and I think a reason I feel so stressed out lately is that I haven't been able to swim, which is a natural relaxer for me.

9. Dinner. Once again, I'm hungry but not excited to eat. I don't like eating rice or vegetables soaked in oil and grease, or salty dumplings after I work out because it feels like I'm negating everything I just did by putting trash into my body. It's been a struggle to find inexpensive but good and healthy food to eat after workout. I have started going to the store to get some cold chocolate milk, and I've found a good noodle dish that is not too expensive. Sometimes I go back to my room and eat some more bread with peanut butter. 

10. Evening. Study, study, study, group project, practice problems, facebook, email, blog, pictures, bedtime :)

China is tough, that's all there is to it. To be honest, I do not like China much. Traveling is very stressful. Any form of communication is stressful, like ordering food or mailing letters. Riding a bike is stressful because there are no helmets in China, you have to dodge cars, other bikes, pedestrians, speed bumps, puddles, and posts sticking up in the middle of the roads. Intersections are the hardest to navigate on a bike, and I do not like turning left. Going back to my room is stressful because I always worry that it is going to smell weird. Showering is stressful (unfortunately) because I have to wait until certain times to shower, I never know if my shower will turn on, and I never know if I'm going to have any water pressure, and my shower gets the entire bathroom soaking wet. Doing laundry is stressful. I tried using the laundry service, but it took two days to get my clothes back, and the lady did not use detergent, so my clothes smelled like dirt. I've resorted to doing my own laundry, but there are only 11 washers and 2 dryers in the entire dorm complex of 11 floors with 60 rooms on each floor. Class is stressful because there is so much material in such little time that I am no where near comfortable with my understanding of the material before the tests that we have every week. Drinking water is stressful because the tap is not drinkable in China, so I have to buy my water all of the time, and I drink A LOT of water. 

I am dirty all of the time in China.  When it is dry, the streets are dusty, and the air is dirty and polluted. When it is rainy, all of the dirt in the streets turns into mud that splashes onto the backs of your legs when you walk and ride your bike. I have bruises up and down my legs from parking my bike in the bike lots because I'm always running into my own bike or other bikes when I'm trying to squeeze my bike into a spot or trying to remove it and drive away. I sit around dirty a lot of the time, waiting for the time to come when I can shower. I am always sweating, just like in Singapore, so I am running through clothes like crazy, and because of the amount of time it takes to complete one load of laundry, I find myself rewearing sweaty clothes quite a bit. I am a smelly wonder :)

Asians are, for the most part, rude. I was warned that they have no concept of personal space, but I was not prepared for how the Chinese act. Even in Singapore, I was shocked at how men will push past you to get onto a bus or train. In the US, men and boys will step aside and let girls on before them, but in Asia, everyone is so pushy to get onto the bus or train. Traveling on public transportation means getting pushed, shoved, bumped into, whacked by umbrellas, run into by bikes... the list is endless. I've gone back and forth as to why the Chinese act this way, and I've determined that if you are not aggressive, you will never get anything accomplished. It is a vicious cycle. Now, instead of trying to move out of everyone's way, I've adopted the Asian technique of just bumping into people. I am glad that I am a tall, big American so that I can move people out of my way.

Also, Caroline, Kristi, Jen, Sara, and I have a list going called "Reasons You Know That You Are In a Communist Country", and I will share these with you when I am safely back in the United States in August.

Aside from these hardships of everyday living in China, we've developed the tradition of Hot Pot Tuesdays to give us something to look forward to during the week. Every Tuesday night after class and working out, about 20 of us ride our bikes down to Wudaoku and eat at a Hot Pot restaurant. We spend lots of money, but we eat so much good food, and it's always such a great time. After Hot Pot, we walk next door for ice cream and study snacks to get us through the rest of the week. Next week, we have a final Tuesday afternoon, so of course we are celebrating afterwards with some HOT POT! After dinner, we will stay in Wudaoku for the rest of the evening at Lush (a bar) and Propaganda (a dance club). 

A small note for my future reference: if you ever do business in China, remember the Chinese New Year. It's like the Christmas season in the US.