Another Brick in the Wall

Hey!

Today I'm going to tell you guys a little bit about my experience with education in China. After all, it's what I'm consuming most of during my time here.

So first of all, a little bit about my Chinese classes. Avid readers will already know that I have class every day from 8 to 12. There are five different types of classes, namely reading, writing, speaking, listening and general teaching. There is a different textbook for every class and it is expected of the teachers to finish them within the semester. Teaching methods differ from teacher to teacher, but all-encompassing is the desire to stick to the books. There are classes in which we practically do nothing but the exercises given in the book. These are unsurprisingly very boring. It's generally quite rare to be asked about one's own opinion, at most there are two open questions to the class in every lesson. There are redeeming qualities though. For example, our reading teacher makes two students hold a presentation on a topic of their choice every week. Afterwards the class discusses. Our speaking teacher uses a teaching style that is most similar to the teaching methods I'm used to from Europe. He lets us come up with little sketches and makes us talk. That obviously doesn't stop him from spending half an hour minutely going through every single new word that we learn. Well, you win some you lose some. All in all, the classes are not ideal, but I do feel like I'm learning something. In the afternoon we have the possibility of going to additional classes. Right now I'm going to "Appreciation of Ancient Chinese Poems" and "Chinese-English Translation". Both of these classes are very cool and interesting. Also they are a lot more interactive than the language classes. Oh, if any of you are wondering, all my classes are taught in Chinese.

Now on to what I've heard about the university education for normal Bachelor/Master students. I've never been to one of their classes, but here's what's been told to me by other students. First of all, a lot of them have classes on the weekend (yikes). Not even Sunday is safe. Also, they sometimes have classes until 9 in the evening. I'm not sure if you can still learn anything that late at night to be honest. Their courses are a lot like school. There is a textbook which the teacher follows and from what I gather not so much choice on how and what you want to learn. The craziest thing that they have to do in my opinion is take sports classes and run 800m in a certain time every semester. I guess if they're not fast enough they fail their degree? I mean, just what?

The last thing I want to talk about is something that took me a while to notice, but after I did, I started seeing it everywhere. I'm talking about the way that the country is educating its citizens to adhere to certain values. There are 12 "core values"  and the list of them can be seen wherever you go in China. On highways there are huge signs with them, they are shown on the little info-TVs on public transport, small and big posters on pretty much every street remind you of them. The 12 values are as follows: 富强, rich and powerful; 民主, democracy; 文明, civilization (as in civilized conduct); 和谐, harmony; 自由, freedom; 平等 equality; 公正 justice; 法治 adherence to law; 爱国 love of one's country; 敬业 respect one's work/ be dedicated to one's work; 诚信 honesty; 友善 friendliness.
I'm not going to comment too much on this list. The one thing I am going to say is that it's quite impressive how pervasive it is. I see this list every day. There is basically no way to live here without coming into regular contact with it. I guess unless you never leave your house.

One of the signs, on the steps leading up to a temple.

In December I will have the opportunity to go to a 高中 (high school) to see how the children are taught there. I will of course report later. :)

For now, bye-bye and until next time!

Chinese Word of the Day: 写画 paint a picture with ink. It literally means "write a picture". In China, works of calligraphy often contain a picture, a poem/description of the picture and always the seal of the artist. I went to a calligraphy exhibition today which was amazing :)

It's A Wonderful World

The last three days have been amazing. Let me tell you all about it.

Wednesday was the 11th November, 11-11, a day that in most countries has some significance. In Germany it is the beginning of carnival. In the UK it's Remembrance Day. And in China? It's Singles' Day. Because hey, we need some celebration too. Who needs Valentine's Day anyway? This day is mainly celebrated by shops offering crazy discounts on everything. So naturally, after classes ended I went to a nearby mall to check them out. There were in fact a lot of things on discount, mainly shoes, the problem was that it was impossible to find a pair that fit me. So, momentarily beaten I returned to my dorm. But I am  not one to give up so easily, so I took to the Internet. Sites similar to Amazon and Ebay are very common in China and you can get practically anything online. Also, delivery usually only takes two days. So I logged into my 淘宝 account and started my search. And bam, like magic, I found shoes and a coat, both for around 10 Euros. Pretty insane, right? The shoes have already arrived, turns out I accidentally ordered two pairs, but I don't really care because they're amazing and I love them. So much for online shopping in China.

Me and my new shoes.

Thursday and Friday my university took us Chinese language students on a class trip. We started our trip Thursday morning at 7 o'clock. A little early for my taste but luckily we had a two hour long bus ride for sleeping. Our destination was Baoji (宝鸡), a "small" city of 3.7 million inhabitants. There we visited the Baoji Bronze Museum. They have bronze ware from as early as the Zhou Dynasty, which lasted from around 1000 BC to 256 BC. There are mainly household articles, like bowls and cups exhibited there, but also some weapons and of course ritual vessels. The bronze findings are especially valuable because in ancient China they were also used for writing on (paper only appeared in the Han Dynasty). They hold historical records and also show the development of Chinese characters. Although it wasn't always easy to understand the Chinese guide, ,it was a very interesting place. So here, have some pictures!

Cool architecture, right?

中国, China. This word first appeared on bronze that is exhibited here. At the time it meant "middle land", it was only used to name the country later.

Alcohol containers. Bronze household articles were mainly used by families of high social status, the common folk used pottery, which I guess is exhibited in some other museum.

For all the Sinologists - ge! A kind of Chinese halberd.

After the Bronze museum we went to the Jintai temple of Baoji, a Daoist temple on a beautiful little hill. It was a lovely place and we were once again shown around by a Chinese guide. There were sadly so many statues of holy figures that I now don't remember any of them. Also no pictures, because I always feel like it would be rude to take pictures of these places of worship.

Okay, you get ONE picture.

Also look at these Ginkgo trees. So pretty.

We were still not done with our day of sight-seeing, so we hopped on the bus again and were taken up the hill on a street of questionable safety and arrived at the mausoleum of Tang emperor Qin and his wife. The two are buried in seperate graves which both have their own entrance tunnel. One 20m underground, the other one 18m. So down we went, to admire the statues and bronzeware that were left to accompany them into the world of the dead. No pictures allowed though.

A sign that shows how the spot where the mausoleum is built is in accordance with Fengshui principles. The mausoleum itself is the snake (not pictured), there is a turtle in the North (a hill), a dragon in the East (also a hill), a tiger in the West (a hill that is smaller than the dragon) and a phoenix in the South (a river). I recommend you inform yourselves if you're interested in this, I can't really make this caption any longer.

Then it was time to get back on the bus and be taken to Tianshui (天水) in Gansu (甘肃) province, another small city of 3.9 inhabitants. We drove through 34(!!) tunnels and the journey took about three hours. Unfortunately it was already quite late, thus impossible to appreciate the landscape. Instead I spent the busride marvelling at the dark night sky and the stars. It had been too long since I've seen them. I even saw a shooting star :) We spent the night in a very fancy hotel with not so fancy KFC for dinner. (We didn't choose to be fed this, it was bought for us by the travel company, just so you know. I would never choose to eat at KFC voluntarily.)

So after a night's rest in the most comfortable bed ever, we were on our feet again at 8 in the morning. We visited the 伏羲庙, Fuxi temple of Tianshui. Fuxi is a legendary figure who is said to have created humankind from clay, together with his wife, who was also his sister. Also he taught humans how to hunt, fish and cook. What he is most famous for is that the 8 trigrams (八卦) were revealed to him in the form of a dragon horse with markings. These trigrams are combinations of three continuous or broken lines, which represent different natural phenomena, directions, body parts...They represent a lot of things. A broken line here stands for yin 阴, the female/passive and an unbroken line stands for yang 阳, the male/active. These, according to Daoism, are complementary forces that interact in the world and always need each other to exist. Basically everything contains both yin and yang, which are always influencing each other. So, everything is constantly in flux, nothing ever constant. The trigrams were then combined to form 64 hexagrams which were and are used for predicting the future (see Yijing 已经, also known as I Ching, the Book of Changes. Traditionally thought to have been written by Fuxi.) Basically Fuxi was a pretty great guy. Thanks.

This tree was planted in the Tang dynasty, even before the temple was built (Ming dynasty). According to our guide, it has been hollow for a long time and because people would put offerings into the hole, there were 40 valuable pieces of ancient art found inside it. Also it survived being struck by lightning.

In the middle, the eight trigrams, around them the 64 hexagrams.

Nature vs. Architecture.

Our last stop on this trip was also the most spectacular one. We went to one of the four Buddhist grottoes of China, Maijishan (麦积山) grottoes. These are 194 caves carved into Maiji mountain, most of them have a Buddha/Bodhisattva statue inside of them. The statues range in age from the Northern Wei (386-534) to Qing (1644-1912). Because of this, visiting the grottoes gives one an overview of over 1000 years of art history. We learned that during the Wei rule, it was common to make Buddha statues very slim, they turned fatter during the Sui dynasty. We also saw a statue of a Western Bodhisattva, who according to legend brought music to China. It was a wonderful place and the air was clean!! It smelled of snow, almost brought me to tears. A perfect end to our trip.

For those who don't like to walk.

Beautiful landscape. Note also the loudspeakers in the tall tree. Which we suspect to not be entirely natural.

There it is :)

Face to face with the giant Bodhisattvas.

Looking down. What a great view these statues have.

Slim.

Fat. Also this is the Westerner, recognizable by his beautiful wavy hair.

These cute little puppies.

They decided to follow us down the mountain, hoping for some food. They were adorable.

So those of you who are still with me, thank you for reading this slightly longer than normal post. Love from me!

Also, here are a few more oddities.

Rules for waiters. The seven "no"s of bringing food. Don't give the food to customers if: the ingredients aren't correct, the plates aren't clean, the temperature isn't high enough, the colour isn't correct, the quantity isn't enough, the name isn't right, the number of the chef isn't provided. These lists of don'ts are quite commonly seen in China.

They quite often get the "unrecyclable" wrong. Frequently with hilarious results.

"Wonderful circumstances"

Chinese Word of the Day: 导游 daoyou, tour guide.

I Am The Passenger

大家好！

I spent the last four days doing some more exploring in and around Xi'an, this time with Thomas, who most of you will know as one of my awesome classmates from back in Leipzig. The reason for his coming was the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting that was held in Beijing this weekend. The government gave all students in Beijing six days of holidays, in an attempt to make the city less crowded and polluted. Whether if worked or not, I don't know. In any case, it was a great opportunity for the Beijing-ers to do some travelling.

Thomas arrived on Thursday at 8:30 in the morning. It was luckily pretty easy to spot him in the crowd coming out from the station, a foreigner in China just sticks out like a sore thumb. After him being awestruck by the sheer amount of open space that we have here in Xi'an, we went to check him into his hotel room. On Thursday we went to look at all the main attractions of the city centre, Bell tower, Drum tower, Great Mosque and Muslim quarter. We also found time to stop at a little bead shop. It is quite common to see this kind of shop at tourist attractions, they sell beads with Chinese characters on them. They just separate them by first letter and the customers have to look through the containers by themselves. It's easy to spend half an hour at this shop just looking for the characters in your name, because each container has about 200 different characters. We did find our respective Chinese names though and I now have an awesome bracelet.In the evening we rented bicycles to go around the city wall. The Xi'an city wall goes around the city centre in a square, it takes about 90 minutes to go around it by bike. Very fun, although painful.

A street in the Muslim quarter.

In the temple of the City God - five Confucian virtues - 信 trustworthy, 智 wise, 礼 proper etiquette, 义 just, 仁 humane. Some of these characters look different from the ones in the picture because the pictured characters are traditional ones and I can only type in simplified characters.

On the city wall. What do you think the black thing are? We were thinking eyebrows, but then the decision to put them below the face just seems strange.

The bell tower looking flawless as always.

On Friday we went to Xingqing Park, which you might remember as the location of my earlier photoshoot. This was the first time I went to the park in the morning, it was an amazing experience. Every square is filled with people doing some kind of activity. We were greeted by a group of about 100 elderly women (called 大妈, "big/great mother") dancing together. Behind them were couples doing the waltz and to the side some people were playing with Bailong Balls. While we drinking in the scenery, a painter sat down a few meters away from us and started sketching. He soon attracted a small crowd of spectators who began to advise him on how to make it look more like us. We purchased his drawing and went on exploring. The most impressive sight for me was a huge group of people who were gathered around a tree, singing together. They had an orchestra and a conductor and sounded pretty amazing.

The park choir.

After lunch it was time for me to prepare myself for the International Students' Speech Competition. An event that all Confucius Institute scholarship recipients were forced to participate in. We had to prepare a speech of four minutes and then recite it in front of an audience. The stuff of nightmares, basically. Even better, I was number 27 of 27, so I had almost 2 hours of sitting around and worrying to do before it was my turn. But finally I did my thing, it was fine, I won a backpack and the day was over. Almost. We decided to go see the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, which was sadly already closed. Our search for food then led us into an area where incredibly big shopping malls were being constructed, but which was almost abandoned by Chinese standards. Very few people on the street. So, after an hour of clueless walking around in disbelief, we went to 小寨, Xi'an's main shopping/eating district and had dinner there.

On Saturday it was time for Xi'an's main attraction, the Terracotta Warriors. Still as impressive as last week, although significantly colder. Afterwards we went to 华清池, hot springs close to Xi'an. It was beautiful there, we spent about half an hour warming our legs over the hot water. The place should also be of interest to the historians among you. Chiang Kai-shek resided here in 1936, during the Chinese Civil War. He was detained by two of his party's (Guomindang, Chinese Nationalist Party) marshals, who wanted to force him to form a united front with the Chinese Communist Party in order to fight the Japanese invasion. This event is known as the Xi'an Incident and is regarded as a major turning point in Chinese history. Hard to believe when one is walking through the beautiful scenery, that a kidnapping once took place here.

Main pit.

This is what the figures are thought to have looked like at the time of their creation.

Statue at the entrance to the hot springs. These are Emperor Xuanzong (Tang Dynasty) and his concubine Lady Yang, who bathed in the springs.

Me with the backpack that I won at the competition.

What a nice place to be detained in, don't you think?

The water is warm! Heaven on earth.

Sunday morning we had a bit of a different experience. We went to an orphanage in one of the villages surrounding Xi'an to teach English to the kids there. It was pretty crazy, teaching 25 children who are screaming at each other is quite a challenge. It was a great experience anyway and I will be going there again. There is a group of volunteers from my university who go to the orphanage every Sunday. Really admirable work. After getting back and having lunch we then went to 碑林, a collection of 3000 steles with Chinese texts carved into them. The most impressive part for me was the room with all the Confucian classics carved into stone. The easiest text to recognize was the Book of Changes 易经 because the hexagrams stick out. Also fairly easy to pick out was 论语, the Analects of Confucius, because as one of the guides put it, it's a lot of "The Master speaks, The Master speaks, The Master speaks..." (子曰，子曰，子曰).
The museum was very impressive, but I will have to go again with a Chinese guide, for more understanding. In the evening we went to a shop called 德国啤酒, German beer, which sold the most disappointing beer ever, and then had a great dinner with traditional Xi'an food.

Public toilet in the village.

This morning, we then had to get up at 6 and go to the train station. Danke Thomas! I had a great time showing my new home town to yet another visitor. Now normality returns to my weeks. Although, not quite yet! Tomorrow is 双11, the 11 November, also known as 光棍节 Singles' day. Mainly what happens is that all shops have crazy sales, kind of like Black Friday, only more Chinese. I will report more later.

For now, hugs and kisses from an increasingly cold and still not space-heated Xi'an.

Chinese Word of the Day: 退房 tuifang, check out. No explanation necessary.

Also, three pictures of oddities. The fact that they are all red is a coincidence by the way. Although I guess I am in China after all.

These are also sometimes pink. Although usually the translation is correct.

An actual phone to call the fire brigade.

Roses in November.

A Good Day to Run

 or Being a Tourist In Your Own City.

Hey guys!

I've had an eventful weekend to say the least. My sister came to visit me :) She arrived last Thursday at 14:30. I took the airport bus from the train station, which was substantially less terrifying than the first time on that bus. I had a small moment of happiness on the bus, when I realized that I am now really living in China. I can understand weird Taiwanese TV series, I can read novels and I can take the bus without getting lost. It's amazing to me that I still have nine months in this fascinating place. End reflective paragraph.

Anyway, I got to the airport way too early, so I treated myself to the cutest Dunkin' Donuts ever and waited. Then my sister finally arrived and we took the bus back into Xi'an. There is unfortunately no metro line that goes to the airport yet, although it is being constructed at the moment. The bus takes between one and two hours, depending on traffic. At least you get an interesting ride through the suburbs of the city. The bus goes through a development area, meaning that there are new neighbourhoods being constructed from scratch. Very impressive, also crazy.

The aforementioned donut.

In my sister's hostel we met a girl from Chongqing who was in Xi'an to take her IELTS who came with us to the Muslim quarter to have dinner. The Muslim quarter is a part of town center where people of the Muslim Hui minority (回民) sell their food, which is absolutely delicious. An example of traditional Xi'an food are Biangbiangmian, broad and thick noodles in spicy sauce with a very complicated character. See for yourselves. If you like spicy food, definitely come visit me here :) Also if you like pomegranates, but more on that momentarily. After dinner we went to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda to watch the fountain show that happens there every evening from March to October. Xi'an people say the fountain is the biggest one in China. Very nice anyway.

The pagoda and fountain.

On Friday we went to visit the Terracotta warriors, basically a dream come true for me. It's wonderful finally getting to see a place that you heard so much about. The scope of the army is really overwhelming. We also went to the site of the mausoleum of the first Qin emperor, which is what the army was built to protect. Sadly you cannot look at the actual excavation site of the mausoleum, but there is a beautiful park around it which is definitely also worth a visit. Afterwards we bought pomegranates in Lintong, the village/district of Xi'an near the Terracotta warriors. This place is known throughout China as a great place to buy pomegranates and most people who come to visit the warriors leave with a bag of fruit. They are DELICIOUS.

No pictures of the Terracotta warriors, forgot my camera :( Instead have this one. Proof of the crazy good weather we had this weekend.

Saturday morning I participated in the Xi'an City Wall Marathon. Now don't get too excited, I only ran 5km, but for me personally that's already quite an accomplishmet. The atmosphere at the run was amazing, not competitive at all, a lot of people were actually mainly there to get onto the wall for free. I came in 10th place by the way, and I won a towel! The first time I've ever won anything by doing sports :D After the run I hurried back to university for a quick shower and then back into town centre to meet my sister. We went to all the classic Xi'an town centre attractions, namely the Bell tower, the Drum tower, the Great Mosque and the City Wall (this time I paid). Especially the Great Mosque was beautiful, a place of quiet in the busy city. In the evening we went to have Sichuan food with a few of my classmates, which was delicious as always.

The South Gate in the morning.

Go!

The South Gate in the evening.

Sunday morning my sister left for Shanghai. It was a great weekend which made me fall in love with Xi'an a little more. I've also begun to appreciate its bus system immensely. From Jiaotong University, every main Xi'an attraction is reachable directly by bus. And sometimes you even get a seat.

Basically, if any of you ever want to come visit me here, please feel free. I will provide free guide services and a bed in a hostel only costs 5 euros a night. Also a bus ride is about 6 cents.

Thank you Lena for coming! Love you x

Chinese Word of the Day: 遮瑕 zhexia, concealer. Found a Sephora.