Jinsha Site Museum

break


Some of the Chinese professors who run this program set up a field trip for us (read totally free and we get driven around). We went to the JinSha Site Museum. It's in Chengdu, we took minivans, fun times. In 2001 when getting ready to lay foundation a real estate company found artifacts. Since then excavation has been going non stop. Around some of the sites have been built huge museums, exhibition halls. You can walk amongst the sites on raised boardwalks. The best stuff that has been found is very well displayed through many smaller rooms. It was beautiful and well designed. They have room for expansion. The land surrounding the museum looks like a park. It's all well kept and kids were running around. The whole site covers many kilometers, and there are many different places where excavation is going on. The main site is a religious complex. Most of the artifacts they are recovering are 2,000 to 3,000 years old.



So I wasn't going to blog that I was sick. But I can't really get away with just saying I didn't pay attention on a museum tour, that's really not in my personality. I got sick last week. I just had a stomach thing. I missed two days of class, and spent one day in bed. The field trip was the second day of my illness, I wasn't really over it yet, but I felt better. I ate some bread for lunch and then tried to go on the field trip. My stomach really hated that bread, I had really bad tension, it felt like I had eaten a rock. So I was in a lot of pain and very tired, so I missed out on a lot of the educational stuff going on around me. I thought it was a beautiful trip though, and I think when Tanner comes I'll take him back to the museum.

This was the first gold mask found at the site. It's beautiful and so very delicate. It is also tiny, you don't really get the scale in the photograph. It's smaller than the palm of my hand. I was pretty amazed.


There were beautiful works in jade as well. It was dim so I didn't take very many photos since they were blurred.
One of the more important finds are a whole bunch of elephant tusks. They found them whole and in pieces or carved for tool use and decoration. It helped the anthropologists determine that the climate in the Sichuan basin was much warmer when the settlements they are studying were alive. So that was interesting.


One of the things every loved best at the museum was an enormous root. It was the size of someones living room. It was preserved almost entirely intact. They can exposed it and then built a glass floor above it. The tree was thousands of years old when it died and then was preserved for another few thousand years.






The treat for us American students was a trip to a recent dig near the museums. It was maybe ten minutes away by car. It was just a lot in between some apartment blocks and some construction. I guess the top layers were destroyed by the construction. They were already working on deeper layers of soil, and finding very old artifacts. I was really surprised that the dig was only five days old. We were really there. Older men and women were using hoes and shovels to clear away layers of soil. All of them were watched over by Chinese students with clipboards, trowels and zip lock baggies for anything they found. I was having a hard time picturing Indiana Jones running around, but I tried.



I really loved this woman's hair.



As we started to tune out the explanations in Chinese and wander around we ended up all finding and standing near the SKELETON! I mean really! I got to walk around a fresh dig sit with very little supervision. We chatted with the Chinese graduate students. We got to examine a skeleton, I am pretty sure they told us he was 800 years old, up close and personal. The graduate student in whose plot it was found was beaming, he was so happy to tell us all about it.




The site was actually really surprising. It was very informal. It was Friday afternoon and there were kids running around. The children of local neighbors and some of the adults working there.
It was also an image that is commonly used to explain China today. In front of us was a potentially important archaeological site and right behind it we could watch more buildings going up. It definitely is not such a cliche when you are actually standing there watching it all.



I ate a real dinner and real lunch today without feeling sick, so I am all better. I have also been away from home for two months now. I have been a little sad and lazy the last two weeks, getting sick just made me fed up. So I gave myself a pep talk and have woke up feeling much happier and more optimistic the past two days. I got a few things done, and doing one things leads me to to another. So I think I can catch up in a few weeks in my classes, well before Tanner gets here.

I also need to CONGRATULATE RHEA! I just found out today that she was accepted into the study abroad program she wanted to do. I know it is through the English Department at the UW. She'll study in London for one quarter this spring. I think it's a literature studies seminar. It won't put off her graduation (which will most likely happen before or at the same time as mine). So it sounds like she really picked the best program and they wanted her. I am so happy AND so upset that I won't be able to visit!

Art Class

I dropped Taiji. I actually only had that class once. I dropped it partly because of reasons beyond my control and partly because I'm a flake.

But I have this other class. It's a Chinese Art and Culture class, I assumed from the syllabus it was art appreciation. It turns out that we get to actually make art often in the class as well. The first class was a lesson in Calligraphy. We had an older Chinese woman, Ming Laoshi, a professional artist, demonstrate calligraphy for us. We bought brushes and our homework was to practice calligraphy. We didn't get much of a lesson, but it was fun to try it back at home anyways. We also got a packet that included the history of calligraphy.

This week Ming Laoshi came back for another class. She demonstrated Chinese traditional painting. She showed us bamboo and many kinds of flowers. She demonstrated how to paint a lotus flower, they are the easiest. We were supposed to work in a semi abstract style. You have to mix the paint with water, and then carefully get the paint on the brush, so that when you put it to the paper you get a gradient of color. We needed a few kinds of brushes, for different parts of the plant. It was great. It felt a little like a grade school class, everyone was standing, painting and chatting. Ming Laoshi also found something to compliment in almost all of our works, like a grade school teacher.

In the end Ming Laoshi chose one painting that was the most like hers, and gave that artist the painting she had made as an example. She chose to give it to me! I was very surprised with myself. It was so much fun. I think I should practice more. I would like to continue to practice both the calligraphy and the painting. It would be nice to come back to America with a Chinese hobby.

Below is Ming Laoshi's lotus.
Mine is above.
I took the photos of the paintings up on my wall. The quality of the photos isn't very good.




Here is also Ming Laoshi's calligraphy, it's my Chinese name, Bai Wei



We have class every Tuesday evening. Next week a landscape artist is coming from far away, our professor, whose name I have forgotten, said that the landscape artist was taking a long distance bus, just for this one lesson. So yeah. We are treated so well here, I'm often surprised at the fun and special opportunities we are given. I think a bunch of kids in the class don't like it, they thought it would be more about the history of Chinese art, and not art classes. I am really enjoying it.

Like, Oh My God, So Exciting

Hey Everyone! I don't know how this works, but when I plug into the internet with the land line on my own laptop I can update and read my blog!
I read everyone's comments, thank you all for the support and the well wishes. It really means a lot to me.
Thanks again to Tanner for taking the time to do this. It will probably take me as long or longer to upload photos and that whole deal. But I'm really excited to do it for myself now.
I will also probably post often and be really annoying with it now!

Shanghai Part 2

This entry got really long, I had a good time. It’s really the first time I travelled alone, and I just wanted to write so much. So I broke it up into two halfs, right in the middle of my second full day in Shanghai. Like, whatever.

I got to the MOCA. The exhibit was about Gaudi, called The Cosmos of Gaudi. It was sort of an odd exhibit. The bottom floor was models and tools he used to practice designs for his architecture. It had very technical descriptions of things. He called himself a “geometrist” and so it was strong on geometry and math and physics and all that stuff that holds up cool looking buildings. I actually wrote down some direct quotes from the exhibit, I kept thinking about Tanner.

Convex vaults are formed by hyperbolic parabaloid. A hyperbolic parabaloid is a surface generated by straight lines (always parallel) that rest on two straight directrices that intersect a space.


I think they made up some of those words.

The exhibit also had some of the furniture and decorative pieces he designed. I really enjoyed it actually. It was not an exhibit I would have run out to see on my own, had it come to Seattle. It very much made me want to go to Spain to see his work as it was intended.















I also went to M50. Oh man! It’s an industrial complex that was turned into an art community not that long ago. It is chalk full of galleries and studios. Many were closed because of the holiday. I was really excited about going here. My friend from Emerson, Caitlin Diana Doyle, had given me a book about design in Shanghai for Christmas. I’m so glad I went. I really love contemporary art. I saw some things I loved. Shanghai is the modern art capital of China, and this complex is world famous. I really wish I could grow up and have money and buy modern art for my home…






OH man. Sitting outside in the middle of this complex, in my polka dot shirt, I felt so grown up and so happy. I can’t believe I actually made it. I was journaling about the art I had spent hours looking at, what I liked and didn’t like, what I was inspired by. I wrote about the kinds of hopes I had for my own future. I can’t believe I was actually in Shanghai, travelling alone, getting to see everything I wanted to, and not having to worry about a thing. I don’t often feel like an adult yet, I take care of myself and am very adult, but I don’t really think of myself as an “independent woman.” That’s been a goal of mine for a little while now, and being in Shanghai that afternoon, I really did feel like it. I was so proud of myself. I’m so happy I came all this way to spend a year in China.







I went back to the hostel that evening. I had a run and coke and pizza for dinner. I just want to say. Wow. I don’t drink hard alcohol very often, but after a long day in the heat and not having it for a while, that rum and coke tasted great. (Hum, maybe I won’t sweat in that sentence, but I want to, but I shouldn’t, hum…). Also, the bar on top of my hostel, where I had dinner, has a direct view of Pudong, it was fabulous. I will definitely go back there if I’m in Shanghai again (when I am in Shanghai again!). Oh yeah, it was Captain Hostel, the whole thing was completely done up in a nautical theme. It was sweet.

The next day I took the subway and caught a ride to the factory. Darren and I interviewed Mr. Chuang, the factory owner. It went fine. He was very open with us. We didn’t find out anything new though. I missed Boston often, the subway made me miss Boston. I thought of Caitlin often, I hope she reads this and knows the book she gave me really inspired me to enjoy Shanghai in a really classy way.

I spent that evening in Shanghai. I was pretty worn out. I bought a paperback. Ah! It was so great! I bought a G.M. Ford novel, No Man’s Land. I couldn’t resist, as soon as I saw his name. It’s with his new character Frank Corso, and it didn’t take place in Seattle. I didn’t like it as much as his funnier works. But I thought about my mom and my Grandpa Jim the whole time and enjoyed myself. I read it in a really wonderful coffee shop, I just relaxed and enjoyed the air conditioning.

Then I took the train home.

Except this little boy! On the train ride home there was a little boy who was just so cute. I wanted to keep him! He was chubby all over and the cutest dimples! He was sweet too, and almost well behaved (most city kids are spoiled! And act horribly on the train! Ugh).

I got home and it was cool and raining in Chengdu. I am surprised at how strongly I felt on arriving back in the city. After only a month it doesn’t seem like Chengdu would feel like home, but it really almost did. I felt relieved and more optimistic as soon as we got here. I settled right back into life here. I need to catch up on my sleep and study harder.

So that was trip to Shanghai! It might have been more productive, both in research and sights seen, but I think it was just right, it was certainly the best I could do. I do feel inspired. It made me want to travel more. It made me really happy that I have so many interests and that I’m so open and interested in life. I want to see every city and just enjoy wandering and eating and watching!

Shanghai Part 1

We had a week off in October for a national holiday. I decided a week before that if Darren was going to go to Shanghai to do research I wanted to go to. While we were in Yangjuen we were told that 32 people had left for Shanghai to work in a factory. The owner of the factory is an old friend of Steve (the professor who set up this program and is advising my research project). So alright. It was a bit tricky, Darren is one of those people who won’t give you a serious answer and avoids concrete decisions. Obviously I am just the opposite. I appreciate his humor and am one of the only people in this group who could have had fun with him for that many days in a row though, so we both knew it would be fine.

I bought the train tickets all by myself. Score 1! The train trip to Shanghai is 40 hours long. The train doesn’t go straight east, it has to go north, through Xi’an for example. The train ride to Shanghai was nice. We chatted with the people around us (mostly Darren chatted and I sort of listened, I was still too shy about using my Chinese, but Darren made me practice some). I love looking out the window. But by the second day I was reading and listening to music. I have been working on Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, so I had plenty to read.

We got to Shanghai and the first I noticed wasn’t the crowds, but the weather. It was hot and humid. Ugh. We bought our return tickets, and we had Burger King for lunch. Yes American food! It was fun. Darren decided to maybe find the factory or a hotel near it. So he left for the public bus.

I however was going to stay on the Bund, I had sightseeing to do! I also didn’t have as much research to do as Darren. Of course my cab pulls up at the address of what my guide book says is a budget hotel. Sheesh. The Astor House Hotel is not a budget hotel. But I didn’t want to catch another cab, and I decided to just go with the flow, they had an available single for the night. So I staying in a fancy hotel, by myself, just a block off the Bund. Score 2!

Okay, so the hotel. It was the first Western hotel to open in Shanghai. It has portraits of celebrities who have stayed there, and there are special celebrity rooms, one of which is known as the “Albert Einstein” room. It was expensive but didn’t cost more than the nearby chain hotels in Shanghai do. When by guide book was written it was run down and had a lot of dorm style rooms. Since then it has been refurbished and is moving upscale. The doormen wear Scottish outfits and there is a sing outside saying “Appropriate Attire Required.” The ballroom was closed that night because they were hosting a very posh Shanghai wedding. I can give the link of for the website if you are interested.

I took a nap and a shower and went out on the town. I walked the length of Nianjing Lu, which is the Shanghainese version of Malibu Drive or 5th Avenue. It was so crowded you couldn’t take more than five or six steps without brushing up against or bumping into other people. I also noticed that I was tall! In Chengdu in a crowd I never feel obviously tall. In Shanghai I was obviously tall. It was really fun. I tried to shop, but the crowds were too much. At one point I caught myself thinking “I want to punch one of these little women in the back of the head so badly,” I realized I needed to stop shopping then. I did buy some earrings, and postcards. I bought some nice fleece warm up pants to wear in the dorms.

Later that night outside my hotel I walked up the Bund. There were huge crowds. Someone, a white man, asked me if there were going to fireworks. Of course I didn’t know. But I hung around looking at the Pudong district and the night lights for an hour. I chatted with a nice family. When they left after hanging around I realized that there weren’t fireworks, everyone was just looking at the view, for hours. I walked around in the crowd, I ate street food, and went back to the hotel. I watched CNN. I also got room service, first time in my life! I got a ham sandwich, I know, I know, but I hadn’t had western food since I got here, so spoiling myself seemed alright. Besides, Shanghai food isn’t any good after eating Sichuan food for a month. I can say it was one of the most satisfying sandwiches I have ever had (also one of the most expensive).

It really was a beautiful night. I enjoy cities. I love the energy and the activity. I enjoy watching people. The lights of the Pudong were beautiful. Shanghai has a nice ocean breeze and in the evening the temperature is perfect. Occasionally I could even smell the ocean. There were so many families out that night, daughters helping their aged mothers through the crowd, and a lot of dads with tired kids on their shoulders. It very much felt like a holiday as well, most of the crowds were other Chinese people coming into Shanghai for the holiday. I felt very comfortable just wandering and enjoying the atmosphere.

The next day I didn’t go out in the morning. I had breakfast at the hotel. Breakfast is in the ballroom, it has chandeliers and ancient hardwood floors. It was nicest room I have ever eaten in. While I was eating a tour was let in to look at the room. It was great. I had a mix of delicious western and Chinese breakfast foods. I was dressed up for my day, both for being in Shanghai and also in case I was going to interview the owner of the factory that day. I felt like everyone could have guessed I wasn’t really in Shanghai for an interview or anything, but a student attempting to dress up.

The factory had the company driver pick me up. I won’t go in to details. I spent the day on the third floor of the factory office building, which has dorms and a kitchen for the foreman and office workers. I also spent half the evening in the dormitories for the people who work at the factory. I got to interview the girls from Yangjuen, they don’t actually fit the qualifications for my project, but it was interesting, fun and kind of sad. Darren and I worked together to interview all the people from Yangjuen. As far as factories in Shanghai go, the people are being treated well. It won’t stop bothering me that 18 year old girls are working 10 to 12 hour days 6 days a week, no matter how well the factory is set up.

The people from Yangjuen are always nice. We all had dinner together. It was very homey and nice to be with them. Darren and I were also really silly and enjoyed that day together. I stayed in the factory that night, for free.

The next day was our free day. Darren was going to a suburb of Shanghai to see some friends. I was driven back to the city center. That day was the best by far. I walked to the People’s Park in the center o f the city. There is such great architecture in the city. I thought about going to the Shanghai Museum but the line was out the door. So I headed for the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, the MOCA. On the way some girls my age tried to start talking to me in English.

Well, I decided to be more spontaneous right? I chatted with them. They were going to a tea ceremony and asked if I would go with. A few of them were English majors and wanted to practice. They were all holiday from Xi’an Transportation College. The teahouse was nearby. I had a blast. At one point they kept going on and on about how beautiful I was. We joked about boyfriends. The girl doing the presentation was our age too, and we kept distracting her from her job. I learned a lot about tea. Of course at the end I was pressure into buying some tea, on top of the cost of the presentation. I think we all got scammed a little, and me most, but I say, it was the most fun I’ll ever have getting scammed. The girls all gave me their email addresses and phone numbers. I’ve been getting text messages from them. They also heard my name wrong, and before I knew it were calling me Bai Lu, instead of Bai Wei. Bai Lu really reminds me of “Balu” (spelling) from the Disney version of the Jungle Book. I kept humming “I w anna be like you u u u…” and thinking of my “uncle” Carl all afternoon. tos of tea ceremony

A little bit of today

So today was a pretty typical day for the beginning of my year.

My alarm woke me up, and decided not to get up. I didn’t sleep well on the train back from Shanghai and then again last night. I’ve been skipping classes often since school started four weeks ago. Before the October break it wasn’t a big deal. Everyone (mostly Eddie) has been telling us that classes don’t get serious until after the break. So I slept some more. I went to check my email and found Tanner online. We had a video chat. That’s always fun, I still haven’t gotten my mom to do one with me. She sucks (/smile). While I was down at the room where we can access the wireless internet I chatted with Geoff a little, he also skipped class.

I came back to my room and by then it was noon. Brandy came buy to get some things she had left here, she’s another girl in my program. We ended up chatting about our vacations, and life, for an hour. I cleaned my room while we talked. After she left I got dressed for real and put on some makeup. I walked across campus to the West Gate, my norm is of course near the East Gate.

My walk today was one of the best I’ve had so far. I end up walking everywhere, campus is huge and it always feels lazy to pay for a rickshaw, bus or cab. I’ve been listening to my Mp3 player lately when I walk. I haven’t owned one before. I listened to The Best of Van Morrison. I’ve been listening to that album a lot lately. I ripped it from my mom. It’s so good! There are some really classy songs, some that are really upbeat and fun, some that are romantic and some that are really bluesy. The weather today was cool; it’s in the 50s Fahrenheit. The wind from a weather system that passed over us last night is still blowing, it’s moving pretty well, I would say its breezy today. The leaves are starting to turn, and a lot of the little college roads I like to walk along are lined with trees rustling in the wind. It rained overnight so it’s damp as well. It felt very much like fall. It still smells and sounds so different that I didn’t really feel like I was home. But I definitely felt like the weather was calm, and comforting. Van Morrison also reminded me of home. I felt very content to be walking.

As I write this I keep thinking of my friend Sophia. I know she loves fall, even more then I do. We’ve been staying in touch more lately, I miss her. I miss you Sophia.

I got to the West Gate. I bought some phone cards. The man who I always buy them from at the West Gate only speaks Sichuanhua, so he chats at me and smiles, knowing I won’t respond. He always gives us white kids a good deal, he is friendly with Eddie. I called home but was too late, Mom and Scott were sleeping and Rhea wanted to finish her homework so she could go to bed as well. I went grocery shopping at Hao You Dou，好友都 , it’s translated as Trust Mart, a direct translation is something like “All We Have is Good.” It’s like a Fred Meyer. I always feel overwhelmed and kind of wander around looking at things, which is part of the reason I go. I never seem to find everything I need, I couldn’t find brown sugar for my oatmeal, but I found some other good things (I bought organic oatmeal on accident last week, it’s grown in China too, I was excited when I got home and realized I bought organic! It’s very good and cooks quickly). I also seem to hold up the line every time I go to Hao You Dou. I grabbed some potatoes, but I failed to notice the woman who weighs and labels your produce. The checker doesn’t have codes for produce, so we had to wait. This time everyone was nice to me about it.

I walked my groceries home. I put them away and ate some junk food. Lisa and I chatted. I uploaded my photos from my trip to Shanghai and now I’m writing a note. I need to write an entry about Shanghai but I know that will take longer. I’m feeling mellow and kind of lazy.

So, that was my day today. It’s pretty normal, only most days I go to class first, and then end up studying at about 5 o’clock, instead of updating my blog.

And for those of you who are actually reading my blog, thanks! I’ve gotten a lot of compliments and comments about it lately. I really appreciate it. You know me, I really like to talk, about myself and everything else. So being this far away from everyone is sometimes difficult. I do feel more connected writing this, even if I’m never sure who is reading it. I also worked really hard for this exchange, and it’s nice to be able to share it with everyone, and know everyone is proud of me.

aww, sappy