Song Number 1: Chasing the Sun

Simply put, the plane ride to Beijing was not pleasant. Sitting in one spot for half a day is painful. Thankfully, I had Chinese to take my mind off things. A man from Chengdu sitting next to me was so kind to help me review vocabulary and grammar. I heard myself using the basic dialogue responses that Zhou laoshi had prepared. Chinese 115 at Yale is amazing.
Every so often while I studied, I looked outside the window to enjoy the scenery. The plane took me through every possible geographic region - I saw the Pacific, the Canadian mountain range, its forests, the freezing waters of the North Pole at noon (icebergs included), Chinese desert, Chinese tundra, Chinese farmland... all under the sun. I moved with the sun, rotating around the Earth, casting my shadow 30,000 feet up in the air, my orange round ball of a friend some 65 million miles away.
The humidity hit me like a batting ram when I got off the plane. After customs and baggage claim, I saw thousands of Chinese teenagers crowded around the entrance with orange balloons, waiting for some celebrity to come. I felt pairs of eyes follow me all the way out of the airport - why do they make it so evident?
I took a bus to Wudaokou, thankfully met up with a senior Light Fellow called Jason, who helped me get a taxi to my couchsurfing host's address. My host was really relaxed - an Austrian native, he makes his living taking amazing photographs and teaching English. He's pretty good at Japanese, but his Chinese is not up to par, yet. Like me, he said that he came to China to see it before the Olympic Games' tourists do.
The first afternoon and night there I felt myself blending into the crowd, joining the Asian mass. Occasionally I found myself gawking (though subtlely) at other foreigners, but I think I looked at them more to hear a bit of that comforting English language than for their foreign appearance. The only people who know I'm a foreigner are the waitresses. I'd spend too long poring over the menu while others know immediately what they want. Despite my language barrier (for now), the waitresses were really nice, speaking broken English and unbroken Chinese, while I made sense of them with broken Chinese and unbroken English.
People don't sleep very early in Wudaokou. I took a walk after a much needed shower, and night life is bizarre here. On the main street where everyone from the nearby apartments gather, groups of anywhere from five to fifteen sat in a circle, eating meat kabobs, noodles, and drinking huge bottles of beer. I walked a bit further down to the park, and saw old couples practicing how to waltz to some Chinese singer out of the '80s. After dodging incoming waltzers, the big street was filled with teenagers and other foreigners, some going to nightclubs, some to bars, some to karaoke, some to their homes, some to join their friends for a usual nine-o'clock-meat'n'beer-meal. The drivers liberally honk horns, groups of friends yell raucously into the night, and I lied on my host's couch, overcome by fatigue and jetlag.

edit 8:40 AM BST
I ate xiao baozi and ma2la4mi3sian4 (small meat dumplings and spicy noodles with vegetables) for breakfast. I must pack now, and go to Beijing Language and Culture University to register with Harvard.
note: Nobody seems to cook themselves breakfast in the morning.
note: Drink lots of water. Liters and liters more.

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Overture

I'm sitting on those un-welcoming drab gray cushion chairs at the airport, waiting for my 8:10 AM flight. Waking up on time to get to the airport was actually pretty easy - I guess some of the post-Yale test anxiety still lingers. Or maybe I'm just excited.

I'm not sure how to define my excitement. According to my parents, I generally contain any sort of enthusiasm with some sort of "Korean" dignity, whatever that means. On the way to the airport, my dad went on about how East Asian people know etiquette better than Westerners. But isn't etiquette relative? Take the Eastern and Western approaches to drinking soup. Western manners insist on no slurping noise, whereas in Korea, Japan, and China, slurping one's soup is considered perfectly acceptable - how else would the soup cool down? I'm guessing my dad meant that I take the unexpected on with a cool head with common sense, and, in his own words, "You're neither too happy or too sad." I see some truth in that. I'm happy that I'll set foot on new ground, but I'm not hyperventilating, "I'm going to China! I'm going to China!". I'm curious to see what the country's like, and how people are there. On the other hand, I'm sad that I'll be missing the chance to see my best friends, who will come after I leave. I'm sad to leave my family, and Willy. But I know that when I come back, they will be there, and I'll bring more stories to the dinner table.

I didn't plan to go to China before I started college. It just... happened. I thought that I'd be sitting in some lab or hospital right now, volunteering and researching, making my resume pretty for medical school. But how could I pass up a trip to China, all expenses covered? My language lectors had been amazing during my freshman year, giving me hilarious and often profound insight into Chinese culture and its state today. I want to use my knowledge and to see the sights I had only glimpsed in history textbooks. I want to see China before the Olympics in 2008, and the infestation of the world population in China. Yes, infestation is a strong word, and I know China's already very developed, but I want to see the mass of heads with homogenous black hair for myself.

My first rest place will be at a fellow couchsurfer's place. I can't give his name for privacy reasons. What is a couchsurfer, you ask? Couchsurfing is an internationally known method of travel, where independent travelers can sleep on other traveler's couches... for free. You can contact a couchsurfer online, ask for a couch, and hopefully you'll get one to rest on. It's all a system of trust - you pray to whatever deity you believe in that, as you sleep, your host will not sell your organs to the highest bidder. I exaggerate - there have there been such a case, according to the site. Here's the site for all of you who are interested: www.couchsurfing.com. This will be my first couchsurfing experience and I've never met my couchsurfer, nor do I clearly know how to get to his apartment, but it will be exciting to ride Beijing buses and taxis for the first time and meet completely random people. Stay tuned. I assure you, there will be a third post.

I just recently finished The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so I am compelled to add this final note: I hope you have your towel.

edit, 10:47 AM, Vancouver International Airport
I feel too lazy to get food or browse the duty-free shops at the moment. Vancouver is a beautiful city, a lot like Hong Kong (said the person next to me). Lots of little islands, beautiful clouds, but brown murky bay. Pity I won't be here for long.While I was waiting in the Canadian customs line, I happened to talk with a lady who published a book on bribery, and was going to China to talk about it to a government committee. She told me we were lucky to be stuck with U.S. bureaucracy and red tape rather than have to deal with developing government corruption. For example, in order for one to obtain a driver's license in America, one simply has to follow a few set age and knowledge rules, paying set fees here and there. The worst nuance that the American can complain about is waiting in line. As she said, "My students in India told me that to get a license there (in India), one could go about it legally and wait for days, or they could bribe the person behind the counter, have the driver's license personally delivered to their door, and have a commercial trucker's license to boot." I asked her what the word for bribery in Chinese was, and she said "hong2 bao1." Isn't that literally "red envelope"? I'm puzzled by this conversation, and a bit nervous. At least when I was in Tunisia I had a sense of Western values despite the Islamic influence, but what set of rules (or lack thereof) have I decided to subject myself to?

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