Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Pingyao - A Solo Experience

Hello again everyone,

The combination of my laziness and the things we are doing here mean that from this day on, or well, from when I started missing my Monday mark on, I won't be having a set date of publication any longer. :P I will get a post up each week for sure, but I can't promise when exactly they will show up.  With that little disclaimer out of the way, let's move on to the big event for the week:  my trip to the walled city of Pingyao.

The trip began strangely, as I ended up being the only non-Chinese speaking member to go.  The other guys here from America either had other plans for the day, or were sleeping when we were supposed to leave.  Granted, at 6:00 in the morning, I was wishing I was still asleep as well.  But instead, I boarded a train with six native Chinese speakers, hoping that the trip didn't turn into a total wash because I couldn't speak the language everyone else did.

And I wasn't disappointed.  Our tour guide spoke English, and so was able to answer all of my questions about the sites we visited.  The first of those sites was a slight (1 hour bus ride) detour from Pingyao.  Just like last week's update talked about the Rong Guo Mansion, where our book was turned into a film, this site was called the Qiao mansion, and was also the location of a movie.  However, unlike the first mansion, this mansion actually housed a family in an older dynasty.  I managed to get a few pictures here, and I'll share with you the ones that show the house the best, in my opinion.

This photo really shows the scale of the mansion. This expanse was one courtyard of the mansion.

This is a wooden replica of the mansion that is kept inside a room there.

While this garden has been, of course, refurbished and maintained, the original layout has been preserved.

After that, we drove into Pingyao, which is the last remaining walled city in China, and one of the few remaining in the world.  With a six kilometer perimeter, the city is not terribly large. And yet, it houses 45,000 people, which means that walking through the streets can be very crowded.  We took a small tour of the wall, a tour of an ancient prison and the oldest bank in China, and finally were given a chance to do a bit of wandering. Below are some pictures from my different tours in the city.

This is just one of the torture devices that was on display in the prison.  This one was used to publicly humiliate criminals, as they could be pulled around town while hung up on this smaller version of a cross.

This is the North Gate of Pingyao, and the location we were able to walk around on for our tour.

This was a small section of an old Chinese "check" which demonstrated that they used watermark techniques long before the modern era.

The wandering around town was interesting, but was also a little strange because I did my wandering alone. With no one that spoke my language very well with me, I had a lot of time to just stop and look at whatever I wanted, without having to please other group members.  Other than this trip, my week has been uneventful.  We finished the second third of our Chinese language book, and so will be taking a small test over that next week.  That means I've been doing quite a bit of studying and will continue to do so.  Hopefully, there will be some word on this music performance I talked about earlier, but as of today, we haven't heard anything. :/  I will keep you posted on anything fun that comes up when I make next week's post.  Thanks again for reading this.

Adam

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Hong Lou Meng

Hello again,

Yes, yes, I know that I posted this two days late. However, I did have a reason this time.  This week, we were invited by our literature professor to travel to a site here in the city that pertains to the novel we are reading in our class:  Hong Lou Meng, or The Dream of The Red Chamber.  In fact, this location is where they filmed a TV version of the novel that is still widely watched in China today.  I thought I would wait to post a blog so I could tell you about that, and have some pictures to share as well. :)

However, I would like to save that for the end, and share another event that happened during this week.  That event is that I got sick for the first time in China.  I had dearly hoped that it wouldn't happen while I was over here. I tried to drink water, and I kept eating well instead of snacking on junk food all the time, like I do in the states. :P Alas, it wasn't meant to be.  I am doing much better now, and have started eating regular food again, although in slightly smaller portions.  But it wasn't a fun experience, and I hope it is the only time I have to deal with it.

Now, with that out of the way, I can share a little about this site we visited in town.  It took about a half hour by car for us to reach the location.  The series was originally filmed, I believe, in the 1980's, so some of the locations have gotten pretty run down, and there was quite a bit of renovation going on while we were there.  Even so, it was very interesting to see some of the places that the novel talks about.  Below are two examples, with headings describing what these locations are.

 A garden, in which many interactions take place between the novels three primary characters.

A recreation of the reception hall for a daughter who is an imperial concubine for the emperor.

Our visit lasted roughly an hour, and included some information about the author of the book as well as just seeing where the series was filmed. The book was written by a man named Cao Xueqin.  However, scholars studying the book today believe that he only wrote the first 80 or so chapters of the novel, and that someone else took it up from there to finish the last 40 or so chapters.  And yes, this book has around 120 chapters.  The English version we are reading takes up over 2300 pages, if that gives you any sense of the size of this novel.

 A statue of Cao Xueqin.

A copy of the novel on display.

Overall, it was a fun visit, and a full week. Between being sick, going on the trip, and still having to study and keep my other classes running well, I didn't have much time for anything else.  I plan to keep going to my martial arts class on Thursdays, which will hopefully continue to be fun.  This coming weekend is our trip to Pingyao, a city that still has walls around it. I will post again next week to let you know how that went, and if anything else exciting has happened on the trip.  Thanks again for reading.

Adam

Monday, October 14, 2013

Taishan and Qufu

Hello everybody,

Its time again to update you on everything that has been happening this past week.  This week held another trip for us, this time to the city of Qufu and then Mount Tai.  There were also a couple of other things that warrant mentioning this week, but I'll start off with the trip, the biggest thing we ended up doing.

Our first stop, after a six hour bus ride, was at the city of Qufu.  This city was the original hometown of Confucius, the man who started Confucianism.  Specifically, we visited three famous sites tied to Confucius; his temple, mansion, and cemetery.  These three sites are still widely visited by many people across China, even though Confucianism is no longer the main religion or thought pattern in China.

 The temple entrance gates.
 A group photo at the mansion.
Confucius' gravestone and burial mound.

After that we drove back an hour to get to a small city at the foot of Mount Tai.  Mount Tai is where the ancient emperors of Chine would give sacrifices to "heaven" which is what they worshiped as a god. While I could have climbed the over 3000 stairs the the top of the mountain, I instead opted for the cable car that only took eight minutes and allowed me to sit down. :P 


While the top of the mountain has been converted into a large tourist site, it still holds both Taoist and Buddhist temples, and is visited by many practitioners of these religions.  Also, it has been fairly well maintained, has some hiking trails around the sides of the mountains.  John, Alex, and I took one of these trails during our visit, and were out hiking for around two hours.

 An eighty year old Buddhist at the top of the mountain. He was ecstatic to take pictures with a group of foreign students. :)
One of the views offered during our hike around the mountain.

After this, we headed back to the hotel, and came home the following day. While it was a very fun trip, it wasn't quite as interesting as the Beijing trip a couple weeks ago. This is partly because we didn't do as much, and partly because it was only the few of us from Kearney, while there was a larger group of foreign students on the Beijing trip.

The other two things that I would like to mention in this post concern other events I've signed up for here on campus.  The first is, unfortunately, that I will be unable to do the calligraphy class I talked about earlier.  They scheduled that class during our Literature class, so I will be unable to attend it.  However, the second event is much happier.  Instead of calligraphy, I will be taking a class called Chinese Martial Arts every Thursday at 4 PM.  I am incredibly excited to have the chance to take that class, and I hope it goes well every week.  I'll keep you updated if anything really fun happens there.

And that's about it for this week.  I know a few short paragraphs and a few pictures aren't enough to actually get the experience of how massive this semester actually is, but I hope they at least help you know a little about what I'm doing.  I can't wait to get back to the states and be able to share more pictures and stories in person, where I can answer questions and learn about what everyone else has been up to as well. :) Until, next week, thanks again for reading.

Adam

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

National Holiday Week

Hello

I'm late again, aren't I? This time, I'm going to use the excuse that I just came out of a week long vacation, and because we didn't have classes on Monday, I didn't think to post another entry here. Of course, we all know that that is just another way of saying "I completely forgot." :P And so, without any further ado, here is a blog entry detailing what happened during the past week.

First of all, as I mentioned, we just finished a week long vacation, lasting from October 1st-7th.  This vacation is observed because of China's National Day celebration, which is very much like July 4th for us in America.  As far as I know, there is no school at all during this week in the entire country.  This provided a very nice break, especially since it came at roughly the half way point of our stay in China.  With no classes, homework, or other things like that, it gave me a chance to do what I wanted for a week.

Unfortunately, I didn't really do much. :P With one of our group feeling sick, and a couple parties being thrown on fourth floor of our dorm, there was really not enough time to go out and do things.  The parties were fun, although I would have to compare them to a typical high school dance in America.  They gave a great chance for us to talk with a bunch of different foreigners, and I met a few more people that I will talk to on a more regular basis now.

Other than those, the week was just a nice chance to relax.  We went out for dinner with our UNK professor chaperon, which was a traditional, home cooked Indian meal.  We did visit a Walmart, which was the first one we have seen since arriving in China, and we found yet another mall to visit.  All in all, it wasn't a bad week. It just wasn't a week that led to a very long blog entry. :/ This coming weekend, the 11th-13th, we have another trip to the cemetery, birthplace, and temple of Confucius, which should be very interesting.  I will have more to say, and more pictures to post, the Monday following that trip.  And yes, I will do my absolute best to get back to posting on Mondays, like I promised before. :P Thanks again for reading this, to anyone that does.

Adam