So much to say!

Life here seems to be flying by. I can't believe that on Friday we're off to Shanghai, and that I will have spent three weeks here. It really gives me perspective on JUST how big the city is here when I think about how much I have seen, but how much is still left to be seen. On the one hand, that means I have a lot of reasons to come back, which gives me a huge incentive to learn some Chinese, because it's pretty difficult to navigate the city without it. I've been lucky to have the help of some native speakers and people who have studied Chinese extensively, but every time I get in a taxi by myself, I get a little apprehensive. Especially when the cab driver looks at my hotel map and just shakes his head to say, I have no idea where this is. Makes me a little nervous. Saturday I managed to get a cab driver who spoke English, and it was a completely different experience. I know quite a lot about the taxi industry in Beijing now. I kicked off the weekend with dinner at a Muslim restaurant that has been around since the Qing Dynasty. The food was amazing, and I met a lot of really cool people, all from New York and most at school at Columbia. We had a whole room to ourselves, so we were loud and laughing the whole time. We ate ourselves silly, with everything from fried fruit to stomach of an unidentified animal to lamb eye. I don't think anyone can claim that I have squeamish tendencies left over from much time as a vegetarian! We ended the night at another girl's apartment, and it was a lot of fun to just hang out with people, as opposed to going somewhere loud and smoking for once! Saturday we went to the Forbidden City. It, as expected, was beautiful. One of the students from Beida, Tania, was kind enough to show us around, and she told us about the symbolism of the difference animals and the stories of the people who had lived in the city. The dragons here are really cool; they are the royal animal (along with Phoenixes). One of my favorite sights was this huge rock sculpture that bordered the stairs to the Emperor's "office". It was covered with a dragon pattern and had been carved from a HUGE rock. In order to get it to Beijing from countryside where it was found, they had to wait until winter, sprinkle water on the road to make it icy, and then pull it along the ice! I guess it was flat or downhill! Only the Chinese could pull that off!! We spent the afternoon shopping. There's a lot of designer and fake designer stuff here. I am not a huge fan of bargaining--I find it sort of insulting to tell someone that I'm only willing to pay a 1/10 of what they offer it to me from--but I'm going to have to get over it when I go shopping for real tomorrow. But, there is a lot of good stuff to buy, I have to say! They have some beautiful paintings too; I wish I could bring them home without having to schlep them all over the country. I got invited to a guy's 21 birthday party on Saturday night (one of the Columbia boys). He had reserved two huge banquet tables at a restaurant that served whole roasted lamb and had a belly dancer show (in which some of the boys had the opportunity to participate in!). It was a lot of fun, and again we ate a TON of food. The restaurant specialized in food from the Northwestern part of China, so it was a very different cuisine than what I've been eating for most of the trip. Yesterday was pretty tame. Slept most of the day--the whole week had left me exhausted. My students are great, but they are very demanding. They work so hard and ask so many questions that I've learned that I need to be pretty prepared for class or I'm going to get blindsided. Last week we did a lot of pop culture; they learned some pick-up lines (If you were a pirate. . . .), all about American holidays, and even how to swing dance! Today we debated about whether we should put animals in zoos and whether high school students should be separated into social science and natural science classes, instead of taking all different kinds of classes, the way we do. We had some interesting conversations last week about gun control, the Supreme Court, and religion. They all seem pretty content that while in America, people may want/need a gun for self defense, having one in Beijing would be fairly pointless because it's so safe. We talked about the flag salute cases (Gobitis, 1940; W. VA v. Barnette, 1943) and about how the constitution is imprested, the ways in which social context matters, and the balance of power, which was actually quite appropriate since the next day Professor Roger Porter from Harvard, delivered a lecture via live videoconference. It was pretty interesting; he teaches a very popular class on the American Presidency and served as an advisor for three different presidents (including Nixon and Reagan). On religion, I was talking about how in France they did not allow students to wear religious paraphernalia to school, and one of my students raised her hand and said, I don't understand why religion is so important. And I asked, why my religion would be important to me (religious convictions) or why your religion would be important to me (tolerance). She answered, either. Since the vast majority of people here are atheist, the idea that religious ideals on morality would play such a large role in politics and society and even personal decisions is completely foreign. It was one of those moments of true cultural exchange as I fumbled to explain a phenomena that I found completely familiar. It was a similar experience to talk about media and bias when we discussed issues such as the War in Iraq and the situation of Taiwan. If my students get half as much out of this experience as I do, I think it's a resounding success! Off to find more Muslim food for dinner! Then maybe heading off to Propaganda bar. Good times!