五道口 wudaokou (whoo dow koh)

五道口 Is a place in Beijing with a lot of universites nearby. Consequentially, it also has a preponderance (your english word of the day) of bars, clubs and restaurants than other areas. Some friends and I are making plans as we speak (well, if you're reading aloud, as you speak, I don't talk to myself when I'm writing) to go there for a night on the town tomorrow evening. Last weekend was quite enjoyable, my cooperate sponsor, Tracy, the kind intern who escorts me to tourist places invited me out with some friends. We met her hometown friend first, who's name is 李娜，lee nah, english name: crystal. She is 24 and working on food safety in china. She informed me that often, in china even though a foodstuff maysay it is safe, it's not always true. Her job is to try and correct that.

Brief interlude: here in China, moreover in Beijing, it's important to be able to tell the difference between real and fake. In america, you can pretty much take it for granted that if something says genuine, it better be, otherwise, some money-grubbing walking hazard of a citizen will find a way to make money off the false advertising through a lawsuit. This is one perspective. Another is, a concerned citizen assumed that if someone claimed something was in fact, genuine, then it was not. Upon realizing the deception, this emotionally and potentially physically injured individual sued the company making false statements for the equivalent value of money to damage dealt. In this fashion, the majority of statements in america are relatively accurate. Relatively. Anyway, here in China, such widespread accountability does not exist as of yet.
When you think about how many people live in Beijing, and how little money most people have, it should come as no surprise that some are taking advantage of this opening.

The chinese terms are 真的 (zhende) and 假的(jiade)。Real and bogus, jen duh or jeeyah duh. Most will freely admit 假的, since you're familiar enough to ask. Not everyone though. Sometimes, it can be hard to be aure as a consumer, as well. While it may sound too good to be true that those fancy Dr. Dre beats headphones only cost 20$, it could just be that the man selling them has a sister working in the factory that can get her hands on runoff. So, while a land of peril (potentially) Beijing is also a land of potential treasure. So many things are actually made China, after all.

So, with that said, I don't feel overly concerned with whether the food I eat is zhende safe or jiade safe. If I'm eating near campus, or as usual, at the campus cafeteria, I should be fine. If I decided to randomly eat from a street cart, the risk would be, do I chance this delicious taste for a terrible gut destroying disease? Usually, I say "No", even though the risk is lower than it seems.
It just seems like a safely hedged bet to me not to eat potentially gut-destroying food.

So, after I met Crystal, we joined two more friends of Tracy's, Henri and 小柏 (Xiaobai she-ow bye)。Henri is Australian, 小柏，obviously, is Chinese. When I first heard Henri speaking, I was astounded at how fluent and casual he sounded with english. His parents are chinese, but live in Australia, so he's here studying Mandarin.

We had a blast dancing with an absolutely crowded dancefloor. When I say crowded, I mean options for arm movement were close to the chest, or above the head, people were packed in so close. You may think that sounds unpleasent, but with cheesy, bad american pop playing, where I know absolutely every song because my friends all listen to it (I'm looking at you, Reuben) and everyone is having a good time without worrying over much about how they dance, (I've seen better, but that's not the point.) the energy of that setup is wonderful. You are all familiar with how light my frame is, so imagine me bouncing around off bodies in a small pinball machine, and you'll get a wildly inaccurate, but fun idea of how the dancing went.

Anyway, we're planning to go for round 2 this time around.

On another note, we had our first chinese test today. I was sick yesterday and didn't even try to attend class, but felt well enough today to get up and move about. The test wasn't terribly challenging, but the sheer amount of new words I've been introduced to over the last 3 weeks (somewhere above 600 and counting) makes studying them all challenging. Luckily. This means I'm learning a lot. But, afterward, I joined my friend 许娟娟 (Xu Juanjuan shhh-ewe jew-ahnjuhwen) at the library, and from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, we studied. There were food breaks and talk about english and chinese breaks, but for the most part, it was good hard studying. I'm turning out to be better at the student thing than I'd thought!

One of the best things I discovered today is that as most crass youngsters in America often do, crass youngsters in China often do the same. For instance, we crass youngsters all like to joke about people who are fond of order as being slightly OCD. The chinese term is 强迫症 (Qiangpozheng Chi-ahn-ge poh gee-uhn-ge). According to 娟娟, if you said this to an older person, they wouldn't understand.

Other than that, I just want to ask, would you like me to continue providing my self-created guide to pronouncing pinyin? It's becoming harder and harder to know how to make certIn sounds using english letters instead of just using pinyin, because that's just the way it sounds, right?

Anyway, will write more soon.

Long time no see, 好久不见，Haojiubujian (how jeeoh boo jee-an)

I've not posted in a while, and some of my readers have bugged me about it. So, in order to quiet the peanut gallery. I'll give you some news of dear old Ben. In the storied lands of China, there are many many things to do, and the last 2 - 3 weeks have been spent very busily.

I'm sick right now, we have a test tomorrow and it's cold. But I'm still having a blast. There are too many good things to write them all now. I'll get to it eventually.

In the meantime, I'll share a small story.

For lunch today, I decided to venture off campus. As I made my way to the campus gate, a screwdriver fell out of the sky into the street, at my feet. Then, because of it's momentum it bounced about 3 feet and flew off behind me. I'm not sure where it came from, but my suspicions is the dormitory nearby, from an open window, 7 stories up. I don't know where else it could have come from with the same trajectory and velocity. No one stopped to even look, besides me. Apparently that's common in China. Maybe it rains screwdrivers sometimes, here, who knows.

Eating at a korean restaurant, with indonesians, in China.

So, an american and 4 indonesians walk into a bar. Andrew, his sister Mariska and their friends Andrian and Christian invited me to go eat with them at a korean restaurant a short busride away from campus. The bus was fun, like trying to stay mounted on a bucking bronco, except since it was a bus, it was like trying to stay standing while someone trys to take your legs out from under you. Like I said, fun.

At the restaurant we went to, [insert name when known], they served you several little dishes of different food, vegetables, fruits, crabmeat. All sorts of different appetizers. It was all free. After that, they keep you waiting for several minutes until they brought the main course. I'm sure not everyone has to wait, but we did. Regardless of the service provided (negligable) the meal was fun.

When the meal finally arrived, it was several dishes of uncooked meat. I should mention, in the middle of our table was a small firepit, a stove, with a smoke vent above us. We cooked our meat ourselves, from raw and bloody to questionably cooked (in my opinion) all by ourselves (everyone but me helped, since I don't know the first thing about cooking out). The food tasted pretty good, but I didn't think there was very much of it. We had lamb, pork, chicken and beef. Which segues into an interesting thing about the english language. We have different names for our meat than our animals.

Sheep-Lamb, Mutton
Cow-Beef, Veal
Pig-Pork
Chicken-Poultry
Rabbit-Rabbit
Squirrel-Squirrel

The reason behind this has to do with the different social classes. The lower class, poor and hungry, would eat cheap, easily hunted meat, like rabbit and squirrel, while the landed gentry and such could afford the meat of stock animals, but, because they were a higher class, they couldn't use the same names as the peasentry that raised the animals did. Another, perhaps more telling aspect of this is that most of the higher class meat names come from french, while the lower class words come from german.

Or something like that. Look it up if you're curious, and let me know.

And so, our story begins...

Emily told me Registration begins at 8:30AM. I woke up early, showered, dressed, and went back to sleep until 8:20AM. Never a moment wasted for sleep, in my book.
When I made my way downstairs, registration was in full swing. It had started earlier, apparently. Emily and I got in line, filled out all the paperwork, (as in she helped me a lot (as in she did almost everything) while I got to look at a slew of international students (ladies) as we waited in line) as we reached the last line of redtape, it turned out we needed passport sized photos. Something I'd neglected to bring.
This led us to a small photography place across the street, where for 20元, we got about a zillion photos of my smiling mug. Which we then used to get my registration completed, with Emily sneaking into the front of the line, and quickly resolving the issue.

And then there was the test.

I'd thought the language proficiency test was next monday, so I'd only studied a little, planning on using my whole week to prepare. Turns out, it was today. I would have studied more if I'd known. But, all in all, it was a fairly simple test, where I was asked to read a passage in Chinese and didn't recognize all the characters in it, but was better suited than the lower level of textbook, that I recognized everything easily in. And that was it. Class assignments are posted Saturday.

After that, I took another long walk to the north of campus this time. I saw a few places, Helen's, PBD, and more restaurants. I walked out to 4th Ring road, a massive river of traffic and fumes, with concrete walkways over it to the attractions located on the other side. I'll be checking those out next trip. There's a Pizza Hut over there. Which, in China, has become a fine dining eventspace, serving a varied menu, wine, high quality pizza, younameit. I still prefer american Pizza Hut pizza though, from experience.

When I returned, I discovered something wonderful! I had a new roomate! But he wasn't in at the time, so I left a note and wandered off again. As I was on my way out, I came across a man trying to carry his suitcase up the staircase, and having trouble with the awkward size of it. Being a good chap, I helped him carry it up to the 6th floor, only to discover he actually had a room on the second, which was another trip down. He introduced himself as Vincent, and we parted ways.

I spent a pleasent evening pestering friends asleep in Kentucky with texts at what was 5:00 AM for them, and returned to meet my roommate. His name was Andrew, and his sister was already studying here. He'd just graduated from Illinois, and was here to learn Chinese.

Turns out Andrew and Vincent are friends, and were previously roommates. Small world or something like that, right?