Week 1

Being with a Chinese family means lots of large meals. Meals in which aunts tell you you're not putting enough onions on your Peking duck, where the males are offered beer but the women are not (but women get to ride the air conditioned car to the restaurant while the males walk), and where you never eat enough - as the relations say while putting more food on your plate. Being with a rich Chinese family means a chaffeured car to all the tourist sites (and it's magically always just pulling up as we exit the restaurant), spa services which come to your door, and servants who move your things so you can never find anything the next day. I've already been chided for mistakenly asking if we should tip the chaffeur and for wanting to peep into the housekeeper's quarters to see what it was like. Being with my uncle's Chinese family means having his student look up train tickets to Mongolia for me, another student pick up my aunt when she got lost in the city, and a luxury-all-expense-paid trip to Shandong province via first class soft-sleeper train. It's just like the Harry Potter train! Complete with a little cart that comes around with food. I keep expecting Bertie Bott's jelly beans (Ew! Earwax!), but all they have are steamed buns. The TV station manager picked us up at the station and drove us to the hotel. Meanwhile, doctors in the U.S. are no longer even allowed to accept free pens from pharmaceutical companies anymore.

We've managed to hit Badaling Great Wall, Mutianyu Great Wall (recommendeD), Ming Tombs, Summer Palace, Forbidden City (recommended), and the nightclub scene in Beijing and karaoke with the country's top advertising students.

TaiShan - Dragon of Promises
Originally uploaded by susiederkins.

Interestingly, students all over the world are pretty similar, even if you're in a communist country. My uncle teaches advertising and branding at Beijing U., which my mom tells me is the Harvard of China. Beijing U. has old buildings (except they're Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon type buildings instead of Gothic buildings with ivy), decrepit dorms, and students wearing Birkenstocks (lots of them). There's a surprising number of foreign students here. The campus seems a little safer, not by virtue of the neighborhood, but more by virtue of cultural values. Students are placed on a pedestal here, so homeless people don't even think about sleeping on campus, and thieves never steal from them. They're quite literally in an ivory tower. Even student protests are generally overlooked (Tianamen being a notable exception) because they're waved away with a hand and a shake of the head and the utterance "They're students, let them be idealists." Many former student protesters stay on to be professors at Beijing U. They're not allowed to have anti-government propaganda in their lectures, but they do encourage their students to think freely and critically about issues.

Many people receive bootleg Taiwan tv channels via satellite, so the people here have a good media outlet to the outside world. The police tend to look the other way because they too, watch the same channels. China is in political flux and most people know it. More interesting is the technological flux. DVDs are everywhere, but you cant' find VHS if your life depended on it, because China opened its borders later and skipped over that step. Cell phones are dirt cheap but the payphones were never upgraded.

The food, of course, is still the same. So far I've eaten turtle soup (with the turtle floating in it, shell and all), grubs, and every sort of sea-animal possible. I've thought about eating pigeon, cicadas, grasshoppers, and a few other things that were on the table, but I bailed out. My brother did manage to eat grasshoppers and cicadas after much coaxing.

It's funny being around relatives that you haven't seen in 20-some years. They're full of stories about this or that that you used to do when you were little (I was never a good child), how you used to drive grandma crazy, and how adorable you were. It's also funny hearing stories about mom. I think she may have been funny and quirky. Weird. I like to think I'm funny and quirky. I'm also told I dance a lot like her (during a fun but strange nightclub outing with me, my brother, my cousin, and my two 50-some year old aunts). They used to make fun of her for crying over everything. Grandma used to get mad because it'd make her look bad to have a kid who was always crying. My aunt makes fun of my uncle for tearing up over soap operas. It's nice to know I can blame genetics for my tendency to tear up at long-distance commercials, at will, or when angry and frustrated. It's not due to inherent weakness of character.

My uncle got me a cell phone to use in China so I can call in case of emergency. It's nice, except I can't read Chinese, so I don't really know how to use it. I have 12 messages in my inbox that I don't know what they say, and I can only call the 3 numbers I have in my phonebook - my uncle, his assistant, and my friend Ed in Shanghai.

My aunt has been matchmaking me with the son of the tv station manager who took us around during the luxury vacation. I had to tell her that in the unlikely event that I drop out of medical school, move to China, live in pseudo-rural Shandong instead of Beijing or Shanghai, he breaks up with his long term girlfriend and we overcome the language barrier, I suppose I'd consider dating him. She said we should keep in touch over email, even though I can't read Chinese and he can't read english because we never know what may happe in 5-6 years.

A little Communist I met at the Great Wall.
Originally uploaded by susiederkins.