Beijing

We went to Beijing for a few days, because we had a week vacation (because China recognizes May 1st as a national holiday, and I think the school also wanted an excuse to have a longer break.)

So, my parents arranged to rent camping equipment for one night, from a company that helps organize camping trips on the Great Wall, in the less touristy areas. So we slept on the Great Wall for one night, also as a birthday celebration for John. (He's now twelve.) It was really fun, and we pretended that we were defending against the Mongols. The only problem was that night, when we realized that we only had a little bit of water left and there wasn't time to hike down and get more. So we didn't have any water to drink that morning, which was fine, because we were leaving relatively early anyway, but still annoying.

The driver we had to take us to the wall and back the next morning really liked John. It was cute.

After that we spent two nights in a small hotel in the middle of the city, amid the traditional hutong villages. There was a lot we planned to do but didn't get to, partly because some of them were closed when we went there and also because it's really hard to navigate, between the long line interchanges at the subway stations and the taxis that wouldn't stop for us. But, all in all, it was great. We went to the Forbidden City - which is, surprisingly, called simply the Palace Museum by the Chinese, who usually give places very poetic names. I think we would have been more amazed by it if we hadn't already been living in China for the past eight-and-a-half months. It was still amazing, it's just... we've already seen a ton of traditional Chinese buildings. While that doesn't make any of them less unique or amazing, it does mean that they don't have the same charm to them as they do to someone who has never seen one before except in photographs.

We also tried to go to the Beijing Underground City, which is a large expanse of underground tunnels built under Chairman Mao's regime, designed to support most of the citizens of Beijing in case nuclear war with Russia broke out. Unfortunately, the tunnels are have been closed for renovation since February last year. We're hoping this means that they'll open again soon, and that they are going to open up more tunnels to the public (instead of just making it more commercialized.)

The other thing we didn't get to see was Mao's Mausoleum, where you can see the embalmed remains of the great Chairman himself. The thing is, it's only open for a few hours and on certain days, so, although we tried to take this into account, it still wasn't open when we tried to go there.

All in all, we like Shanghai better (and better yet is Hong Kong), but we still are glad we went there.

We also had dinner one night in a restaurant that advertises itself as "American Home Cooking" with the "best burgers in town," but I'd say that's not quite true. These were the first real burgers I've had since we were in Hong Kong over Christmas. (The western restaurants in China frequently serve "burgers" with minuscule patties so you have to take two bites of nothing but bread and vegetables before reaching the small morsel of over-cooked beef.)

I got my braces Wednesday the week before last. They didn't hurt at all when they put them in. (I slept through the whole process.) However, my mouth felt really sore for a few days afterward. I'm also need to get used to the fact that my front teeth are almost un-useable, so when I was eating corn-on-the-cob I had to cut the corn off before I could even get it into my mouth.

The Great Pasta Confusion

I have noticed that the Chinese are very good at getting Western foods, particularly pastas, mixed up. When my mom came back from her teacher-exchange to China, she said that at one point her Chinese host took her to a Western restaurant. In the menu, there was a dish called Steak and Lasagna, except when they ordered it, there wasn't any lasagna; there was spaghetti. Her Chinese host kept calling it lasagna, and my mom tried to tell her, "That's not lasagna, it's spaghetti." (Of course, we wouldn't serve steak and spaghetti together, anyway.)

Now I've noticed a lot of pasta-confusions of my own: in the school cafeteria, which is run by a Chinese restaurant company. I've seen penne called macaroni, macaroni called penne, spaghetti called penne, macaroni called lasagna, etc. Luckily, the Chinese only know about those four types of pasta, because they'd be even more confused if you mixed in some of the more complicated pastas. For example, I'm doubtful that they could find out the difference between ravioli and tortellini, or spaghetti, linguini, and fettuccini.

You want Hello Kitty on the hood of your car?

It's cold right now. Really cold. The weather here fluctuates a ton; just a few weeks ago it was warm out, and then it was cold and wet again, then a bit warmer, and then today it was raining. Chinese weather is crazy. I guess it fits in with the rest of the country!

My bed has been bugging the heck out of me lately, because the mattress itself is rock-solid (no figurative language here, it literally is rock-solid), and the only way to deal with it is to use a mattress pad, except that obviously the mattress-makers and the mattress pad-makers obviously didn't exactly collaborate, because the pad is ever-so-slightly bigger than the bed and is constantly sliding down. Plus, my dad insists that I have my bed pushed completely against the wall, except that if it's against the wall, my blanket can't go over the edge of my bed and that really bothers me. I hate sharing a room, especially when I'm in a tiny apartment and it means that I literally never get any personal space except for when I'm in the bathroom. And when my little brother doesn't bother to knock enough, so he frequently walks in on me while I'm in my underwear, I've got problems, especially when he (or my mom or dad or whoever) fully realizes that I'm getting dressed, but walks off and leaves the door wide open, anyway.

I don't really have too much else to say, because I've been thinking about my drawing and everything recently. John says that I need more pictures on my blog, but that's because this is a word blog, not a picture blog. Anyway, that said, I haven't had much luck thinking of things to write recently. But there have been increased sightings of Hello Kitty-themed cars in the vicinity; three, to be exact. The first one was green with white Hello Kitties on the hood and doors (we have seen this one multiple times, because obviously whoever owns it lives in the apartment complex next to ours), the second one was white with a pink Hello Kitty on the hood, and the third, and most horrifying, was white with pink Hello Kitties on the hood and sides, plus about fifty Hello Kitty bobble-heads and such lining the dashboard. This one was stopped at an intersection, and John and I took note of the fact that there was a man driving. Unfortunately, I haven't ever had my camera with me. The Hello Kitty cars remind me of how I've seen the red Beijing Olympics logo on a couple of items it should never go on, namely another car and a grand piano.

Computers, Food, and Art, What Else?

We got our computers for school finally. I'm a little bit frustrated with them because they're Macbooks, which are great for some things, but they still have their own frustrations. I like Windows for having a task bar on the bottom of the screen , where I can see all of the applications that I have running, and actually having a RIGHT-CLICK BUTTON!!! On the Macbooks, you have to either put two fingers on the trackpad and then click the button, which often accidentally turns into a left-click anyway, or press control and click. When I used Macbooks in the computer lab at my old school, (and, by the way, what's the point of having a computer lab if there's laptops in it?), I never noticed, but that was before I really started using right-click. Augh...

Anyways, I'm going through a SERIOUS Mexican food craving right now. They have Mexican restaurants here, but they aren't nearly good enough. However, as my dad has said already, there are some really good Muslim restaurants around here with Western-Chinese Muslim food, which we have discovered is really good. It's nice and spicy, which satisfies some of my Mexican-food cravings, and there is this really good flat bread called "nang," and one of the restaurants we go to serves this "pizza," which is nang bread with this tasty ground-lamb-with-spices stuff on top. We sometimes call it "taco pizza" because it tastes almost exactly like a good beef taco.

I've decided to take up drawing again. I've tried drawing two or three times before, but then I get impatient and stop. Now, though, one of my friends (an artist) convinced me to start drawing again. I don't mean realistic drawing, I definitely don't have enough patience for that, I'm more doing manga- and anime-based artwork. Before you start imagining little girls with green hair, gigantic shiny eyes, and pointy chins, you need to know that there are many different kinds of manga styles, and some are better than others. I don't like the little green-hair-big-eye-pointy-chin girl, either. I've also joined a website called deviantART, which is kind of like a Facebook for artists, so if you want to see my art, I suggest you email me and ask for the web address to my profile, because I don't really want everyone I don't know who comes across this blog to find my dA page, at least not yet.

I've also been doing some painting, charcoal drawing, and things like that. I think it's a lot of fun! I think that my two favorite media have to be charcoal and thick acrylic paint. Thick paint is so much fun, because you can put in lots of texture and it's really easy to fix mistakes. I've also started designing a character of my own, so if I ever happen to get a story written about her, I'll put parts of it here, too.

Backtracking and Violins

There are some things that I wanted to say about Christmas Break but never got around to, so I'm finally going to do that.

Mom's friend Chris was visiting for the second half of the break, so I wanted to go to all of the gardens with them, but, as I said earlier, I was sick, so I didn't get to go. I did go to one of the gardens with them. (This was the Humble Administrator's Garden, which we jokingly call the Oh-So-Humble or Not So Humble Administrator's Garden, since it's the biggest and fanciest garden in the city. And Suzhou is known throughout China for its beautiful gardens, which were actually the private residences of rich merchants and businessmen.) I also went with them to the Suzhou Museum, which has some interesting Chinese historical artifacts, but we mostly go there for the architecture. It was designed by I. M. Pei, one of my idols, to combine traditional Chinese and modern architectural styles. It's really amazing. But by then I felt too sick to walk around the museum (even though it's very small,) so I sat on a bench and waited for them, because Dad was taking me home early after that. It was a little bit depressing, because next they were going to the Lion's Grove Garden, which is my favorite because it has a big rock maze of stairs, tunnels, and narrow walkways that is fun to explore (and get lost in, because it takes forever to find your way out.) Later I went to Shanghai with them for the day (we just take the train in), and we went to the Pearl Tower, which is the big landmark of Shanghai. It was fun, especially since Allyne and John didn't want to go to Shanghai (the crazies) and were still at home, so it was just the four of us. We also went to the French Concession, which is the part of Shanghai that used to be under the control of France. It has French-style architecture and French food, including really good crepes and (real) croissants, not American "croissants," which are really just rolls shaped like croissants, with not nearly enough butter layers, if any. Real croissants are made with dough that has butter folded into it. It's folded so there are at least seventy-two layers. When the perfect croissant is done, it is browned and flaky on the outside, then soft (but still flaky) on the inside, then just slightly chewier closer to the middle, and warm throughout. If it's pain au chocolat, which is just like a croissant except that it has chocolate in the middle, then it's absolute heaven. French food is so good, especially if it's a pastry. Mmm...

This Saturday we're going back to a shop that we found there with high-quality violins, and we're going to buy one!!! I'm so excited! We really want two, one for me and one for my mom, but we're settling with just one for now. We also want to eventually get an electric violin and maybe even a five-stringed violin, which is like a violin and a viola combined, because it has the G, D, and A strings, which both instruments have, along with the C string, which a viola has but a violin doesn't, and the E string, which a violin has but a viola doesn't. But that will have to wait a while.

I'm going to play Pachelbel's Canon, because that song is so much fun on violin, especially when you get to the parts where there are about four notes on one bow. I can't wait... I am not a very patient person.

More on the New Year

According to Chinese legend, the God of Prosperity was born on the fifth day of the year. Anyone who lights fireworks on this day will be blessed with prosperity, and the earlier in the day the fireworks are lit, the better.

Today (Friday) is the fifth day of the New Year's celebrations, hence the fireworks at midnight last night. I had read something about this not to long ago, but I'd forgotten about it until someone mentioned it today.

The Lunar New Year isn't only celebrated in China; I know that Koreans celebrate it, too, and some of the southeast Asian countries. Also, in traditional Asian culture, you do not grow a year older on you're birthday; you grow older on New Year's. As soon as someone is born, they are considered one year old (because they are in their first year if life.) They become two years old at their first New Year. Then they remain two years old until the next New Year, when they become three, and so on. So if you were born just before New Year's, you would be considered two years old even if you were born only two months before.

New Year's Insanity

It's Chinese New Year. So much for a parade and a big group of people dressed up as a long red dragon; this is the real deal. You aren't just watching the show; you are literally in the show. It is crazy. It's exactly like the fireworks at the Fourth of July, just a whole lot bigger and much, much closer to the ground. Fireworks are very legal and very plentiful in China, and these aren't just the little noisemakers-and-sparklers kind of fireworks, these are real fireworks. China is the land of fireworks, always has been and forever will be. There are absolutely no words to describe the whole atmosphere of it. Literally everyone is setting off some. In the courtyards, on the sidewalk, off of the roofs of buildings, etc. Our apartment is on the fifth floor, right next to the street that runs through the complex (the perfect place to light fireworks), so we get front-row seats when they explode right outside of our window (sometimes ricocheting off of the sides of the buildings.)

The official celebrations started on Sunday, New Year's Eve. We get two whole weeks off for the New Year, so we had full license to stay up until two in the morning. At around 10 in the evening, they started setting off lots of fireworks. Then it died down, and at about 11:30 it started up again at full force. I could hardly hear my own voice in all of the noise. It lasted for a few more hours. My grandma, who is visiting, is staying in my brother's bedroom, which is on the side next to the street. She said that she was woken a few times by people lighting fireworks in the street.

The last few days, there haven't been too many exciting firework shows, but today (Thursday night) they were doing a big show again. I was already in my pajamas and am too lazy to change back into by clothes to go outside, so I stuck my head outside the window to watch. They were lighting rockets in the middle courtyard of our complex, and, behind those, I saw ones being lit in the complex across the street. I also saw them being reflected off of the building to my right from where more were being launched on the other side of our building. I closed my eyes and pretended that there was a big thunderstorm, just for fun. The big fireworks were the thunder and the little crackling ones were the rain. It also helped that it had been raining hard earlier in the day, so rain still was dripping off of the side of the building and onto my head.

In short: Chinese New Year is absolute insanity. There's no way to describe it with justice; just come here and see for yourself