5 really cool things I bought in China

When I came to China, I had a really lengthy shopping list of things like custom made qipao dress, majiang set, tea set, etc. It turned out that these things are all either very expensive or very heavy. Also it is reasonable to accuse me of being a cheapskate. But for one reason or another I just didn't get to everything on my list.

But I did get some other unique items for not too expensive either, I thought I could share.

1. Fengyoujing 风油精 This small glass bottle contains a bright green, oily liquid inside, and which has a very pungent menthol scent to it. It is very effective for relieving the itching of a mosquito bite. This stuff is a god send if you get bitten a lot like me.

2. The sparkliest nail polish I've ever encountered and some neat nail polish remover sheets. Would you just look at this nail polish! It was only 10 yuan and was of pretty decent quality. The nail polish remover sheets are really great too, which smell like blueberry and claim to be organic.

3. A Chinese medicine scraping tool made out of ox horn. I originally purchased this as just sort of a novelty trinket. It is very pretty, but I never expected to actually use it. One day I picked it up and tested skin scraping out, I found that it actually feels fantastic, and does improve you skin! I have used it similar to a skin brush, scraping in long broad strokes, but I know that shorter, more intense strokes can also be done near strategic accupoints to relieve sickness. The pointed end can also be used to stimulate accupoints throughout the body for good health. I probably should have stayed away from the animal products, but I thought, what the heck. This was about 30 yuan.

4. This sweet ball cap. Just look at it! 15 yuan!

5. THIS BASKET. This basket is definitely at the top of my list. For one it is absolutely beautiful. And two, it is totally functional. I could probably fit about 20 pounds of stuff in there! I take it with me to the vegetable market, and all the sellers comment on how pretty it is, and how good it is to carry. So what if you have to make wide turns with it?!
It was about 45 yuan, about $8 USD. Don't ask me how I am going to fit it in my suitcase, but by george I'm taking it with me.

So there you have it, my top six purchase in China! Thanks for reading everyone, see you next time 下次再会～

光棍节--Happy Belated Single's Day, Everyone!

"Being single is eating wontons in the cafeteria, alone."

Hello Everyone!

To all of my single readers, I would like to wish you a happy Singles Day, and that you soon are able to not be single!

On November 11th, 11/11, this holiday is celebrated by singles across China, popularized by the number of one's in the date. You are supposed to eat 4 油条, "oil sticks," a fried donut type thing shaped like the number one, to signify the date, along with a baozi for the dash in the middle. Singles day in 2011 was especially well received, I'm sure that you can imagine.

If you are single, then people will send you all manner of text messages to wish you a happy holiday and that they hope you will be able to not be single soon. I thought that this phrase in Chinese was particularly funny- 早日脱光, "early day take off your single-ness." A friend in one of my classes is single, and she said she was plagued all day by texts from friends sending their wishes to her. Singles can sort of celebrate being single, but it seems more sad in a way, more like a reminded that you haven't yet found a 对象, a target for marriage.

Another aspect to singles day is, like all great holidays, consumerism! Some people have asserted that this holiday was only created by companies so that they could have Singles Day related shopping promotions. Online shopping websites, ahem, Taobao, 淘宝, have big promotions starting at midnight the day of. Some of our roommates here I heard took advantage of this to pick up some stuff, haha.

Anyways, just wanted to share this silly holiday with you all. Cheers!

So what's with the face masks?

I've had a few people back in the states ask me about the face mask thing and why people wear them. There are a couple reasons for the mask, maybe a little pseudo-sciency, but reasons nonetheless. 

I started wearing one if the bluish green surgical masks a couple of weeks ago on my roommates suggestion. I get really bad pollen allergies, and was sneezing for like 10 minutes solid, and the next day she brought some home for me to wear. She said that it's common for people wear them to help with allergies. I feel like this makes sense, because it's a physical barrier between your face and pollen. I haven't had a ton of allergy flare-ups since I've been here, so I can't say definitively weather or not it really works, but I buy it. 

The second reason that people wear a mask is to prevent the spread of illness. You would wear it if you were sick, so that you wouldn't get anyone else sick. Sick days in china are not really a thing, and you probably have to show up to work or class once or twice while your sick, so you could wear one at that time, on the subway, etc. The drawback is that they make your face really hot and are really annoying to wear inside. 

The third reason for a mask is to prevent breathing in dirty air when you are out in the road. I see so many people riding bicycles, on their motorbike, or just walking around wearing a mask out in busy streets. I feel like the pseudo-science comes in a little bit here, but I invite you to suspend your suspicion for just a moment to imagine being in really dirty air. Like your standing behind a tractor for a few minutes, a California afternoon when the southern  half the state is on fire, your sister left the bottle of nail polish open in the smallest bathroom in the house, a campfire that hasn't quite taken yet and is mostly just smoke... These are the kind if smells that you will get out on the street. The kind if smells which you can't tell if they simply smell bad or if they are actually dangerous. A classmate has even told me she gets headaches when she goes  out for too long, so you really can't help but wonder. When faced with these strange smells, you cannot help but want to cover your nose and mouth. Having a mask on can really help with this. 

There are a few different kinds masks, which are the surgical type masks, and then novelty cloth masks. As far as I can tell, neither if these masks have any type if extra protection, other than just being cloth over your face, hence my suspicion of pseudo-science. The novelty ones are funny, baecause they come in children's sizes, men and women's styles, big and small, Lacey and pink, checkered... Quite funny. 

I myself bought this really great shiny pink lepoard one that covers most if my face. Will says it makes me look like a ninja hehe. Not only is it totally adorable, it gets warmed up from your breath and keeps you really warm! It keeps the dangerous and gross smells down and potentially helps my allergies stay under control. It helps keep me healthy and keeps out roadside dirt particles. And it covers my face and makes me look less like a foreigner! So for me and many others, the mask is definitely working. 

Chinese School

So this has been my first week going to a full five days of classes at Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine--so cool! Finally going for a full week is really allowing me to settle in, and see things with clear eyes, instead of the initial "ohmygod where is my classroom i'm so late" sort of eyes.

First, I want to say that after all of the headache that it took to manage, I want to say that I am actually really glad that I am going to a different University for classes that my other flagship classmates. NUCM is almost entirely made up of Chinese students, a big contrast to Nanjing University, where I could go all day just speaking English with all of the foreigners. I see a foreigner once in a while, but they are few and far in between. In one of my classes, Basics of Chinese Medicine Theory, and I am the only exchange student/flagship student there! It is really cool to be completely immersed in my classes, it feels like such a once in a lifetime kind of thing: 难得可贵！

Second, I want to say that I think everything that they've ever told us in America about how lucky we are to go to school there, and how school in Asia is really intense, is like 100% true. All the buildings are grey and look exactly the same, and are like a maze. And then once you find your classroom, you're teacher may or may not show up, or the room might have just changed an no one told you, or the class was just cancelled. Luckily I didn't run into these problems, but lots of my class mates did. And then, once you pin down the class, and the time, and the place, you actually have to like, go and attend the class.

Class in China is sitting and listening to the teacher talk into a microphone at the front of the class, while she/he clicks through a powerpoint, which is just lines copied from the book, that you are supposed to have in front of you. There is no eating allowed, but you can drink tea. The desks are indescribably uncomfortable, because the chair is attached to the desk at the weirdest distance from the table, and you can't move it around, and sometimes the chairs are broken. During class, if the teacher asks you a question, you stand up, and find the answer in the book as fast you humanly possible, and then read the paragraph where the answer is; none of this "say it in your own words" nonsense. Also, there seems to be some elusive kind of system where the teacher hopes that you will finish her sentences, and that if you have correctly memorized the material, you will spontaneously say the answer/finish her sentence in unison with her and the rest of the class. The one thing that the teachers seem to be lenient on is talking in class, and at some points during the lecture, a wave of low-pitched talking rises up, and literally every student in the class is just talking, and the teacher's sadly amplified voice is like, completely drowned out. But she never says anything, it is just so odd.

I also have a short break between classes, where I like to just walk around and check things out. There is always people riding around two to a bicycle, or best friends holding hands. They broadcast the campus radio program over the loud speakers outside for everyone to listen to, and they really like to play Coldplay's "Yellow." It give things sort of a sweet feeling, walking around listening to "yellow," eating tangerine's in the twilight...

Overall, I am really enjoying my classes out here. I feel so lucky! Also, I took some photos of the campus, you can check them out here.

P.S. Just a note for future Flagship students: If anyone is reading this and is wondering if they would like to take classes at Xianlin area, where my school is located, let me just tell you up front that it take A REALLY LONG TIME to get there. They tell you in the office that it takes an hour, but you best be getting along a good hour and a half before your class starts or your ass is about to be late. *huffing* That is all.

秋高气爽了！Happy Fall everyone!

Clothing in China

Ah yes, I "LOAE" Paul Frank too! ...My guess is that
counterfeiting probably has something to
 do with the exorbitantly high prices in China also. 

So over vacation, Betty and I of course had to do the little shopping trip or two, and let me just say, purchasing clothing here is surprisingly expensive, and not in the like, 物美价廉, you get what you pay for sort of way.

So we are in downtown Hangzhou just checking out the area, and Betty spotted a shirt that she liked, so we go in to check it out.... And this shirt is cute, but its really lacking in quality, practically coming apart at the seams, and the fabric is really thin and this sort of faux-suede material. I would say comparable to something you would find at Forever 21 in the states, the price point, if I were to guess, couldn't have been more that like $15 USD or so. But we flip over the price tag and it was a whopping 540元, which is like almost $100 USD! I couldn't believe it!

This price turned out to be standard at most of the other stores that we went into in the area. Most things hovered in the 450-600元 range, and for anything nicer that like Forever 21 quality, you were looking at something more like 1000元. I couldn't believe my eyeballs, I tell you. I asked Betty what she thought of the prices, if it was just that this area was extra posh or touristy, but she said that most of the shops around our university in Nanjing were in similar price ranges, and seems to be the standard range for clothes purchased in-store.

As we browsed the racks, I thought of my sister Sofie, who has a part-time job at a high-end retail store. She is always talking about the large number of customers visiting from China that she helps. This always struck her as sort of remarkable, because really, they go in and buy  A LOT of stuff, and spend a lot of money. We always wondered what that was all about, and I always conjectured that it was just the Chinese 追求名牌 "chasing brand name" phenomenon that we learned about in my Chinese class, but now that I am in China shopping, it seems like it could also be simply attributed to a cost benefit thing.

For example, if you could pay $90 to get a cheap shirt from some no name clothing retailer; or you could stalk up on name brand, better made stuff for just a little bit extra when you like, visit your Uncle in the US or something like that, which would you do? You would probably just wait it out, to get a whole bunch of the good stuff at one time, right? For like a similar price! So to them, purchasing "luxury" goods in the US is basically the same price, with more benefits: you get the flashy logo on it, which definitely has appeal here in China, and, if that shirt we saw the other day was any indicator of the quality of clothing here as a whole, you also get much nicer and well made pieces of clothing.

It really was an interesting experience to go shopping here, and it sort of put things into perspective for me as far as why American luxury brands are so popular with Chinese people. Very interesting.

Going to school on Sundays--Seriously??

Right at the start of the semester here, we have had quite a few days off. We had the Mid-Autumn Festival, with a four day break, and now it is National Day, with a whopping seven day break. But in China, when you have a break, a thing that makes sense is that you should make up for the days that you had off, right?? RIGHT??

When I first heard that we would be required to make up all Fridays off by holding class on SUDAY instead, I was surprised, to say the least. First of all, there is the logical thing of, why would we make up only Friday's class, and not do anything about Thursday's missed class? And what about all of the other days we miss for longer breaks? All of this Friday class make-uping has actually given us a surplus of Friday class sessions, and now we've attended it two times more than classes on other days of the week, and a week of attending class six days in a row!

And then the little anglo-christian deep inside of me was like--"You can't do that, Sunday is the day of rest!" I felt it so clearly, sort of like a violation of the sanctity of Sunday or something. I have not considered myself a religious person for a long time now, so it must have been something left over from way back in my childhood, when my family would go to church.

When we asked our program why the class schedule is arranged this way, we got a few different answers. It turns out that the holiday schedule is different every year, and that schedule does not get published until after the school year starts; this makes it impossible to know exactly how many class hours you will have when you pay your tuition. So that whole making up class things is so that you can what you paid for as far as class hours go. But there is another questions too, which is why isn't the holiday schedule the same every year, and why does it take so long to get it published?

 But its not just schools that are affected: government organizations are making up the days too. That means that thousands of people are living with uncertainty of their vacation time, and without the benefit of a fixed schedule. This creates problems as far as traveling, and creates a rush to buy tickets for the holiday. For example, if you're going to visit relatives, you have to either take a gamble on the dates to buy tickets before the rush comes on, before the dates are announced; or wait until the dates are announced and fight for train tickets and hotels with the rest of 'em. I have a classmate who decided to try and get plane tickets before the travel rush, but he got his dates wrong and had to miss a week of class because of it.

These are just the facts of life in China: waiting on government bureaucracy, odd regulation... No one bats an eyelash when this type of thing happens. Most people just shrug and say "It's just China," and get on with it. And it is a rather trivial matter...

Anyways, food for thought! Happy National Day everyone! Cheers~

中国改变得非常快：China is changing so fast...

At like a breakneck speed. Back in America I always heard people say this, in both Chinese and English, but it was sort of hard to get a grip on what it meant to me, as a young person, from a small US town.

But now that I am here, I know exactly what it means. It means 24hr/day construction. It means leaving for a year and not knowing what your town might look like when you come back. It means new structures going up so quickly you kind of wonder if they are structurally sound. It means ditches in the road, ambiguous traffic directions, and dangerous intersections. It means NOISE, all the TIME noise, the oh god did I just damage my ear drum a little bit kind of noise. An army of men in orange helmets out on the street running cement saws in flip-flops.

 Right down the street from my house, there is a big sports stadium where they will be holding the Youth Olympics next August, so in preparation they are putting in all manner of new underground stations and flower planters by the road.... SPORTS *shakes fist*

Sometimes at night I can here the high powered trenching machine at work. It makes my boyfriend's flat in San Francisco, conveniently located on 19th avenue (aka the freeway), seem like a sanctuary of peace and tranquility. It is very odd to see everything torn up like this. I am not sure if I just happened to get plopped right down in the middle of one tiny construction project, or if this is really related to the ubiquitous "China is changing" trend. I feel like it must be, on some sort of grand scale.                    

I won the Confucius Institute Scholarship! Yay! 谢谢孔子学院！

I just heard the news yesterday by email! I won a scholarship from the Confucius Institute at Nanjing University to study Chinese! It covers my tuition and hopefully some of the cost of living! I haven't won a ton of scholarships, and, this one being kind of a big one, I feel super excited.

The Confucius Institute is a Chinese organization promoting Chinese language and culture abroad. There is probably a chapter on your campus! They host many cultural competitions which have some really wonderful awards for funding and study abroad opportunities, so I would urge you to go in and say hello! For this particular scholarship, I was the only one on my campus to apply, which really upped my chances, and I hear that this is not a situation which is unheard of. If you want to study abroad, want funding, and want ways to practice your Chinese, definitely go check it out.

You can check out there website here.

Yay!!

ISIC Cards?

There is sort of a loose "requirement" from the Office of International programs that says you should buy an ISIC card. It is supposed to be an international ID card that comes with discounts around the country. But I say, isn't my passport an international ID card? And the benefits aren't all that great in China. Most of the discounts are in Shanghai, only one in Nanjing.

 It's $25, and I feel like it wouldn't really be worth it. Has anyone ever used the ISIC card abroad? Did you find it convenient? Would you recommend it?

My Chinese Friends from Work, Some Travel Advise

Lately, I have been making friends with some coworkers of mine who are from China. They have been so wonderful to talk to and hang out with, and they have given me some great advise on in country travel that I would never have gotten anywhere else.

We were all hanging out on Sunday night, chatting and having a snack, and I realized that I hadn't told them I would be leaving work soon. When I told them about when I was leaving, I became unexpectedly sad! I hadn't thought about how we might not see each other again for a long time. So if any of you guys are reading this, 離開了科學館以後會很想念你們！你們給我的建議真幫我很大的忙！我們保持聯絡吧！

If you are reading this as a flagship student, I would really recommend that you get in touch with the Chinese community at your work. It is a wonderful opportunity to use your language skills in real life situations, and your coworkers or people that you help there will be so impressed and glad that you can use their native language. I have had the opportunity to practice Chinese at two of my jobs since I started studying, and I really think that part of the reason why my Chinese progressed as fast as it did.

Additionally, here are some tips from my friends for getting to and around China:

-Beijing and Hong Kong airports are the largest international airports in the country.
-Fly into either of these, at which time you can catch a domestic flight to the city of your choice.
-Domestic flights should only be about 400 RMB (~$70!!)
-Check both Chinese and English language websites for prices. I have a suspicion that Chinese language ones will be less expensive. I was recommended this website: 携程旅行網
-When you book your flight, book a hotel for a night or two as well. These should also run about 400RMB. There WILL be less expensive options, but these will come with less amenities. Go for the mid range one.
-Make sure that you know the address of the place you are staying at. Have a printout with the address, and hand it to the driver.
-You will want to google the distance between the airport and your hotel. Look up local taxi fares, and do the math. Know what to expect regarding prices, so you don't get tricked.
-You might consider getting in touch with a Chinese travel agent when you are still in the US. They can help you navigate all of your options, and some even have some connections, useful if you (heaven forbid) run into some trouble.

Hope this helps! And thanks for everything CAS Friends!

李曦和我/QQ

QQ is neat. Its like a mix between AOL Instant messenger and Facebook. You add friends and post statuses and pictures and stuff. Fun times on Thursday with my tutor Xi Li, who helped me make a QQ account. This way, I can hopefully make friends in China, and stay in touch with them a bit easier. 

It was sort of strange because when you make an account, you not only get a name and password, you also get a number to go along with it too. Its like a long 10 digit number that you are required to use to add people. I mentioned it to my dad, and he found that sort of intriguing, in light of some of the recent policy reforms that have been passed, trying to make people online identity easier to trace back to their real life identity. It also brought to mind that I was asked for my passport number (!!!) when registering for Sina Weibo, another social media platform, which I kindly declined to. 

But then again I am a total n00b at the internet, especially the chinese internet. Does anyone know what the long number is for? Have they always done it that way? And why did it want my passport number??  

Anyways, thanks so much Xi Li for helping me out with this! Now i just need to add some more friends! 真謝謝李曦姐姐幫我裝好QQ的軟件！這次在一起超好玩的呀！