“We cannot escape fate or nature or politics. Ordinary Chinese always knew that.”
- Mo Yan

In his work, Iron Child, Mo Yan uses iron to represent the Chinese government during the Great Leap Forward. This is particularly fitting since the government called for peasants to produce iron in great quantities. The focus on iron production resulted in the neglect of agriculture which caused a massive famine and the deaths of nearly 30 million Chinese people. Mo Yan’s themes in Iron Child include loneliness, distrust, and submission to power, but the overarching one (and the one covered here) is that of iron representing the government.

To understand the short story better, one must first become acquainted with Mo Yan’s early life. He was born in Gao Mi, the village that the events of Iron Child take place in. He was born in early 1955 which would put him at about the age of the narrator, Woody, at the time the story took place. He was from a poor farming family, ensuring that his parents were conscripted into the “labor brigades.” It is very possible that he is drawing from his own experiences as a child and may have seen or been a part of what he describes in Iron Child.

At the beginning of Iron Child, Woody is confined by iron. The walls of his “nursery school” consisted of “…saplings some two meters tall, all strung together by heavy wire.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 379). It isn’t directly stated, but one can assume the heavy wire was made of steel, which is an alloy of iron and carbon. Not only were the children controlled by the iron, they were also fed by the cast iron cauldrons used to prepare their porridge with wild greens. They were watched by people assigned by the government, “Three skeletal old women…all three had hawklike noses and sunken eyes, to us they looked like crones.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 379) Besides the children, their “…fathers, mothers, and older siblings – in fact, anyone who could handle a hoe or a shovel – were conscripted into the labor brigades.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 379) The government had full control over the people. The children were all confined away from their parents because they were being used to build a railroad, made of iron, near their village. The building of a railroad represents the extension of the government into the lives of the people. The people were being used by the government to build out the ideals of communism.

When the railroad was completed, the children were allowed to leave their confinement and be reunited with their families. Woody’s family, however, did not return for him. Instead of helping him, the women in charge shoved him outside and refused to help:

I’d long forgotten where I lived, and tearfully begged one of the old women to take me home. But she shoved me to one side, turned and ran back inside, closing the gate behind her. Then she secured it with a big, shiny brass lock. I stood outside the fence crying, screaming, and begging, but they ignored me. (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 382)

The use of a brass lock is intriguing, as certainly cast iron locks would have been available. Mo Yan, I think, was trying to show that even if you’re freed from government control, the people themselves can be just as bad. Crying outside of the nursery, Woody met a boy covered in rust and deemed him Iron Child.

Iron Child invited Woody to play near the railroad. When they reached it, Woody thought the rails resembled snakes, “I imagined that if I stepped on one of them, it would start to wriggle, and that it would wrap its headless wooden tail around my legs. I stepped on one cautiously. The iron was cold, but it didn’t wriggle and it didn’t swish its tail.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 383) Woody became hungry so Iron Child told him to eat a bar of iron. After first expressing doubt that a human could eat iron, Iron Child convinced Woody to try it:

I took the iron bar hesitantly, put it up to my mouth, and licked it to see how it tasted. It was salty, sour, and rank, sort of like preserved fish…I tried biting off a chunk and, to my surprise, succeeded with hardly any effort. As I began to chew, the flavor filled my mouth, tasting better and better until, before I knew it, I had greedily finished off the whole thing. (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 383)

The first taste of iron is really the first interaction with the government. It was wholly unpleasant. Only after biting the iron bar does Woody realize that it tastes good. I think that chewing the iron bar is representative of destroying the ideals of the Communist Party, and that the good taste that resulted is the joy one feels at ending things that are unjust and harmful. Iron Child told Woody, “Anybody can eat iron, but people don’t know that…Do you think smelting iron is easier than planting crops? In fact, it’s harder.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 383) This is a reference to the fact that nearly 30 million Chinese people died in this era due to starvation from the intense focus on steel production. Mo Yan is saying that if people knew they could eat iron (destroy the government) then they would have been able to feed themselves. After Woody realized that he could eat the iron, he was no longer afraid of the rails; rather, he wasn’t afraid of the government anymore since he had the power to fight it. In fact, he outright threatened them, “I muttered to myself, Iron rails, iron rails, don’t get cocky, because if you do, I’ll eat you up.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 384)

Woody and Iron Child then went along the rails until they “…reached a spot where the sky had turned red. Seven or eight huge ovens were spewing flames into the air…[Iron Child] said, Up ahead there is where the smelt iron and steel.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 384) The sky was the color of the Chinese Communist Party, and the furnaces spewing fire were the government molding people’s opinions and forging new members. At this place, Woody found his mother and father, “…I recognized them as my daddy and my mommy…it suddenly dawned on me what horrifying people they were, at least as horrifying as the three old women at the ‘nursery school’.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 384) His parents had become tools of the government, producing iron instead of caring for him. When they realized Woody was there, they tried to reunite with him, only to have him run away. Woody and Iron Child fled into a scrap heap and eventually into a rusting tank, “Iron Child said he wanted to crawl into the turret, but the hatch was rusted shut. Iron Child said, ‘Let’s bite off the screws.’” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 385) This is representative of Mo Yan’s own life, where as a critic of the government, he was employed by the People’s Liberation Army. Woody’s parents attempted to bribe him out of hiding, “…when I heard them trying to tempt me with meaty dumplings and sweet potatoes and eggs, I sneered contemptuously.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 385) Bribes are something the CCP does even now to get people to do what it wants. It is also more broadly applicable to modern Chinese society, where everyone has been blinded by the incredible increase in wealth to the point where politics are almost completely ignored. The government has bribed its own people with economic prosperity in exchange for political freedom.

Woody and Iron Child began to steal iron from the production camp which frightened some of the workers. The pair stole an iron wok, and “as we were feasting on our iron wok, we saw a man with a gimpy leg and a holstered revolver on his hip limp over and smack the men who were shouting ‘iron demons.’” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 385) The government is still represented by iron. The gun the man was carrying was likely made of steel, and it was that gun that gave him his power. Without it, he was just a weak man with a limp. When Iron Child stole the gun from the man, “[he] fell down on his backside. ‘Help!’ he screamed.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 385) The loss of his weapon, the steel pistol, made him powerless and afraid. The “taste” of the gun was unappealing to the children, “I took a bite [of the gun]. It tasted like gun powder. I spit it out and complained: ‘It tastes terrible. It’s no good.’” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 386) The raw and oppressive power the gun represented was disgusting to the children, so after sufficiently destroying it they threw it back at the gimpy man.

The children’s rebellion could not last forever, though, “One night, we went out to frighten the men who were smashing woks…we heard a loud whoosh as a rope net dropped over us. We attacked the net with our teeth, but no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t bite through the rope.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 387) The change of tactics of the government, from iron to rope, made the children’s defenses worthless. They could not free themselves from the control of the government. As a final act of domination, the government “scraped our rusty bodies with sandpaper. It hurt, it hurt like hell!” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 387) Scraping their bodies with sandpaper is really reeducation for the youth. They were being stripped of their revolutionary spirit and being made into what the party wanted them to be. This doesn’t quite fit into the time period of the story, as re-education didn’t start until about 10 years later in the Cultural Revolution, but it still echoes the sentiments of the government at the time.

The government of China during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution was so set to achieve its communist ideals that it was willing to manipulate and control the people. There were few who spoke out against the changes, and many who did ended up with a fate similar to, though most often worse than, Woody and Iron Child. Re-education was only sometimes implemented, often death was quicker and more effective. Iron is an excellent vehicle to describe the Chinese government during the Great Leap Forward due to its great many uses in both helping (farming tools, woks) and harming people (guns, fences).

Sources:
Lau, Goldblatt (2007) The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature, Second Edition Columbia University Press

Iron Demons by
Steven Buss is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Lu Xun’s talent in critiquing society in a discrete and yet extremely powerful way is astonishing. This talent is readily apparent in his short story, A Madman’s Diary. The political climate of Lu Xun’s era would not take kindly to a piece of work that openly criticizes society, so Lu Xun utilized a “madman” and his delusions to expose the madness of a society, based on ancient laws, which “eats men.” By claiming that he was publishing a personal diary which was written in vernacular Chinese as medical research, Lu Xun reached out to the lower classes of society who could not read the writing style at the time. Not only did this enable the common person to be exposed Lu Xun’s critiques of society, but it also helped protect Lu Xun from prosecution by giving the impression that the views expressed were not his own.

As Lu Xun’s madman begins his descent into madness, he begins to realize the ails of society. The madman, upon seeing the moon, realized that he had “not seen it for over thirty years, so today when [he] saw it [he] felt in unusually high spirits.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 7) I believe the moon represents a different way of thinking, one which Lu Xun had began experiencing. It doesn’t make any sense that one could have not seen the moon for thirty years, but one could easily not have had a thought that ran in opposition to the established opinions of society for thirty years. The next night for the madman is what really makes his madness – or rather, Lu Xun’s contempt for society’s beliefs and actions - apparent. “Tonight there is no moon at all, I know that this is a bad omen.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 8) A bad omen, indeed! Lu Xun is trying to show that despite having thoughts that run counter to society, those thoughts are easily eclipsed by the overpowering nature of the predominant ways of thought.

But what makes the views of a society so universal and so compelling? Certainly its the indoctrination of the young by their parents into a social system or belief structure. This is apparent at all times in history, today being no exception, and is integral to who we are. The indoctrination of the young is seen in religion, in culture, in everything that humans do. “But then what of the children? At that time they were not yet born, so why should they eye me so strangely today, as if they were afraid of me, as if they wanted to murder me? … I know. They must have learned this from their parents!” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 8) Lu Xun saw how children were raised to accept Confucian thought and how being apathetic about the injustices committed against one’s self by a higher member of society, but to defend that social structure against change became part of the social norm:

Those people, some of whom have been pilloried by the magistrate, slapped in the face by their local gentry, had their wives taken away by bailiffs, or their parents driven to suicide by creditors, never looked as frightened and as fierce then as they did yesterday. (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 8)

Beyond being critical of the indoctrination of the young into Confucianism, Lu Xun critiqued Confucianism itself. He felt that the ideas that Confucianism promoted were corrosive to a good society and encouraged people to ostracize, demean, and persecute – in other words, to eat – people with new ideas. “I realize all the poison in their speech, all the daggers in their laughter. Their teeth are white and glistening: they use these teeth to eat men.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 9) This critique of Confucianism is still rather veiled behind social commentary, but Lu Xun takes a more direct stab at Confucian ideas when the madman researches the history of eating men in China. On every page he reads he sees the words “Confucian Virtue and Morality.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 9) As the madman reads more he starts to “see words between the lines. The whole book was filled with the two words – ‘Eat people.’” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 9) This is presented as a hallucination, but it can be read as extracting deeper meaning from a text. Instead of taking the Confucian virtues and morals at face value, Lu Xun saw them for what they were – a way to keep people in line and maintain a power structure that is abusive to a large portion of society. Words such as these would be grounds for arrest and possibly death at the time Lu Xun wrote it. The protection Lu Xun gained from claiming this was the diary of a madman was absolutely essential for its publication and his continued free life.

From addressing the young, Lu Xun moves to the elders of society. “My elder brother came slowly out, leading an old man. There was a murderous gleam in his eyes…” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 10) At first glance, the madman’s delusions about the old man are the same delusions he has about the rest of the people he’s come into contact with. This, however, is not the case. The madman believed that this old man was there because he was conspiring with his brother to eat him. The old man represents the elders of society in general, and their impact on perpetuating customs. “I knew quite well that this old man was the executioner in disguise!” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 10) The disguise is the reverence and respect which elders are given despite their beliefs or actions, such as enforcing Confucian doctrines. Lu Xun is saying that these elders who demand so much respect are the same people who prevent societal change.

Society in A Madman’s Diary is portrayed as being full of individuals who are too fearful to do what they want themselves, and instead leverage the pressures of society to achieve their desired outcome. “I know their way: they are not prepared to kill outright, nor would they dare, for fear of the consequences. Instead they have banded together and set traps everywhere, to force me to kill myself.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 11) Lu Xun is showing that society seeks the destruction of some people, particularly those that threaten established traditions. He also felt that despite their actions, people were aware of the harm they were doing, but ignored bad feelings because they just wanted to be normal. “That’s the way it’s always been…/Does that make it right?/I refuse to discuss it with you. Anyway, you shouldn’t talk about it. It’s wrong for anyone to talk about it.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 12) Instead of addressing problems with society, they were ignored and accepted because that’s the way it has always been.

How comfortable life would be for them if they could rid themselves of such obsessions and go to work, walk, eat, and sleep at ease. They have only this one step to take. Yet fathers and sons, husbands and wives, brothers, friends, teachers and students, sworn enemies, and even strangers, have all joined in this conspiracy, discouraging and preventing each other from taking this step. (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 13)

Lu Xun finally starts offering solutions after revealing the apathy the society has. “…If you will just change your ways, change right away, then everyone will have peace. Although this has been going on since time immemorial, today we could make a special effort to do what is right, and say this can’t be done!” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 13) The madman is now expressing Lu Xun’s personal ideas directly, without using metaphor. If people, Lu Xun thought, would stop accepting old philosophies and start questioning things, they could be so much better and come to new and more just conclusions. He didn’t have much hope for society, however. “They would never be willing to change their stand, and their plans were all laid: they had labeled me a madman.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 14) Because there was an automatic bias against someone with new thoughts, those thoughts were cast aside as ridiculous and never given adequate contemplation. Anyone who didn’t conform to the expectations of society was truly mad.

This resignation certainly didn’t stop Lu Xun from imploring people to change, “You should change, change from the bottom of your hearts. You must realize that there will be no place for man-eaters in the world in [the] future.” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 14) Lu Xun’s reference to the “world in [the] future” is the western world where free and scientific thought reigned. He favored western societies for the advanced medicine and felt that the Chinese people could really become great if they opened up to new ideas. “Man-eaters” refers, as before, to the practice of shunning new ideas and persecuting those who had them. He rightly saw that the future is dependent on free thought and free expression, as well as scientific inquiry. Sadly, Lu Xun saw no hope in the adults of his era, and only saw the promise of change with children. “Perhaps there are still children who haven’t eaten men? Save the children…” (Lau, Goldblatt, 2007: 15)

Lu Xun’s A Madman’s Diary is laced with powerful social commentary which influenced society greatly. His disdain for Confucian virtues and thought clearly shine through, as well as his negative views on society in general. I feel that having a madman represent the only sane man in the society in the short story helps Lu Xun get his point across that the society of his age was flawed. He was probably risking his life, or at the very least his freedom when he wrote and published this story, but as someone who was deeply dissatisfied with society, he had no other choice. Thankfully, his influence positively affected China and helped lead the country to new ways of thought.

Sources:
Lau, Goldblatt (2007) The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature, Second Edition Columbia University Press

Social Commentary in Lu Xun’s A Madman’s Diary by
Steven Buss is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

I’m going to Fujian this weekend to hang out in Wuyi Shan and chat it up with some CCP members. Copious amounts of alcohol will most likely be imbibed, as the alcohol culture among the party is most pronounced (even if they say things to the contrary). Topics likely to be discussed:

• Freedom of information/speech/press/dissent/religion/etc
• The need for universal health care in this supposedly communist state
• What the hell is up with you guys and Taiwan?
• What the hell is up with you guys and Tibet?
• You don’t seriously believe that the rampant economic growth under capitalism is leading to your idealized communist state, do you?
• Why isn’t primary education free for all students? Live up to the claim of being communist already!
• You do realize that censoring the internet is not effective because people can easily get around it, don’t you?
• Why have you let China become so polluted in such a short amount of time? You are all masters at propaganda, how about instead of manipulating people to spot spitting and stand in line you tell them to use a fucking trash can and not dump toxic chemicals in the water supply?
• Will I ever be allowed back in China? Please?
• Is all the talk about a “peaceful rise” just something to placate the rest of the world as, with the present decline of the United States, you become the sole power?

Wish me luck and that no one poisons my food.

I’ve succumbed to the pollution and the unsanitary conditions in Beijing and have gotten sick like many of the other students. When I first arrived in Beijing, I was doing four laps around the complex where I live (about 4.7 miles), but now I am down to three laps because I’m so completely winded from the lack of clean air. The sanitation in China leaves much to be desired. I often see cooks hold their thumb to one nostril and blow, launching mucus to the ground beside them. They then continue on with their work without washing their hands. I have also seen noodles and other food dropped on the ground, only to be scooped up and thrown back into the dish. One can imagine how easy it is to get sick here, and I think I’ve done a hell of a job fighting it off until now.

So that last bit in the title…surveillance. What do I mean? Well, while I’ve been here in Beijing, I’ve lived as though I am under constant surveillance. I don’t know for sure that I am, but I think it is not out of the question. After all, I’m a freedom-loving, democracy-promoting, liberal American college student (which represents almost the complete opposite of China’s government ideology). I find it completely plausible that all of the international students are being surveilled. The US government has done it and, especially with the current administration, is probably still doing it. That doesn’t necessarily mean I have anything to fear, its just part of the cost of being a 老外 (laowai, foreigner). I find it particularly funny that in a nation where everyone watches me I can’t tell if I’m being watched (many people here are still fascinated and surprised when they see a white person so they stare incessantly). Twice when I’ve gone running here, I have had a car follow me. Upon realizing I had a car matching my speed right next to me on an otherwise empty part of the road, I changed course to run through and around some buildings. Both times, when I disappeared into the buildings, the car sped up and proceeded on its way. I don’t know if these two incidents were government related, or if some drivers were so fascinated to see a white boy running that they just had to slow down and watch. Frankly, both scenarios are equally as likely for me. What’s worse, thinking you’re being paranoid, or knowing you should be?

I went out to climb some mountains last weekend, but we were never able to actually reach one. This country sure likes their walls… We happened upon two mountains that were privately owned and completely surrounded by a 10 or 11 foot high wall and a moat. Awesome, way to own a mountain. Another was owned by a university and we were denied admittance. Perhaps more planning would have resulted in more success. I got some decent pictures (though not of mountains) from the trip including an old Beijing house (I don’t think this would be considered a Hutong), the red army, and smiling children.

There are a bunch of new photos from the Summer Palace on Flickr (first, last) to hold you over until I have time for a proper update.

The practice essay prompt involved individual responsibility in situations you aren’t directly involved in (i.e. encountering an injured man on the side of the road - should you call the ambulance?), and I’ve gained yet another valuable anecdote in support of my theory of why the Middle East is stuck in an odd social time warp. All the kids said it’s not their responsibillity, it’s whoever saw the accident or caused it. No notion of thinking beyond oneself for a greater social cause (except, and this sounds horribly imperialistic to say, for the ex-pat American kid in the class, who said that individual responsibility helps a society progress). He said it, not me.

I was really shocked by the responses of the Jordanian students, and it made me wonder how Chinese students might respond. Based on my experience trying to communicate with people using only very broken Chinese and trying to navigate the city, I would wager that Chinese people would respond like Americans. So far all of the Chinese I’ve met have been very helpful. Its not like they’ve been helpful because they feel like they have to be, but to me it feels like they actually want to help. Of course, I’m talking about a society that had a Communist stint, so that’s not especially surprising. I’ll have to remember to ask some Chinese people this question when I’m more fluent.

My next subject is touchy in China, and I was considering not posting it. I’ve left out the name of the person I was speaking with along with any personally identifiable information. I was talking with a girl here at Tsinghua and was surprised when she mentioned the Tiananmen Square protest and subsequent massacre in 1989. We were originally talking about the May 4th movement’s protests at Tiananmen back in 1919 but the topic moved around a bit. I told her that I was surprised that she knew about the protests in 1989, and asked if she though most of the students here at Tsinghua also knew. She has spent some time outside of China where the restrictions on knowledge don’t exist and was able to learn a great deal of information that is suppressed in China. She said that most of the students know something happened, but that they don’t know what. She also said that they don’t care, they would rather just make money. I then asked her if many students knew how to circumvent the great firewall. She says many do, but most don’t and they don’t have any reason to since they don’t know what they’re missing. I then asked her how she felt about all of this. She said that she’s frustrated and saddened by the restrictions on the internet, but there’s very little she can do since no the large majority of the population cares. I’m curious what the rest of the student body thinks, but this isn’t a subject I can go around asking people. I have no opinion to give until I get back to the US where I’m protected by mostly reasonable laws on free thought.

Fun fact about China and it’s changing values: The number of syphilis infections in China in the years from 1993 to 1999 increased from .2 per 100,000 to 6.5 per 100,000 people. The authors of the study attribute the rise mainly to “economic reforms and globalization in China. These changes have led to income gaps and a cultural climate that favors re-emergence of prostitution due to a substantial majority of men and a large migrant population of male workers,” and only partly to “[c]hanging social practices such as people experimenting with sex at earlier ages and before marriage, as well as increasing costs of individual health care.” In my most un-expert opinion (really, I’m just guessing and you shouldn’t put an value in my postulations), I think the increase has more to do with the lack of knowledge about sexual health and, like in America, social stigmas which prevent people from admitting they might have an STD and seeking treatment. Less information has never led to better health. More at Science Daily. Interestingly this virus was exterminated in China during the Cultural Revolution and only reemerged after opening the borders to the world. +1 point for Mao.

Cases of HIV/AIDS are also on the rise. As of 2005, there were 1 million infected individuals in China. According to Wikipedia, if nothing is done, this number could reach 10 million by 2010.

That’s enough musing for today. 再见!

I have yet to fully adjust to Beijing time; I’m going to bed around 10 or 11pm and waking up around 6am. I don’t really have a problem with this, as it lets me be productive in the morning and go running before breakfast without dreading it.

The breakfast foods here in China are vastly different than in America (with the exception of French toast, which the natives seem to like very much). I have found the 素包子(su baozi, vegetarian dumplings) to be very tasty and, like the natives, I’m also a fan of the French toast. Lunch and dinner have a great selection of foods. I have no idea what I’ve been eating, but it has all been delicious. One curious thing about the cafeteria is the absence of napkins. I don’t know if the Chinese are so much better than me at using chopsticks, or if its their noticeable lack of facial hair (beards catch food, *sigh*), but they never seem to have a problem with not having a napkin. Another curious (to me, at least) custom is that the soy milk and cow’s milk are both served warm at breakfast. They could be served warm the rest of the day, but I haven’t had the urge for either after breakfast. All of the other drinks are also served only mildly cold (as in slightly below room temperature), and there is absolutely no ice to be found anywhere. It is impossible to cool down in this country (as I type this, I’m sitting in my dorm in my boxers in the dark attempting to cool down at least a little). I want to buy a fan, but I will have no use for it after my three months here are up and I doubt that I’ll be able to find a buyer when I leave since there is no summer session for regular students at 清华大学(qinghua da xue, Tsinghua University) and the Fall semester doesn’t start until about a month after I return to the US. Oh well, there’s only two more weeks until we get 空调 (kong tiao, air conditioning) in our dorms. Forecast for the next 10 days: 热 (re, hot), 有风 (you feng, windy), 满身尘埃 (man shen chen ai, dusty).

I went with a few people to the 圆明园 (yuanming yuan, Old Summer Palace…I think, but that doesn’t make sense to me). You can see pictures on flickr. We weren’t quite sure where it was, so we asked a Chinese man for directions. It turns out that we were actually very close, and he pointed us toward the ticket counter. His name is Yang Zhengxian (I don’t know the characters for his name) and he was the most helpful and nicest (native) person I’ve met here. He’s a chemistry professor at Normal University and his wife is currently in the US doing research at Yellowstone National Park. They just got married on May 1st. We tried to treat him to lunch after he walked and talked with us in the yuanming yuan, but with typical Chinese politeness he refused (and we even asked the requisite three times!). I hope we were good ambassadors for America.

Messing up the chronology, on the way to the Old Summer Palace, I took what I feel is one of my best photos. Well, three photos: one, two, and three. Enough self promotion!

A few friends and I went wandering around a small part of Beijing called 五道口 (wu dao kou, 5th intersection) today. It is a shopping area that grew around a subway stop (or maybe vice-versa). We found a coffee shop and I was able to satisfy my withdrawal cravings. I don’t know if the coffee was exceptionally good, or if I was just grateful for coffee, but I thoroughly enjoyed my cappuccino. It was just as good as I can get back in the US (which, I know, isn’t saying much). I might make that a regular place to visit, but the prices are a bit high. The cappuccino was 22 kuai, which is roughly 2.90. Compared to everything else in this country, that’s really expensive. For example, a can of coke can be had for 2 or 3 kuai. Speaking of the 可口可乐 (ke kou ke le, Coca Cola）, it is delicious here! Much better than American Coke. I hear that its the real sugar that makes it so much better.

I also go to class here! Today was the first day of class, and I’m feeling pretty good about my competency. There are a few star pupils, but I think I’m on par with most of the students. Our 老师 (laoshi, teacher) is nice. She’s about 5 months pregnant with, I presume, her first child. I am guessing that its her first child due to the government’s limit on the number of children couples can have. I hope her pregnancy continues without complications. I’m sure there will be more news on class at it progresses. Pictures to come soon.

Its 11, and I’m feeling tired. 再见 (zai jian, see you later).

Warning: I’m about to complain.

My internet connection here is terribly inadequate and feels like I’m back on dial up. I must say that I expected better from one of China’s best universities. Packets are dropping constantly, and it often takes several requests before a web page loads. My hopes of using Skype instead of expensive international phone service have been crushed due to the bad internet connection. The content filtering bothers me very much. I am an avid reader of wikipedia, and not being able to get information on whatever I want whenever I want it is a feeling that I’m not used to and, I must say, one I’m not fond of. One thing that I have noticed is the selective filtering of news websites. The American news networks like CNN and MSNBC are freely available while the BBC News is blocked. That should tell you something about the quality and content of American news media.

We have been told not to drink the water in Beijing, including the water flowing into our dorms. I find it very unsettling that I’m bathing in water that is too contaminated to consume. The university was kind enough to provided all of us with an electric kettle so we can boil water to kill the various microbes in the water, but that doesn’t do anything about any heavy metals like lead or mercury that might be present. I got some bottled water from the small market on campus which I’ve been drinking and using to brush my teeth.

The beds are terrible. They consist of a piece of wood with a couple of layers of cotton padding placed on top. I suppose they could be worse, but they could certainly be better.

But its not all bad, I swear! On to the good things!

I bought a few apples from the market which taste great. Everything is really cheap. I bought those three apples for about 75 US cents. I also bought some 茉莉花茶 (jasmine tea) which is a mix of green tea and jasmine flowers. It cost 14 块 which is about $2 US. It has a very floral taste and aroma.

The cafeteria is very big; so far I have explored the first and second floors. I’m not sure what I’ve been eating, but it has all been pretty good. For breakfast today I had some sort of dumpling that I think was filled with a sweet soybean paste (miso?) and one of the apples I mentioned above. I’m ordering mostly by pointing since I don’t know the words for most foods. It has been quite the experience so far!

Our dorms don’t have air conditioning until June 1st due to power restrictions I guess. This isn’t so bad because the weather has been great so far. I think the high today is 25C (77F).

I’ve taken a few photos: my dorm, my bed (also linked above), and the view from my dorm. More will follow, but uploading them takes a very long time over this connection.

I spent all day today seeing my family and a couple friends. I went fishing with my father out in the Atlantic this morning, despite my moral objections to the practice (if you don’t know me, I’m a vegetarian). I didn’t catch any fish, so it wasn’t too bad for me. I did, however, get a sunburn on my feet. When I put on the sunblock my shoes were on, and when I took them off later in the day I forgot to put some on. Oh well. This might work to my advantage for my upcoming 13.5 hour flight to Beijing. I’ll be taking some benadryl which should not only relieve the itching, but also help me sleep. Chris and Shannon (two good friends of mine) came by and we went to the beach down by the nuclear power plant here in Stuart, FL. A storm was brewing so the sea was pretty rough but fun.

My sister, Kim, came into town to see me off which I appreciated. One of my brothers also stopped by. We all had Anna’s pizza which is arguably the best pizza in the whole damn state. I requested it as my last meal in America.

I leave for the airport in under 4 hours. I am staying up all night to aid in my struggle to actually sleep through the flight. I think I’ll go finish packing and get some last minute studying done.