China Friends and the wall

April 21, 2013

Week 1

Went to the Great Wall! We went up to a section that is closed off to the public, the only way to get there is to know this secret hostel place right at the foot of the mountain. You sleep in these people's house and then they feed you! Obviously this all costs money but it is part of the package!

We hiked up the first day in all fog it was paradise! So magical and Mystical like China, Like a China woman with her face half covered with a fan. We made it to the wall, at the top you seriously saw into the oblivion, the fog was eternity off the side you could only see about 100 ft. or less in front of you, we started to scale the wall and had to de some sweet and pretty dangerous climbing but not too bad, it was so amazing looking off to the side and just seeing white, thinking, "if I fell, how far would I fall?" The fog then would thin and thicken, finally after battling giant spiders and fog we made it to a nice spot and the fog began to clear and the sunset peered through, you could see everything! It was like when I was on the top of Mount Taishan and I felt like for a second, not only was I there at that place, but I WAS there, I was that place, I felt apart of it, I would breath and the wind would too, and I would stare and be stared back at by the Mountains. The Wall went on forever.

The next morning we woke up at before the butt crack of dawn and ran back up the mountain because it was as clear as a bell up there, we went even farther than the day before and Climbed up this super steep part, the stairs had to be climbed on all fours and if you leaned back you were a gonner, at the top of that tower we then went to the next one and you had to again scale a rock wall to get to the top, We made our Way to the strait up tallest peak around and It was a strait drop around the side of the tower 500 ft. Other than that we have been to all the shopping places, done some haggling, practicing Chinese made some friends with a bunch of foreigners.

Week 2

I have been making a ton of friends. I have made 3 friends from Egypt who speak Chinese fluently pretty much and since their English is not good enough to understand each other very well, we have to communicate in Chinese. Among my Peruvian friends, Italian friends, and German friend, I have befriended a handful of Chinese friends too. Claire, Vera, Jolin, Queeny, leaf, Lily, Thinker, Gao Fei  and Eclipse. They have taken me out to dinners, KTVs, and we have language trading a lot! They are very curious and knowledgeable of the outside world. Gao Fei is studying to be an English teacher because her parents want her to, though she herself does not want to and is not actually interested in English much at all. She wants to study History, but she is scared of going against her parents’ wishes.

Betty Speaks English nearly fluent and has eliminated her Chinese accent. She speaks like a British person She is a firm believer in Non-Religion. Not a radical at all but she simply and firmly believes that there is no creator and that when we die that is it. We stop existing. She finds peace in this somehow and says she is okay with the fact that we all become nothing someday. This is apparently the view of many from what she says. She explained that even many of those who go to the Temple to pray, do not believe in what or who they pray to, but almost it is as if they are praying to luck and good fortune.

We went to Shi Du to go hiking and it is about three hours from CNU. On the bus I met a woman named Lu and her daughter. I decided to be brave and put my Chinese to the test, expecting the conversation to end in about 15 minutes. We proceeded to talk for the entire 3 hours. She said my Chinese was 不错 and I was very exited! We talked about how English is different than Chinese. How Chinese is an older language, and I am ignorant of the facts but I argued that Chinese in its whole form is a much bigger language. She said English was bigger. I talked to her about her and her husbands work as she did everything she could to give her only little girl a comfortable place to rest. She asked me what I wanted to do with linguistics and I said there were many things I could do but I wasn't sure what yet. She herself was a Nurse in Beijing and her husband an accountant.

Riding the subways and buses and eating at the cafeteria you really become a part of the fast paced China culture. One word that passes through my mind is MASS. China seems to move in one direction. The people in their individual lives move and act as one mass. The rushing in the subways and on the bus, the crossing the roads when the pedestrian light is NOT on, The cramming into a three hour ride home, there are no lines, no one waits for anyone else, you just move and stay as close to the person in front of you so you get YOUR spot, with EVERYBODY else.