Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

Skull in a cup

The Yinxu museum in Anyang is a bit like a haunted house.

When you enter the place, you quite literally are walking through a graveyard, since the museum was built over a group of ancient tombs and sacrificial pits.

These sites all belong to the Shang Dynasty (1600 to 1046 BC). Before 1899, the dynasty was believed to be a myth. But oracle bone findings along with excavations at Anyang proved its existence, making this city the site for one of the most significant finds in Chinese history.

What surprised me the most when visiting the museum was how human sacrifice was commonly practiced in the Shang Dynasty. Slaves or captured enemies, were often slaughtered or buried alive as offerings to protect the recently deceased. Even the living wives of dead men were known to join their husbands upon burial. Dogs, horses, chariots, and elephants would also be immolated.

Human skeletons only made up a portion of the museum. A vast variety of pottery, weapons, oracle bones and other artifacts were also on display.  But this particular relic stood out.

"Yan (a type of pot) containing human skull," read this very brief exhibit display. Makes me think living during the Shang Dynasty might have been a bit of nightmare.

Anyang

Like Xi'an, Anyang is another ancient capital in China. The Shang dynasty kings settled the city more than 3,000 years ago, and archaeologists continue to excavate ancient artifacts from area. With no school this week, I decided to go and visit the place.

I have to say, lately I've felt a bit insulated in where I live in Beijing. The city and its comforts are modern, the restaurant menus all display English, and an unshaven foreigner always seems to be in my field of view.

But in boarding the train to Anyang, I felt I was away from that. We waited in line, a long mass of people holding out their pink tickets. Carrying nothing that resembled a suitcase, old men shouldered large burlap sacks over their backs as they ambled up to the gate. And around me the speech began to change; the firm and steady Mandarin I was used to going silent, and morphing into the almost whimsical dialects of China's different provinces.

During part of the train ride, a young couple sat across from me. They talked and talked, but I have no idea what they were talking about it.  Something, something, Shanxi province, and something, something, cell phone was all that I heard through their thick accents.

I arrived in Anyang (population 5 million) this afternoon, and I've already wandered through the streets a bit. The city feels a bit older and noticeably dirtier. Buildings look faded; the government painted letters on the train station are now but a pinkish white. At the Lanzhou restaurant I ate today, a cockroach creeped past my foot.

I see more stray dogs on the streets, scavenging through trash or looking lost. Buses still display an ad for a Chinese movie that was shown more than a year ago. If you wander too far, you'll know by smelling a faint whiff of manure some of these nearby farms possess.

I've seen no foreigners here. But I have seen quite a few poor people. While eating dinner, a speechless old man asked for spare change, going from table to table at a large outdoor dining area. Later, a blind man, carrying a Chinese fiddle, somehow managed to cross a busy intersection, only to then play for money on a bustling sidewalk street. Just a small walk away, a young teacher knelt in front of a shop and begged for cash mutely. A sign written on the ground in front of her said she needed the money to pay for her husband's surgery.

I was almost shocked to see this, since in Beijing I've rarely encountered it so far. But in my days walking the streets of Xi'an, this was quite common. I had just briefly forgotten about it.

I did give out some of my money, only to then quibble with myself that I had given out too much. That made me feel guiltier. In total, I must have only handed out less than one American dollar worth of cash.

New website

I can finally see my blog again. And now I can edit it like normal. Hopefully this means no more of having to use proxy sites to get around China's great firewall.

You can also visit cloudyinbeijing.com to get to this site.

Flower expo

Yesterday was the mid-autumn festival, and thankfully I remembered to buy mooncakes.

On Saturday, I visited with my aunt and her family, along with my grand uncle and his wife. Mooncakes or Yue bing are the customary gifts you buy for this holiday. So I'm glad I didn't come empty handed.

To celebrate, we went to the 7th China Flower Expo. This was the first time it had been held in Beijing, in a nearby town called Shunyi.

There weren't so many carnations, roses or daffodils. In fact, it seemed there weren't as many flowers as there were trees and other flora more common and popular in China.

But it wasn't a stroll in some garden. Nearly all the exhibits were overflowing with people. Beijing certainly has a huge population, (at 17.4 million) and yesterday I could feel it, bumping into someone every minute. Long lines trickled out of the bathrooms doors, and large masses of people seemed to pour their way through each entrance.

Throughout the day my aunt and grand uncle said to me: "In America you don't see this many people, do you?"

The funny moment came when while in a crowd of people, a small boy hugged my aunt's husband, thinking it was his father.

"你抱错了!"  the boy's family said. "You're hugging the wrong dad!"

School so far

Because of the national holiday, the school has given all the students a total of 11 days off.

Normally the Oct.1 holiday only lasts for a few days. But since its the 60th anniversary, they've extended it by about a week.  I welcome the time off, but I'm not sure if this is good for my study habits; "We're going to forget all the things we've just learned," one of my classmates pointed out.

Though things have only just begun, school has been good so far, although the hours can be long. Every weekday, I attend class from 8 a.m. to noon. If I was only here to study it would be fine, but with my freelancing taking priority it feels a bit much.

Thus the pacing of things have been more of a hustle, reminding me of my days in college.  Back then I would spend half of my time studying for school, while I'd spend my other half working at the college paper. Now mornings are devoted to learning obscure vocab like 叶脉 (leaf vein) and 鞘 (scabbard), while afternoons and evenings revolve around writing and research.

I also can't help but think how life is fundamentally different than it was a year ago. I remember when I was a teacher in Xi'an, I had literally met hundreds and hundreds of people in those first few weeks. Many of them were students I had met through the classes I taught, or through school activities, while a few others were fellow teachers. Being one of the few foreigners on campus, I actually felt kind of popular.  Me, the valued asset, who was needed by the school, looked up to by the students, and who also got paid relatively well for it.

But now I'm just another student, eating in the cafeteria amongst the throngs of undegrads. All the while, I see dozens of foreigners playing basketball and tennis with the local students here.

Unlike before, in these first few weeks, I've only met what feels like a handful of people. They've mainly just been classmates: a college student from Syracuse wanting to pursue a career in a foreign relations; a Chinese-Australian looking to study his MBA; and a recent college grad who, coincidentally, went to the same high school as me. Yet strangely, I haven't gotten a chance to meet any native Chinese students.

A few days ago I went to my first house party at another university here. The whole apartment was filled with foreigners. European and African accents teemed from the hallways and living room, with Latin dance music booming from a set of speakers. Because of the noise, the local police eventually arrived to quiet things down. Later, one small group of partygoers left the apartment to go  smoke weed.

"How do you get weed in China?" someone asked.

"Dealers here have it," a person replied.

It's a surprise to find things in Beijing that I thought I had left behind in my own college years. I don't know if that's good or bad, just that it's amusing. A few days ago one of my classmates scribbled down a message during class and showed it to me. Written in Chinese, the note said:

你觉得我们的老师很辣？

Translation:

Do you think our teacher is hot?

(This post was written earlier, but published later since I was having trouble uploading it to the website.)

The next cycle

While in a grocery store today, I watched the start of China’s 60th anniversary parade. All the workers there had stopped what they were doing, and gathered in front of the two televisions hanging above the shop’s exit. As the event broadcasted, one shop worker took out her cellphone, looking as if she was ready, but hesistant, to snap a photo of the TV.

It seemed silly. But she wasn’t the only one thinking the same thing. With nearly everyone but VIPs barred from the parade, even I felt compelled to take a photo of the TV screen as the parade went on.

Once back in my apartment, I turned on my television and saw the military portion of the parade. Tanks, artillery and missile launchers of all kind marched on by. I was in awe, seeing the weapon arsenals escalate from small guided missiles to then hulking barrels capable of delivering a nuclear payload.

Newspapers have talked about how this anniversary may symbolize the dawning of a new era in China. Under an ancient Chinese calendar system, reaching 60 years signifies the end of one cycle.

In those last few cycles, China’s had a rough time, whether it be declining under the Qing Dynasty, facing oppression by foreign powers or languishing under early Communist rule. But those days seem so far away after seeing China’s military might on full display today.