...and the rest

-Tuesday, 9.11-
We took a train from Jinan to Beijing in the morning. There were only so many first-class seats available so not all of the students got to ride comfortably, that one student being me. :/ It’s not that the economy seats themselves were uncomfortable, but when you’re sitting next to, um, bigger people, it gets a little claustrophobic. Oh well, one of these days I’ll get to ride first class…
When we got into Beijing, we had lunch with the artist behind the logo for the Beijing 2008 Olympics in the guest room of the cafeteria at CAFA, the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Afterwards, he took us on a tour of the campus. What a nice freaking art school. I would live in China if I could go to grad school there – it’s that amazing. It’s pretty affordable, too, the only problem is getting in (they accept less than 2% of applicants), Anyways, point is, CAFA is the art school all art schools should aspire to be, at least in design, cos it’s the coolest art campus ever.
After we visited CAFA, we took the bus to the Great Wall. There we were treated to an amazing dumpling dinner with all the beer you could ever fathom to drink at this little family’s house a ways away from the touristy side of the Great Wall, after watching the sunset from one of the watchtowers. The food was really good and there was plenty of entertainment watching their cat hunt a praying mantis and eat it. Full and satisfied, we stocked up on beer and flashlights and followed our guide to our campsite on the Great Wall.

The hike up the many flights of stairs almost made me regret bringing the beer in my backpack. Keyword being almost. We were given our sleeping bags when we got to the site, so we all set up our spaces and there the fun began. Some of us played cards, some of us played with flashlights and extended exposure photography, some of us marveled at the crazy bugs. But near the end of the night we all crashed – most of us at least. I had a lot on my mind, so I couldn’t fall asleep as easily.

-Wednesday, 9.12-
Woke up not so bright but still really early on the Great Wall. It was cloudier than expected, but we were still able to catch a glimpse of sunrise before it returned to hiding behind the clouds as we ate a breakfast of granola and coffee. At around 7.30 we embarked on our hike along the spine of the Great Wall.

I shouldn’t have said anything about climbing a lot of stairs the night before, because this was probably the most stairs I’ve ever climbed in my entire life. We started at Tower 4 (where we camped) and made it to like Tower 33 or something – I dunno, I lost count after hiking so much. The Mongols must have been really determined for the Chinese to build a wall in the friggin’ mountains. Nevertheless, it was hands down the coolest part of the trip. We didn’t hike through all the touristy parts ‘til the end, which was really cool cos it felt like we really got to know the real Great Wall, hiking through the rubble and deteriorated sections caused by war and time. It was definitely the most challenging hike I’ve ever done, but it was so worth it. After we crossed the toll bridge to the meeting point, we took a zip-line further down, which, by the way, is a great way to end a hike. We then took a boat to our lunch destination and eat heartily before we were to return on the bus to Beijing.

When we got back to Beijing we visited the 798 Art District. Really cool place. China’s art districts are like a thousand times cooler than ours – theirs’ is like an actual community. Here the group split off. I visited a couple of really cool metalwork galleries, but I wasn’t too interested in the gallery scene. Instead, I walked around the entire art district searching for all the graffiti I could find and photograph, and there was a lot of it. Of course, walking around looking for every nook and cranny can get you lost. And I did. Luckily, I had some sense of direction and was eventually able to find my way back and in time to get on the bus.
For dinner we ate at a steamed bun dumpling restaurant near our hostel. It was pretty good, though I think I’ve had my share of steamed buns and dumplings for the trip. After dinner we went to our hostel and settled down and rested. The hostel was a lot nicer than Ying made it out to be. Seriously, it was a lot cooler than any of the other places we stayed at during our trip. It was an old traditional Chinese house with an open courtyard that was recently renovated into a hostel with foreigners in mind. So it had the look and style of an old Chinese house with the comfortableness of a modern home (mainly, a Western toilet, not a squatter, but there was also internet, a guitar, and a Chinese hackysack). Our time in Beijing has been off to a good start.

-Thursday, 9.13-

And it seems I spoke too soon. It rained all morning while we were at the Forbidden City. Couldn’t it have waited ‘til we got back to Oregon, where it’ll rain nonstop for the next 6 months? Oh well, I guess you can’t have everything. It was still pretty cool though. Before we went into the Forbidden City we hiked up to the top of a hill in a park right next to the north side of the FC. My knees were still tired from 4-5 hours of hiking at the Great Wall, and I could really feel it as I climbed up the stairs to the pavilion. It was a really cool view though, since Beijing is mostly flat except for the hill we were on.
Edwin and I explored the FC, which was pretty cool but it was raining and there were a lot of tourists crowding around everything. Not to mention that the key buildings of interest were all under renovation, most likely to prepare for the onslaught of tourists to come next summer, when the Olympics come to Beijing. When we ran into Tim and Jen outside the exhibit about Cixi, Edwin gave us a nice little history lesson about Cixi and how much she screwed up things for China. More on that later.
After walking through the FC, we walked around Tiananmen Square and found a cheap noodle shop off some side street to have lunch at. We then met up with some others from the group in front of Mao’s Mausoleum (which was also closed for renovations….*sigh*) and walked to a teahouse and chilled there for a bit. Took a taxi back to the hostel, kicked it a bit with the kittens they had there, had dinner nearby at this quaint restaurant, and took it easy for the night. All in all, a pretty laidback day.

-Friday, 9.14-
Woke up to heavy rain and thunder. Great. We started off the day visiting the Temple of Heaven in the pouring rain. And honestly, it was pretty miserable. Is it supposed to rain this much in heaven? Either way, the Temple of Heaven wasn’t anything too spectacular, compared to everything else we’ve seen.
Took a cab back to the hostel and started working on my project. I took advantage of the guitar at the hostel and wrote a song while I still had my burst of inspiration. Had myself a little lunch and a much needed nap. That nap killed my appetite later though, as I barely ate anything for dinner. Later that night, we all went out to Hou Hai, Beijing’s beautiful bar district along the north side of the lake. It was a lot of fun finally being able to get all the students together to go out. We started at a swanky little bar with some live music and a round of B-52s. Then we crossed the bridge across the bank and went into a dance club for a while. This was followed by another hour or so of barhopping. I don’t know if it was dancing or the lack of sustenance or both, but the drinks in Beijing felt a lot stronger than in Shanghai and Jinan. 20 kwai mojitos? Yes, please!

-Saturday, 9.15-
Waking up early to catch a cab to the cultural flea market sucked! But it was worth it once my hangover went away. There was so much stuff there, and I really got to improve my bartering skills considering all the crap I bought. I spent around 1000 yuan there, which was a third of what I started with at the beginning of the trip. But I got so many cool gifts, as well as a couple things for myself. There was seriously so much stuff though. It took me at least a couple hours to look at everything before I decided to buy something.
I cabbed it back myself since I was late meeting up with my classmates I had planned to split a cab with. The driver was this really cute young woman, but unfortunately neither of us could speak each other’s language. We tried many times but failed, which made for an awfully quiet cab ride.
When I got back I was more tired than hungry, so I took a nap instead of eating lunch. We then had our project review. Everyone had some cool stuff, but it seems like after our extra work in Jinan we were all kinda burnt out and just wanted to enjoy Beijing for what it was. Afterwards we tried having dinner at this nice restaurant famous for its Peking Duck, but the wait was incredibly long and we had plans to go to the Beijing Opera teahouse afterwards, so we ended up eating at the restaurant next door. Luckily though, the Peking Duck they served at the restaurant we ate at was made at the restaurant we were originally going to eat at. What a coincidence! And man, was it good!
We went to the Teahouse show after dinner and watched a puppet show about the Monkey King, some Qin dynasty opera, oral mimicry, pot juggling, kung fu and all sorts of cool stuff. It would’ve been a lot more enjoyable if we understood the language, but nonetheless it was still cool. Came back to the hostel and spent the rest of the night packing.

-Sunday, 9.16-
Had breakfast at the hostel with the group of us that was leaving. Others were staying in China for a little longer. We said our goodbyes – it was really sad to leave so soon, after really just getting to know each other. But I was ready to come home. It was just a puzzle fitting all of our luggage into the bus. Quite a feat if you ask me.
When we got to the airport we already had trouble checking in, as a couple of us had luggage that exceeded the weight limit. So we went aside and rearranged our crap accordingly. Then when we finally got on the plane, we got delayed for 8 hours! That’s almost as long as the damn flight itself! Apparently, the initial delay was because the captain’s oxygen mask didn’t work during safety check, so we had to wait for that to get fixed. Then the airport asked the plane to move, but the captain didn’t want to, so that caused all sorts of complications between the flight crew and the government. Yes, the government. As if we weren’t already on the tarmac for long enough, we had to change flight crews. So finally after 8 hours of sitting in the plane we were able to depart, but not after 2 people got sick and 2 others got kicked off the plane for yelling at the crew. We were so incredibly late when we got to San Francisco I had to wait in line again at the baggage re-check to change my connecting flight because the entire plane had to reconnect their flights. But finally I’m home and that’s all that I care about at the moment. LONGEST SUNDAY EVER.

P.S.: while I was leaving to re-check my baggage after I got my new boarding pass, I saw Dominic Monaghan (Merry in LotR and Charlie in Lost) waiting at the end of the line. My guess is he arrived from the London flight. Cool!

the exhibition!

So now that the exhibition is finally over, I can give y'all the rundown of the past 4 days:

-Thursday, 9.06-
Our first day to find our partners and work on our projects. I teamed up with the Fine Arts class president Yu Youpeng, whose specialty was Chinese woodprinting and wall murals. Luckily, he spoke quite a bit of english - at least a lot more than I spoke chinese. As we showed each other our works I realized that this was going to be tough, as our styles are drastically different. But we were able to agree that a fusion of both of our styles would look pretty cool. As our time was pretty limited that day, we were only able to plan out our project, but we had a pretty complete idea of what we both wanted to do.
We had lunch together at the school cafeteria and then he had to get some other things done, so I decided to go with some of the other students to hike the mountain right outside the school. Long story short, flip-flops don't get you very far when there's no trail. We ended up going to the rec center, or something like that, and I played a few games of ping pong.
Met back up with Youpeng and discussed our project once again to double-check the details and then left with our group back to the old campus. Dinner and then some rest.

-Friday, 9.07-
What a stressful day! Youpeng and I had planned to complete all of our line drawing in the course of the day, thinking we had the whole day to do it, but plans got changed and we had to go to a contemporary art museum followed by a sketch trip at 5 Tiger Lakes in the afternoon. We got our supplies and got as much of the line art done as we could, and then I ended up having to take our project back to work on it during my down time so that we could start coloring the next day. When our group got to 5 Tiger Lakes, instead of walking around and enjoying the scenery of the flora and the ponds or getting tea at the teahouse, I found a place to sit down and work on our project. My working drew a lot of attention, as kids and families walking by stopped to look at my work while I would just smile back and continue working. The security guard was even curious enough to leave his post and see what I was doing.
After about 30 minutes we left to eat dinner. When we got back to our rooms I worked on our project once again. Then a good lot of us went to a trendy dance club in town because one of the professors wanted to take us out to one, knowing how American students like to party. I took the opportunity to go out, since this would be the only time to experience the nightlife in Jinan. It ended up being a lot of fun. We started off in a karaoke room and I sang one song before we figured out it would be 1200 yuan for all of us to rent the room for 1 hour. Luckily one of the professors had connections with the owner of the club and got us out of that one.
We proceeded to the bar and ordered a couple drinks, and after a while the dance floor opened up. With some liquid courage in our systems, we got on the dance floor and rocked the house! There was barely anyone out there before we came on, but once we started dancing the floor got packed. When I came back to the booth the professors treated me to green tea + whiskey concoction, which was actually quite tasty. We also met a cute girl named Ro Jo who was a student at Shandong Normal University (the name sounds weird, but I think normal is supposed to mean general). She was really nice and spoke pretty good english. After about an hour or so at the club, we took a taxi back. Since I had worked off most of the liquor, I felt pretty sober at the end of the night and decided to finish my line drawings for the joint project. At least I was able to get it done!

-Saturday, 9.08-
When I got to campus, Youpeng finished his portion of the drawings and then that's when we ran into a little difficulty. Originally, I was going to color the centerpiece with my brush pens and Youpeng was going to color the drawings with acrylic paint, but he felt that I should color my own drawings. I agreed with his reasoning but I can't paint worth crap and I didn't want the outer ring to be colored with two different media. Eventually we were able to decide upon coloring the entire thing with colored pencils. So we went back to the supply store and got our colored pencils, and worked on our project to the finish, which was like 5 minutes before I had to catch the bus back to the campus at 9pm. Stressful! And I wasn't even done working. When I got back, I finished up my individual project and popped open a Tsingtao to kick back for the remainder of the night.

-Sunday, 9.09-
This day was for our critiques and getting everything ready to be photographed and printed for the exhibition. The central computer for the printing had some technical difficulties so the critiques started about 90 minutes later than planned. I think it went pretty well. Everybody had some really cool collaborations. Since we started late, we had to rush lunch and get back in time to get stuff ready for printing. Afterwards, our group returned to the old campus.
Man did it feel good to be done with our projects (for the Shandong portion of the trip at least)! We had a lot of free time left in the day, so I decided to go look for a nice pair of pants to wear for the exhibition. After passing dozens of boutiques with gaudy or overpriced clothes, Jesse and I found a pants tailor shop called Bai Yuan Trousers (which means 100 Yuan Trousers). This place was awesome! I was able to get a nice pair of black slacks tailored to my size for about 13 US dollars! Jesse ended up getting a pair too since it was such a great deal. We took a cab back to the old campus and had dinner with our group. Afterwards, some of us went to the massage parlor down the street and got backrubs.
The backrubs were nice, but the night didn't feel complete, so Joel and I went to look for a bar to get a couple drinks. We ended up walking into a karaoke bar that wanted to charge too much, so we left and found this restaurant that had a fridge full of cold beers we could see through the window. Interesting and confusing situation, as we didn't have enough small change to pay for the beers, and they couldn't break a 100. It also didn't help that we couldn't speak Chinese. As both parties were confused and somewhat frustrated, they ended up just letting us take the beers for free. Sweet!

-Monday, 9.10-

Today was the big exhibition day. When we got to campus, we had a conference with the president of the school, who made a few speeches and gave us gifts. We made our way to the exhibition hall to put our work up. It was really exciting, as I've never had any of my work showcased in an exhibition, or not that I can remember, except for maybe the art show at the University of Georgia, but I wasn't even there.
When the exhibition started, the faculty opened up with a welcoming speech and student representatives from both the US and China made speeches. Very cool. There were so many students that showed up to see our works, it was great! Everyone's work was really cool, and there were some that gartered a lot of attention. At the end of the opening day exhibition, all the students in the program were to draw whatever on this huge roll of paper, which was a lot of fun. Afterwards, we had to say goodbye to the Chinese students, after exchanging gifts and email addresses. It was kinda sad to leave so soon, as we were able make friends despite the language barrier. But hey, I got a lot of pictures and memories and I'm ready to continue on with the trip.
We had dinner with some of the faculty and the president and vice president of the school. What an interesting dinner. We had some bai jiou (.......) and danced and sang karaoke. It was actually pretty fun. Afterwards I went out with a couple of my classmates and I ended up buying a sweet pair of sunglasses, but not without bartering down the price of course. Then we hit the supermarket for some snacks and now I'm here updating my blog. After this I gotta pack cos we're taking the train to Beijing early in the morning. Great Wall here I come!

Shandong

-Saturday, 9.01-
This was our last day in Shanghai, as well as our last day free day for the week. I had already finished my 1st project the night before, so I took this day to explore around. In the afternoon I took the subway with some of my classmates to what we thought was the French concession area, though we didn't really have a map to tell us where it was so we kinda just winged it. Even though we didn't find it, it was still fun to walk around and see more of the city besides the chaotic downtown area. We met up with the rest of the group for dinner at this restaurant called Vegetarian Lifestyle, and surprisingly it was really good. Afterwards we came back to the hotel and critiqued each other's projects and took a taxi bus to Shanghai train station. That in itself was an adventure, as our drivers were freakin' crazy, changing lanes across 4 lanes of traffic and blabbering some nonsense in Chinese at Edwin. We got on the sleeper train, got a couple of beers and hung out in our cabin and passed out in the moist sheets they gave us. Great...

-Sunday, 9.02-

We arrived in the city Jinan in the Shandong province in the morning. I was particularly clumsy that day. As I was walking down the stairs, I decided to walk down the middle section that was just a slope and slipped and slid down the whole way. Aside from the embarassment, it was kinda fun. The Shandong University of Art and Design (I'll say SUAD from now on) greeted us with a huge banner and a very warm welcome. We took a bus to the campus, checked in and got some awesome breakfast, after which we got back on the bus and took a quick tour of Jinan.
We saw some water spring gardens and the central shopping plaza before we had a feast of a lunch, and then we went to the Hero Mountain culture market, which was pretty exciting. There was so much unique stuff there. There was even a little turtle market with a huge assortment of live turtles, probably for people to buy to cook up later...sad :(
For dinner we ate at Shark King Hotel. It was an epic feast around a 40 foot diameter table in a really fancy room. Probably the classiest place I've ever eaten at. The Lazy Susan in the middle was probably 30 or 35 feet in diameter, and turned itself using magnetic levitation. The food was amazing and then everybody toasted everyone...multiple times. When the Chinese toast, they drink the entire glass. I toasted/got toasted probably 15 or so times. Great night. Can't remember what happened when I got back....probably went to bed?

-Monday, 9.03-

On Monday we went to the new SUAD campus about 40 minutes out of Jinan to meet the students and do a group activity. We all introduced ourselves and got to see some of the graduate work which was really amazing. At break we explored the campus and got some drinks and then came back to the classroom to work on our first assignment. The American students were to draw first on this piece of paper that ran along the wall, and then the Chinese students were to add to it, with a theme of our impressions of China. It was a really fun workshop and it was really interesting to see what the Chinese students would come up with. We had lunch, took the bus back to the old campus (where we're staying) and looked at the school president's private museum collection of antiques. Dinner at the cafeteria. Some of us went wandering around afterwards to get a grip of the area around us. Sleep.

-Tuesday, 9.04-

We woke up at the buttcrack of dawn to eat breakfast (which I missed...) and then got on the bus to Qufu, the hometown of Confucius. During the 2 hour bus ride, I think the driver used his horn 95% of the time. It was extremely annoying, though luckily I had my iPod to sorta drown it out. We got a tour of the Confucious Temple, which was built continually over 2500 years by each of the 70 or so generations that followed in Confucius' family. It was really cool and all the architecture was really ornate. We then went to eat lunch nearby and got a tour of the Confucius family cemetary afterwards.

Back on the bus to Taian, home of the largest mountain in China, Mt. Tai. This place I could've spent all day in because the view was spectacular. Since we were short on time, we took a gondola to the top and back down, but I doubt the group would've wanted to hike any of it anyway... For dinner we went to a Hawaiian buffet, and man do the Chinese like to toast a lot. Jackie, the coordinator from Shandong, kept filling up my beer glass, and towards the end of dinner, him and Yu Yong the camera man kept toasting. Even if I said no more they'd fill up my glass. Eventually I ralfed in the bathroom and then had a couple more glasses of beer to wash out the taste. Went back to the dorms and passed out. Fun night!

-Wednesday, 9.05-

Today some of the Chinese students came to the old campus to hang out with us, while some others from our group took a 3 hour bus ride to Weifang to learn kitemaking. That sounded fun but I could not take 6 hours of honking anymore, so I stuck around town with the Chinese students and we went to the Buddha mountain nearby with 10,000 Buddhas. That was a lot of fun. There was a giant golden Buddha up the stairs from the front gate and we hung around there for a while, then we walked up the mountain and hit some gongs and bells and whatnot, then ventured to the top of the mountain. Man, what a hike! It was really rewarding though, because from the top you could see all of Jinan. What a spectacular view. Afterwards we went to lunch at Pizza Hut, which actually wasn't THAT bad - it was a nice deviation from eating Chinese food for every meal of every day. Came back to the campus, did some laundry and got some rest.
Right now I'm at some backalley internet cafe. After this I'm going to work on my 2nd project before I meet up with the rest of the group for dinner. Tomorrow we start our collaborative projects with the Chinese students. Zai jian!