Another weekend with Mom and John
Anyway, this time I learned that my first home was 1009 Lombard Street (the curvy part). Below us lived Stuart and Betty Court. Mom used to make Len and me run around the house barefoot, because she didn’t want us making too much noise. We played in a vacant lot next door. Dad was away most of the time – WWII, right?
The good (and bad) of hiking the Great Wall
Hi Everyone!
The last few weeks have been wonderful. Last weekend we went hiking along the great wall, slept in a village along the wall, and woke up at four in the morning to hike (in the dark) to the highest guard post and watch the sunrise. It was one of the most breathtaking views I’ve ever seen. There were already two Chinese photographers that had slept the night on the wall and were taking pictures of the slow transition from red to orange then purple to blue. The sky was extremely clear and I could easily see hundreds of miles of the wall, the surrounding mountains, and the endless rolling hills below.
Unfortunately IES has some learning to do in terms of organizing trips. Besides for the scenery and the few moments I had on my own, the hike was quite miserable. I ended up carrying a girl’s duffel bag and fur jacket, and lent my shoes to a girl that had shown up in stylish flats. The program gave no list, warning, or any sort of preparation. Most of these kids had never hiked in their lives. I even pointed out to one of the “leaders” before we left campus that someone showed up with a duffel bag and fur coat and has never hiked before. He simply replied, “We’ll figure it out”. That’s the last I heard from him. I’ve never seen such incompetence in leaders and so much whining from kids. Grrr…
However this weekend I decided to do my own thing. Katherine, my good friend from California, and I went hiking on a different portion of the great wall. I found a hiking group called Beijing Hikers in my Lonely Planet that goes on hikes in the surrounding areas around Beijing. It’s mainly ex-pats from the ages of 30-60 on the hike, which meant an easy pace and interesting conversation. I met a really nice lady, Edie, who just moved to Beijing and works for the UN agriculture and food organization. Although she’s at least ten years older then me, I really can relate to her and enjoy her company. We’re having dinner in Nan Luo Gu Xiang-a nice local boutique area tomorrow. I also met a journalist who helped Katherine and I figure out our Tibet plans. We can’t go in, but she told us of surrounding areas that are equally as wild with zero tourists. The hike itself was fun with gorgeous scenery. I think I’ll be doing more hikes with these guys.
On a different note, life here is starting to shift from that of a long-term tourist, to short term resident. I’ve become less awkward at using my mandarin to communicate and I’m also starting to really get the hang of moving around this city. I have my (not so reliable) bike that I use to go to class, bike to the Chaoshifa (supermarket), and bike to different local places for meals. Of course I’m still scared to death of crossing the roads and try to avoid it at all cost. I’ve also become dependent on the subway and bus system here, which is so convenient. I now feel confident getting around the city on my own-it only took two months!
I’ve also made some cool Chinese friends, which is actually very hard. On campus I have many “friends” but they are just people eager to learn English and are very pushy when it comes to our friendship-constantly calling me to meet because they have presents for me etc. I’ve learned my lesson and don’t meet with these people anymore. I do have a legitimate friend and her English name is Nikki. She is very open to talk about anything. Tibet, press freedom, propaganda, communism, lack of sexual education, and women’s rights are all topics that she doesn’t mind discussing. She is in fact very open-minded. I’m really enjoying her company, and she lets me speak in Chinese (when I can).
Classes here are good, but extremely challenging and take up all of my time. The first block (Chinese Media) just ended so I had a four-day weekend! Woohoo. Chinese class is still wonderful; my teacher is the cutest person in the world and really cares about us on a personal level. We are about to start our next block, which is Chinese History. It’s mobile learning so we have classes while traveling. We are gone for two weeks and visit Xian, Ya’nan, and Nanjing (which I have already briefly visited). I’m really excited to leave Beijing again and see some more of the country. We leave on Friday.
Last week we visited Sina.com and the People’s Daily (a huge newspaper, it was the main newspaper during the Cultural Revolution). As usual we got a tour of the place and an interview, but didn’t learn anything new. Most of the employees are Party members, the interview was basically him telling us how free Chinese media is (vomit) and how western newspapers have a lot to learn. There is so much Propaganda scattered throughout these visits.
I miss you all, you’re always crossing my mind, and I can’t wait to see you in December! Cheers!
Lots of Love,
Rachael
Conversations with Nana
Mom’s mother was named Ruth Harbison (but we called her Jeep), and Jeep’s father was named John Butler Reynolds. He lived on Wyoming Avenue in Wilkes-Barre, PA. He used to hold mom and Monica on his lap and rub his beard on them: “it was awful – it hurt!”
When mom was around seven, she was given a pony by her stepfather, Shelby Tom Harbison. She named the pony Sparkie, after Spark Plug, the pony in the comic strip Barney Google & Snuffy Smith. She also had a dog Spot. Later, her mother’s mother, Gonny McKuen, gave her a horse cart, which she hitched up to Spark Plug and “I was able to go everywhere.” She rode Sparkie to Miss Lurie Collier’s school, which had about 15 students in all grades. Later she attended Hamilton School, “across the street from the College of Transylvania.”
Finally she attended Warrenton School outside Washington D.C., or “Warrenton School for country girls and cows”, as the girls called it. It was here that she was required to speak some French at every meal. One time she looked up the word for “full”, and when, during dinner, the headmistress asked if she wanted another helping, she responded with “Non merci, je suis plein.”
It was at Warrenton that the headmistress, Ms. Bouligny, let her show her horse; mom won, and “I got to keep the ribbon; Ms. Bouligny kept the cup.”
From Warrenton, mom went to the University of Kentucky, where she joined the Tri Delt sorority:
“By the light of the tri-delt moon
and the three stars above
Tri Delt girls sing sweet melodies
to the freshmen they love…”
Mom’s father, Sam Dyer (after whom I was named) died from tuberculosis when mom was very young (she has no memories of him). He spent his last days at the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium in Saranac Lake, New York. Mom repeated many times during our discussion “How very sad it must have been for Jeep to lose her husband so early in their marriage.” Jeep had met Sam Dyer at a Yale dance, which she attended with one of her brothers as her escort.
Sam Dyer went to the Hill School (in New York?) before going to Yale, where “he was the best athlete.” At Yale he was “a four-letter man” (although how he could earn four letters in only three sports seasons is hard to explain).
Jeep has a brother, Pierce B. Reynolds, whose daughter Monica was mom’s best friend; they used to spend every summer together in Kentucky, riding everywhere on their horses.
Uncle Len and China
Hi Rach:
This is all so interesting. Thanks for taking the time to give us details of your trip. I have a China experience coming up. In 2 weeks a visiting Chinese delegation will be in San Francisco. They are visiting the U.S. looking for ideas to improve their Juvenile Justice system (one of three main goals of the most recent 5 year plan). I get to speak to them for 2 hours!! I have a powerpoint presentation that they are translating into Chinese now. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Any talk of Obama vs McCain over there? Do they know about the election? Do they care who wins? The news now is good. Obama is pulling ahead, but dirty tricks are ahead and in 4 weeks anything can happen. All fingers are crossed.
Love,
Len
As I mentioned before there is very little international news here in the People’s Republic. So it’s harder for people to get any information and when they do it’s filtered by the governemnt. That being said most people are not aware of the candidates and if they have heard of them, they know them as: “the black man, the old man, and the women”. This I have heard several times. Several people have said they really don’t care what happens, they hope the person with the best policy’s regarding China wins. So no people here don’t care, and even if they did-it’s hard for them to get straight up information on the candidates without a little propoganda thrown in there. The college kids are the ones that know the most.
xxoo
P.S. good luck on your presentation Len, I hope they translate your lecture accurately. Make sure you don’t mention the Cultural Revolution, Mao, or the Party in any negative light…I’ve already been in a little trouble for that:)
Rachael returns from Shanghai
Oh goody – another email from our Rachael. She’s back from Shanghai, after visiting the tallest building in China. I’m assuming it’s the one on the left, although Google says it is not quite finished. Pretty neat looking, huh? (Rachael’s email is just below).
Ni Hao family,
I have a little cold right now, so I’m in the dorm on my computer. Yesterday the pollution was worse than I’ve ever seen it! It looked like San Francisco on a really bad day, except instead of fog-smog! Gross.
I got back from Shanghai on Wednesday absolutely wiped! We left on Friday night and took a sleeper train there. We spent our time in Shanghai wisely. I had my Chinese media class one morning and the next day we had a field trip. We visited a local newspaper publishing house (China Youth Daily) and the Shanghai TV station. They were broadcasting live while we were there about China going to the moon..very exciting. It was quite an experience being able to visit both forms of media. TV is obviously dominating in terms of money and circulation. However, they are both equally regulated. Everything published and broadcasted must follow “Party Policy”. There is no questioning or criticism, which makes reading a newspaper and watching the news extremely boring. Not to mention every form of media covers the same stories: China goes in Space, Olympics, Olympics, Milk Scandal….blah blah.
I also asked the editor in Chief what he liked about his job, and what he would change. This was a sugar coated form of, “what’s wrong with the system?”. He went on and on about how great the lifestyle is, and how proud and respected he is to have that position. He ignored the second part, so I asked again,” What would you change?” and he responded (in Chinese),”I don’t have time to think about that.” He had been working there for ten years! This mindset is very common. I met with a university student in Shanghai and also had a conversation about the media. She was very liberal in most things, but when I asked if she would try to change the system if she got a job in the media, she responded, “I would be too happy and proud to have that job, why would I want to risk it?”.
We visited the Bund (the area on the water surrounding the city), the French Concession, The Shanghai art Museum, and of course the largest building in Asia!! We paid and went to the top of it, to get the most beautiful view of Shanghai at night. It was 100 floors tall!
On the way back from Shanghai we went through Nanjing because we couldn’t get tickets directly back o Beijing. It was a national holiday this weekend, so everything was extremely crowded. The train station on the holiday was absolutely ridiculous!! It is very large (like a medium sized airport) and had lines out across the street to enter. Once we finally got into the building we had to wait about an hour for our train to arrive in a waiting room much larger than any airport terminal. Most people were sitting on the floors in the aisles. There were many different faces there. A lot of migrant workers going home for the holidays with small cloth bags and a wok. A lot of them had woks with them. There were also many Chinese tour groups with matching hats and a leader that would carry a flag with the same pattern as the hats. Most of these tour groups consisted of middle aged women and men very eager to get through the crowd. So we are all waiting for the gates to open, and as soon as they called it, chaos broke out. Hundreds of people swarmed, aggressively pushing and shoving to get through the door. I would be walking and then all of a sudden be elbowed in the gut by an eighty year old woman! Then before I knew it the Burberry hat tour group would trample me. Thank god some of my friends had blonde hair, it was easy to spot them! Once we were on the train all was good, very nice actually.
I’m back to the normal schedule now, which leaves little time for anything but school. I think we are going to the great wall this weekend of the weather permits it. I need to start my research project and college applications. So much to do, so little time!
I went to a huge French Wallmart-esq store called Carrefour and stocked up on good food! I’m getting a little sick of the food.ssshhh.
I must rest and kick this cold.
I love you guys and can’t wait to see you at Christmas!
Rach