Bargaining and Concerting

Last weekend I experienced the ultimate bargaining experience: The Silk Market. Imagine walking into a room and have a million people yell at you with offers and wanting you to buy something. Imagine being grabbed by the arm with a Vulcan grip that doesn't let go and drags you into a stall to buy things. Imagine having people scream at you demanding your ice cream on a stick. Yes, all of this happened to me at the Silk Market. It was like a scene out of a distant planet. Well, my mission was to buy clothes and shoes for my internship in Beijing that is part of my program this fall. So I guess I should have been expecting the craziness that was about to unfold. First I went around the indoor-mall-on-steroids-like market to see where everything was and pick my battles. Most of the salespeople started upwards of 1000 kuai for a shirt or pair of pants but I ended up bargaining them down to around 100 kuai. I figured out that the only way to get a good price was to bargain solely in Chinese. While buying shirts, the women at the stall demanded that I buy them ice cream for the deal to be completed. I laughed in their face when they told me this but there were serious. It took me a long time to decide to actually follow through with their wishes. Coming back into the market from outside with the ice creams, my friend and I were met with hostility. All of the vendors around us saw what we had and pounced. They all descended upon us and demanded that we give them our ice cream. We ended up taking a picture eating the ice cream with the vendors I bought the shirts from. It was pretty incredible to see so much bootleg merch concentrated in one place with the government's approval. I don't think a Silk Market could happen anywhere else in the world.

Part 2 of the post is dedicated to the Beijing Pop Festival this past weekend. This festival was probably the most fun I've had at a concert. So, and and some friends ended up taking the bus down to Chaoyang Park, about an hour away from campus. When we finally got to the venue we found a big amusement park just outside the stages/merch/food area. It took a while to figure out where to buy tickets but we found a white van with a tickets sign on it that seemed right. We went straight to the main stage because the bands we wanted to see were all there. First up was the Japanese band RaIN: rock and inspriration. This band is the most epic band ever to set sights on a stage, period. No one will ever eclipse them. The only way I can describe this band is 80s hair death metal. Epic guitar solos were everywhere and every song ended with the bass player throwing his guitar down to the stage. I was waiting for the lead guitarist to light his guitar on fire. Next up was Markey Ramone, the drummer from the Ramones! He had a backing band that were not so good but the comedy factor of the lead singer did not get old throughout the show. At the beginning of every song he yelled, "1,2,3,4!!!" The crowd was really into it and they did a solid job of pulling off the classic Ramones songs. Next up was Cuijian, the man who invented rock music in China and was a major political voice for a long time. He was banned from playing live shows for some time but the people loved him so the government couldn't hold him back. Anyway, the show was great. People were waving giant red flags with his face imprinted on it and singing the choruses in Chinese. Closing the night was Nine Inch Nails. I don't know how they found a way into China to play but somehow they did. Their new album was about a fascist regime who was overthrown by the people. The show was really wild and I felt lucky emerging from the show without getting hurt. The entire crowd seemed to transform into a giant mosh pit. The festival was a really incredible experience that I will always remember.

Somehow the third week of the semester is already starting tomorrow. Since this past weekend's music festival my roommates and I have put up propaganda posters that we bought on campus up around the room and opened up a lot of space. The posters are pretty neat because they are from all of the different periods of Mao's rule in China. Some of them are pretty humorous, such as one that shows the West as capitalists waving money in the air with soldiers descending upon them. I also went on a visit to a Beijing artist's studio on the 15th. It was a great experience seeing a Chinese painter demonstrating how to paint landscapes and draw calligraphy. Our professor told us that he will try to arrange more visits to different studios and museums. One other thing that happened this past week was my first English lesson. The kids in my English class are 8 and 9 years old and really wild. It might be hard to control them. Ha. But teaching is great for my Chinese because I will have to explain a lot of words and concepts in Chinese. It should be a lot of fun.

***All of the pictures are updated with captions so definitely check them out!

End of Korea/New Beginnings in Beijing

I'm back in Beijing and settled now after about 10 days in Korea. I didn't wrap up my time in Korea so here it goes. On last Thursday Charlie and I went to the DMZ on a guided tour. We met up with the group at a hotel in downtown Seoul which included some interesting people from the US who are living in Japan teaching English. They thought that Korea was cheap! And they talked about how everyone is so polite in Japan. I couldn't believe what they were saying. It was like talking to people from outer space. Later we made it to the DMZ and we were told we could only take pictures at certain places due to security. The DMZ was much different than I had imagined. Going into the DMZ seemed as if we were going into a war zone which we really were doing, I just never thought it would look the way it did. Its amazing to thing that the two Koreas have been at war for over 50 years and never signed a peace treaty. After entering the DMZ zone, we walked through the 3rd infiltration tunnel with hard hats. In the 1980s the South Koreans found these tunnels that were built by the North Koreans to invade. The 3rd tunnel was built to accommodate thousands of soldiers per hour crossing over the border. It was a chilling to walk around through the tunnels while water droplets seeped through the cracks of the walls onto my helmet. Later on we went to the observation deck and saw the demarcation line with our own eyes. Our last day in Korea began with pancakes. Charlie and I decided to make an American breakfast of banana/apple pancakes and orange juice. After this we met up with friends to walk around Yoonmi's school and a street selling traditional Korean crafts. For dinner we had traditional Korean food which was really tasty. Leaving Seoul was difficult but had to be done. It was great seeing Yoonmi and our other Korean friends for a while.

So now we are back in Beijing and almost settled in at Beida. Since the homestay didn't work out for a lot of complicated reasons, I'll be staying on campus in the international student dorm. It's actually a more much convenient since I will be right next to my classes. Classes are starting again and I've had some interesting experiences to say the least. One of these experiences has been the Silk Market. What was originally just a short shopping run to pick up clothes for my internship turned into a comedic workshop on bargaining. More on that to come. I've also made several trips back to Yao Fangzi (The Medicine House) which have been great. I had the spiciest and hottest Huoguo (Hotpot) I'll ever have. Getting to the Silk Market let me experience the Beijing Subway for the first time. I had my first Beijing Kaoya (Roast Duck) experience. I found out that I'll be teaching English to Chinese kindergarteners this semester. I even caught a glimpse of the Beijing music scene last night. This weekend (the 8th and 9th) is the Beijing Pop Festival which features Public Enemy and Nine Inch Nails. Not what a lot of people would characterize as pop music and not the sort of bands a communist country such as China would be likely to invite to the country's biggest music festival. Public Enemy has long been a revolutionary hip hop group and Nine Inch Nails just came out with a record about a fascist state overthrown by the people. Hmm. I'll definitely be there.