Well, I am in the craziness of final preparations: lists, notes, packing, checking things off...
I have been told that blogspot (and some other social networking sites) may not work in China. So if you look at my blog and nothing has been added, don't worry. I will take notes and photos and create posts to add when I return in August. I'm extremely excited and ready to take off... : )
Friday, June 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
11 days to go
In less than two weeks I will be in Beijing, and the first thing I'm curious about is the airport, especially the new Terminal 3, which was completed in time for the Olympics last summer. I followed the development of the airport and the other high tech Olympic buildings last summer: the "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium, the "Aquatics Cube" swim venue, the CCNN TV towers, and the high tech, futuristic "Dragon Terminal" of the airport--far beyond any US airport I can think of.
"Harmonious Airport, Dreams start from here" flashes across the screen when I Google the Beijing Capital International Airport. One source calls the airport "a centerpiece project" of the 2008 Olympics. Shaped like a flying dragon from the air, Terminal 3 covers 501 square miles, contains five floors (two underground), can handle 50 million passengers a year, and was designed for energy efficiency with natural lighting. It was, until the Dubai International Airport opened in November 2008, the largest building in the world.
After the high tech airport, our group will experience the ancient: the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, the Temple of Heaven, a traditional hutong neighborhood. There will probably be hundreds of tourists at these places, but I don't care--because I will actually be there.
Fun facts about Beijing: It takes three hours to drive across Beijing because Beijing is roughly the size of Belgium (LP 113). Beijing was Peking in a past life: Peking Duck Peking…
[http://gizmodo.com/393275/worlds-biggest-airport-opens-in-beijing]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/business/worldbusiness/02terminal.html]
"Harmonious Airport, Dreams start from here" flashes across the screen when I Google the Beijing Capital International Airport. One source calls the airport "a centerpiece project" of the 2008 Olympics. Shaped like a flying dragon from the air, Terminal 3 covers 501 square miles, contains five floors (two underground), can handle 50 million passengers a year, and was designed for energy efficiency with natural lighting. It was, until the Dubai International Airport opened in November 2008, the largest building in the world.
After the high tech airport, our group will experience the ancient: the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, the Temple of Heaven, a traditional hutong neighborhood. There will probably be hundreds of tourists at these places, but I don't care--because I will actually be there.
Fun facts about Beijing: It takes three hours to drive across Beijing because Beijing is roughly the size of Belgium (LP 113). Beijing was Peking in a past life: Peking Duck Peking…
[http://gizmodo.com/393275/worlds-biggest-airport-opens-in-beijing]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/business/worldbusiness/02terminal.html]
Sunday, June 14, 2009
14 days to go
There will be a total solar eclipse visible in China July 22, 2009, 9-9:38 a.m. (Beijing time). I sincerely hope I can see this eclipse. I've been interested in solar eclipses for a while, ever since I read descriptions by writers Virginia Woolf and Annie Dillard.
On June 30, 1927, Woolf recorded a long account of a solar eclipse in her diary. I found this section especially beautiful:
"I thought we were like very old people, in the birth of the world--druids of Stonehenge; ... at the back of us were great blue spaces in the cloud. These were still blue. But now the colour was going out. The clouds were turning pale; a reddish black colour. Down in the valley it was an extraordinary scrumble of red and black; there was the one light burning; all was cloud down there, and very beautiful, so delicately tinted. Nothing could be seen through the cloud. The 24 seconds were passing. Then one looked back again at the blue; and rapidly, very very quickly, all the colours faded; it became darker and darker as at the beginning of a violent storm; and we thought now it is over--this is the shadow; when suddenly the light went out. We had fallen. It was extinct. There was no colour. The earth was dead."
Woolf goes on to describe the return of light and notes that the next eclipse would not be until 1999. Annie Dillard writes about the 1999 eclipse as she viewed it on a mountain in eastern Washington in one of my favorite essays, "Total Eclipse."
Here is a passage I especially like from Dillard:
"I looked at Gary. He was in the film. Everything was lost. He was a platinum print, a dead artist's version of life. I saw on his skull the darkness of night mixed with the colors of day. My mind was going out; my eyes were receding the way galaxies recede to the rim of space. Gary was light-years away, gesturing inside a circle of darkness, down the wrong end of a telescope. He smiled as if he saw me; the stringy crinkles around his mouth moved. The sight of him, familiar and wrong, was something I was remembering from centuries hence, from the other side of death: yes, that is the way he used to look, when we were living. When it was our generation's turn to be alive."
According to scientist Wang Sichao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, "The total [July 2009] eclipse will last up to six minutes, or the longest one that can be seen in China in almost 500 years from 1814 to 2309" (China Daily, June 14, 2009 [http://www.chinadaily.com.cn//china/2009-06/14/content_8281854.htm]). Tour providers are advertising total solar eclipse tours on that site.
I wonder how early or late in the day the eclipse will be. China, a huge country, is all on one time zone. So what 9 a.m. means in Chengdu is not necessarily that time of day in terms of the sun as we know it. People do not necessarily work 8-5, since in the west it would still be dark for a couple hours in the morning. Weather could also be a factor with smog or thunderstorms. But regardless, I look forward to July 22, and I will record whatever I see.
Fun fact about China: The time in China is the same everywhere in the country, called "Beijing Time," even though China spans five time zones geographically--if I'm reading the map right. So China is longer east to west than the US with our four time zones. (LP 1008-1009)
On June 30, 1927, Woolf recorded a long account of a solar eclipse in her diary. I found this section especially beautiful:
"I thought we were like very old people, in the birth of the world--druids of Stonehenge; ... at the back of us were great blue spaces in the cloud. These were still blue. But now the colour was going out. The clouds were turning pale; a reddish black colour. Down in the valley it was an extraordinary scrumble of red and black; there was the one light burning; all was cloud down there, and very beautiful, so delicately tinted. Nothing could be seen through the cloud. The 24 seconds were passing. Then one looked back again at the blue; and rapidly, very very quickly, all the colours faded; it became darker and darker as at the beginning of a violent storm; and we thought now it is over--this is the shadow; when suddenly the light went out. We had fallen. It was extinct. There was no colour. The earth was dead."
Woolf goes on to describe the return of light and notes that the next eclipse would not be until 1999. Annie Dillard writes about the 1999 eclipse as she viewed it on a mountain in eastern Washington in one of my favorite essays, "Total Eclipse."
Here is a passage I especially like from Dillard:
"I looked at Gary. He was in the film. Everything was lost. He was a platinum print, a dead artist's version of life. I saw on his skull the darkness of night mixed with the colors of day. My mind was going out; my eyes were receding the way galaxies recede to the rim of space. Gary was light-years away, gesturing inside a circle of darkness, down the wrong end of a telescope. He smiled as if he saw me; the stringy crinkles around his mouth moved. The sight of him, familiar and wrong, was something I was remembering from centuries hence, from the other side of death: yes, that is the way he used to look, when we were living. When it was our generation's turn to be alive."
According to scientist Wang Sichao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, "The total [July 2009] eclipse will last up to six minutes, or the longest one that can be seen in China in almost 500 years from 1814 to 2309" (China Daily, June 14, 2009 [http://www.chinadaily.com.cn//china/2009-06/14/content_8281854.htm]). Tour providers are advertising total solar eclipse tours on that site.
I wonder how early or late in the day the eclipse will be. China, a huge country, is all on one time zone. So what 9 a.m. means in Chengdu is not necessarily that time of day in terms of the sun as we know it. People do not necessarily work 8-5, since in the west it would still be dark for a couple hours in the morning. Weather could also be a factor with smog or thunderstorms. But regardless, I look forward to July 22, and I will record whatever I see.
Fun fact about China: The time in China is the same everywhere in the country, called "Beijing Time," even though China spans five time zones geographically--if I'm reading the map right. So China is longer east to west than the US with our four time zones. (LP 1008-1009)
Friday, June 12, 2009
16 days to go
I spent time yesterday reading about Chengdu in my Lonely Planet guide. This is the city where I will be for five weeks, the majority of my trip. The layout of the city is really not difficult, or at least I've been telling myself that, as I study the city map. I will be at the Southwest University for Nationalities which is near "South Section 4, 1st Ring Road."
Ring a ding roads
There is a square in the center of Chengdu called Tianfu Square. Then three "ring roads" circle the square: First Ring Road, Second Ring Road, and Third Ring Road. Each Ring Road is also named by its location: North First Ring Road, West Second Ring Road, South Third Ring, etc.
This layout of streets strongly motivates me to learn the Mandarin words for first, second, third, north, south, east, west, and road ... as well as street. I've been working on these words with a CD, but without actually being there, number and location words remain abstract--pure memorization. Now I at least have places on a map to tie the words to.
By the way, "road" is "Lu," "one" is "yi," and "ring" must be "huan." First Ring Road is "Yihaun Lu" (pronounced "ee hon loo"). Please, if you know more Chinese than me, email me with the correct pronunciation.
There are major boulevards that run through these rings as well as minor streets. The ring layout of streets with roads cutting through, kind of like a target with a star in the middle, seems logical as a way to lay out a city. But it sure is different from the west, where streets lie straight, cross each other in 90 degree turns, and form grids. Boise streets run fairly straight, but I lived in Utah growing up and whoever drew that map clearly laid out a grid.
In a way the rings of Chengdu, almost as remote as the rings of Saturn as I daydream about the near future, will also have similar "addresses" in the solar system of Chengdu. But not consistent addresses.
Fun fact about China: LP calls Chengdu "a true Asian city" in "its nonchalant disregard of systematic street number and naming"; some places have five sets of numbers on the door from various streets that intersect the particular location (LP 755). So LP suggests finding places more by landmarks than by addresses. And that is a western approach.
Ring a ding roads
There is a square in the center of Chengdu called Tianfu Square. Then three "ring roads" circle the square: First Ring Road, Second Ring Road, and Third Ring Road. Each Ring Road is also named by its location: North First Ring Road, West Second Ring Road, South Third Ring, etc.
This layout of streets strongly motivates me to learn the Mandarin words for first, second, third, north, south, east, west, and road ... as well as street. I've been working on these words with a CD, but without actually being there, number and location words remain abstract--pure memorization. Now I at least have places on a map to tie the words to.
By the way, "road" is "Lu," "one" is "yi," and "ring" must be "huan." First Ring Road is "Yihaun Lu" (pronounced "ee hon loo"). Please, if you know more Chinese than me, email me with the correct pronunciation.
There are major boulevards that run through these rings as well as minor streets. The ring layout of streets with roads cutting through, kind of like a target with a star in the middle, seems logical as a way to lay out a city. But it sure is different from the west, where streets lie straight, cross each other in 90 degree turns, and form grids. Boise streets run fairly straight, but I lived in Utah growing up and whoever drew that map clearly laid out a grid.
In a way the rings of Chengdu, almost as remote as the rings of Saturn as I daydream about the near future, will also have similar "addresses" in the solar system of Chengdu. But not consistent addresses.
Fun fact about China: LP calls Chengdu "a true Asian city" in "its nonchalant disregard of systematic street number and naming"; some places have five sets of numbers on the door from various streets that intersect the particular location (LP 755). So LP suggests finding places more by landmarks than by addresses. And that is a western approach.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
17 days to go
Ni hao!
First post, and seventeen days until I leave for China. On June 28, I fly out of my town, Boise, Idaho, to San Francisco. There I join a flight that includes University Study Abroad Consortium (USAC, based in Reno) students headed to China. We fly overnight to Beijing where we get a four day tour of that historic city. From there we fly into Chengdu, in southwestern China, for a five week summer school course. I will be taking Chinese I, Sichuan Cooking, and Chinese Calligraphy and teaching a course in journal travel writing to USAC students. I am incredibly excited. I was all ready to go two years ago for Fall term 2007 when family health issues forced me to withdraw. Now things have improved, and at last I will be in China and actually experience it for myself. I have read books and articles, taken some basic Mandarin, and now I am reviewing my Pimsleur CDs and reading Lonely Planet, China (LP).
Fun fact about China: Tea was once used as currency in China (LP 100).
First post, and seventeen days until I leave for China. On June 28, I fly out of my town, Boise, Idaho, to San Francisco. There I join a flight that includes University Study Abroad Consortium (USAC, based in Reno) students headed to China. We fly overnight to Beijing where we get a four day tour of that historic city. From there we fly into Chengdu, in southwestern China, for a five week summer school course. I will be taking Chinese I, Sichuan Cooking, and Chinese Calligraphy and teaching a course in journal travel writing to USAC students. I am incredibly excited. I was all ready to go two years ago for Fall term 2007 when family health issues forced me to withdraw. Now things have improved, and at last I will be in China and actually experience it for myself. I have read books and articles, taken some basic Mandarin, and now I am reviewing my Pimsleur CDs and reading Lonely Planet, China (LP).
Fun fact about China: Tea was once used as currency in China (LP 100).
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