Studying and Chinese Rock Stars

my trusty bike.

the sheets of paper are filled with characters. about 400 characters a sheet.

so, the first quarter of school is officially over. some of the pictures above are from a day my friend and i spent studying in a coffee shop two weekends ago. we wrote something like 1000 or 1200 characters. i think my hand still hurts. remains to be seen how well i did on my exams, though. we only have exams in Chinese, but that is still two midterms. the coffee shop is really cool. for 18 yuan, or about 3 dollars, you can order drinks all day and access the internet. we sat there for hours just studying. the waitress there wouldn't let us order anything unless we could pronounce the name correctly, so we had some fun with that.

last weekend, Julia, Jamie, Erick, and I went to the Bell Tower and Drum Tower, which are exactly what they sound like. We went to the Bell Tower first. We were a little surprised to be greeted at the door with security guards wielding metal detectors. never before had we encountered this particular greeting in Beijing. then, we realized that the Bell Tower is where someone was stabbed during the Olympics. with that slightly morbid thought in mind, we ascended 200 steep stairs to the top. The Bell Tower houses, you would never guess this, a really large bell previously used to announce the time, but now it just serves as a tourist trap. we entertained a couple of Chinese people by trying to read the Chinese signs. However, the view from the top of the tower was absolutely amazing. we could see most of Beijing, which is saying something. Beijing is a pretty big city. I still have trouble imagining just how big it really is. every time I think I get a handle on it, I go somewhere different and realized it is impossible to fully comprehend. fun fact: the population of Beijing consists of 1% of China's total population and about 1/2 of Canada's. thats a lot of people. anyway, we had fun finding familiar buildings. the day was amazingly pollution free, so we could see all the way to the mountains surrounding Beijing. The weather in the fall is really nice because the persistent breeze blows all the pollution elsewhere. so, after we had soaked up the view and cool breeze, we went across to the Drum Tower which was exactly the same except with no security. the guards tried to tell us it was closed for the day, but Julia convinced them to let us go up by telling them we were leaving Beijing the next day. Too bad we will be here for the next 7 months or so. fast thinking. anyway, the view was just as beautiful on top of the Drum tower, except no bell. there were about 10 or so extremely large drums, to my surprise. so all in all, another fun day in Beijing.

so, this week was same as usual. today in our Chinese Society and Culture class, we had a guest speaker. His name is Kaiser Kou and he is an American who has been living in Beijing for a couple of years. oh, he also happens to be a Chinese rock star. he was instrumental in founding what has been called the first Chinese rock band, the Tong Dynasty and sometimes would play with them. Currently, he is part of Chun Qui, a Chinese metal band. he was a really cool guy. he had this really long hair and a huge repertoire of hilarious stories. he told us a brief history of Chinese Rock. how it began, how foreigners influenced it, etc. one of his best traits is that he is heavily influenced by Rush. needless to say, this was one of our more interesting classes. perhaps only rivaled by the Beijing Coca Cola vice President. he was also a pretty interesting guy. he is an American who lived in China before it was "opened" to the west in the late 1970s. he went to a Chinese high school and everything. his Chinese is pretty good. he also had some great stories. but the best part was he brought in an Olympic Torch and passed it around the class. Coke was a huge Olympic sponsor and organized the Torch relay. that was pretty awesome.

for the next two weeks, I will be travelling in Fujian providence with my class. We are going to learn a little about tea and silk production. we are taking the train, its about 30 hours. we are also going to some rural villages. its going to be a lot of fun, but no updates until i am back. we leave on sunday and come back the 14th of November. no school and no books. i am pretty excited.