So Saturday morning before eight o’clock was the big day of the opening ceremony which seemed very, very early after not having had to go to school for quite some time now and be used to a quite different daily rhythm...but well it all seemed very official but it didn’t really leaving me feel any more enlightened at the end than I did before it all started…yes they did give us a lot of information, but none of it really that useful in the end…

We were told by the police that we are not allowed to eat drugs and yes they did use the words to eat drugs…and were also told that we should not sell our passport. The lecture with the policeman was probably the one that was the most strange because he tried to look all serious and really scare us into behaving well with hair raising stories of students from last semester who have been if not expelled, the thrown out of China and one student is even still in the hospital after getting into a drunken brawl…but at the same time he had this power point with these drawings of fat little students and fat little policemen on them that just looked like picked out by a five year old girl because they look so cute and it was really hard to take him seriously. It was just a bit strange all of it.

Afterwards they had told us that there would be a kind of party so that all the international students could get to know each other better before starting class…well it wasn’t so much a party as it was a table set up in the hallway with some small treats and coffee and tea and stuff…but it was all ok because it was a way for people to like see who the others are and maybe talk ect…but all the Japanese kind of seem to know each other so they left, the same with the Koreans, the Thai, the Taiwanese and the Indonesians etc so in the end it was really just us westerners talking and getting to know each other…maybe it’s because we all are so few from each country that we all might just as well be like one separate group as are the others that kind of stick to their own…I don’t really know…but today as classes started I found out that I am the only westerner in my class…apart from me there is a girl from the Ukraine, 8 Thai, 1 Korean guy and 4 Indonesian girls…but it’s a really nice class although I haven’t spoken that much with the others yet…I think that some of the Thais want to switch classes because they think they are too many from one country in the same class which might be true…as I’m the only Dane I don’t really care that much because there’s no chance that I’ll end up speaking my own language instead of Chinese…but I really do like the class because as our teacher said at the end of the day we have been lucky because we’re a weird class because she can see that in the level of understanding and speaking most of us should be in 101 instead of 100 (these are the levels of the classes and we’re in level 0 so to say) but the problem is that most of us really can’t read the characters very well so we can’t join 101 because we’d be lost because they only use characters…so we might just move faster in the book and take 2 lessons instead of one per class which would be really great…but I’ll just see how it goes this first week…at least today I didn’t feel lost in class because we just spent the day saying hello how are you in Chinese more or less…which was a bit boring but I heard from Kate what they have in 101 and I don’t think that I could follow that class…the other Danes who have studied three semesters at the University at home are in that class and don’t seem to know all the characters used so I would be totally lost…It just so frustrating to know that I have known all of this stuff and forgotten it all and have to start over…but I comfort myself by hoping that it will come back to me faster with the practice…

Yesterday Kate and I went on a walking tour of the Hutongs…I had found a web page online announcing this tour and it sounded quite interesting and I’m sooooo glad that we decided to go because it was absolutely great!!!
The tour is managed by a Chinese called Hong who is really nice and really patient and calm and his English is excellent because he has lived some years in California. We met at the south end of the Tian’an Men Square and walked around the newly build pedestrian street, and the old commercial center…we saw the narrowest Hutong in Beijing which was also the old center for the banks because the narrow street allowed the guards to be able to stop robberies from occurring…but it’s a bit difficult to describe these places so I’ll just upload the photos and you can see for yourself…the sad truth is that almost all of these places will soon be gone because of renovations…

It is sad in the way that they are just so picturesque and they make it possible to imagine what Beijing might have been like and looked like in the old days. The Hutongs have so much historic value but at the same time the people who live there have extremely bad living conditions. They live so many people in such small spaces and in winter when it can get as cold as -25 C and more I don’t know how they survive without heating…and just the fact that the Hutongs themselves do not have bathrooms so they have installed public toilets that people have to share but they might be like 50 people sharing 1 or 2 toilets and bathing I have no idea how they resolve that issue…three years ago I visited a family who lived in a Hutong and they said that they until recently showered outside in the court yard with a bucket of water…but they lived in a bit nicer part of town and have had the money for reparations and had installed a bathroom etc…but they also made their living inviting tourists in to see their house…and in comparison with the ones I saw yesterday that was so much nicer…

But people who live there have lived in those places all their life and for many generations and I don’t think that they really want to move and although something new might be build in the place of the Hutongs none of the people who are there now will ever be able to afford the rent they might have the same faith as the newly renovated/newly build pedestrian street which is all empty but a handful of places that have been able to afford the rent. So you have I think it said 800 meters of beautiful buildings looking like a ghost town which is quiet sad because it could be a really nice place…although you kind of get a kind of Disney Land feeling when walking there…is all just seems like a bit too much and a bit too unreal and fake…I definitely prefer the adjoining street which remains the same and is just so China as China can be in questions of crowns, impressions, old and new…there you can get almost all that you could wish for and if you’re lucky and good at bargaining then you might even get it at a fairly reasonable price…

But the tour ended in an old tea house which was great because it was a really cold day and we were all frozen after having walked around for two hours…and we listened to Chinese music played live on traditional instruments and saw shadow play as it was done in the old days…something about a crane which was all I kind of understood from the plot but it was probably an old Chinese legend of some sort that was told…

Yesterday evening Kate and I went to meet up with Ran at Lush…Ran is a guy from Israel whom I studied Chinese with three years ago when we were both students at Global Exchange here in Beijing. Quite a lot from that time are still here…or want to come back or have just gone home…so it’s true…there is just something about Beijing that makes you want to stay…Ah, and Lush is a very nice café/bar that is like the hang out for all kinds of people…mainly foreign students but also many Chinese come there…and every Sunday they have an open mic night where you can go up and sing, play, recite a poem or whatever you feel like or you can as I just go and see what other people do...the atmosphere there is just really nice and you always meet a lot of new interesting people and it has sort of been a tradition to go there ever since we were at Global Exchange…it was fun coming back after two years because it feels like it’s one of the few places where time has somehow stood still…the place more or less looks the same as always…the people who were always there are still there…and I was very happy to see that this Chinese American guy that I heard play there two years ago is either still here or has also returned to Beijing because he really has one of the most amazing voices especially for singing reggae music and somehow when you look at him you can’t imagine that voice and that person goes together…but somehow it just works and it’s just very enjoyable because it’s like a free concert…although as it is an open mic night there is also the possibility of some very crappy singers going up on stage but that is just the risk that you have to take…so if you ever find yourself in Beijing I can highly recommend paying Lush a visit :-)

Ok, but this will be all for now because I have to do my homework for tomorrow…I have to copy Chinese characters…feel like I’m back in 1st grade but then again somehow I am so it’s fine…luckily I find the characters utterly fascinating and love to write them…as far as I have been told tomorrow is also the first day of calligraphy classes, they are extra classes that one can choose which I’m definitely planning on doing…

And just one final little remark on why I chose this foto to represent this blog...notice the beautiful BLUE sky!!!!! :-D