Bats flying around in 曲阜

泰山： At 4:38 a.m. I received a wake up call and groggily arose in the musky, damp air of my hotel room on the top of the mountain. I put on a heavy overcoat provided by the hotel and walked out to catch the sunrise. I sat on a rock and silently watched the giant mass of clouds marching past like a funeral procession in the valley below me. I thought about a lot of things. And the sun did rise quickly, magnificently, bringing a new day to throngs of people waiting for it in military-like overcoats.
I spent the next night in 曲阜 (Qufu)where Confucius is from. It was pouring down rain not long after we had arrived and a group of us went out into it quite unprepared looking for a meal. We wandered into a very impoverished area without a road, but just a muddy path with garbage filled ditches on the sides, peppered with restaurants and vendors all vying for our business. Walking past a dirty cart with dog meat(狗肉)inside, skulls and ribs visible amongst the mass of meat piled up on itself, my clothes were saturated and muddy, rainwater pouring down my face from my hair and the song "Videotape" from Radiohead's latest album "In Rainbows" was playing on repeat in my head. It was a very wonderful and haunting scene in my memory.
In Qufu I was told I looked like I was from 新疆(Xinjiang)by a restaurant worker, which I assumed was an insult since a lot of Han Chinese look down upon minorities.

北大楼

Nanjing University: North Large Building

The Shoes I Passed Up

At a small DVD shop a CD caught my eye: a two-disc set of Chinese actor Leslie Cheung's greatest hits. This actor is famous for such emotionally intense and epic movies such as "Temptress Moon" and "Farewell My Concubine." Openly bisexual in the later years of his career, though surprisingly still reknowned by Chinese people, he committed suicide by jumping off of a tall building in Hong Kong in 2003. Everyone was shocked. So I bought the CD set and it's pretty corny Cantonese pop. The cover has a tagline that says: "Each song all is the Peru system glistens in each all to have the shining sunlight the shade." But I like him as an actor quite a bit.
Here is a vignette of my time in Beijing:

On our last day in Beijing, Shawna and I wandered around some smoggy, rainy streets in a strange stupor. Our third of four inevitable goodbyes was yet another heart-wrenching trial run for the big 3-month goodbye at September’s close. Hopefully we will be well prepared for that when the time comes since we have had so much practice. That last day in Beijing we really didn’t know what we wanted to do, and the weather was amply oppressive. For the first time we slept in that morning and had a late start, which took it out of us as well. (Late as in 9 am instead of 8 am). But as down-and-out as the both of us felt, I was still very happy walking by her side, hand in hand. I wanted to kiss her every moment and hold her close like a warm fire on a cold night.

As we lazily meandered like two parallel creeks through rows upon rows of fake goods at the market, a pair of bootleg BAPE shoes stood out to me. They were green and white and very plastic in appearance. On the sides of the shoes was a little cartoon Santa Claus holding a court-order. I should have stuck around and bargained them down to a reasonable price, but I just didn’t have it in me that day. And I am a foreigner after all, a foreigner in Beijing during the 2008 Olympic games. That means a lot to a Chinese shopkeeper, let me tell you.

"Insectual"

I took a nice cool shower to strip myself clean of the elements of this new city, feeling both lonely and content. I spent the evening in the company of a few of my classmates, three other friendly students with whom I shared a meal of soup dumplings that exploded with every bite in spite of the warning signs put up on the walls of the establishment. Then I drank another Snowflake (雪花) lite beer and ate lamb skewers (羊肉串); I sat on a stool at a small roadside table with my fellow cohorts, soaking in the muggy night. I was very warmly invited to sit outside the little kiosk where I bought the beer by the woman shopkeeper, but decided I needed skewers to accent this beer. Thought about Nanjing, my impressions after two days here. I was never met at the airport by CIEE program staff when I arrived so I hopped on a shuttle bus that took me to some place in the city center unbeknownst to me and from there I hailed a taxi to take me to Nanjing University. The taxis here are mostly an emerald green color, with the hard plastic guard wall separating driver from passenger. A few other cabs are a sleek marlin blue, but I chanced upon a green one. The driver swept through the hectic streets, heavily congested with bikers, mopeds, pedestrians, buses and the like. We pulled onto a large avenue called 北京西路 and passed down through it smoothly like a blood cell through a major vessel. It was by far the most beautiful street I have ever been on; lined uniformly on either side with towering planetrees whose thick overhanging branches with the scaly bark created a canopy tunnel over the road. My jaw must have dropped, taking in all of the scene at once, the imagery so overpowering. Nanjing is a good city. Dirty, pretty, and raw just the way I like them.

I feel it in my fingers

The Nanjing Metro consisting of a single line would be best described as cozy and neat. I got on at 鼓楼 and the subway train had a fragrant flower scent, ester-like if you will. But then I got out at 玄武 to find the lake of the same name. That station smelled faintly of ethyl acetate, or your common nail-polish remover. Once I was out on the street I was able to find the lake when I saw the old city walls and wandered in that direction. The lake was huge and a smooth wind made small turmoil in the opaque waters. People all around were hanging in hammocks, flying kites, saving their children from teenagers zooming by on mopeds, and peddlers here and there selling peculiar treats like taffy animals on sticks. I spun an arrow and it landed on a picture of a phoenix so that is what the man made me. Too much sugar though. I wandered around some more, watching the smog-cloaked sun slowly set behind the old city wall as dragonflies and cicadas hummed about.
When I left I walked all the way back to my dormitory which was suitably far away for my tired legs. All this way without a map in a city I am still quite unfamiliar with. At any rate, I stopped by a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant, went in sat down and ordered. And I spoke for a time with the owner, the conversation conducted entirely in Chinese which made me feel good and confident about my oral and listening skills after that bitch of a placement test I took this morning. He could tell I was 混血儿 and he asked me why I am paying to study here when I could just speak with my dad.