I am sitting at the Beijing airport waiting to board my flight. Most of my classmates upgraded to business class (only $639, which isn’t too bad) but I’m being thrifty and saving money for my house. So I’ve got a long ride in coach coming up….
I have been thinking today about everything I’ve learned about China that I haven’t written in the blog. For example, I forgot to mention that Jonathan at Wal-Mart told us they used to sell dog meat, but they stopped because the expats and other non-Chinese people didn’t like the image. He said he wished they still sold it because Wal-Mart’s goal should be to satisfy the Chinese consumer. Yesterday, our tour guide told us that he would tell us about Tian’anmen Square and what happened in 1989. Then, he basically proceeded to say (relatively quickly) that students had been protesting, they had a meeting with government officials that didn’t go well, the government warned people not to come out that night but they did anyway, and then the “incident” happened. He said they don’t talk about the incident in China. That was it. I also asked one of our tour guides if she read the book “Wild Swans” by Jung Chang, which is an amazing read and apparently a pretty accurate description of events during the Cultural Revolution in China. She said that she had read it, but that the book was not translated into Chinese. She had a friend send the English version to her from Hong Kong. I asked if she would feel comfortable reading it on a public bus, and she said no. Finally, it was interesting to observe the effects of the “one child” policy. There was an article in the China daily saying that only 36% of people in China observe the one child policy because of various exemptions (such as an exemption for farmers). But in the cities, I definitely noticed that almost all parents who were walking with children only had one each with them. They also seemed very protective and affectionate with their children.
Also yesterday, I went shoe shopping at a little Chinese mall. I told the saleswoman that I had big feet and asked her if she had any size 41 (metric, of course). She said “Ah, yes, big feet. I’ll be right back.” She returned with some shoes marked size 41. They felt a little snug, but I figured I just needed to stretch them out. So I wore them to the closing dinner. When I got home after the dinner and took off the shoes, the little size 41 stickers had worn off and revealed that they were size 39s! Sounds like she could have made just about any size I needed.
Today a group of 11 of us went to the Great Wall. What an incredible trip. We only had a few hours because we arrived at about 7:45 a.m. and our flight left at 4:20 p.m., but we got to soak up plenty. It is clear to me why the Great Wall has recently been voted number one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It’s just incredible to imagine that they built that structure hundreds and hundreds of years ago. We hiked around for a couple of hours, got a good workout and got nice and sweaty for our flight home.
Once again, my favorite part of this trip was that we were total rock stars. Seriously, the groups of children touring the Great Wall from some of the smaller cities in China act like they were seeing Michael Jordan or Brittany Spears whenever we walked by. For the first hour or so of our walk, we were the only Westerners in sight. We got asked to take our picture with the kids so many times it was unbelievable. I seemed to be particularly intriguing to them, probably because of the red hair and pasty skin. The kids also like to practice their English. We must have had 100 kids say “Hello” and then when we say “How are you?” they all say the exact same phrase: “Fine, thank you.” After our walk, Steve and I gave away some Notre Dame gear. The kids were pretty fired up. Before we left, there were 2 mini Notre Dame footballs flying around the Great Wall. I gave a few kids each a leprechaun magnet, and they clearly had no idea what they were. There was a tour guide that spoke a little English, but I don’t think that “University mascot” or “magnet” translated well.
That’s all for now. I’ll try to post a summary of my trip to China soon, but I need to go catch my flight…. Thanks for reading the blog!
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