Bright Lights and Late Nights

On Tuesday night after finals, everyone wanted to go out to celebrate, so we decided to go to Houhai district to celebrate. I’m not going to tell you all the details, but if you ever want to go out drinking and dancing, Houhai is not a bad place to do that. The area consists of dozens of small bars that line the edges of a lake. At night it is a sea of flashing lights and blaring music.

Our group consisted of about 20 Italians, four Spaniards, one Greek (Konstantina, my one and only Greek friend), one Irish guy and one American. We ended up outside a place called Reggae Bar, and that night there happened to be a couple guitarists playing flamenco inside.  Upon hearing the music, the Spaniards set to dancing in the streets. The Italians sat down on the couches that were outside the bar’s door, not quite yet ready to dance.

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Exporting America

The other night, I managed to catch up with some Italian friends for the last couple songs of a night out singing karaoke. When I got there, they wanted to sing an American song so that I could sing along with them. They started scrolling through some American songs—I think they picked one by the Black-Eyed Peas—and they were surprised when I said I didn’t know it. “But how can you not know it? You’re American!” was the remark that captured the sentiment of the group. I was a little embarrassed and I pretended it was just that one song, but I doubt they believed my act. The truth is, this group of Italian twenty-somethings knew way more about recent American pop music than I did.

KTV in Beijing

In addition to music, I also found out that American television and movies are very popular abroad. On our long bus ride back from the Inner Mongolia trip, one of the conversation topics that came up was American television and cinema. Shows like the OC, CSI, Calfornication, Sex and the City, The Sopranos and Twilight were all well-known by my classmates. So were the Simpsons. I laughed when they said that they think of Americans as rich, beautiful people who live in on either of the coasts (of course, they also stereotype American tourists as being fat and loud). They wanted to visit California, because on television it looked like such a great place to be. I assured them that everything they see on TV is true.

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Staying Alive on Beijing's Streets

If you are a person who believes that risking your life makes you feel alive, then you ought to come to China and cross a busy street during rush hour. Why? Let’s just say that traffic in China is a lot more ‘free-flowing’ than in the states. By free-flowing, I mean that drivers there tend to follow the traffic laws, unless they decide the rules aren’t convenient. If you could stand at an intersection and watch traffic for a while, you would see that red lights usually mean stop, cars usually stay in their lanes and bikes and motorcycles usually go in the same direction as the rest of the traffic. However, you would also see that at certain times during the day, many of the rules are thrown out the window and chaos reigns. Check out the video to see what I mean.

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Despedidos (Farewells)

This post I dedicate to all my new friends, especially my Spanish friends—Silvia, Daniel, Luis, Susana and Konstantina (not quite Spanish, but close enough), os echo de menos.

One of the most difficult parts of coming to a place like BLCU for a month is that time goes by so quickly, and just when you are beginning to make good friends, you have to say farewell and go back to your own countries. At the end of each of the last several days, I have had to say goodbye to lots of new friends, wondering each time if it would be the last time I ever saw them. We always hope to meet again, but the truth is that you never know, so you wish each other the best in life, wherever it may take you.

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Living Behind the Great Firewall

One of the things that US media frequently mentions is the issue of internet censorship in China. This year, Google got into a row with the Chinese government over Google’s refusal block some of the search results that the Chinese government deems too sensitive for the general public (things got so bad at one point that Google announced it was pulling out of China completely. The company and the government have since reached some type of agreement, though I expect the tensions to arise again in the future). 

If you search for Tiananmen square, for example, you get lots of search results about the square’s history, design, annual visitors, etc. However, if you add 1989 to the search, you get a message that Google is not available. If you try to go back to the search page, you get the same message and will have to wait a few minutes for Google’s services to return. On Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, you can search for Tiananmen 1989, but if you click on any result that has ‘protests’ or ‘massacre’ in the description, you get nowhere.

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