So Many Mountains! (Video)

So, I think this once a week(ish) blog post thing is going well -- what do you think? Should I post more? What should I talk about? It gets hard to think of video and blog post ideas after a while....I want to keep this fresh, and I want more and more people to come and check out the site.

Anyway, I have another video for you guys that I want to show. It's of me going to some mountains behind the school (Lanzhou Jiaotong University) and just hanging out. I went back again today, but there was a lot of people, and I was too sore from playing Ultimate Frisbee to finish climbing.

I hope you enjoy! The YouTube version is kind of crappy, but the Youku one is HD -- I include both because some websites are banned in some countries. I want everyone to have the chance to watch them.


Like I said in the video, there's just something about climbing mountains......it just makes you feel more alive. This is true everywhere, of course, and not just in China. But for me, there's an added level of intrigue and mystery to these mountains --- for a number of reasons, and not just because there seem to be a number of people buried on them. I asked a friend if people really were buried there or if they were just commemorative markers, and he said that 99% of the time in China, they're actually buried there. What a beautiful place to be buried!

I seriously need to get out and do more stuff. I've been so lazy lately....I'm always telling people to get out and get around, but I haven't left the Jiao Da area in the past two or three weeks. A little sad, really.....but I'll try to do that more. Now I'm a little busy with classes and learning Chinese from a friend. Luckily, he's doing it for free --- great!!!

(Lanzhou University of Technology's 2011 Music Competition)

I'm going to be performing a Chinese song with a friend on November 11th at a Welcome to the University Party for the freshmen.....my friend says there'll be around 2,000 people there.

Damn, that's a lot of people. I have to teach him how to play guitar AND play this song within two weeks. I don't know if that'll be possible, but we'll see.

Well.......that about wraps up this little blog post. I think that's all I have to say at the moment, but I'd really like to get away from the more personal stuff and back to the bigger picture. It seems like this blog is becoming more and more personal/narcissistic/whatever word you want to call it, and I really want to ask you what you think. Comments, please!

Is there something about China or Chinese culture that you'd like me to talk about? Do you like my normal posts, or should I do something special? I feel like doing something special soon!

Wuquan Mountain and National Day Video

All right! I finally put together my Wuquan (5 Springs) Mountain video! I have just been lazy, so I hadn't done it till a couple of days ago.....but here it is! Sorry for the nearly two week-long delay!


If you're having problems with the embedded video, click here to go to the original video page. There shouldn't be a problem on that page

Unfortunately, I've lost my USB Drive, so I can't transfer any more pictures of the place to this computer yet....so, sorry about that. I hope I can upload them soon!

The video will just have to do for now. But, luckily, this is in HD - I took the pictures and the raw footage with my iPhone, which, although is a little unsteady, does a pretty decent job in the HD department!

Anyway, yeah, Wuquan was a fun way to spend a morning, as well as Lan Mountain. What, mountains AND hotpot???!!! Fantastic!!! That's a recipe for win.

As Life Goes On....One Year Later

This post comes in two parts - if you want to skip the language stuff, go to part two!


Part One: The Language Stuff!

So, I've been keeping up with this blog, "Life After China," and the writer has lately been posting about his going back into Chinese language classes and the struggles (or not so much, apparently) that it entails. Some stuff he's way beyond, some stuff he doesn't know, and that's life, yeah? We know and we don't know. Anyway....

I'm pretty much decided on going back to Lanzhou for a couple of weeks (or maybe longer - I've been invited to visit several people's homes already....wow. We'll see how the money holds out. I've got to have some for back home, too!)

This has really spurred me on getting my language skills back up and running. The past week or so, I've been really hitting it hard, and it's been fun! I'm making a video of me speaking Chinese and introducing my hometown to my Chinese friends, which will make it up onto here once I get it done and edited.

One thing that I've just started doing that I didn't hear Marcus talk about was utilize QQ - it's a Chinese online chatting program kind of like AIM and MySpace combined, along with many other features. I get chatting with a buddy in Chinese and if I don't know a word, I use Google Translate. *cheating, I know*

DON'T STOP THERE! What I've started to do is save the conversations by pasting them onto Pages/Microsoft Word, printing them out, and translating the conversations and reading them aloud, including what I didn't know. Example of part of my conversation:

怎么样了？ 
Xia Fei  22:50:48
飞机票挣够了？ 
Austin (李强)  22:51:19
还不够了
Austin (李强)  22:51:24
差不多够了！
Xia Fei  22:51:30
差多少？ 
Xia Fei  22:51:39
总共是多少？ 
Austin (李强)  22:52:13
1594美元
Xia Fei  22:52:39
一趟？ 
Austin (李强)  22:53:04
都趟
Austin (李强)  22:53:15
去和来
Xia Fei  22:53:24
两趟？ 
Xia Fei  22:53:29
哦 
Austin (李强)  22:53:30
是的！

There's a double advantage to this - you can practice your reading and vocab, but also simulate a REAL conversation that you just had! It's not one of those stupid "Can you fix my tire" dialogues, or whatever. It's a native speaker and you talking. Sure, the "proper grammar" may or may not be present, but it's how people really talk, and that's what matters on the streets. It'll get you more comfortable talking and getting into the lingual mindset. The best part is, you'll never run out of material as long as you've got friends!

Part 2: The Other Stuff!


Today is actually my one-year anniversary of leaving the U.S. to go to China. It's been a year....man, who knew that I'd be doing and thinking this kind of stuff a year from today? I dunno...I think I had an inkling, but only that.

As I get farther and farther away from my China experience, time-wise, the memories of small things have begun to fad - the names of my favorite restaurants, names of acquaintances, and some of the more useless Chinese haha.

But seriously, it just reminds me of one thing - life goes on. It just does. Time will pass and memories will fade. It's just the nature of life. Life is fleeting - we need to live it the best we can and not shut ourselves out of new people and experiences.

When I get back to Lanzhou this summer, I may look for a job teaching or tutoring. We'll see how it plays out - I can't wait to get back into the ever-changing, crazy, awkward, difficult, and intensely fulfilling life in China!

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Seeing the Elephant

If you've ever spent significant time abroad, there's just something about it that is uncommunicable about your experience - that's what I'm talking about today. If you've been abroad, tell me where, when, and if you agree - I'd love to hear about it!

There is a phrase that combat veterans sometimes use when referring to the experiences of war and why they are so often reluctant to talk about it. It's called "seeing the elephant." It's an odd phrase that has some interesting origins, but I don't really want to get into that, but here's Wikipedia if you really want to know:

"Seeing the Elephant" Wiki

What I really want to talk about is the meaning the phrase. 

Currently, the phrase seems to pop up a lot among military combat veterans, particularly the enlisted. When someone has "seen the elephant," it means they have seen combat. 

It sounds simple, but there are a lot of dimensions to seeing combat - I was reading "Shooter" by Jack Coughlin and he talks about seeing the elephant. He says that if you've never felt the sting of smoke in your eyes, never heard a bullet zing by you, never killed a man, never smelled the stench of death, then you can never really talk about war with veterans. 

He says that in order for you to truly understand what war is, you have to be there and experience it yourself. Otherwise, war is just something sterilized you've seen on TV or read about in books.

This may seem like a clumsy parallel, but I believe that living abroad is the same way - you just have to be there to understand what kind of experience living in China is. When you've walked through the Hutongs of Beijing,

                         When you've hung out with people that don't speak your language,

When you smell the garbage dump you pass by every day to get to class (or go to a restaurant),

When you go across the world and meet wonderful friends who become your adopted family,

When you meet a girl you like and she likes you, but her dialect is so heavy you can't communicate well,

When you've been disturbed in the middle of the night by 'women of the night' coming into your hotel room.

When you've tried and failed to understand so much dialect from random cities that you feel like your language study has been worthless,

When you go down to a place as old, majestic, and historic as the Yellow River with your buddies just to skip rocks and kill time,

there's just something that is beyond communication to others. You tell them and they say, "that's cool," but that's all. There's just an added dimension there which is impossible to really convey. You had to be there.

You had to see the elephant. 

From the Spotlight

Everyone who knows me knows that I don't really enjoy the spotlight very much. I don't really like to be the highlight of the party, the big star, etc. I've always enjoyed being involved in this and that, of course - but being the 'superstar' of Lanzhou University of Technology (especially the West Campus) is something that I could never have imagined back home. Let me tell you about the happiest memory that I have of China so far.  Today was the semifinals (or 3/4 finals or something) of the music/singing/band competition on the West Campus. I was really nervous about it, because for one I was going to be singing in front of people (again...I had done it the week before for round 2) and two, I was going to be singing in Chinese and playing a guitar solo. However, once we had done soundcheck and played a little preview, I got really, really excited. First was the song Good Riddance (The Time of Your Life) by Green Day - that was so much fun to sing - my friends/bandmates really love the song and we had a blast practicing it and performing it. The crowd loved us so much, they started saying 加一 个， 加一个, which means "another one, another one!"  So we obliged! We played a song, which translated, means "the old boy". It is one of the most popular songs in China - everyone knows it. I told the crowd we were going to sing it and they all kind of looked at each other with that look of 'really? he's gonna sing that? he doesn't even speak much Chinese!' I showed them! After I sang the first line of the song, the crowd went nuts!!! It was so cool, I've never been in that kind of situation before and it made me feel so happy - so happy, in fact, that I got distracted and forgot to sing the second line! My friend Janson saved me, he saw that I forgot and sang it for me. After bumbling through the guitar solo, we got to the last two choruses and Janson told the crowd to sing along if they knew the words. Me, Janson, Boss, and the crowd all sang the last two choruses together - even the judges! People were taking pictures of us, cheering, clapping, shouting, singing, it was such a great moment that I wish could have lasted forever. I'm grinning like an idiot thinking about it now.  On that stage, I felt alive and completely and truly happy. I was with my friends, I was playing guitar and singing for a crowd that I knew loved me - it was truly one of the best moments of me life. These past few weekends during band practice have been some of my happiest here in Lanzhou. My friend Janson told me that he is happiest on stage playing music, and when I saw him playing today along with me and Boss, I could really tell. I think it might have also been true for me today. I looked through the crowd while we played our songs, seeing friends and giving them a nod of recognition; my heart leapt when I saw their faces. I feel like I've really found a home here - I don't know what I will do when it comes time to leave. That is my happiest memory of China so far.