Back in the States

Wow, what a ride!  Hey everyone, I'm back in the States! I'm still suffering from jetlag and I still have yet to catch up on my YouTube subscription and put all the pictures on Facebook, but I'm pretty happy.

Life in L.U.T goes on - a lot of my friends graduated and are moving onto the next step of their lives.

The campus was pretty busy when me and Robert  arrived - since the seniors were graduating, they were trying to sell all their books/clothes/whatever  to the younger students who might need them later.

The campus was in a mild state of chaos with all the noise from the student-turned-vendors, but it was interesting. We don't do that kind of thing in the States.

We went around all the places that I wanted to go - including Zhongshan Bridge.



This bridge is one of the key landmarks of Lanzhou - it was the first bridge built across the Yellow River in a provincial-level city. Built by the Germans as well.



It bridges the gap between the northern and southern part of the city and lies just beneath Bai Ta Mountain, which stands atop the mountain on the north side of the Yellow River.

The Yellow River itself is something worth noting. 

It's the mother of Chinese civilization, which is why it is still called the "Mother River," even today.

The Yellow River provides a measure of tranquility in this crazy little city - people take their pets down to the water, sit in little cafes, drink tea, do Tai Chi, and more. You'll find lots of couples, families, and elderly people along the river.

It was great to be walking along the river again - drinking in the cool breeze in the lovely afternoon. 80 degrees with no humidity and a slight breeze - wonderful!

Of course, what you look forward to the most is your friends. I couldn't wait to see all of my friends again. 

All of us together, sharing meals, taking walks, talking about anything from girls to guns to Chicago to the TV show "The Big Bang Theory" (which seems to be waaaay more popular in China than America). 

"Rock-Paper-Scissor-Lizard-Spock!"

Life goes on in Lanzhou and at L.U.T.. Some time has passed, and while there are new faces, not a lot has changed around campus and in the Qilihe District of Lanzhou. The same hole-in-the-wall restaurants with the same waitresses still serve the same great food, the teachers still bring their children to the playground and soccer field to play at night, the students still do (or don't do) their homework, and time marches on without regard for anyone else.

It was a wonderful trip - I got to do everything I wanted to do and more. Keep an eye out for more posts, there's some cool stuff coming up!

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No Education, No Upward Mobility

(My "Beautiful China, Part 2" post is having some serious issues with uploading pictures...I'm not such a huge fan of Blogger right now. I wrote this post a couple of days ago and I wanted to share it because it is a huge part of Chinese society today.)


Chinese society places a great deal of importance on education. A great deal.

From elementary school until high school, students study, study, study. It is not unusual for a student from late middle school all the way through high school graduation to study until around 11pm or midnight, and then wake up at 6am the next day to review before going to school. They take the same basic classes every student in the world takes: math, science, history, etc., with the exception of English. From primary school until high school graduation, every Chinese student must study English because English is an international language. 

All of this is done for the chance to go to college, which is an opportunity that a lot of students will not be able to realize. The Gao Kao, the Chinese college entrance test, is probably the biggest and most important event in the life of a Chinese high school student who wishes to go to college. 

Every year, millions of students take this test and those who were unlucky enough to pass suffer the disappointment of the failing score and the knowledge that all the work they did for their entire life could not be rounded and filled out by their college education. It is possible to retake the exam, but few people do. 

Without a college education, there is little to no hope that a person can live the successful, comfortable life with a high social status that they dreamed about when they were growing up. The best hope that a Chinese person can have for their life is to open up a small shop or business and make enough money to pay the bills. There is very little hope for a really comfortable life. 

For the fortunate few who are very street smart, they are able to build a decent company that is capable of moving them up, but in China, much fewer opportunities for this kind of thing exist without an education than in America.

(Me with one of the fortunate few - my friend Benjamin Xi's uncle started a water company, 黄河原, with customers all over Gansu and branching out to Ningxia and other regions!)

In America, one can make a comfortable and happy life for themselves without a college education. They can become singers, interior designers, real estate agents, businessmen, entertainers, sports players - any number of careers are open to the non-college educated. In China, these careers also exist, but they are for the very, very, very privileged and elite of society.  

Chinese people know this and it is one of the defining characteristics of Chinese society. Upward Social Mobility exists in China, but it is only real to very few people. In  more developed areas of China such as Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou, this mobility exists in greater numbers because of the Westernization, development, and greater opportunity of these areas. 

It's a sad fact of life, but it's just the way life is in China. But I guess that means there are less Justin Biebers in Chinese society...

Things I’ve Only Seen In China

In China, there are a lot of things you’ll see and do that America just doesn’t have and doesn’t do - here are a few of them. These are probably true in other countries as well, but I obviously haven’t seen the whole world, so…..yeah, here they are.

- Ride an impossibly crowded bus with people literally pushing strangers out of their way in order to get on. I still hate this one every now and then. It seems very impolite to me.

- A country that actually likes karaoke and thinks it’s cool!!

- Students that like studying so much that they will sometimes blow off hanging out with friends to go to the library to study. Dude.

- People have no problems standing on a train or bus for hours at a time with no seats

- A majority of people actually like and genuinely prefer pop music to rock music!!!

- Older parents can legally sue their adult children for not financially providing for them

- People really like to eat cold dishes - many times preferring the 凉菜 (cold food) to the (hot food) 热菜.

 - Some meat and vegetable dishes that would normally be hot in America or in other countries are allowed to sit and get cold and are actually preferred that way. This one actually took me a little while to get used to.

- If you are a *ahem* larger person, then people will tell you ‘oh, I think you are very fat. I am so skinny’ just as a passing comment like ‘oh, you have a beard’ or ‘oh, i like your shirt’. It doesn’t sound like much, but I was genuinely shocked to hear that the first time it was said to me - it just never happened before.

- Boys wearing bright purple and pink is very common and NOT considered gay in the slightest.

- People don’t ever hug each other except when they are little kids or are together romantically (even then, it seems rare). Very, very strange for me. I have only hugged 2 people here - 1 of whom had been to America and gotten lots of hugs in America and missed being hugged (does that count?)

I’m really tired now, so I’m going to bed - if I think of any more, I’ll put them in another post. Here is the latest video:

It's Been A While!

4/15 Sorry it's been so long since I posted. I have been very sick, so I haven't been in much of a mood to write….or do anything, really. I've kind of withdrawn from 'normal' life during the week or so that I've been sick and now it's a little difficult to get back into the social life. But now the weather has been getting warmer, the trees have been getting greener, the flowers are getting flower-ier, and I'm really happy about it! Warmer weather has been a really great psychological boost - sometimes the simple things really make the day! Today's Friday - I don't like Fridays much. I've got my really difficult Listening class and that's no fun...sometimes I feel like I've been learning too much too fast, but whatever. I always get in a little bit of a funk on Friday afternoon, but usually I manage to bump into a friend, which makes the day better. Today I bumped into Alice, who I met on a bus from the West Campus a few weeks ago. We talked about a ton of stuff for a couple of hours by the little pond on the old campus - I really enjoyed it. :) One thing she asked me was about the differences between Chinese students and American students...I really think they are very much the same - worried about tests, homework, and in some cases, boyfriends and girlfriends. There are a lot of differences, of course - class sizes are bigger here, students take their parents' wishes a lot more seriously, and a lot of them seriously have the desire to learn a new language (English, of course).  I dunno what else to say….stuff's been pretty much the same - I'm very much looking forward to the May holiday - we've got about a week off - people keep telling me different amounts. I want to go to Hong Kong, but I don't think I'll have enough money - I'm seriously jealous of Derek - he's going to Singapore and Malaysia. 4/16 Went to the West Campus today and spent a lot of time with some friends and had two wonderful meals at some restaurants on campus - fabulous! Sichuan Fish dishes, a sort of omelette dish with onions and meat, fried potatoes with spices, some soups, and other stuff that I can't remember.  On a more sober note, there was a huge sandstorm this afternoon with some really, really strong winds. There was an accident by one of the buildings in which a student was hurt very badly. The way the buildings are built here are a little shabby sometimes - they are concrete blanketed with a thin layer of bricks. During the winds, some of the bricks blew off the buildings and fell onto a student after about a 5 story drop. He was hurt very badly, we could see the blood all over the ground where he fell and where it happened - it was too much blood. As he was on the ground, the head trauma caused him to have some seizures which we could see from where we were. I hope that you can keep that student in your thoughts and prayers, it was very bad. He was carried away on a stretcher and eventually an ambulance came. I wish that my first experience with a sandstorm hadn't involved someone getting hurt, although I didn't know them.