Haircut...in Beijing!

Hi everyone! Sorry it's been ages since I've posted anything - we've been crazy busy and I haven't been on the internet at all.

On Thursday, we had Chinese class as usual and then a few of us had to jet off to our work placement to get there for 12. It was at the New Oriental Education & Technology Group. They're the most recognised brand in private Chinese education, offering the best English language skills programmmes. They're a massive company - they even have their own publishing house. We had a presentation and chat with a girl there who is putting together the curriculum for their new pre-school programme. She was actually from Toronto originally - she's the 2nd person I've met here who has emigrated from Canada to Beijing. It was really interesting to learn about the Chinese education system and she's going to e-mail me about the possibility of doing a work-term at their publishing house next summer!

We had to rush back to campus after the placement to take part in our Calligraphy class. We missed the explanation about the history of calligraphy but got to participate in actually painting the characters. It was fun to try it out but it's not something I'll take up as a hobby any time soon!

I wasn't feeling great on Thursday - we were all starting to get a bit run down from the lack of sleep and constant heat, as well as the massive change in diet. I wasn't really feeling up to a big night out at the Karaoke so I ended up going to the Silk Market with some people. The Silk Market is massive - 7 floors of markets!! You can buy almost anything there. A lot of the vendors are really aggressive, especially towards Westerners! They grab you and don't let go. It's a bit annoying but you just have to be aggressive back and tell them no. Like everywhere in China, they are far more courteous if you speak Chinese to them - everyone appreciates it when you make an effort. We spent a few hours at the market and then headed downstairs to a restaurant called 'Yummy yummy' - which is a cook-it-yourself restaurant. We were sat at a bar with pans of boiling water in front of us, into which they dropped lots of spices. Then they would bring you whatever you ordered off the menu - but completely raw. I ordered baby octupus and squid with some wong bok (cabbage type stuff) and noodles. It was good but I think I'll stick to having the food cooked for me from now on.

On Friday, we went to a Hutong after class, which is basically a little street or alleyway, often in the slums. This one is massively aimed at tourists though and was quite the commercial enterprise. We took rickshaws from the entrance of the Hutong down towards the entry of the park we were visiting - can't remember the name. The park was beautiful and we visited a teahouse and had a tea-tasting - I'm not exactly sure what the teas were, one of them was jasmine and I think one was lychee. They were all really nice.

In the evening, a few of us went out to dinner in Houhai (which is next to Beihai park). It was pretty expensive - it's pretty upmarket around there. The food was nice and we stayed there for a long time. The place is packed with bars - it's just a shame it's expensive. When I say expensive...it's still cheaper than the UK, but seems expensive compared to other places. We planned to meet up with some other people at a club called Suzie Wongs but we'd planned it a bit wrong - after talking to some Chinese girls, we realised we were a 3 hour walk away from where we were meant to be - so we called it a night and went back to the hotel around 1 or 2 am.

On Saturday morning, we got up early and went to Chengde, which is a 4 hour drive north of Beijing. It's the place that the emporor built as his summer resort, basically. I expected it to be very small but it was actually quite a big city - I think the population was something like 3 million?? In the afternoon, we visited the mountain resort, which was another beautiful park. The resort was similar to Forbidden City but built in a completely different style - apparently the emperor was trying to mix it up a bit! A few of us decided to separate off in the park and we rented a boat and toured the lakes for an hour. It was really nice and relaxing, much nicer than walking around in the heat. We serenaded some Chinese people with some silly English songs and they followed us around the lake!

After another delicious meal at the hotel, we ventured out into the night in Chengde to see what was going on. It wasn't the most lively place for nightlife and the best we could find was a karaoke bar. The man wasn't keen to haggle on price so we decided to walk around a bit instead. We found some people singing and dancing in the street and hung out there for a while. It started to get a bit late so we came back to the hotel and had an early-ish night.

On Sunday we visited two temples - I can't remember their names. The first one was smaller but I liked it a lot more. It felt genuine - there were actually monks chanting and praying and walking around playing their instruments. It was great. There was also a gigantic buddha - he's said to have 1000 arms, but he actually only has 42 because the Chinese say that each of his arms is worth 25 of ours. The second temple was massive and beautiful but far more touristy. Surprisingly, we seemed to be pretty much the only Westerners there - most of the tourists in Chengde are Chinese. We got lots of funny looks, pictures, and waves from children - getting used to it by now!! After the second temple, we had lunch and then got back on the coach to come back to Beijing.

I decided to get my hair cut so myself and another girl ventured across the street to a posh hairdressers. Only one or two people in there could speak a word of English so it was pretty funny trying to sort it all out. Luckily I had a magazine with photos of what I wanted so it was easy to get them to cut it. I had a complete blast in there - I was a bit nervous at first but they were all hilarious - between their bad English and my bad Chinese, we made lots of jokes and banter. Everyone in the salon was staring at me the whole time and all of the hairdressers who weren't working actually gathered around me and watched me! I managed to tell them that I was a foreign student studying across the street at BNU and they told me to come back in my free time to hang out with them!! The language barrier will no doubt continue to be a problem but I think I'll see if they want to go out for a beer - hopefully I've made some new Chinese friends!

After that, I showed off my new hair across the street at the really cheap bar where about 20 people had gathered. We dined on dumplings, noodle soup and fried rice, with lots of pijiu (beer). We decided to have an early night and I managed to get to bed before 1.

Chinese class this morning was good as usual, today we learned how to tell the time, which builds on what we learnt last week. It's all good to know but I think most of us would find it more useful to learn things which we can put into practice in real-life situations that we are in in Beijing. I've never had to ask a Chinese person the time so far!!

Anyway, sorry for the rushed entry! I don't have time to put up any pictures. I think we're off to the zoo this afternoon to see some pandas and then out on the town tonight. I'll write more soon!!