胡同儿、天坛公园

One of the two famous towers of Beijing (鼓楼 Drum Tower)

The other tower (钟楼 Bell Tower)

View of the hutongs (historic alleyways where the affluent used to live) from the tower

烟袋斜街

后海 (lake nestled among the hutongs, turns into quite the bar scene at night)

Entering Temple of Heaven Park, more worth visiting than the Forbidden City in my opinion

Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests (also called the Temple of Heaven)

At the Temple of Heaven Park I saw a lot of couples taking wedding photos.  Some brides wear red (an auspicious color in China), and some wear white (due to the growing Western influence).  There's two ceremonies anyway, an official registration with the government at the marriage office where you receive marriage certificates and an actual wedding banquet involving guests.  When China's population was expected to grow exponentially after the Reform and Opening, the government began encouraging late marriage and late childbirth.  In China's typical paternalist style, the 1980 marriage law still forbids men younger than 22 and women younger than 20 from marrying.  However, the dynamics of the Chinese population are changing.  No longer at risk for uncontrollable growth, China's now preoccupied with an aging population characterized by a huge amount of older Chinese who don't have enough children or social security to support themselves.  Just this year, the National's People's Congress has allowed discussion concerning changing the marriage law, just as the one-child Policy has also been loosed.

Infinite Corridor

Imperial Vault of Heaven

Round Altar

With a friend from Beijing Language and Culture University

北京语言文化大学

On June 5th I arrived in Beijing for Harvard in Beijing Academy (HBA), a two-month long intensive Chinese immersion program on the campus of Beijing Language and Culture University in the Haidian District.  The small campus has an enormous  amount of international students, and the entire district is filled with college students.  Our teachers are Harvard professors and BLCU students getting their Master's in teaching Chinese as a foreign language, so a lot of super friendly, young, enthusiastic Chinese natives.  We have four hours of class every morning and then an hour of one-on-one with a teacher every afternoon.  Every night the teachers hold office hours where you can opt in for another two and a half hours of one-on-one tutoring.

My dorm room

Basketball courts on campus

The equivalent of Yale's Cross Campus

View from top of a building near campus

Student cafeteria building

The bluest the sky has ever been over BLCU (main gate)

I discovered the most amazing thing on campus last night.  I was walking across campus to my favorite nighttime street vendor who sells lychees outside the entrance of the nearest metro stop, when I noticed the track right next to my dorm was swarming with people.  Maybe because it's not as hot, sunny, or polluted at night, but tons of Chinese people were walking or jogging on the track, sitting and talking or doing tai chi in the field in the center, kids running around all over.  It makes the most pleasant night run.

道别广州

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, called the Stone House in Chinese

On my last Sunday in Guangzhou (May 31st), I went to the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, called the Stone House in Chinese.  The gates around the cathedral were locked and the guards weren't letting anyone in, but I explained I was Catholic and they let me approach (yet not still not enter) the cathedral.  Exploring buildings around the cathedral I accidentally ended up wandering into the middle of some type of very lively Christian service full of Africans.

The Chinese government places severe restrictions on the free practice of religion, both by direct persecution of believers and by creating state commissions that nominally exist to serve various faith groups, including Protestant "三自爱国教会" Three-Self Patriotic Church, "天主教爱国会" Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, and "中国侰斯兰教协会" Islamic Association of China.  In reality, these are puppet institutions that exist to enable the government to control and manipulate religious practice while maintaining a facade of freedom and tolerance.  Their leadership is mostly hand-picked Party loyalists, and their open elevation of allegiance to the state above other commitments undercuts any claim they make to adhere to orthodox religious principles, at least in the eyes of most believers.  Judaism actually benefits greatly from not having any official state recognition or "sponsorship" in China, so synagogues are more or less free to offer services without direct state oversight, on the condition that no local Chinese be permitted to participate.  (My source for this was the director of our language program in Beijing).  Currently, the government is also trying to prevent Muslims in the Xinjiang region from fasting in observance of Ramadan, and forcing Muslim restaurants to remain open throughout the lunar month.

A statue of Jesus with a very Asian facial structure within the Sacred Heart compound

'Bright Filial Piety Temple' is the oldest Buddhist temple in Guangzhou, dating back to the 4th century.

There is a legend that Guangzhou was once a region in famine, but the farmers were rescued by five goats sent from the heavens bearing stalks of grain in their mouths.  This huge statue in Yuexie Park depicts the legend.

The vast Yuexiu Park, which has miles of trails some of which seem like stone paths climbing through a rainforest.

Lake within Yuexiu Park

Orchid Garden Park

Crossing into Shamian Island, home of the Swan Lake Hotel

Plaza of the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall

Chen Clan Ancestral Hall

The Canton Tower

One of the great things about China is that if it's remotely sunny outside I can walk around under the shade of my umbrella and be in the vast majority.  Chinese people, mostly women, are obsessive about protecting their skin because they consider white/pale skin to be the beauty standard.  This results in incessant comments on my paleness.  The other night I was in the elevator when an old lady got on and exclaimed at how white I was!  She then had us compare arms to marvel at the difference in skin tone.  In Chinese there is the phrase "白富美" which literally means white rich beautiful, and is used regularly to refer to the ideal woman as a marriage prospect.

I was followed around daily by this adorable baby girl when I was renting a room with her family.  Baby talk is a legitimate realm of linguistic study, and I've gotten to hear plenty.  I've found the most pronounced characteristic in Chinese is the duplication of words.  I love hearing kids speak foreign languages, although unfortunately she only understood Cantonese.  She was cared for by her grandparents during the day; any other form of childcare is foreign to Chinese people, as are nursing homes.

Trip to Shaoguan

The last week I was in Guangdong province, I travelled to the Shaoguan region in the north of the province.  Helping out two med students and a doctor, we visited the schools in nearby rural towns where children had previously been given a visual acuity test and received a voucher for free glasses (to oversimplify the project).  The return trip was to see how many children still weren't wearing glasses and administer a survey to determine why not.

School playground;
First flag I've seen so far, compare this to the omnipresence of American flags in the U.S.

We would set up our eye chart in each classroom we visited

I was like the Pied Piper at these schools where children had only ever seen white people on the television.  We could barely keep them out of the classrooms in which we were working.  If I stood still for too long outside a crowd of amazed children would have formed around me.  I agreed to write my English name for one girl and then ended having to sign autographs for all of them.  Starting in the third grade Chinese schoolchildren all have English courses.  Still, the teachers are all nonnative speakers, and the kids' speaking skills come really slowly.

In Shaoguan proper

My two med student friends picking out Chinese fruits for me to try.
The spiky ones in front are durian.  They smell like rotting fruit and the taste is just a fainter version of the smell.