An eventful first week of November

“Hey, how come this post only comes up so late, what has been happening in the meantime, and what about October stories?” Plain apologies, I have been kidnapped by a group of ferocious Sweet potatoes street vendors, and have not been able to write about my recent things until today! … more realistically, I have been busy trying to “activate” my life here while still spending most of my time studying for my chinese classes… It is also easier to tell you about a few “hot” stuff, although my recent stories will start with a rather cold one.

It has snowed in Beijing! Not a very small one either, the first snowfall on 1st November (the earliest since 1987!), was heavier than the light snowfalls Beijing will usually meet in the Winter. The snowfall has been overall extremely welcomed, should it be by the students of Tsinghua University who could be seen happily playing with the snow like they were some 10 years younger, and making dozens, or probably hundreds of Snowmen all around the campus (see some of the pictures – although the one by the sides of which I and my American friend Will were not made by us), or by myself taking this large white blanket as a temporary salvation to the dust and pollution, or more officially and perhaps importantly, by the farmers around Beijing for which this Snowfall is much providential. Providence, really? This brings us to an interesting subject, and I don’t know how much i may surprise you by saying the following, this snowfall may well not have been the action of mother Nature, but that of Big Brother CCP! Weather modification is an almost certain action undertaken by the Chinese government, the last important examples in date are the Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, and the Ceremony on national day just one month before on 1st October. At that latter’s time, the weather had been a dull grey foggy cover for a couple of days, before mysteriously rain broke out on the night before the Ceremony on the morning of the 1st, after what we were to find a perfect blue sky for the ceremony…! Normal, surprising, or rather shocking? I will let you judge by yourselves.

img 3384

img 3401

img 3393

img 3389

Hopping back in time a little, on 31st October we were celebrating the popular Halloween. After deliberating for a while with friends for the best costume idea, my friend and I decided on becoming Korean for that night =) It is to be noted that Koreans are by far the dominating fraction of the exchange and foreign students in Tsinghua, and that they often have a pretty distinguishable style, namely thick black framed glasses, a cap set under a hood, a black shiny jacket, jeans and most importantly, an electric scooter with preferentially a pretty Korean girl at the back. I lacked the last part but did my best to reproduce the style. On that occasion we joined a Floor Halloween party with non-less original costumes as Pedophiles, Zombie and Heroes of the ancient Chinese history, all to be seen in the pictures. Later we went on with a pizza bar where we played an American style drinking game, and where it was funny that several people from the bar’s staff joined us in the end. We ended the night exploring night clubs the famous, slightly hip area of Sanlitun, where we enjoyed a Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” show in one of the club and a very nice atmosphere.

The rest of the week was full of other worthwhile events, such as an encounter with two french students of the Ecole Polytechnique Paris who invited me to attend a introduction lecture to Chinese Economy -
which gave me nothing less than answers on the mysteries of Chinese contemporary political and environmental situation – also counting my first “Chinese corner”, where the cultural exchange and mixing of local and foreign students is really the best and happiest thing I could be hoping for. These last two weeks has also been the International Culture festival in Tsinghua, with many events on the program (among which a International stands session where i ended up signing autographs at the Swiss stand in the name of the Swiss cause : other “Hop Schwytz!” and “Switzerland welcomes you!” included), and where non-surpringly, Korea played an important role as last thursday was the “Korean Day”. On the program of that day : drum, pop dance and Taekwondo demonstrations, initiation to the Korean language and writing, and costumed flirting sessions (cf my successful german friend Matthias ).

Last but not least for this week, and also the reason why I am still writing this blogpost at 2pm wearing pyjamas in my room, we celebrated our friend’s birthday last night, night on which we experienced the most diversified situations. Indeed, after starting with a delighting dinner at our favourite restaurant on campus, we (our birthday kid Matthias, an Australian born Chinese and myself) decided on going to explore the famous cultural shops and bar streets of Houhai (后海), an ancient area in the North-East of the forbidden city which has been turned into a successful entertainement area. The bar streets being endless there, we spent some one hour strolling around, tentatively being dragged by countless stalkers, after what we opted for an attractive bar which had an honest look and from which the stalker was particularly friendly. After making sure that there was no minimum charge for our stay there, we sat down with much content and ordered the usual Tsingdao. Soon after, two young ladies approached us with a flow of sweet words and smiles, to which we non-naively directly answered “do we have to pay? we’re not gonna pay anything for you to be here neither for any other service than what we ordered”. To this end, and in the following events, having improved my chinese proved very, very useful. After a couple of their lies, they still ended up here and chatting, soon after were to arrive mysterious plates of snacks and fruits, which we also strictly refused and put on the side without touching any of. While having the good hope that I might be able to handle the situation with words, I still felt relaxed and let things go such for a while. Only after I asked the girls : “we’re not gonna have to pay for the beers you two are drinking without us having ordered them, will we?” and they answered that of course, I had to pay, I realized things had already been driven a little too far. While kindly requesting them to leave, their smile gently disappeared, and that was Bill’s time. From the original 60Yuan that we would have to pay for our drinks, the Bills they presented to us was non-less than 6 times as much… While the situation seemed pretty bad and barmen were starting to accumulate around us, I convinced my friends that we were gonna get out of here without paying any more than the drinks that had been drunk. Letting out a 100Yuan bill, and along with some heavenly inspiration negotiating in Chinese, we rised and prepared for going out, and got blocked by the barmen, grabbed by the girls. It is useful to say at this point that I had taken a look around and had seen no staff with less than a headed shorter than me, which gave me confidence in our escape. Spending much time and using some tricks, we miraculously made our way out of the bar, out of which barmen got quite violent but were quickly restrained by the Boss calling them “Don’t hit, don’t hit!!”, certainly conscious of the bad consequence molesting foreigners might have for them. After some more firm “negotation”, we were even more surprised that they finally gave up and, tricking and cheating beasts they were, went back to their bar, after what we left with something of a pressed pace. This event has probably been the apotheausis of a series of bad experiences regarding Chinese’s very-developped cheating and tricking abilities, and we are getting more and more conscious and prepared on these sometime hostile grounds. A lesson is also that the so-called “ladies-bar” sometime have a very well concealed appearance, and that going out with 3 guys only was somewhat dangerous and annoying in such conditions. Fortunately, and also on own decision, the night wasn’t to be closed with such a bad event. Back to the entertainement area next to our University, Wudaokou, we decided to try our luck once more and went for a drink in a bar, although certainly with a much safer atmosphere there. While indeed enjoying a much happier time there, we were most “喜出望外” or “happy being our expectations”, as we were approached again but this time by a group of local female students, inviting us to play their favourite game, “The Killer”, which is a much popular role-play game all around China and also well known abroad. This much saner and enjoyable part was to conclude our bustling night, which proved once again this general fact about China: you are gonna live and find everything here, from the most terrible and disgusting things to the most positively surprising and enriching experience, it’s only up to you to expect, anticipate and favourably arrange your way through these!

Until next time (hopefully sooner this time ^^”), best greetings to you, family and friends, and thanks for reading!

Advertisement