High Cereal Prices and Hover Toilets

June 19, 2008

We woke up at 6:30 a.m. to go for a jog. While out an about we saw lots of people out greeting the day. They were doing stretches that looked like yoga of some sort. They were throwing a tennis ball type thing back and forth using racquets.


Here is a picture of a man doing simple stretches on a set of bars in the park.


This is a picture of people gathered in a big lot next to the park to do dance-type exercises. I don't know if they are free or if they have to pay some sort of membership, but a person could have just slipped into the back and joined them.


More folks exercising near the parks.


We went to a welcome meeting in a really nice conference room in this hotel. The president of the university spoke and several other officials welcomed us. Melissa, our advisor from Ohio State, said words of thanks and we all introduced ourselves. The people at this university are so welcoming. I can tell already it is going to be a great time. They even had a gigantic sign that said, “Welcome OSU to CAAS.”


Here is Mrs. Mao starting the class.

We had class with Mrs. Mao and she taught us about the types of food that come from each province. She is such a nice teacher. Her English is better than most and she really goes into detail with her stories. She has her students come and do short presentations at the end of her class. She is dividing the information they are to teach us by decade. The girls today talked about the 1950’s. I could tell they were nervous, but they didn’t do bad at all.


After our morning class, we had a big welcome lunch in the Blackwell. The president of the school was there and several other dignitaries. They brought out tons of food and put it on the lazy Susans in the middle of our tables. It seemed like every time we turned around they were rearranging the food onto make more room. The president also talked at this event and made a toast to our group. They are so welcoming toward us. They just kept bring more food and being friendly to us.



The toilets outside of our room are of the hover style. This is where you do not sit down, but you squat like a little kid would to look at a bug and hover over the hole. The toilet is like a hole in the ground. There is nothing above ground but the flush button. I have yet to use one. I think I’ll just hold it.

Later that afternoon, we had our agricultural class. Our teacher started talking about how the cereal price is so high. I asked her if China is on board with any sort of the renewable fuels craze. She said, “American corn is beating the world.” I guess she must be referring to the high food prices that she thinks is a result of the high grain prices. Again for this program we are going to have to write papers. Rather than one big paper we have to write a smaller, six page, paper for each of our classes. I think for agricultural class, I will write my paper on renewable fuels and how it relates to China. She explained that in China, most of the ariable land is a mountain, and that with less ariable land it is difficult to feed all those people. She also said it is common for older people to only eat twice a day because when they were younger there was only enough food for them to do so. She said that rice is produced in the south because there is more rain there. She also said that cereal grains are shipped from the north to the south. She also explained that farmers get very small portions of land- like the size of a classroom to produce their food. She said that the farmers and their households have low educational levels and that most people do not finish middle school because they are needed for working. Even though the fields are small, in some areas there must be some bigger fields because they have custom harvesting here of wheat similar to what ewe have in the United States. She said most importantly, people cannot afford to go to high school. The government provides money to pay for their books. The teacher’s salary is also paid by the government. In China, it is preferred to have a boy because they can do the work since it is too expensive to have machinery. All people living in the country are called farmers, not just people that actually farm.

For supper that evening, we tried to go to the cafeteria in the basement so we could use up our meal plans, but they were closed so we headed to the Sichuan restaurant. The food from the Sichuan province is known for being spicy, so we were careful to order dishes that were slightly the least spicy. It is much easier to eat here than I thought it would be. We are getting good at chopsticks and at restaurants, all we have to do is point to what we want on the menu.

"You are my best friend." - A Chinese Waiter

People in China wear the same clothes two days in a row and then change. We had this suspicion when we noticed DongFang do this when she picked us up in the airport and the next day, but it was defiantly confirmed by Heor, one of our tour guides from the first full day. Paige, who has been her before, says that Chinese people claim it is easier to remember people and their names that way. Of course, I think many of them look very similar, but I would think they would be better able to tell each other apart!! I guess if it is a common thing, and everyone does it, then no one can feel weird about it. It is just plain common. I wonder if American has any set standards like that that we take for granted and people from other countries would notice we do right away.

We have decided to not eat breakfast on campus and survive with the stuff we buy at the store. The food is not that bad, but the smell of it is less than appetizing. We had a welcome class this morning where several vice presidents of the university came to talk to us and welcome us. Furthermore, the about 30 graduate students each said hello and nice to meet you individually. We then introduced our selves. Every time we would say our names, they would all in unison repeat them. It was hilarious when we got to Gregory; they all just looked at each other and laughed before they tried to pronounce and three syllable word. They make themselves laugh quite often. Even when the children run up to you and say, “Hello,” something they’ve learned in grade school, they run away laughing.

We found out at our introductory course that the President of the school would not be able to come to our welcome dinner this evening because he was going to be on a late flight. Therefore, it was moved to Thursday noon. Since we had the rest of the afternoon off, we headed up the street to find some lunch. We went to a place we were originally going to call the orange place. We split our group up into two tables and a man with very little English came to greet us. He gave us menus and we started to pick some food out. Thank heaven that most places we have encountered so far have picture menus. We are told that you should pick out 1 more dish than the number of people at your table. We have found out that this is FAR too much. We always leave tons of food on our tables. We usually pick out some sort of chicken, beef, sea food, and vegetable plus rice for us to share. It is a lot. When we eat at “The Blackwell” we like the broccoli they make, this day at the Orange restaurant, we ordered snow peas and they were really good. During our meal, the waiter came out with a small slip of paper where he had scribbled, “Is the food to your taste?” We went above and beyond to let him know that it was. Later, he came to our table and said, “You are my best friend.” We are going to start calling this restaurant, “The Best Friend,” since we have no idea what it says in Chinese.


Mike, Ashe, and Greg eating at, "The Best Friend."


These vegetable markets are all over! I bet there are ten within a two block radius of our campus. They have to sell their product somewhere!

We then headed back to the room and eventually walked to the busy street for a little shopping and browsing around. We went to a Nike store they have here. The shoes are about $100, so it would not be worth buy them here. I'll get them at Kohl's for $40.


Ashe and Jess checking out the shoes at the Nike store.


Seth has since told me that this is a dog face, but originally we thought it was part of a cat. Read on.

We saw all sorts of things between the campus and here, including the hide of a cat head. Yes, we saw a cat head. We learned in class that in the Southern area the people are basically uneducated hicks and they do eat cat. What the teacher didn’t say was that they also eat it in Beijing. That is okay, we found out for ourselves!
Exercise is such an important part of the Chinese culture. No matter what their age, Chinese are always out and about doing something. The elderly are on walks or at the exercise parks using the equipment. The young people, of course, ride there bikes and walk all over. We haven’t seen too many runners yet, but I am sure they will appear.


This is a hospital about one block from our campus with a very common exercise park in front of it! We joke that there will be NO BREAKING YOUR LEG IN CHINA! We will not go to the hospital!

At the end of our afternoon, we watched the boys play basketball with the Chinese. The Chinese were really, really good. Mark is so tall and they are really impressed with him. He dunked a few and blocked a few of their shots. They cheered for him even though he wasn’t on their team. They loved to watch him play.




The boys from OSU who played basketball. I bet you can pick out which one is Mark.

Later we walked to an outdoor restaurant behind the Friendship Hotel with our whole group. It was very nice and peaceful. The menu was odd, but the items were written in English.


I ordered cucumber. It came out as five seven inch long, one inch around raw cucumbers. I ate two of them and then sent them around the table.

Ashley ordered barbequed cauliflower. It was on a skewer and had some spices on it, she really liked it. Next time we go, I think I will get some beef and scallions, some other people ordered. Lauren ordered barbequed garlic which was just garlic chunks on a skewer. They came out and asked us if we would like Chinese ice cream. They acted like it was a real big deal. I ordered some and it was not. It looked and tasted like something they would serve in elementary school cafeterias.


Paige ordered chrysanthemum tea to drink and what came back was this! I tasted it and it just tasted like warm water. I'd rather be here looking at this tea pot than a watering pots of mums at home!

We sat out here until way after dark and then headed back to campus via stopping at 7eleven. Yes, they have 7 eleven here.


Back at the hotel we all gathered in our room, asked each other get to know you questions, and chatted the night away. It was a very fun time and I really look forward to getting to know this group.

The People's Republic of China

China Daily Journal

June 16, 2008

We have finally arrived in China!!! It is about midnight as a type this email, exactly 12 hours ahead of Ohio time. Our departing time from Columbus, Ohio was 8:45 a.m. on Sunday June 15, 2008. After one week off school, we still weren’t completely prepared at midnight the night before. I mostly hold sheer procrastination responsible for this, but also account the fact that Seth and I got ENGAGED (Woo Hoo!!!) for my lack of preparedness. It was just fine with me to be packing that late because I had intended on staying up all night since we had a 13 hour flight from Newark, NJ to Beijing today. Upon finally finishing packing, complete with Dad making a trip to the shop at 3:30 a.m. to get bailer twine for making a clothesline in China, Mom, Dad, Ashley, Jessica, and I departed home. Kevin, Becky, and Jade brought Jessica over to our house at that early hour. The ride to Columbus was fine, except, I really had a hard time staying awake. I woke up to get a fruit and yogurt parfait at McDonalds in Bellefontaine and then when we were on 315 and people were asking if we were going the right way.

At the Columbus airport, I had to shift some of my supplies because one of my suitcases weighed a little over the 50 pound limit. We made it through security okay, except Ashe had to get rid of some toothpaste which was over the 3 ounce size limit. We’ll just share now. We turned around after making it through to see Mom and Dad watching us and exchanging real big waves, we headed to our terminal.


Boarding the plane in Columbus. This was the first time any of us had done an "up the steps" boarding.




The flight to Newark was not bad except there was a crying baby near the front. Ashley and Jessica sat on one side of the aisle together and I sat on the other side. There was a girl of Asian decent with me and somehow we started talking about what we were doing after we arrived at Newark and she said she was also heading to China. Originally from here, she is studying at Marietta College in Ohio and is just home for the summer. I fell asleep on that flight, which made it go pretty fast.

At Newark we found our next terminal and spotted Rob and Gregory, two of our tour mates who flew into Newark form other locations. We decided to grab lunch before setting up camp in the terminal. I had a chicken Caesar wrap and the girls went for chicken sandwiches and fries from a place called, “Nathan’s.” It was only after that did we find out that our flight was delayed by two hours, for reasons unknown. We were somewhat worried that we would be late to China and therefore have to navigate our way around Beijing, but figured that since there were five of us, they would wait. We ended up being right, because most of the other students and Melissa, our professor, had delayed flights as well. In fact, Nick is coming yet tomorrow and we have yet to hear from Johanna!! Continental gave out food vouchers for $8.00 and after looking to find something that I could take on the plane and save for later and being unsuccessful, I ended up buying a fruit cup and a bottle of water which was a total of $7.00. Expensive, I know. As we all sat together, waiting until it was time to leave, I know that I zonked out for a while.

Our plane to China! Huge!

Finally it was time to board the plane. It looked huge from the terminal window. Inside we found 42 coach class rows of three sets of three across. There were also large sections of business and first class passengers. I told the attendant that I would be more than willing to move to those sections should she need a volunteer and she said it would be $7,000. I passed. J Jess, Ashe, and I were on the left side of the plane, Ashe by the window and Jess in the middle in the row behind me. I was also by a window. I was surprised to see the diverse crowd that was on the plane. Some were Chinese, returning home, and others seemed to be part of student groups like ours. I don’t think that I identified anyone that I guessed to be heading to China this early for the Olympics which are in August.

The plane ride was not near as bad as I thought it would be. It was 13 hours though!




We saw huge, probably 100 acre, chunks of ice in the ocean or sea that we crossed over. I wonder what causes them to break at all.


Here is the route we took!


We went right over the North Pole. Sorry folks, I did not see Santa. He must be on vacation!



When we passed the International Date Line, some people sang Happy Birthday to a girl. This will be the longest birthday of her life. I think we passed over some deserts also. As we flew closer to Beijing, China did not look like what I expected it to from the plane. The roofs of buildings were not elaborate and square. We saw lots of huge buildings which I believe to be manufacturing facilities. It seemed like every time we turned around they were feeding us. I guess that is what you get for paying about $100 per hour to fly. It could just seem this way because we basically only woke up to answer the lady that was coming through to ask if we wanted fish or steak or what kind of drink we preferred. At one point they came through with small pizzas and a cup of ice cream for each passenger. I got out of my seat and stretched and went to the bathroom once. I turned around in my seat and talked to Ashe and Jess a few times also. I looked at a couple of magazines and tried to start reading a book. Mostly, though, I just slept. It went pretty fast that way. The only time any of us felt queezy was when we were preparing to land. They had just given us a breakfast type meal, with some eggs and stuff. I just ate the bread, but I wished I wouldn’t have.


HEre is Gregory, one of our tourmates, going through Customs.


This is our first glimpse at anything Olympic like. It was on the escalator toward baggage claim.

At the Beijing Airport we walked wait in a long customs line, to claim our baggage, go through security. Then we found a bus to take to the other terminal of the airport where we were to meet up with DangFong, our Chinese tour guide. The first bus we saw looked rather full, but it seemed like the driver was waiting for a few more people to get on it. We didn’t volunteer. We did get on the next bus after stowing our luggage in the underneath compartments. This bus was full but I was much relived when the bus driver started it up and air conditioning came on. At the other terminal Ashe, Jess, and I opted to take advantage of free carts for stacking and pushing our luggage and started the quest with Gregory and Robert to find the McDonalds where we were supposed to meet DangFong. We were on the fourth floor and it took us quite a while to find the correct elevator to get to the second floor, where we were to meet her. We couldn’t take an escalator because of all our stuff and most of the elevators were marked for employees only. I finally asked someone, “Do you speak English?” and she said, “May I help you?” and I said, “We need an elevator to the second floor.” She directed us, but those elevators had large crowds waiting to use them so we found an enormous ramp that had two slopes and used it. It was then that I found out that our carts had breaks. I was practically running to keep up with the cart and Ashe said, “If you’d let up on the handle, that will employ the brakes.” Duh.


A view of part of the Beijing Airport.

We found Michael on the second floor and he showed us the location of McDonalds. Poor Michael, he still does not have his luggage. As we headed toward the McDonalds a lady came up to us and asked us if we were from Ohio State. We said we were and she told us that she was DangFong.



She said she would go looking for Johanna, while we waited on her. Her grad student, who told us we could call her Julia, waited with us. At one point, she said, “Introduce yourselves to me.” DangFong came back with no Johanna and we headed outside what Julia said was a car waiting for us. I was relieved to see it was a bus for the six of us OSU students, our luggage, DangFong, Julia, and the driver. The air conditioning was nice and we peered out the window at our first true glimpse of China.

The girls mischievously read a newspaper found on the bus.

I was unable to stay awake for most of it, but I do remember seeing several restaurants, shops, hotels, and malls, including a KFC and McDonalds. They had these all over in the Dominican, too.


A nice hotel we saw from the bus. It says, "CTS Hotel on it." I wonder if this is any relation to the CTS my mom and aunts worked at. They said her job got shipped to China!



We were utterly amazed at the quality of our hotel, where we will be staying for most of our trip. Ashe, Jess, and I will be sharing a room and we each have our own bed. We have one internet port in the room, a TV, lots of storage space, and a nice bathroom. The toilet doesn’t have that much pressure when it comes to flushing, but it does the job. The shower is nice, but our water heater is right in the room, and didn’t keep up with our three consecutive showers. I am extremely satisfied with our living conditions.



DangFong lead the six of us to the restaurant in the hotel. It was very nice as well. She ordered a host of food choices for us which included some fried chicken drummettes, broccoli, pot stickers with sausage inside, white rice with vegetables and eggs, and other stuff that I cannot recall. She then left to go pick up the others at the airport. There was plenty left over when we were finished. DangFong seemingly had paid for the meal and after we tried to ask the waitress if we needed to pay and she waved us out, we headed up to our rooms. Us girls started talking, but ended up falling into a deep sleep. We woke up to the sound of our room doorbell (yes our rooms have doorbells). We were having a group meeting in Melissa, our professor’s room. There, she distributed our meal cards which are to last us one week, but I think they will go longer, gave us some coursework syllabi and an itinerary. The students who had just arrived went to eat and the rest of us headed to our rooms. We girls unpacked, storing our clothes in the various closet and drawer locations. We took showers and prepared for bed. It took us quite a while to fall asleep.

June 17, 2008

Even though we had gone to bed around 1:00 a.m. we woke up on our own at about 4:30 a.m. We weren’t tired and couldn’t sleep. This is probably because we slept practically all day yesterday. We fidgeted around on the internet; read our tour books, magazines, and novels; and even did a few push ups. Jess and Ashe eventually fell back asleep, but I just read my book until it was time to get up for breakfast.

At 8:30 a.m. we all converged on the hotel lobby. DangFong lead us to another small restaurant type place where we could pick items we wanted to eat and use our meal card to pay for them. I picked a pancake looking like item that had some green stuff inside. It was more like a quesadilla without the cheese with some onion type vegetable inside. It was very difficult to eat with chopsticks. When we went to pay the item cost 1 yin which is about 15 cents. So cheap! We got juice too, which was 4 yin, so a little more expensive.

We then headed back to our rooms where we had some time to kill before we headed out on the tour of campus and the surrounding area. The campus seems very safe. It also seems somewhat small. Although there are gates surrounding the campus with gaurds, it is still hard for me to tell where the perimeter of the campus is. I look forward to getting to know the surrounding area.


Here is a neat building with the elaborate roof tops I was picturing.

Some graduate students lead us through the local markets and showed us some restaurants and stores. This area is totally Americanized. There was all kinds of shops. The supermarket was huge. We saw some really odd stuff there. There was raw poultry that still had the heads on. All over the city there were cars, bikes, and people walking. It was very busy and bustling. We tried to go to a bank where people could exchange American money for Chinese money, but they needed our passports and we had given them to the hotel for check in.


This van says, "The Crazy English." I guess they really do call us crazy!


Here is a strip of shops and such that we passed. MickeyD's really is everywhere!


Some of our group waiting while our tourguides decide where to take us next.


Some poultry at the grocery with their heads still on! Yikes! Won't be eating that!



Some meat in a freezer. I guess you just scoop it out and put it in a bag. Pretty unsteril if you ask me.




The view from the escalator of the supermarket.

A squash type item cut into a big slice. Maybe it was melon. I do not know. Anyway, it is about 60 cents worth of the item.





Eventually we headed back to campus. We saw a few areas that have small exercise items similar to what you might find at a park in America. We have these at Fred Beekmen park and by the trail on campus. Before coming here we heard that these were being installed to help people prepare for the Olympics. I find this hilarious.


We went through campus, clear to the other side, and out the gate to another bank.


There, we waited for a long period of time to take turns exchanging our American cash for yin. The exchange rate here was much better than the one we experienced at the Newark Airport. It took at least an hour for our entire group to meet with the financial officer one by one in the back room. I found it odd that they didn’t have us wait in line like the rest of the Chinese people, but we did have a back office room to ourselves.


We watched out the window at 10 year old (or so) school children played in the school yard. They were so funny to watch. A group of four girls connected their legs together and hopped around in a circle. There were several boys that came over and waved to us through the window. We headed back to campus and some of us ate at the nice restaurant downstairs because the student cafeteria was closed since it was about 1:00 p.m. already. It cost a total of 27 yin which is about three dollars. We were able to pay for this using our meal card. The meal card has 300 yin on it and we can make it last as long as we want. Not bad for six different food items which we were on a lazy susan in front of us and we twirled around to get what we wanted. I liked the rice and the broccoli the best, but some of the spicy chicken wasn’t too bad. I really do not like the pot stickers.

We came up to the room and started to work on our journals. The next thing I knew was that DangFong was knocking on our door. I answered it, thinking it was morning. She said we would meet up later than we were supposed to because she had to go to the airport to get Nick. After much more sleeping (when will this end?) we headed to the grocery with Juan and Paige to get breakfast food. The night life was so hopping. It wasn’t scary at all to be out after dark. There were many lights and people around. There are so many shops out there. We didn’t find too much at the grocery. I got some wheat crackers, some chocolate cookies, and some garbage bags for 11 yin which is about $1.50.