Watching the Olympics and listening to all this talk about Beijing makes me really miss that place! All I hear and see is Beijing this and Beijing that and I hate that I’m not there to explore all the really cool things that they did just for the Olympics =( I even missed out on trying out the new Beijing International Airport by a week!! 天天听着看着中国的旅游 hotspots ，新和旧的东西我全部都想看！非常可惜！
I can’t help but tune myself into the Olympic events everyday, especially now that we can watch it on CCTV! The problem with Channel 7 is that they give a lot of air time to swimming and other popular Australian sports, concentrating on the Australian athletes because that’s what our Australian market demands of them.
But this time around, CCTV gives me the choice of what to watch. I don’t think I’ve ever watched softball, equestrian, weight-lifting, judo， badminton， 乒乓比赛 什么的 during the Olympics before…
虽然我可以看别的运动，我还喜欢看游泳比赛，diving (especially synchronized diving), gymnastics… mainly the sports that involves a lot of gravity defying and/or contortion of the body O_o; The least favourite for me has to be the equestrian competition and the white water rafting.
我很像北京。。。 我想见我的北京朋友。。。
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On a side note, I’m starting to get really frustrated with always hearing 中国加油，《insert athlete name》加油，《insert team name》加油，《insert country name》加油. My goodness, how many times do they have to say “Jia You!” at least mix it up a bit… isn’t there something else in Chinese besides 加油??!
I thought I would use the Beijing Olympic Games as a good excuse for me to blog a little in Chinese…
BUT my vocab prevents me from writing about just how crazily fantastic the Olympic opening ceremony was! Only in China can you get a HUGE mass of people performing in sync with 99% accuracy. I enjoyed playing ’spot the mistakes’ during the performances just because it would be unfair if there weren’t any mistakes at the Beijing Olympics… it’ll make the Australian Sydney Olympics look bad!
The Beijing Olympics though, there are some performances which I doubt I’ll easily forget. I especially loved the performance with the mass of drums which lit up in sync and the moving columns which was so in sync that I almost believed it was computerised.
我最不喜欢的是 the order of which each country entered the stadium! 我每次等澳大利亚队出来才坐别的东西。因为澳大利亚第一字是 ‘a’ 应该在前面的，可是这次澳大利亚差不多是最后出的！！My dad had to explain to me that countries were entering in order of number of strokes in their Chinese character… STROKES?! Poor Australia has way too many =(
Anyways, like I said great ceremony. Even the lighting of the Olympic flame was cool! Although, it would have been cooler if there were no mistakes…
I initially wanted to stay in Harbin for about five days so we can see the Ice Festival, Snow World, Tiger Park etc etc and just take our own sweet time with the place. But because it was so troublesome to get our hands on the train tickets, we figured the length of our stay will depend on the availability on our train ticket back to Beijing.
In the end we decided not to stay so long because the cold was really getting to us, plus there was a bit of tension during our whole trip since it didn’t exactly start off on the right foot. So the next day we planned to go to the Tiger Park in the morning and then see the Harbin Ice Festival in the late afternoon and evening. Our friends who visited Harbin the week before advised us that it was best to go during that time so that we can see the ice sculptures during daylight as well as lit up at night.
They also warned us with stories about frozen eye lashes and how the vapours of our breath would freeze once it left our body! And so I was thankful that the temperature in Harbin when we were there was ‘warmer’ going as low as -25C. I was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to wear my contacts - no one wants to have their contacts frozen onto their eyeball!! At -20C I found that although my breath did freeze a little on my scarf, it didn’t freeze on my eyelashes which in turn meant my contacts were safely moist on my eyes =)
I was actually quite excited to go to Tiger Park to see the endangered species and just to get a chance to be up close to them. We caught our breaths as we stumbled out of the taxi – we still weren’t used to Harbin taxi drivers speeding on ice slick roads!
The Tiger Park was quite depressing and uneventful after the first few tiger sightings, instead I couldn’t help but think of how bored out of their minds these tigers were… The enclosure isn’t tiny but I can’t say that it’s that big either. I was a bit disappointed that the only white tigers I saw were a couple of cubs in a tiny enclosure…
Although going to the Tiger Park was quite easy, coming back however is a bit trickier because it’s pretty far from the city – which is understandable in case one escapes or something… This means that the taxi drivers are not so easily found to get a lift back. We ended up hitching a ride with some other Chinese local to get us dropped off at the Harbin Ice Festival!
The Harbin Ice Festival is definitely right up there with Zhongyang Jie of places you just have to visit when you’re in Harbin. I would have liked to stay there a bit longer, I don’t think I had the chance to look at everything or even had enough time to appreciate everything. Had I been wearing the appropriate clothes for freezing climates, I might have even gone down on their ice slide, gone curling or one of their other activities they had.
Nonetheless, the two coffee/milo/hot chocolate/soup breaks did nothing to keep our fingers, toes and ears from going painfully numb. Speaking of breaks, in the center of the biggest tent was a tiny enclosure with a couple of tigers in it…. Talk about mood killer!
Anyway, I’ll let the Video and photos speak for themselves… The photos are on my Facebook album =)
To continue one from Harbin Ice Festival Part 1, we finally arrived in Harbin and arrived at the hotel around 5am. The hotel was thankfully close by to the train station and there was no trouble getting a taxi at that time in the morning.
However, I still had a bit of trouble with booking our hotel because:
I couldn’t tell them when we were arriving (we didn’t have train tickets at that time)
I couldn’t tell them how long we were staying (I wasn’t sure what day we could get train tickets back to Beijing)
There’s actually TWO JinJiang Hotels in Harbin
I simply just couldn’t understand them…. oh the shame!
So arriving at 5am, we had to wake up the receptionist and she told us that we can’t check in until 7am when some of their patrons checked out. Being as tired as we were, we slept in the lobby which was freezing cold even though the doors were closed.
Thank goodness the Harbin JinJiang Hotel at Sophia Plaza had a really good manager on staff, she was extremely helpful and could understand our broken Mandarin. The best thing about Harbin is that their spoken Mandarin is the easiest to understand, even the locals agree =)
The manager helped us organise our room, she helped with the breakfast tickets and she even helped us buy our return train tickets when another staff member told us to go call them ourselves! (Plus it only took her 5mins to do)
So we went into our rooms, passed out and woke up sometime near noon… we didn’t exactly have much sleep on the painfully long and uncomfortable journey to Harbin. The good thing is that we did our research and we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to see and where the tourist spots all were.
With a spring back into our steps, we headed off in the direction of the St Sofia Orthodox Church. The St Sophia Church itself seemed to be a little smaller than I had imagined it, probably because of all the giant buildings surrounding it. I was most surprised by the birds still hanging around the church, I thought they would have flown to warmer climates or froze to death by now…
Once we had our share of photos, we found our way to Zhongyang Dajie (Central Ave) which is well known for the beautiful Russian architecture. There were ice sculptures spaced out all down the cobble stone road, and the whole street made me feel like I was in a dream when the lights turned on. Absolutely breath-taking.
Below is a short clip I took just as the sun was setting and the buildings started to light up
As it got darker, we found ourselves extremely thankful for the many shopping complexes available to shelter us from the cold. In fact, if we weren’t running around outside in the freezing cold, we would be sweating it off in the well heated shopping complexes and stores.
After a final round of hot coffee and Russian imported chocolate (which by the was is more expensive at the Ice Bar), we started off back to the hotel. On our way back, we even stumbled across some slides made of ice and a Christmas tree they forgot to take down =)
Below is a short clip I took of St. Sophia Church that night as we walked back to the hotel.
I’ve finally gotten around to finish typing up a large portion of my trip to the Harbin Ice Festival in January of 2008!!! YaY! But I just discovered that I totally killed Part 2 of the Harbin Trip by saving Part 3 over it!! >=( I’m so distraught right now… it was such a long post too. This will just mean that Part 2 will be delayed, I’ll attempt to get it up by the end of this week though =) Note to self: Always type posts up in Word for backup!!
After our last exam at BLCU (Jan 15th), most of us international students went off on our mini holidays to other parts of China or back home to see family and friends. After months of preparation and continuous discussions about where to go and what to see, we decided on going to the Harbin Ice Festival!
We had actually prepared an itinerary to travel all the way to Guilin and Chengdu to see the pretty landscape and cute pandas (did you hear about the Pandas who escaped because of the earthquake??), even going through Xi’an and Pingyao to see the terracotta warriors and ancient city, but we realised it was a bit too hopeful since it was a right before Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) and we were most likely going to have trouble with train tickets!
We weren’t wrong! Talking about our plans to Harbin was one thing, to actually get it done was another! Firstly, just to buy the train tickets to Harbin were a huge hassle because you have to fight half of China just to get to the ticket counter. The whole ticketing system was so that you can only buy your tickets 4-5days before the departure date, and you can’t book any tickets ahead of time. Although, I’m sure you could if you knew someone at the ticketing office!
We had to line up several times in the super-long Chinese style queues, where it’s just one big free-for-all wrestling match to get the ticket officers’ attention only to be turned down and told “明天回来 come back tomorrow“. We ended up delaying our trip by a few days because of this, which meant our hotel bookings had to be changed and our hopes of getting our hands on 3 hard sleepers were dashed. Instead, out of pure desperation, we got ourselves hard seaters.The train ride to Harbin was extremely memorable.
First of all, China rail sells standing tickets for those who, as the ticket suggests, remain standing throughout the whole journey. During peak season, these passengers are shoulder to shoulder blocking your way from the door to your seat. If you arrive late to your seat, expect some locals to be sitting in your seat. That is, if you even make it to your seat in the first place!
The train had already started moving and we were stuck in the mass of people trying to make our way to our allocated seats. Several locals happily help by pushing you on your way (some more aggressively than others). I’m quite sure I ended up stepping on people and random luggage in the aisle, as well as practically sitting in some strangers lap.
We found entertainment in just observing and commenting on the appearance and behaviour of the local Chinese. One girl in particular looked every part Japanese with her hair and make up, even her giant teddy bear. We watched her almost get run over by the lunch cart (she bought a standing ticket), we watched her steal the seats of other patrons when they went to the toilet and we also watched her practically sleep in the aisle.
It was only until near the end of our journey that the crowd ‘thinned’ out so those standing had space to sit/sleep in the aisle. It was also towards the end of the 18hour train ride that the locals found great humour and entertainment with us foreigners. Chinese are easily entertained if you just simply speak broken Mandarin to them and teach them some English.
Click the below link for more information about travel by trains
One of the things I wished I had when I went to BLCU was a better map of BLCU campus and the area surrounding BLCU. When arriving on campus, it would be nice to actually know where you need to go to get things done because the process of actually getting anything done takes AGES sometimes. This blog post is dedicated to a few basic things I think would have been useful for those new to BLCU and the Wudaokou area.
First of all I need to put in a quick disclaimer: Please keep in mind that this post is based on my experience of studying as a student at BLCU during September 2007 to January 2008, there is constant construction going around in Beijing and buildings may be constructed or disappear overnight!
The map that BLCU sends out to students is correct but it can also be very easy to misinterpret because some buildings are out of shape, out of proportion and you have no idea where to get your basic supplies!
Basic knowledge about BLCU:
BLCU = 语言大学 Yuyan Daxue. Some very locals and students might call it “Beiyu” but it’s not as common.
Beida = 北京大学 Beijing University. This is NOT Beijing Normal or another university with ‘Beijing’ in it.
Ditie Daxue is opposite BLCU.
Wudaokou is an area buzzing with shops, restaurants, cafes, apartments, and basically functions off the many many students in the area. Considered the University area because it’s near Beida, Tsinghua and BLCU.
It takes about 10mins to walk from Dorm 4 in BLCU to Wudaokou
One of the most useful things you should know is the two road names which BLCU is located: “Chengfu Lu” and “Xueyuan Lu“. This comes in handy when you’re drunk off your face from another night out at Sunlitun (or Propaganda) and you were unlucky enough to find the one taxi driver who doesn’t know where “Yuyan Daxue” is.
Here’s the basic map of the BLCU campus I made using Google Maps.
KEY: Green Lines: Outlines the BLCU campus Red Dots: The main gates which you enter or leave the campus Yellow Lines: The main roads which BLCU is located on OrangeDots: Indicate where you can find an ATM or Bank Blue Dots: The more important buildings you would want to know on your first day of arrival
I never actually explored the entire campus, I didn’t really think it was that interesting…. But I must admit that it is pretty important to know where you can go to find help, the bank and ATMs, the internet for your dorm room, food, shopping etc. It’s not too difficult though, I usually just stumbled across places or a classmate would let me know, and the worst case scenario would be to just ask for directions.
It isn’t too difficult to exchange currencies at the Bank of China on BLCU campus but when I went there, they wouldn’t take $AUD for some stupid reason!! (Click on the image on the left for labels of the OrangeDots). The Buildings highlighted with Blue dots are probably the most useful ones, and it’s just good to have an idea of where they all are.
The Friendship Store near the Basketball Courts is your BLCU on campus One-Stop -Shop! Cernet is the name of the BLCU internet shop where you can apply for internet connection for your dorm. BLCU has it’s own tiny Post Office near Cernet but there is also a huge one next to the Chaoshifa. (Click on the image below for labels of Blue dots)
The Chaoshifa is a the local supermarket (ie Coles, Woolworths) to stock up on supplies in your mini fridge. But keep in mind that you need to carry your shopping bags all the way to the South Gate and it takes a good 5 minutes to get there. The other buildings are just good landmarks and I pin-pointed Dorm 17 because it’s technically “off campus” and Dorm 4 because it’s the main dorm for international students.
Here is a quick video I took of BLCU after exams finished (that’s why there isn’t many people around)
I still have quite a few BLCU related posts to blog about (I have it in my head but it’s just not typed up yet), and I’m in the process of breaking up my post on my trip to the Harbin Ice Festival, so remember to check back soon =)
