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 =)

I’m finally free from assessments and only have two exams to sit for!! YaY! Since I’ve been lacking in updates recently, I decided to share something I found in my attempt to do some research for a completely NON SEXUAL related topic, I stumbled across this article which gave me a good minute of entertainment =P

Does attractiveness in men provide clues to semen quality?
M PETERS, G RHODES, L W SIMMONS. Journal of Evolutionary Biology. Oxford: Mar 2008. Vol. 21, Iss. 2; pg. 572
Abstract (Summary)

The psychological mechanisms underlying attractiveness judgements in humans are thought to be evolved adaptations for finding a high quality mate. The phenotype-linked fertility hypothesis proposes that females obtain reliable information on male fertility from male expression of sexual traits. A previous study of Spanish men reported that facial attractiveness was positively associated with semen quality. We aimed to determine whether this effect was widespread by examining a large sample of Australian men. We also extended our study to determine whether cues to semen quality are provided by components of attractiveness: masculinity, averageness and symmetry. Each male participant was photographed and provided a semen sample that was analyzed for sperm morphology, motility and concentration. Two independent sets of women rated the male photographs for attractiveness, and three further sets of 12 women rated the photographs for masculinity, symmetry or averageness. We found no significant correlations between semen quality parameters and attractiveness or attractive traits. Although male physical attractiveness may signal aspects of mate quality, our results suggest that phenotype-linked cues to male fertility may not be general across human populations. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

It’s so interesting to know that scientists are still in their never ending quest in their attempt to answer the big question: “WHY?”

• Why do we like attractive people?
• Why do we think certain features are more attractive than others?
• Why is there a market for plastic surgery?

So now we know that attractiveness does not link to higher fertility rate, what does this mean exactly? Could it possibly mean that there’s no need for attractive people in our world? I mean, what if all the attractive people turned out to have a lower fertility rate? And considering Australia needs to boost its’ population, we want to have the best chance of having more babies… So does that mean lots of ugly babies?

Okay okay, I know it’s a bit premature to jump to any assumptions like ugly babies. But the study could very possibly suggest that, now that we have all these different means of fertilisation and passing on dodgy aka inferior genes, maybe evolution has created more attractive people to combat this… If you think about it, if it had not been for plastic surgery, ugly people will breed with their ugly people gene pool and the attractive people have their own attractive gene pool. Eventually one of them will kick the other in the ass, maybe even enslave them for being different.

But we humans are smarter, we try to beat the system by creating this wonderful market for plastics. We figured since we’ve fixed up homes, we’ve fixed small pox, we’ve fixed peoples’ minds, so why don’t we just fix up everything else?
Or can’t that be done?

Do we recall the story of the husband who sued his wife for an “ugly baby”? You figure it out.

Some beauties are a cut above the rest.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)
Byline: Lori Borgman

A husband in China was so upset his wife gave birth to an “ugly” baby girl that he accused her of having an affair. She confessed to saying, “I do” to plastic surgeons multiple times before saying, “I do,” to her husband at the altar. He filed for divorce and sued for deceit.

I took a weekend trip to Dalian leaving Friday night and returning to Beijing on Saturday morning.

The two nights sleeping on the train turned out to be a lot more worth it considering their beds are much softer than the one I have in the dorms! The sleep wasn’t too bad because my bunk cubical for 6 didn’t have any extreme snorers or babies crying.

A weekend isn’t enough to really see what Dalian is all about but it seems that my tour guide easily covered the non-nature-related-attractions … within one day!

I like living in a city, always bustling with people and being able to always have/find something to do. But when a city gets as big as Beijing, the magic just fades after a while. A city like Dalian reminds me of Perth;

Big town turned small city,

limited places to visit,

shops close too early,

the ocean and

it’s own uniqueness!

How can you not love it?? =P

Don’t get me wrong, Beijing isn’t too fantastic even though I love it here, I just don’t like the fact that staying here has made me lose interest in the culture as well as damaging to my health. Beijing is just getting less and less mysterious as each layer of paint goes on.

All for the preparation of the Olympics of course!

Anyhow, the stay in Dalian was a fantastic mini adventure, and it’s probably the only city in China I’ve beaten my mum to =P wOOt!

Come Monday morning, the first thing that greets me back in my dorm is my fishy friend looking VERY dead. I suspect Jinjin and Heihei had another one of their head-butting rounds which of course Jinjin, the one that eats the most, came out on top.

aHhh well, it was bound to happen sooner than later….

There’s a notice on my dorm building (the main dorm for international students at BLCU) that told us that we won’t be having any HOT water for a week from 8am-6pm.

This is quite alright with me since I like having late showers anyway, but when I went to turn on the hot water (during the set time period), a stream of ugly brown sewer-like water came out!!! So, to my horror, I had to make do with an unsatisfying FREEZING COLD shower - and can I just add that it’s currently WINTER here and I’ve never experience below zero Celcius until now.

I suppose I should be happy it’s the HOT water that they’re fixing up and not the COLD water. It was already bad enough the last time we didn’t have cold water because that meant we didn’t actually have any flushing toilet water! I only discovered this fact when we had used up all the stored water in the toilet…

For those who may come across this problem, you might want to consider the following for flushing toilets:

1. Fill a large container (a medium sized pot will suffice) with water (assuming they only blocked the hot or cold water). If you don’t have either and you’re desperate, use drinking water.
2. Lift up the toilet lid to optimise the target area.
3. Position the container about 30cm from the toilet rim.
4. Pour in ALL the water at once into the toilet bowl. It’s important that there is a decent amount of water poured in all at once and also at a decent but steady speed to create the ‘flushing’ effect.
5. If the nasty stuff is still there, increase the amount of water and repeat with increased speed.
6. If it still doesn’t work, fill the toilet tank manually and then FLUSH!
7. If all else fails, call in a Fuyuan and bug the hell out of them until the toilet is fixed!

NB. The toilet service man usually only comes in the evenings around 4pm. If your toilet was blocked the night before, you might want to consider hiding out in the many cafes around the Wudaokou area.

And please remember, learn from other peoples’ mistakes, no flushing toilet paper down china toilets (especially the ones with the sign). The toilet WILL clog!!

Let’s hope this dirty hot water incident is a once off. I might have to borrow someone else’s shower if it isn’t fixed!!

• I’ve caught a cold.
• There was no cold water in the building until 5pm and the fuyuans didn’t think it was that important to tell us this. Cold water also means no flushing toilet water!!
• Catching a cold means lots of fluids and bed rest, and having no flush on the toilet isn’t really helping any.
• One of my fish died… and it’s the one that I actually wanted to stay alive!
• We had a great indoor picnic with some classmates. Real pasta by an Italian, real tomyum by a Thai and random stir-fry by two alcoholics.
  
• The Tree should still be called Hidden Tree!!!
• Red leaves at Xiangshan cannot be found from the top.
  
• My classmates are so nice and sympathetic.
• My roommate cooks lots of yummy food for me.
• Exams are almost over!
• Kai has cheap drinks and good music 25RMB for absinth?!
  

I don’t usually celebrate Halloween and I don’t dress up to themes or as characters.

So when Halloween came around the corner during our BLCU mid semesters, we decided we had to definitely dress up and celebrate! The celebrating was nice and easy, just drinking and dancing (as per usual). The costumes were a lot harder than I thought!

When we went for dinner at a Yunnan Restaurant near Club 13, we were taken to the back of the restaurant. Where they hiding us from their other patrons or giving us VIP treatment? It doesn’t matter, the food tasted really good! =) The waiters and patrons just couldn’t take their eyes off the group of us. Not only were we foreigners (and speaking quite loudly in plain English), but we were completely dressed up in strange costumes.

Just like the asians back home, a large majority of the people (who happened to be Asian) did NOT wear a costume! Ah, what is it about costumes that scares people off?

The club had live Japanese and Korean bands performing on stage. One of the groups sang a few English songs in terrible English… But we couldn’t help but join in the chorus either way =P

Club 13 was pretty packed at one point, they had some pretty good acts and atmosphere but we were a bit disappointed when the party ended at 24:00hrs. We also missed out on the costume competition because we were eating dinner =(

One of the funniest moments I recall from that day was when our Japanese classmate, who told us about the party, dressed up as a mummy! It was so fun and exciting having everyone helping each other prepare and get ready for the event. I was a bit disappointed when the bandages we stitched were taken off though, it took AGES to sew and we had to redo it a few times because of… difficult areas *coff*crotch*coff*

We were expecting to party late into the night so when the party at Club13 ended, we finished off the night at the local Wudaokou club, Propaganda (must blog about this place later!). We might have looked a little odd in costumes but Propaganda alcohol has some nasty side effects, the other patrons probably thought they were hallucinating!