瞎说

"To be whole, let yourself break. To be straight, let yourself bend. To be full, let yourself be empty. To be new, let yourself wear out. To have everything, give everything up. -道德經 aimee walsh, 22. transplanting from chicago to beijing for 5 months. let's get weird.

[gorgeousgillian-deactivated2017]

[xiashuo-blog]

oh herro

aiiiiiyaaaaaa (this is a phrase widely used in china to express frustration, pain, fatigue, surprise, and various other emotions. kinda like an exclamation point) i am officially the worst blogger ever. duibuqi, friends. 

so yeah, i'm still alive. i'm still in china. it's about halfway through the semester, and i am about to go take my last midterm. then, on saturday, i leave for fujian province for a week. it's kind of like our spring break. fujian is by the ocean so the weather will be gorgeous and i'll wear pretty dresses and eat lots of delicious seafood. get jealous y'all. not really looking forward to the 20-hour train ride (AIYAAAAAA) but i will SURVIVE.

everything is excellent here. obviously every now and then i get frustrated here or i start to miss certain things from home, but i can honestly say that i am incredibly fond of china. the semester is seriously flying by and i know i am not gonna wanna leave when the time comes. le sigh. 

i honestly feel like most of the stuff i do here is so bizarre, writing about it would just paint a pale portrait of what the experience was really like. i really can't wait to tell my stories in person. instead, i shall compile a list of things that i really love in china.

xi hong si chao ji dan (egg and tomato over rice, a staple in chinese cuisine. i am OBSESSED with it)

clubbing (lol really though beijing clubs rule)

how cheap everything is

wasabi coated peanuts

milk tea with jelly pearls

the beijing subway and its cleanliness

being able to talk about everyone around me and not have them understand what i'm saying

my chinese friends who think americans are hilarious

engrish signs

rickshaws with ridiculous amounts of stuff strapped to the back and tiny cars with three wheels that you don't need a license to drive

my professors/my classes (i'm serious.)

tbc kids 

the filthy dogs at the shelter i volunteer at

when chinese people want to take my picture for no apparent reason

street food. especially spicy lamb skewers.

there are a lot more things but i can't think of them right now/i need to wrap this post up soon. now here are some things that i miss from home:

my HOMIES.

good beer (if i never have to drink qingdao again i will be so happy)

mac & cheese

honestly i kind of just miss my friends and family. i can deal with not having other stuff. everyone who reads this, send me an email. i will take forever to reply because i suck and my internet also sucks but it will make my day to hear from you. mad love. 

[xiashuo-blog]

yunnan

aight. so tomorrow the TBC crew will be hopping a 6am flight to kunming, the capital of yunnan province, to begin an epic two-week journey. yunnan is located in southwest china and is well-known for having a large number of ethnic minorities. roughly 91% of the chinese population are han chinese, so it's gonna be really interesting to learn about the small amount of the population who have struggled to keep their traditions alive.

part of our trip will include doing homestays with 5 different families of different ethnic backgrounds. these are the yi, dai, naxi, hani, and tibetan peoples. i can't put into words how excited i am to go on this trip. we are going to see indescribable things. yunnan varies greatly as far as geography goes, so we'll see mountains, rainforests, and the famed tibetan plateau. we'll get to see huge amounts of the chinese countryside from our buses. and eat some delicious, hella spicy food! mostly i can't wait to breathe FRESH AIR. beijing air is awful. i have to force myself to take tons of pictures, cause i have a feeling not even i will believe the things i'm gonna see. 

at the risk of sounding super duper cheesy, i will say that i know this trip is going to change my life. legit. 

[xiashuo-blog]

when the AQI (air quality index) in beijing hits 475, which is categorized as "hazardous" including the description "health warnings of emergency conditions. the entire population is more likely to be affected", we wear the kitty mask. it doesn't really filter the death-air, but whatever. it's a kitty mask so who cares.

http://iphone.bjair.info/ 

[xiashuo-blog]

here are some photos of room 519 in building six, where i live! i wasn't too jazzed about living in a dorm again, but it's really not too bad. apparently, the rooms for international students are EXTREMELY luxurious compared to what the chinese students live in. six chinese students live in a room of the same size, and they do not have bathrooms attached. not only that, they have to walk to a separate building in order to shower, even in the dead of winter. when i get frustrated that the entire bathroom floods when i shower and the temperature of the water is either a) freezing cold b) so hot i think my skin is gonna peel off or c) almost lukewarm, i try to think about them and be less of a whiner.

and yeah. the toilet, shower, and sink share a common space. i guess it's great if nature calls in the middle of your daily cleansing? maybe? also apparently one is not supposed to flush toilet paper down the toilet in this country, because the plumbing is terrible. everywhere you go there will be a tiny wastepaper basket next to the toilet or squatter. but everyone at TBC flushes their TP in the dorm anyway cause...ew, no. just no. WE ARE AMERICANS. SOME THINGS ARE SACRED.

we don't use the tv, despite the quality and ridiculous size of the screen, seeing as there are only ten super fuzzy channels and the fuzziest one is the only english channel. the beds are legitimately hard as rocks, but apparently the chinese believe that it's good for your body. mine disagrees, but i'm adjusting...slowly. i did end up buying something akin to a mattress pad, which helps a little. one of the most depressing rules at TBC is that we are absolutely not allowed to ride on any sort of motorized two-wheel vehicle, such as the motorized bicycles and vespas that are incredibly popular in china. most of the chinese UIBE students have now gone home for the impending chinese new year holiday, so campus is pretty empty, but before that, i watched students rolling around on those fun little scooters from my window every day. I WANNA RIDE ONE SO BADLY. buuuuut i also don't want to be broken, which has a high likelihood of happening considering the crazy traffic and the fact that i have seen not one helmet in this country yet. 

i'm not even a week into classes yet, but i can already tell this is going to be the hardest i'll ever study. i'm in the lowest level of chinese offered and it's already getting difficult. though chinese is similar to english grammatically, it is soooo complex to learn. depending on what intonation you use, one word can mean several different things. i'm constantly afraid i'll insult someone on accident. i'm not complaining, though! my classes are all very interesting, and my professors are really awesome. i'm most excited about my observing china class, which is a journalism course. professor ed gargan might just be the coolest dude ever. speaking of observing china, i'm gonna get back to my reading for that class. i'm actually enjoying the book. weird, right? 

also, in my quest to try all the weird asian snacks, i discovered something excellent: steak-flavored pringle-type chips. surprisingly DELICIOUS. unfortunately, they came in a duo pack with a tube of tomato-flavored ones, which are the suck. there are a lot of tomato-flavored chips here, and i do not understand. 

[xiashuo-blog]

oh! if you have instagram, follow me to see some photos of my chinese adventures so far. i can only post when i find wifi, which is more difficult than you'd imagine, but i'm trying to document as much as i can!

my username is aimee_walsh!

[xiashuo-blog]

oh man. what to say? i've been in beijing for over a week now, and while i'm feeling pretty comfortable here, it's also really bizarre to think about the fact that i'll be living here for the next five months. so far, china is pretty damn fun. it's also super duper weird. for a country whose communism seems rigid and frightening to the outside world, there are a surprising lack of rules. don't get me wrong, foreigners in china have to tread lightly when it comes to certain things, but chinese people tend to do whatever they want, or so it seems. for instance, if there are traffic laws (which i am not convinced they are) they're really more like suggestions. riding in a beijing cab is a terrifying experience, and those same cabbies also drive in the bike lane and come close to hitting probably around 30 pedestrians in the span of an hour. people drive trucks on the sidewalks, and park wherever there happens to be a space large enough (or maybe not large enough) to accommodate their car. 

needless to say, i prefer taking the subway. that is quite the experience too, though. the beijing subway, compared to chicago's EL, is, as chevy chase once said in community, "streets ahead". it's incredibly fast, spotlessly clean, and runs about every three minutes. despite its massive size and number of operating lines, it is easy to navigate even if you're a laowai (foreigner) like me. it's not without its perils, however. you cannot imagine the sheer number of people who take the beijing subway. the stations during rush hour are hellish - you MUST throw courtesy aside or you WILL get trampled. start pushing before the doors even open. expect to get up close and reeeeeally personal with about 15 chinese people. when it's not crowded, it's still a little awkward for this lil blondie. on the street, it's easier to ignore it when people stare at me. in an enclosed space...eeesh. people don't just spend a few seconds or even a minute or two looking at me. they legitimately burn a hole in my face staring THE WHOLE RIDE. UNINTERRUPTEDLY. like i'm gonna turn into a rabbit or something. but i'm getting used to it. i have never practiced DGAFism this hard before.

i spent a large amount of time with my big brother this week, which was awesome. we met for the first time in a year on monday afternoon, and i'm not gonna lie, i started crying on the street when i saw him. imagine how the chinese stared at THAT. but yeee, it was really cool to hang out in beijing with him and his pal dylan, who lives here. dylan took us to lots of chill spots, including sanlitun (a ritzy shopping/bar & club district popular with foreigners) and some awesome bars in different hutongs. hutongs are old traditional-style neighborhoods in beijing, and the ones i've been to so far are damn cool. my favorite spots so far have been a tiny cafe that dylan calls "fat cat/smile dog bar" because, you guessed it, a really obese cat and a cheery little dog that legit looks like its smiling all the time live there, and sirena, a cat cafe. (I MISS MY CATS.)

we also had korean BBQ with some of chris & dylan's chinese friends. that was a riot. the food was bomb and we all had a great time despite language barriers. chinese people love to drink, and they love to cheers each other about every two seconds. if the word "ganbei" (drain the cup, the chinese word for cheers) is said, you should finish your drink. i've had a whole lot of qingdao beer since i've been here, as you can imagine. i'm one of the few kids in the TBC program who is actually old enough to drink in the US, and if you know me, you know i like to drink a lot, but all the young'ins who now can legally drink here in china (the official drinking age is 18) are wearing me OUT. everyone is going pretty apeshit. we all went to a club called elements a few nights ago, and let me tell ya...that was crazy. i usually don't even like clubs, but it was awesome. i think i'll have to make a post dedicated to clubbing in beijing once i've experienced a few different spots.

i'm about to attempt to learn how to play mahjong, so i'll put a cork in it for now. i'm really starting to miss y'all in the states...shoot me an email?? it'll make my day! [email protected] or [email protected]. mad love.

[xiashuo-blog]

lays potato chips in china?? yessir, it's true! the best part about this is that they come in a huge variety of hilarious flavors. so far, i've encountered: numb and spicy hot pot cucumber mexican tomato chicken texas grilled bbq italian red meat fried giant prawn cheese lobster little tomato which one should i try first? i'm thinking numb and spicy hot pot, cause i'm curious as to what "numb" tastes like.

[xiashuo-blog]

first day

welp. here i am. in china. my plane landed last night just before midnight, and after navigating the beijing airport with the help of a really nice dude named derek, ignoring a lot of chinese cabbies wanting to give me a ride and no doubt rip me off (taxi miss? taxi??) i was intercepted by a guy from the beijing center (TBC) who led me to a bus containing three other loyola students: jess, ellen, & alex. beijing seemed to be shrouded in fog, but our guide informed us that nope, that's just the air pollution. we got checked into our dorm rooms, and i unpacked, watched some really weird chinese television, and managed to sleep for a few hours.

when i woke up this morning to the sound of girls running up and down the halls in heels and yelling in chinese, i decided to go downstairs and see if i could get internet somehow. turns out very few people at TBC actually speak english. i went back to my room internet-less, feeling very daunted, and i'll admit it, kind of scared. i don't speak chinese, and i stick out like a sore thumb with my blonde hair and pale skin. how am i going to manage? i spent most of the morning pretty freaked out. 

luckily, alex came to my rescue right on time! his room is just down the hall from mine, and he came and knocked on my door around lunchtime. he'd been out exploring in the morning and thought strength in numbers would be good, so we headed back out together. we both felt WAY better once we were together. it was pretty damn fun seeing the area around campus - there are tons of shops and street vendors, and even with our extremely limited chinese we were able to get some food (some super dank baos in my case) and essentials. bottled water and toilet paper are a MUST. the water is not safe to drink, or even brush your teeth with (full of bacteria and heavy metals) and there is legitimately no toilet paper anywhere. not even in the dorms. trying to buy cell phones was an epic fail though. we'll need to go back with someone who speaks chinese to do that. 

the rest of the loyola students will be arriving tonight and we're all going out to dinner together. i'm really psyched for my roommate, laura, to get here, and to start getting properly orientated and whatnot. i'm just glad to have found internet!! till next time y'all.

[xiashuo-blog]

hey y'all! i decided it would be a good idea to have a place to write about my upcoming adventures in the people's republic of china - so here it is.

for those of you who don't know me, i'm aimee. i'm twenty-two and i attend loyola university chicago, majoring in english & creative writing, minoring in asian studies. i'm going to study abroad for 5 months at the beijing center, which is part of a chinese university called the university of international business and economics (UIBE), located in the chaoyang district of beijing.

aside from studying chinese language, history, religion, and sociology, i'll be traveling to the mountainous yunnan province in february to conduct anthropological research on the various ethnic minorities who live there, and in march, i'll visit the southeastern coastal province of fujian. i also hope to make a trip to the city of shijiazhuang in hebei, where my older brother, chris, lives and teaches english.

my life is about to change in a way that is crazy, awesome, terrifying, and altogether unfathomable to me, and i'm gonna do what i do best - write about it. so come here to read my 瞎说 (xiashuo, nonsense) about life in china.