To Beijing

So we went to Beijing for a couple of days, now we're back in Hangzhou waiting to go to our schools. Beijing is a nice city, the weather is much better, and you can actually get wheat-based products, which is a godsend here where everything is rice-based. It's also just a nicer city in general than most of the places I've been - you have nice public parks where you actually see the old people doing taiqi and whatever, which I'd been hearing about but never seen.

Our tour guide was pretty ruthless, as usual, so we managed to see most of the major sites in three days. The first day, we went to the Heavenly Temple, which opens into Tiananmen square, with the famous portrait of Mao.That's just a stock photo, I should have real photos up soon. Anyway, the next day, we went to the Great Wall, which was one of the big things I was looking forward to. I have some really good pictures of that. We also saw the acrobats - they were cool like always.

The coolest thing about Beijing was all the Mao memorabilia. I bought myself a "Little Red Book" in English and Chinese, so I could walk around with it and offer Mao's input on any given situation. I also bought some old Chinese propoganda posters. I showed them to our tour guide, and a hilarious conversation ensued.

"Do you like Mao?" she asked me.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because he's Chinese."
"Is that the only reason?"
"Yeah...how about you?"
"I also like Mao."
"Why?"
"Because he could...well...control people's thoughts."

Indeed, he could control people's thoughts. What can you say to that?

Oh, and speaking of conspiracy theories, and strange relationships and whatever...I'm finally starting to learn more about how this whole program works, and it turns out UCE is just a relatively minor player. As far as I can tell, they seem to actually be dormant for the school year, so for those of us that are staying the year, they are basically just a recruitment agency. The people who we actually sign a contract with (we also have a contract with UCE, which is really short and basically says we should follow the other contract)...they are also basically a recruitment agency. Nova Language College, which I hear is based in Canada, is actually going to be the name on our paycheck, and I guess they're the only entity which has a contract with the actual school. For some reason I thought these strange arrangements would be less common in China than in America...that it definitely not the case.

And, finally, in the news...rumor has it that Survivor China, the first American TV show to be filmed in China, is being filmed in the next province over...too bad they don't have an English teachers edition.