Update on June 1

After a very exhausting and frustrating day of traveling we finally made it!  It’s hard to believe that we are actually in China!  After a day of delayed flights we finally made it to our hotel for a few hours of sleep.

Breakfast this morning was very interesting!  I had fried rice, fried flour of some sort, & locally made soy milk with sugar which was delicious!  Although I was brave and tried the food this morning I needed a cup of coffee!  It was nice to discover a coffee shop attached to a Baskin Robbins just down the street.

After the coffee break we headed to a local park which required us to cross a busy intersection.  Although this seems like a simple task it was a feat in itself!  In order to make it safely to the other side we had to avoid the cars, not the other way around!!  Once we finally made it to the park we encountered a man meditating underneath a tree and a group of people doing what looked similar to a line dance in front of a pond!

They all seemed to know what movements to do and when to do them and they were in sync with each other with a few people making slight variations.  As we travelled further into the park we saw beautiful bridges, a few men in a band playing music underneath a bridge and an alley of carnival type games.  We also saw some people playing mah-jong and ping pong!  I really enjoyed seeing groups of people playing a classic game in the park.  It was interesting to see a beautiful park mixed in with carnival games.

We stopped at a nice cafe on our way back to the hotel and had the best Chinese food I have ever eaten!  The presentation of the food was just as amazing as the food itself and makes me feel better about what we will be eating here!  We passed a few food vendors selling unique dishes, some of which being chicken feet and heart!  I don’t think I’m brave enough for that...

In the afternoon we got a tour of the campus and went to a museum documenting the history of the school.  Seeing a translation of the Wealth of Nations and the universities name written by Mao Zedong was extremely neat to see!  Next we learned about Chinese opera and saw beautiful costumes!  The school’s campus is absolutely gorgeous and would make walking to class everyday very enjoyable! 

Dinner was very interesting, a mix of fish and pork and lot’s of rice!  We weren’t very good at using chopsticks and after watching us struggle for some time a waitress brought over some forks which made eating a lot easier!  Today was a great start to what will be a very interesting and unique trip!

Sarah Sandall. 

Being in a different country and culture can definitely present some challenges.  After our archeological lecture this morning we again split off into different groups to explore a bit more of the city of Xi’an.  Feeling very touristy I have had my camera in my hand constantly ready to snap a picture of something that is interesting, foreign, beautiful, or all of the above, and I really hadn’t thought twice about what or who I was taking pictures of. 

 After walking down a street today and taking a picture of a little restaurant on the road, I realized the entitlement I had been feeling about taking pictures at whim was not only rude, but possibly insulting. One woman in the shop that I had taken a picture of confronted me (rightly so) and told me that I was not allowed to take pictures of them or their restaurant, and the experience shamed me for my western thought of just assuming I could take what was not mine, and also made me think about every picture I took for the rest of the day, and about the impact that I was having on the people and culture around me.  I am a visitor in this great country, full of national pride and civil religion, and it is imperative that I do not forget this.

In conclusion, I’d like to leave you with a picture.  Clearly it will not be the one taken above, as that would be ethically wrong, but instead it will be a Jackie Chan advertisement, and hopefully it will brighten your day.

Melanie Willerth 

We woke up early today; my body decided it was let’s get going time about 6am. After a fulfilling breakfast we started our walk to the university for our first class. The rain was steadily drizzling down and we broke out our umbrellas. It is an interesting phenomenon here. Everyone has an umbrella; it is an integral part of ones travels. It is used to protect against both rain and sun. They are beautiful colourful expressions of individuality. You rarely see two the same. As another interesting side note, men here do not shy away from colourful umbrellas a large percentage of the time. The cultural institution of “pink” being a girls color at home is not held to here. In fact many a gentlemen sported flowers or birds on their umbrellas in addition to them being “feminine” in color. As we walked towards the campus we passed by a child with his mother walking. It seems the joy children receive from splashing in puddles is universal.

At the college we began our first lecture. It had never really sunk home before exactly how old China is as a civilization! It is rather amazing at how their culture has survived and thrived over time. Canada is a newborn in comparison. I also found it fascinating to hear about the matriarchic society in China. The emphasis on the women in the Banpo tribe’s society was refreshing. As the leaders and central ones is so totally different from any other culture that I had every heard of. They even told us that in the Banpo tribe the burial rituals for women involved single graves with offerings. The men were lumped into mass graves. An interesting difference between most of the rest of the world’s attitude towards women! The religious emphasis on every aspect of life was also an intriguing one. While the American money says “in god we trust” on the bill, the Chinese coin used in the past was completely designed around their belief system. The fact that it was designed round with a square whole in the middle to symbolize round heaven/square earth again shows just how detail oriented these people are.

Victoria Trarback

Birthday celebration.	Attending a lecture at Xi’an Jiaotong University on a topic about the ancient city of Xi’an.
Learning ping pong at Xing Qing Gong park.	Trying to score a point.
A glimpse of the campus of Xi’an Jiaotong University.	Vocal practice at  Xing Qing Gong park.