You know how to you can tell that I love you, my internet fan-friends? Because after sitting at my keyboard for way more than fourteen hours straight writing a 3000 character Chinese essay, and even though China-gov has blocked blogspot, I have found a way to write to you on this lovely 1:00 AM Monday, May 18, 2009 (credit: Mom!).

Let me fill you in on China-life as of late. It’s been more interesting and less I-want-to-tell-parents/costudents-these-sorts-of-things than ever this week, but this is my oh-so-frank blog so if you think you’ll find yourself offended, I encourage you to just stop reading at this point. Yeah, delete the bookmark too, it’s probably for the best.

On with it then. In breaking news that everyone already suspected, Russian girls’ summer clothes are even more ridiculous than their winter regalia. In addition to heels as high and accessories as gaudy as ever, I’ve now also seen ladies who I swear forgot their pants, one who forgot upwards of half of her shirt, as well as several (pierced) bellybuttons. And yet, shopkeepers commonly mistake me for Russian. What does this mean.

In more interesting news, have discovered that a nontrivial percentage of CET students- myself included- would more readily break the law than the language pledge and I find this equal parts amusing and tragic; see me personally for further details.

In related news, for about four minutes on last Wednesday I forgot I was a 外国人. I was like, I want to shop for some veggies here, and then looked around without feeling the least bit self conscious for about four minutes. Then I thought, something is weird here, what could it be? Oh yes that’s right, an outsider- people are watching me again. Right.

In semi-related news, there’s finally some inter-personal drama amongst the CET students. A couple of Chinese roomies are dating, apparently all the boys think my (very taken) roomie is the most attractive of the lot and are willing to pay handsomely for my assistance in winning her over (or something…), everyone has come to hold more or less uniform opinions about each other’s personalities (and more importantly, respective levels of Chinese proficiency) that we compare whenever somebody isn’t around, and I have a couple of completely unfeasible crushes. Now now don’t go getting excited, we’re not talking serious emotions here, and at this point I know better than to take any action beyond passively-aggressively noting the existence of said crushes on the blog that said boys may or may not read. Pretty much, this crushing process is inevitable for me. I meet some cool people, we hang out a lot, I find more and more reasons to like them, and then eventually start thinking we could work out as more. Then, I remember that in 10 days everyone goes back to their own personal America, so it’s definitely just best to settle for an conversation in English and game of spin the bottle in Beijing before we scatter. Man, why didn’t I think of that.

In more consequential news, last Saturday our activity was interviewing old Chinese people, which turned out to be surprisingly interesting. My old person was a professor at 哈工大 until he retired at age 60, and we discussed all kinds of things, ranging from his life during the great cultural revolution to the rationality of religious belief. As far as the latter is concerned, he was way open-minded but just didn’t understand how so many people in such a developed nation as America could all believe in the existence of single God who apparently isn’t in the habit of offering up rational evidence of his existence. I tried to explain to Professor Su that it is possible to have faith not as an irrational belief, but rather as an additional one. It is not contradictory to accept science and/or rationality as the answer to the “what is our world? and how does it work?” questions while simultaneously accepting religious belief as the answer to that “yes, but why?” question. I mean, it ain’t my style, but it ain’t necessarily contradictory either. I don’t know if I impacted his thinking or not, but it was a fun conversation regardless.

I think I’ve forgotten how to drive,
China-Cat