Week 7: Durian and Burgers and Pandas, Oh My!
What a great week! As I mentioned last week, my mother and little sister came to visit this week, and it was great to have them here. Because of the time I’d missed at work recently, I hadn’t planned to take time off work to be with them during the day, but Anna told me I should spend time with my family while they were here and let me take off Wednesday and Thursday this week! Monday and Tuesday at work were both very busy. We finished up our memo on Child Online Protection in the US and also started working on the Facebook and Twitter page for BCLARC (Global Partnership for Children is the name of the page and the Twitter account). We are trying to increase our social media presence and add updates to what is going on at BCLARC and Zhicheng as well as news regarding children’s rights around the world. We got a bunch of new interns on Monday, so Zhicheng has become even more lively with all of the new recruits! Most of them are Chinese students from China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL). I’ve interacted with many of them, and they are smart, motivated, and energetic! In addition to the CUPL students, Zhicheng also welcomed two law students from Australia, April and Emily. They have been a lot of fun, and it is the four of us (April, Emily, Delia, and me, along with Anna) who are responsible for keeping up the Facebook and Twitter page. With the July 21st forum on child online protection coming up, all interns are now working on research to present. The forum will focus on different areas of child online protection, including children’s privacy protection, cyberbullying, child pornography, and online addiction. The CUPL students are responsible for writing a report and preparing a presentation on the applicable Chinese law on the listed areas of child online protection. Us foreigners have to write our own reports on one of the topic areas and the laws of our respective countries. I am doing child online privacy protection in the U.S.
I spent Wednesday and Thursday with my family. On Wednesday, I took them to the Forbidden City and Jingshan Park. Afterwards, we went back to the Night Market on Wangfujing Street and tried scorpion! It tastes like very crunchy chicken. This time, I did not get sick! On the way back home, we were craving ice cream, so we stopped in a shop and got this Chinese brand of ice cream pop called “MODERN,” and it was the creamiest most delicious ice cream I’ve ever had. I hope they have it somewhere in the US, but I doubt it. The next day, we went to the Beijing Zoo! I had heard some distressing things about the condition animals were kept in at this zoo, but I did not see any evidence of maltreatment. I have conflicting views on zoos in general—I think they have their pros and cons—but there was nothing about the Beijing Zoo that made it stand out to me as any less well-maintained than the U.S. zoos I’ve been to. They have a lot of pandas! And one of the monkey habitats was quite large and kept some type of capuchin monkey, I believe. Those monkeys were very entertaining to watch, and there were a lot of adorable monkey babies! After the zoo, we got spicy hot pot for dinner. Friday morning, my family had to head home. It was hard for me to say goodbye to them, and watching them go was the first time I’ve felt really homesick since I’ve been here. Unless you count how much I miss my dog, Chester. My mom and friend Sarah are taking turns watching him for me this summer, and I’m having them send me pictures and/or videos every day. It’s pretty sad, but it’s comforting for me to see that he’s doing O.K.!
On Friday, a former BCLARC intern from last summer, Caitlin, came to visit and give a talk on the research she has continued since she left Zhicheng. After work, Anna took me, Caitlin, Mokun, April, Delia, and Emily to a Korean barbeque place that used durian fruit in a lot of their meat flavoring. If you don’t know what durian is, you should try it one day. Not because it’s the most delicious thing you’ll ever taste, but just for the experience. We first encountered durian in Thailand, where there were signs posted in the subways that forbid durian from being brought on the trains. You see, durian has a distinct, some might say “putrid,” smell that could potentially make people slightly nauseous if they were forced to smell it while stuck inside a small subway train with no windows. I didn’t taste the actual fruit there, but I got some durian-flavored candy. It was smelly, but tasted pretty good. The aftertaste, however, was regrettable and long-lasting, so I won’t be eating any more of that, thank you kindly. Anyway, at the restaurant, the chefs cooked some durian slices while they were cooking some of the meat, so it was infused in some of the pork and beef. Since it was pretty mild, it actually tasted very interesting, and I liked it a lot. The durian itself, when cooked, became a soft, sort of warm pudding texture, and it too was not too bad. To April, it still tasted like rotting garbage, so it may have a different taste to some people—like cilantro but probably worse. After dinner, Caitlin took me to a massage/foot scrubbing place. They place your feet in hot water that’s mixed with some kind of Chinese medicine, and while your feet are soaking, they give you a very intense back/head/neck massage. Then they scrape the dead skin off your feet and give you a foot massage too. It was an incredibly relaxing experience, and my back still feels better than it has in a long while. Caitlin’s Mandarin is very, very good, so it was great that she was there to communicate with the people who worked there because they were hilarious and fun! I would love to go back, and the whole experience there and meeting Caitlin, who has had a lot of experience living and working in China, has made me even more motivated to improve my language skills.
Yesterday was Saturday, and we (Emily, Delia, April, and I) went to the Summer Palace. It was a rainy day, but it was actually a very pleasant relief from the hot weather we’ve had lately. Unlike the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace is less… symmetrical? It seems like it is built into the mountain, and a lot more was put into aesthetics than the Forbidden City, which is much more uniform and stark. There is a large lake next to the palace, and you can ride a pleasure boat around the lake for 20RMB (about $3.00). It was getting late, and we had other plans, so unfortunately we didn’t ride the boat, but I might make a trip back before I leave. The Summer Palace was definitely one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in China so far, and the pictures just don’t do it justice. Not that I can show you those pictures today anyway—my Internet is being slow, and it’s taking a long time to load the pictures from my phone. But you still get zoo animals! Yesterday evening, we met up with Mokun and celebrated the Fourth of July a little late with burgers at a trendy little microbrewery/restaurant in Wudaoying Hutong, which is one of the more popular hutongs in Beijing. The burgers were fantastic, and they came with a syringe full of red wine to infuse them with. Very yummy! Today, we’re taking Emily and April back to the Night Market since they haven’t been, and tomorrow it’s back to work!
