Birthday

On Saturday the school celebrated its 140th anniversary, and we were invited to attend. Preparations had been underway for quite some time -- when we came back from break there were new bilingual signs posted around campus identifying the buildings and their histories, and potted flowers started appearing on campus a week ago.

It had been a long week, and while I wanted to see what this celebration was all about, I wasn't looking forward to getting up early on Saturday. Nonetheless, I set my alarm for 7:15 so I could take my time and have a leisurely breakfast before meeting the academic dean outside our building at 8:30 or so. Instead, I woke up to find that I had turned off my alarm, rolled on top of it and continued sleeping until 8:05. I jumped out of bed, got dressed and went upstairs to wake Brian, who had also slept through his alarm. We met our dean outside on time, rushed and bleary-eyed. Like, I still had sleep lines on my face. But it was a nice day and I began to wake up soon.

The dean paired us with two Chinese English teachers, Allison and Melody, who translated so we would know what was going on. The two-and-a-half-hour ceremony took place in the gym, where it began with students reading congratulatory letters from the Beijing Ministry of Education and other schools. After the principal spoke, distinguished alumni crossed the stage -- including the school's oldest alum, at 102 years old. They also presented the school's first Chinese principal (the school was founded in 1867 by American missionaries, and its first four principals were American), and we watched a video about the school's history.

Then came the performances, which ranged from teacher and student choirs to an accordion quartet playing "Jingle Bells." My favorite, however, was dancing by students from Xinjiang, a northwestern autonomous region that borders Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan. Xinjiang, which has significant natural gas resources, is home to the ethnic Uygur people as well as a separatist movement. The movement has met with repressive tactics by the Chinese government, which has used the war on terror to aggressively pursue Uygur separatists as "Islamic terrorists." 150 Xinjiang students come to the school each year, and they tend to stick together. Theirs was the last performance, and it felt more Middle Eastern or Russian than Chinese. The teacher next to me said the people in Xinjiang are born singers and dancers.

The ceremony wrapped up with speeches by Beijing's vice-mayor and officials from the Beijing Ministry of Education, followed by lunch. In the afternoon the school was supposed to take us to see the Grand Canal, but when I called the coordinator she said the canal had no water so we couldn't go.

In the evening Niall, Brian and I went to Grandma's Kitchen, an American restaurant downtown that's about as authentic as it gets. The menu features meatloaf, country-fried chicken, apple pie, onion rings and all-day Western breakfasts. It felt a little ridiculous being there, but we had probably the best burgers we'll find in town, except maybe at upscale hotels.

Going back to Tongzhou, there were so many people in line at the transfer station that Brian and I didn't get on the first train, but we were first in line for the next one. Passenger volume has jumped by up to 46 percent since Line 5 opened and the city lowered the fare to 2 kuai, and it was bad enough before. Boarding a subway train in Beijing is like playing musical chairs, but with more pushing, shoving and scheming -- seniors and pregant women be damned. Every seat is filled in two seconds flat. Then everyone crowds in until absolutely no one else can fit, leaving the rest on the platform -- and that isn't even necessarily during rush hour.

So we were standing at the edge of the platform with a fairly solid line forming behind us, but as soon as the train pulled in, the line dissolved and everyone started pushing forward. The doors didn't open right away but the pressure from the crowd behind us kept increasing, literally crushing us against the car doors. Once the doors opened, we practically fell in as everyone rushed in behind us. Despite being first in line, Brian and I barely got seats. One guy ended up sitting in my lap, and tried to squeeze between us before giving up. In short, getting a seat was not worth fighting the crowd.

On Sunday Niall and I went to see a photography exhibit at Dashanzi, an art district housed in a former factory. The place is a maze of alleys lined with tiny galleries, and it's teeming with foreigners who sit outside the cafes sipping expensive coffee and discussing representations of trauma in abstract art or how to use new media to romanticize the mundane. It was nice for an afternoon, but it's not really my scene. We wandered through a few Chinese and Japanese contemporary art exhibits, then headed somewhere cheaper for dinner.

China Fun Fact: As of April 2007, China had 58 Subway restaurants. Canada has more than 2,000, the U.S. has almost 21,000 and the U.K. has 870.