Today was our last day of classes!! It was really exciting to be done, although kind of sad because we’ll be leaving China soon. It was another day of just classes, which can be nice sometimes. This morning was our last Chinese lesson, where we mostly just went over what we’d learned, and learned a few more new things. I’ll still never be even CLOSE to fluent, and I don’t think I’ll be taking Chinese at Pitt, either. I really admire anyone who can major in Chinese, because it’s so hard! Our second lecture was a wrap up of Chinese history and culture, as well. We talked about the Cultural Revolution, and all of the happenings of recent years, including the Tiananman Square Riots. It was really cool to hear about things we learn about in school from the view of someone who was actually affected by these events, being as she was a professor and the rioters were mostly college students. It was an experience unlike any I’ll get from back home, and I really appreciated learning from her.
Tuesday, May 20th
Our last day in China! We had a tour of Lenovo first thing this morning, which was really interesting. Lenovo makes computers and computer parts, a lot of which we use in the States. We got to walk through the plant where all of the computers were being assembled, tested, reworked, everything. There was a whole room of people just watching movies, playing video games, typing documents, anything people will actually need to use the computer for, in order to test the quality of the equipment. I would definitely like to have that job. We also got to play with some of the computers in the showroom, although Katie and I had a decent amount of trouble finding solitaire because the computer is set to Chinese. I liked the computer that had the Torino Olympics design on it, and Vivien and I played with one of the notebook computers that you can actually flip around and write on the screen like paper. It was pretty bizarre, but really cool.
For lunch, we went to a restaurant that only serves duck. They serve you every PART of the duck, however, including the head, and the parts they DON’T serve you, they make into duck soup broth. It was actually surprisingly good, and duck was definitely one of my favorite foods we had on the trip, but it was a mildly bizarre place. They brought out the head of the duck on a plate, and they boys enjoyed making it talk to us, because none of us wanted to suck out the brains, like you’re supposed to, apparently. My favorite part was fried duck fat, which they brought out with a little tray of large sugar crystals. You dipped the fat in the crystals and ate it while it was steaming hot, and it was so good. I think I ate half the plate, until I dropped a piece in my teacup and couldn’t get hold of a waitress for about ten minutes to get a new cup. That was a low point of the meal.
After lunch, we went to the Summer Palace. Built for one of the queens’ birthdays, it’s monstrous, and absolutely gorgeous. The painting and the architecture is just awesome, and it feels like it goes on for miles. The only bad part was that the air was so yucky from pollution that my pictures look like my camera had a filter over the lens. The air was BRIGHT YELLOW, which was really, really gross. We walked around the lake first, and through the walkways, looking at all the amazing painting on the buildings, and finally into the palace itself. We walked up and up and up, because the palace is built into a cliffside, so the back exit of each building was high than the front entrance. There was yet again what seemed like millions of steps, but the view of the lake, or what we could see of it through the haze, was really pretty. There were boats on the lake to ferry people across who didn’t feel like walking around, and it was just really pretty. We were able to walk most of the way up the cliff, all the way up to a circular temple where there was a huge statue that looked Hindi, where a lady was worshipping. It was really cool, to see that it’s still used as a temple in modern times.
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