Swat Beijing Summer 2009

June 2, 2009

June 2, 2009: Moving!!-Amanda

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — amorris1 @ 12:43 am

Scary head
The major event of today was switching hotels. We are no longer residing at Piao Home Sweet Home Inn, but rather are situated in a nicer place in the University district, which is a much more convenient location for several of our group members. Additionally, this hotel features many more amenities. Ex: a safe, a mini-fridge, a non-leaky fridge, AND multiple rolls of toilet paper per room. Wow. Bonanza. We are movin’ up in the world!

We then spent an embarrassingly long portion of the afternoon researching remote places in China to move to on Expedia. Apparently there is a Super 8 motel in Xinjiang that goes for $33/night with high speed internet access, a fitness center, AND easy access to the entertainment street in Urumuqi. Crazy. Then, on the way back from dinner (Korean food! mmmmm), we discovered a big-kid playground, and spent a good half hour bouncing around on the equipment.

Big kids

Unproductive days like this make me wonder why Freeman decided to fund us. It’s kind of a problem. Except not really, because I LOVE bibimbap.

(Was that a nonsequitur?)

xoxo, amanda ling

—-

Person of the day:

The artist formerly known as Estella

(Miyuki)

May 27, 2009

May 27, 2009: Interview with Anthropology Grad Student–Amanda

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — amorris1 @ 12:28 am

Today, Will and I had an interview with a grad student in anthropology at Peking University. Every time we go to Beida, we get lost on campus, despite all kinds of bilingual signage. It’s kind of a problem. Anyway, our interview-ee, Ma Yinqiu, was just really really cool! She was so Swattie, in a “save the world” kind of way. She’d done fieldwork on the impact of poor education on women and girls in the Yi people. Ethnicity/nationality play out in really interesting ways in China. Approximately 5% of the population is comprised of ethnic minorities, who are people of Asian descent/are from China, but are not Han Chinese (Han Chinese = what everybody thinks of as Chinese, the culture you studied in class); think people from inner Mongolia, Tibet, etc. Anyway, peoples who are officially recognized as ethnic minorities have some degree of political autonomy, but are seriously disadvantaged in other ways, such as their access to educational and economic opportunity. Maybe the best American analogy is to think of ethnic minorities as vaguely like Native Americans who live on reservations.

Anyway, Ma Yinqiu (the grad student) had lived with the Yi tribe in Sichuan province for 6 months. Drug usage is pretty common–she didn’t know the English word and we hadn’t heard of the Chinese word, but I think she was talking about heroin. As a result of people’s poverty/being unable to buy their own needles, the spread of HIV is pretty rampant. And because most women have never been exposed to the concepts of sexual health, safer sex, contraceptives, or STIs, HIV spreads to the female population from the male migrant worker population (there is really no work in the Yi’s traditional homeland, so a lot of men go the cities as migrant workers.) Anyway, she did a lot of sex ed/preventative education while she was there, and wrote her thesis documenting the problem/what she thought people could do about it.

For me, the most thought-provoking part of the interview was when I asked her if she considered herself an activist. She thought for a moment and said, “No, I don’t think so. It’s not really about me; I don’t want my name or my face out there. I just want to help these people and be an interpreter between them and the rest of China.” That is a really interesting way to think about activism. I’m going to have to think on this one.

Then she took us around the campus and she and Will and I bonded about our shared love for trashy American television. Apparently there are Beida students who are just as obsessed with Gossip Girl as I am. Who knew?
xoxo amanda ling

TV Show of the Day:
Prison Break
(Beloved by Beida students for being more realistic than Korean dramas. Hmmmmm.)

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