Trifter

The Mandarin Language.

Mandarin is one of most popular language in the world today.  A lot of people from different countries aims to learn how to speak mandarin. Big companies sends their prized employees to learn how to speak it.  Fresh graduates go to Beijing to study it.  I was one of them.  Before I went to Beijing, I already had a background with the language having studied in a chinese school during my elementary and secondary years.  Also having a chinese descent this seems to me a perfect excuse to ask my parents to finance my trip to Beijing with the purpose of learning more about my ancestry and the language itself.  That wasn’t my only reason, I wanted to experience living abroad away from my family, living on my own.

Beijing.

I arrived in Beijing at a cold windy afternoon.  It was after winter and there were remnants of snow around the streets .  It was quite a contrast to the hot sunny weather in the Philippines that I was used to. Beijing was quite a big city with a lot of infrastructures that are quite modern and newly built. When you go around the city , you can see that it is a mixture of the old historical ancient places and the new and about to be constructed buildings.  They were gearing up for the olympics around that time so there were a lot of construction.  The streets were quite busy with people riding the bicycles,  one of the major means of transportation.  There were a lot of buses and taxicabs. Private vehicles were not that prominent probably only a lucky few owns them.  I like walking in the streets , a lot of people were doing that and they seem to be in a hurry. I hear the voices of people speaking speaking different languages. I see Americans, Koreans, Japanese, Thailanders, Indonesians, British, and other nationalities speaking mandarin .  I am quite amazed with how fluent  they are with the language. 

Food.

There were people in the streets near my school selling sweet potato, fruits on a stick glazed with sugar and other chinese delicacies  .  One of those which I and my friends usually buy is what we call “fish cake”  .  We don’t know exactly what it is called but it is a bread shaped like a fish and you can choose the fillng whether it is chocolate, strawberry, milk, red bean, etc.  I also like dining out to eat hotpot, the bubbling soup , all sorts of sauces , the raw meat and veggies that you put inside the cauldron..yum!,   the steamed dumplings, ( the tomato and egg ones near my school is my favorite, another restaurant in qianmen that sells dumplings with soup inside is quite delicious) and ofcourse my favorite pecking duck.  You could find pecking duck anywhere and quite cheap at that.  If I miss american food , I could always go to mcdonald’s or kfc although it was quite expensive there.  The breaded pork with the lemon sauce in our cafeteria tastes great.  I also like the Muslim flatbread and the lamb kebabs.  They are budget friendly.

Sights to See.

There were a lot of spare afternoon that I would go with my friends to see the famous landmarks of Beijing.  The Great Wall of China in Mutianyu was a class sponsored trip .  The first time I went there it was snowy.  It was quite a sight to see.  The Summer Palace which used to house the emperors of old .  It was a magnificent place.  The pond at that time was frozen so we went down and walked on thin ice.  Such a chilling experience!  the marble boat and the Seventeen Arch Bridg topped with stone lions. The Forbidden City or the Imperial Palace, a place I only used to see in the movies.  All those beautiful parks filled with flowers, grandparents holding hands while walking and children playing was so heartwarming.

Writing this  brings back so many fond memories.  How I wish to go back there one day and spend my day riding the bus going around the city and reminiscing .