Happy 60th UIBE!!
So the Beijing Center is really only a few classrooms, some dorms, and a library. It’s a small program located at its host school, the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE, or duiwai jingmao daxue, or 外经贸大学). For prospective students who think the Beijing Center is it’s own entity (like I did), it really isn’t. Anyway, this past week UIBE celebrated its 60th anniversary. This meant that they had news coverage, foreign guests, local celebrities, speeches, and then some speeches, and then some dancing, and then a few more speeches. You can see some pictures at CNTV. Personally, I liked whole production, but many of my Chinese friends were actually pretty critical about how boring the content of the ceremonies was. One student seemed pretty embarrassed that UIBE brought professors from schools as far away as the University of Maryland just so they could hear very clichéd and condensed words of praise about UIBE. I don’t know, I thought it was cool.
The capstone of this celebration was the deliciously over-the-top window lighting display at the girls’ dorm building. (Pictures available at Baidu Baike) The building in that picture is a beast. It’s the sole dorm building for all the girls at UIBE, a university of about 11,000+ students, most of which are girls. That means that the girls dorm houses about 7,000 people at five to a room. And there’s no air conditioning and all the bathrooms are public. When I look out from my comfortable two-person dorm with a TV/AC/fridge/private bathroom, I can’t help but feel a little spoiled.
On another note, this week is China’s National Day holiday, meaning I have a week to do whatever I want, however I want to do it. I had originally planned to go Tokyo, but I guess I wasn’t the only one, as the ticket price quickly grew to be staggeringly expensive. So now I’m just gonna hang out around the city and find fun things to do. If you read my last post, you now that my Chinese class is very efficient at kicking my butt, so free time to just do fun stuff is hard to find. That changes this week. So far I’ve visited the crazy-crowded Tiananmen, the lesser known but still famous and crowded Qianmen, Houhai, Gulou, Solana, and Beihai. But what I’m most looking forward to is my attempt to relive the experiences of ancient China’s past scholars and artists. I’ve bought a whole bunch of painting supplies and rice paper, and in the next few days I’m gonna hitch a bus way out of the city to some ancient, forgotten temple and sit and paint the day away. Of course I’m no expert at Chinese brush painting, but still, it’s gonna be awesome.
If you want to read more about UIBE, check out Wikipedia, or if you feel like learning Chinese, Baidu Baike (‘Baidu-pedia’: Chinese Wikipedia) is even better.