China 3: Communication University of China

Then we arrived.

Main Building

Giant pretty clock in front of the Main Building

The Communication University of China (henceforth "CUC"). This is the place that I would be living for the next three weeks. It is huge. People who visit San Jose State think it is big and is easy to get lost in. CUC is like having four SJSUs crammed together. Walking at a brisk pace it took me twenty minutes to walk from the front gates to the back entrance. Not joking. And I walk quickly for my little, stubby legs. It looks like this...

Communication University of China

That is the largest size picture I could insert on the blog. Yeah. Big. If you download/enlarge it somehow, I can walk you through an average day. We always entered through the south gate and "lived" in the International Building, to the right of the basketball courts. Our class room was in the Lecture Building (48), where we stayed for three hours: One hour of Mandarin and two hours of class studies. After class we would head on over to Cafeteria No. 1 and have breakfast/lunch. Then we would stop by the Supermarket (to the left of the Primary school), pick up some water and ramen (tastes even better there), go back to our dorms, pack our bags for the day (water, TP, sunscreen, passport, money, etc.,), stop at Cafeteria No. 2 (to the left of the Sports Field) to pick up what we forgot at the first one, exited at the South gate, and walked about a block to the subway.

Now, the road in the middle of the school, walking North from the Sports Field, if you go to the right, at the very end, they have these little shops that sell street food and beer, almost 24 hours a day. We were there a lot. On Dingfuzhuang East Street, all that is there are vendors: food, noodles, clothes, nick-knacks, fruit and others. It's kind of like a flea market that is open for 20 hours a day.

The cafeterias are... something else. Different. Neither good nor bad. We were given a card with 700Y (Y=yuan for future reference) on it, and when you want food, you tap the card and point to the food you want (there was a language barrier and only one person in our group knew Mandarin). Towards the end of our trip we could actually order our own food, but for the first part, we would just point and hope we were understood.

We didn't wait in a line. It was more like people pushing their way to the front and the first one to tap their card, was the person who was going to be helped. Boy, was that confusing. I waited for ten minutes before someone who spoke enough English explained the game to me, which was very nice of them. They had nothing that you saw in Panda Express or Mr. Chou's, and half the time I had not idea what I was eating, but it was Delicious! Fresh noodles that were made right in front of you, freshly steamed pot stickers and pork buns, and the best pork, lamb, and chicken I've ever had.

The campus was amazing, the food was awesome, and the other students were very kind and welcoming.