Je T'aime

You know how in the U.S., we kind of have a love-hate relationship with France? I mean, there's that diet book about how French women are so thin. And Paris is like, the center of the fashion world for people who pay attention to that sort of thing. And everyone is all like "Ooo - Par-eee! How ro-MAN-tic!"

But on the other hand there's the whole French-people-are-snobs movement, and jokes about Freedom Fries and stuff like that.

Well, I've decided that South Korea is China's France.

Here, it's cool to be able to say a few choice phrases in Korean, especially "I love you". The most fashionable clothing and hair styles come not from Europe or the U.S. but from Korea. Hair styles like this one:

Hot.

Korean music is all the rage here too, and if you can sing any Korean songs at karaoke, you are cheered wildly as a superstar.

On the other hand, the Chinese are also mildly annoyed with the Koreans, their primary offense, as far as I can tell, being their off-the-charts coolness.

"They look down on us," is a common complaint. Koreans are widely accepted as being drama queens who love to be in the spotlight. To put it another way, Koreans are the punks who live down the street and ride a motorcycle all over town, while the Chinese are the dorky kids whose parents make them stay home and study all the time. On the one hand, the Chinese get the self-satisfaction of being teacher's pet, but they also secretly want to be noticed and liked by the cool kids.

On the hair front, at least, they get an E for Effort.

Afternoon Delight

At 11:30, something magical happens on campus.

Teachers and students alike emerge from their dark office caves, blinking in the sunlight. They clump together in predictable groups of threes and fours, chatting amiably, and slowly start to amble over to the dining hall.

Dining hall etiquette follows a strict routine as well. Someone is put in charge of staking out a table, and marking it with a strategically draped outer garment or water bottle. Someone else grabs a handful of chopsticks for the group, carefully counted out and inspected for cleanliness. And we all get aluminum trays adorned with a scoop of rice and a hasty glop of stir-fried vegetable. (Some favorites are eggplant, potato, lotus root, cauliflower, and spinach.)

After lunch, everyone goes back to the dorms to "rest". For me, this involves an immediate wardrobe change. Jeans come off, pajama pants come on. I bounce into bed and get all snuggled under the covers. I'll typically treat myself to an episode of a TV show of my choice (currently watching: Prison Break, season 2), followed by five to ten minutes of reading, and a nice leisurely nap. Ahhhh.

Like clockwork, I wake up naturally at 1:45 or so, newly energetic and ready to face the afternoon.

Only three more hours til dinner!

Life is good.

Spinning

The best thing about my new gym membership is that it includes unlimited spinning classes.

For the uninitiated, "spinning" is a type of exercise involving a stationary bike with one wheel. In China, it also involves a darkened room, a disco ball, a stroke-inducing strobe light, and a spandex-clad muscle man instructor who will occasionally whoop with excitement.

It's basically the closest I've gotten to a dance club in China.

One important advantage of spinning is that it is a full-body workout. Your legs are obviously doing the bulk of the work, but the instructor takes care not to neglect your arms by throwing in frequent pumping motions, in time to the music of course. As Greenday and Pink blast in the background, we vigorously punch the air, wave our arms above our heads, even pretend to be shielding our eyes from the sun as we scan the distant horizon.

With these features, it's no wonder the class is such a hit with the regulars. Despite being offered twice each evening, the spinning class is so popular that you have to get there at least 15 minutes ahead of time to stake your claim to a bike. The preferred method of doing this is to drape a sweaty towel over the handlebars.

Does anyone know if what I've just described bears any resemblance to spinning classes in the U.S.?

Not without a sense of humor

Last weekend, some friends and I decided to hike Mount Tai. I knew it would a fun trip when I checked my China guidebook and found this:

"Tai Shan is not just a mountain, it's a god."

Besides the apparent awe-inspiring nature of the mountain itself, and the rigorous climb to its peak, my trip to Mount Tai had the added advantage of being planned by a close friend with a unique sense of humor. One of the first decisions she made was to have us all meet at 8 am. It wasn't until we had bought train tickets and were seated on the 9:30 train to the town at the mountain's base that she announced that we would not begin climbing until 11 pm (so that we'd arrive at the top just in time for the famed sunrise), and that she had no activities planned for the day.

Funny, right?

We therefore spent the day wandering around the faceless town of Tai An, watching helplessly as our morning vigour turned into afternoon laziness and then got completely sapped away by the dusty roads and endless sidewalks of the downtown area.

After an exhausting two hours of nighttime karaoke, we finally started to make our way to the mountain. My friend chose to have us walk thirty minutes to the trail head instead of paying $1 per person for a cab. Our feeble protests were met with a cheery response about the importance of cardiovascular fitness.

At 11 pm on the dot, we finally began to drag ourselves up the mountain. I could sense the beautiful scenery on either side of the path, but the light of my flashlight only illuminated the hundreds of other people struggling up ahead of me.

Unlike American mountains, which tend to sport rugged dirt "trails", Chinese mountains are completely paved over and boast regulation-sized stairways.

If you'd like to recreate my "hiking" experience, all you have to do is hop on a stairmaster, turn off the lights, and set a timer for three hours. For an even more realistic experience, make sure that in the last hour you increase the incline to near vertical.

I reached the top at 2 am, and was promptly greeted enthusiastically by several entrepreneurs hoping to rent me a stylish "one size fits all" military coat designed to keep out the wind. Because I was exhausted and covered in sweat, and the temperature at the peak was quite literally freezing, I accepted. I quickly found that my coat had been playing an important role in Chinese history for quite some time. I liked imagining that the pungent odor it sported was that of its original wearer, perhaps a guard standing along the Great Wall. Taking care not to let it touch my face, I curled up against the icy stone wall of a conveniently located tunnel and slept.

Soon enough, it was time to head over to the "sunrise viewing area", along with a thousand other spectators who had magically appeared in the two hours I was asleep. To secure a good view, we got there early, and I found myself perched on top of a boulder with both the wind and the pressing crowd threatening to throw me off the mountain at any moment. (The Chinese aren't big on security railings.)

For about forty-five minutes, we stared at this:

Pretty, yes, but we were all cold. The universal annoyance with nature exhibited itself in the following exchange, shouted by anonymous spectators in the crowd:

"Hey, look! A bird!"
"Poor thing - the wind is too strong for it."
"Quick! Someone shoot it!"

Then, just when we were about to give up, this happened:

For the record, I attribute the sun's hasty appearance to the angrily shouted threat posed by the young man next to me:

"Hurry up, Sun, before I "sun" you!"

This followed by an over-the-shoulder remark from his friend:

"Nice. Subtle."

My sentiments exactly.