About this Blog
This blog is one of the requirements for Cal Poly Pomona's College of Environmental Design - 2011 China Summer Abroad Program. This annual summer program is in partnership with North China University of Technology (NCUT) in Beijing and was held this year from June 28 to August 1. The program is an intensive interdisciplinary studio of students of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning of both Cal Poly Pomona and NCUT.
By using photos and sketches as my visual communication media, accompanied with written components, this blog is meant to challenge my convention way of representation and recording. Rather than recreate the typical post card images that we always see about China (though sometimes it's unavoidable), each photograph shown here focuses on a detail that often missed by many visitors of China. This blog became my personal sojourn through the Chinese urban landscape.
Spice Me Up
Like any other country, the first hazing foreigners receive starts with the food. Located at a shopping center next to NCUT, the very first restaurant that my fellow grad students and I went to along with our newly acquired Chinese friends showed us what real spicy food taste like. Printed on their menus are these four different spicy levels: using one pepper as less spicy and four peppers as the spiciest. The middle picture shown on the right sums up what a 4 pepper-level food looks like. Literally half of the wok was filled with peppers. One thing for sure happened after the dinner, our sinuses cleared up and several of us had few trips to the toilet.
It didn't take that long for me to try out one of their bizarre street food. On my first night in China I ate couple scorpions at Wangfujing, one of the most vibrant shopping streets in Beijing. The scorpions were fried, of course, or else I wouldn't have done it.
The streets of Beijing and other urban cities all throughout the country provide the cheapest belly-filler food you can find. Most of these street side restaurants are specialized on one type of food - whether it's noodles, dumplings, skewers or something else. Of course, our Chinese friends made sure that we get to eat at several types of these restaurants. These restaurants might not have the decor and furnishing one would hope for, but there is something about sitting out there next to busy streets that made the whole experience a lot more enjoyable and homey than the restaurants at the mall. There is nothing more satisfying than having few beers and skewers with your friends at one of these street side restaurants - I suspect that locals feel the same way. But as more and more developments turn local streets into huge commercial areas these street side restaurants are now starting to dwindle.
OVERALL EXPERIENCE
Overall, my trip to China was one of the greatest ones. With a culture that is so complex, China’s urban landscape provides the most interesting stories that only Chinese can offer.
The city of Beijing is a mixture of everything China can offer: the overwhelming crowd; the air that some say it’s the summer gloom while others think it’s the pollution; the subways where passengers turn into sardines; the street carts where scorpions and other bugs are served; the street shopping where the skills of bargaining can either bring you new friends or create more enemies (with the store owners); the forbidden place that is not so forbidden; the bird’s nest where mythical Chinese dragons can lay their eggs; the giant cube that cannot make up its mind on what color to use; the enormous square in the center where a red canvass (with prints of 4 little yellow stars and one big yellow star) is waving continuously; and the wall that looks like the spine of a dragon on a hazy day.
South of Beijing, with its many gardens, Suzhou is where serenity hides: its canals make the city the Venice of the East; and traffic is almost nonexistence. Shanghai, on the other hand, is a play of western and eastern architecture styles. Their buildings are seemingly non-stop reaching for heaven and the long corridor of Nanjing Road provides a good pedestrian shopping experience. Additionally, Xi’an’s Terracotta Soldiers Museum was impressive and the hike to Mount Hua Shan was an experience of a lifetime in which the saying “the journey is more important than the destination” is manifested.
After five weeks in China, I firmly believe that the Great Wall is not the greatest thing the country has, but its their culture.
For more information on Cal Poly Pomona's China Summer Abroad Program visit http://www.calpolypomonachina.blogspot.com/
It didn't take that long for me to try out one of their bizarre street food. On my first night in China I ate couple scorpions at Wangfujing, one of the most vibrant shopping streets in Beijing. The scorpions were fried, of course, or else I wouldn't have done it. 
The streets of Beijing and other urban cities all throughout the country provide the cheapest belly-filler food you can find. Most of these street side restaurants are specialized on one type of food - whether it's noodles, dumplings, skewers or something else. Of course, our Chinese friends made sure that we get to eat at several types of these restaurants. These restaurants might not have the decor and furnishing one would hope for, but there is something about sitting out there next to busy streets that made the whole experience a lot more enjoyable and homey than the restaurants at the mall. There is nothing more satisfying than having few beers and skewers with your friends at one of these street side restaurants - I suspect that locals feel the same way. But as more and more developments turn local streets into huge commercial areas these street side restaurants are now starting to dwindle.