Week in Review

Despite it being almost 9pm on a Sunday night and I haven't done a single bit of homework, I feel pretty good about myself right now. Why? Well, as most people know Beijing is full of beggars, many who are crippled and missing limbs. I've heard lots of bad stories about how they could have been intentionally crippled and forced to do this by certain underground organizations so I tend to have a policy of not giving them money. I usually say to others that I wouldn't give a beggar money but would give them food and that there have been times in the US when I've offered food to beggars and been refused. Today after eating dinner with my friend, we had a lot of leftovers and I contemplated just leaving it there and having them throw it out, but my friend suggested that I take it home and eat it for dinner tomorrow. I agreed and wrapped up the leftovers. On my way home I passed by a beggar and he motioned for me to give him the bag of leftovers. This made me realize the many times that I've wasted food at restaurants when I could have easily just packed it up and given it to someone who would really appreciate it. I just hope that I can remember this the next time I have leftovers.

Aside from this little incident, my weekend full of with meeting up with random but actually not that random people. For example, meeting a girl who is going to Harvard this coming fall because she is my uncle's friend's daughter's coworker's niece, having dinner/meeting some Yalies that are doing the Harvard in Beijing Program, bumping into other Yalies in/outside of clubs (ie. Propaganda) and more.

Though seeing all these people was great, I would say the highlight of my weekend was on a field trip I took with my classmates. We went to visit temples that were about an hour outside of Beijing, but to get to these temples we had to go up extremely narrow mountain roads. These were two way lanes that barely fit two cars and along the way down, a car accident had occurred so we were stuck in traffic. All the drivers who were stuck in traffic got out of their car and went to see what had happened. The truck involved in the car accident was leaking something but all the drivers decided that it would be an opportune time to smoke. Thankfully nothing happened but many of my classmates were worried. Soon the drivers decided that they didn't want to wait for the police to come so a bunch of them manually pushed the car aside so that there was room on the road for cars to pass. Once the car was moved to the side, all the smaller cars decided to swerve in front of us even though we were originally the closest vehicle to the scene of the accident (we were a big fat bus so we weren't as able to manuveur). The Chinese mentality of rushing and not waiting in line was strongly working against us. After 10 minutes of sitting there and having cars rush past us on both sides we decided we had to do something. So everyone got off the bus and worked to open up a pathway for the bus. Some physically blocked cars from passing and another group worked to push the car closer to the side. Though the trip was to visit temples, I think most people would say this ordeal was the most fun part. (But on a side note, when visiting temples in China, make sure to go visit the vegetarian restaurants there, they're really good at making vegetables taste like meat)

Here's some visual evidence of our good work:


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