Third Class

One of our professors likes to describe Peking University as follows: the students are first class, the faculty is second class, and the administration is third class. Whether you agree with the proposition or not, the administration definitely let us down on Friday, when they re-instituted a canceled class ten minutes before it was scheduled to begin. So, as we were getting ready to leave for downtown Beijing to retrieve our passports from immigration lock-up (it takes a week to affix a sticker, apparently), we were diverted back to campus for three hours of criminal law. It's a good thing our electric bicycles were somewhat charged.

But it all worked out for the best. We bonded with our professor a bit, and learned that we may be visiting a Chinese jail next semester on a Friday field trip, as guests. We also ended up having lunch with some classmates at Kro's Nest after class, and it was nice to hang out with new friends, get to know them better, and eat some tasty pizza besides. But then it was down to central Beijing for some classic Chinese bureaucracy.

Surprisingly, though we waited for three hours when we dropped off our passports last week, there was no line this time, either on the pick-up side, or the drop-off side. It's the National Holiday in China next week, when the People's Liberation Army will march through Tian'an Men to celebrate the Communists' victory over the Nationalists and the foundation of the People's Republic of China, so I suppose it makes sense that the lines were nonexistent. In fact, we have a week of vacation starting today, so the city is emptying out, with Chinese and expats alike leaving town to see the Chinese interior. The attitude of the Chinese police, however, remains firmly ensconced, right down to when they pretended to not understand our questions, even though they could speak English just fine five minutes beforehand. Gotta love China.

In other news, we made a fascinating discovery this week in the form of TVUNetworks. Put simply, it's a way of watching broadcast TV from around the world. So as I'm writing this, I have a live feed of the Colbert Report playing on my laptop. They don't have a lot of channels, but just enough to make the world seem a little smaller. And they have Fox News, so we can get the O'Reilly Factor whenever it airs; thank to modern telecommunications, the "No Spin Zone" is available in China as it airs. The lack of spin is almost like the lack of spin you can get on government-sanctioned CCTV.

Today we're studying language and making travel plans for the week. It's a little difficult to get train tickets, since everyone's leaving town, so we might just stick to the bus system. Evidently we can get to Tianjin from the airport, so we might head East with some classmates on Tuesday. In the interim, we're going to explore Beijing, or at least the sites that haven't closed down for the week-long holiday.