Liang Shi's BlogPictures x Words x Life

China through new eyes

China, Travel

This summer, I had the privilege of going on an expedition to China with a group of students from UT Austin to experience foreign correspondence hands on. Led by Tracy Dahlby, the director of the Journalism Department at UT and the former Tokyo bureau chief for Newsweek and The Washington Post — among many other accomplishments I can’t even begin to list — it was definitely a life changing experience that opened my eyes far deeper into China than I ever cared to.

Every former trip I took to China consisted of only Shanghai and a few neighboring cities. These trips were all for leisure and family visits. I spent most of my days wandering the endless shopping venues and eateries of the giant metropolis. Very little beyond what I was going to fill my tummy with and where I was going to spend my RMB impacted my mind on a day-to-day basis.

Fast forward to January 2009. There was a mandatory one-hour-a-week prep class we all took prior to departing for the trip. It consisted of in-depth readings on both the old dynasties of China and the new, as well as keeping up with a colossal list of RSS feeds of both U.S. media reporting on China and their own native ones. The whole purpose was so when we went to report, we could relate the small slice of life stories with the larger picture taking place.

I won’t go into detail about all my findings, but you can find a collection of my stories here, and if you click around, you can peruse the extensive archive of grassroots reporting from the rest of our team too. It’s really quite astonishing to think back and remember all those hectic weeks scouring the streets of of Beijing, Xi’an and Shanghai for any type of lead that could turn into a potential story. And to sit back now and reread the work that transpired from what half the time was just plain old fun and the other half consisting of researching, interviewing, filming, photographing and writing our stories inside the nearest Starbucks with wifi for hours at a time, it’s certainly a memory I’ll be calling on for years and years.

This is part one of my China posts, where I will share a select collection of images through my journey. Please enjoy.

Part One: Beijing

A random and very well hidden gem of a theater we found one day while exploring the hutongs. This was the lounge area and to the right was a small theater comprised very simply of black walls, stage lights and bleachers to serve as seats.

One of our first group dinners together, we learned to make dumplings [jiao zi]. Check out this guy’s thumb nail…

The artwork at the entrance of the previous restaurant.

I wrote an article about this particular food stand and it was regrettable that I discovered them only days before I was to leave Beijing. They were the perfect breakfast/lunch spot as it was only a couple of blocks from our hotel (and on the way to Starbucks). Plus the co-owners (pictured above) had such interesting stories to share, particularly the young Chinese man. He’s actually aspiring to become a musician while working at the crepe joint to pay for his living. By night, he dedicates almost all of his time to working on his craft.

The Forbidden Palace.

And what’s Beijing without the Great Wall? It was truly amazing to gaze at this thing in person. Everyone looked like ants.

Even army members vacation.

And for the lazy ones, there was a toboggan lift to take you up and down the Great Wall. It was very much appreciated by us.

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 1:06 am and is filed under China, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.