I really like this electronic motorbike, but we're not allowed to have them.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Back to campus after a good day's shopping.
EAP China! Robert Klein

This is the bridge with the haircuts (pictured) and Mahjong players.
EAP China! Robert Klein

I bought a battery-powered alarm clock here for 33 kuai. It did break after a week though. I got a decent Leisu digital watch nearby, though, for 35 kuai.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Inside JinWuXing.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Buying away. Bring a big group to bargain for things, including cell phones (which you want, believe me...and if you get a nicer one it and you have a GSM network at home like Cingular, you can probably use it at home.) Make sure they set up for phone for you at the shop, though. I bought a nokia that can interface w/ Outlook and most importantly, has a keypad that flips down to allow me to write Chinese characters, a feature I strongly recommend. For the phone, 100 yuan of slowly disbursed calling time, a Chinamobile simcard it all cost me 950 kuai (note, cheap less-featured phones can be bought without the sim card at guomei for 450 kuai. If you get a GSM phone, though, don't buy their China Unicom sim card, come here and buy a China Mobile (zhong guo yi dong) sim card. If you want CDMA (worse reception but free incoming calls), you'll need to get a China Unicom phone, probably at guomei.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Jinwuxing main entrance (2). By the way, the aforementioned telecom store is the one on the same side as the outside wall without an atrium.
EAP China! Robert Klein

This is Jinwuxing, which some rumor to be the biggest swap meet/public market in the world. It's amazing, and the telecom store inside is the best place to get IP cards or cell phones (bargain for the latter, they'll give u a good deal). All my telecom shopping is done here, but please don't pay the embarassingly huge amount I did for a pair of shoes here...they're worth about 5 bucks on average, price accordingly.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Typical Chinese big-box store ubiquitous in Beijing.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Under the opposite direction of traffic's overpass you can get a haircut. Also, the end of that fence is the entrance to the secret canal park that is the best way to bike north in the city or go for a run. Eventually, it makes a right to the olympic park. It's got pagodas and flowers and benches. Just put on deet first.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Beijing doesn't waste any space. If you walk down Xueyuannanlu it intersects one of the many quasi-freeways that crisscross Beijing, but instead of becoming a wasteland, the overpass becomes a source of shade for Mahjong games.
EAP China! Robert Klein

The shops outside campus. The blue store to the right sells cell phone recharge cards, the one to the left sells stationary (like the required character box paper), and the place with the Coke sign sells the ubiquitous cheap ice cream found everywhere in Beijing. You can get ethernet cable at either the blue store to the left or the adjacent place. Get a 7 "mi" (meter) cord, which costs a kuai (yuan) a meter.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Campus trees abound.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Lanhui from a distance. It's a pretty decent building, I think. Xiaoximer is to the right. It's not open 24 hours, though, so if you come back late you either need to hop the fence or go through Ximer or Nanmer.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Just around the corner from Lanhui. I think this is a beautiful oasis in the middle of Beijing.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Note the observatory in the second picture.
EAP China! Robert Klein

The big pink building across the street from campus is one of the fancy international student dorms. It's an awesome building from the outside, can't yet speak for the interior.
EAP China! Robert Klein

University of California is "California State University", in Chinese. Not sure how to differentiate it from CSU, if I needed to.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Allison, one of the few non-UC students on the trip (out of 99 there for the summer on EAP, 2 are from Wisconsin and 2 from Michigan). She's pretty cool, and from Michigan, for the record.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Our welcome feast in the international students building, at the vegatarian table. The food was all good, and also quite unspicy. I felt like a douche the whole time, because our table had a personal fuwuyuan attending to our every needs. I really wish he would've sat down. This was also my first introduction to the big Chinese bottles of Kekoukele, which fills the wine glasses.
EAP China! Robert Klein

The international student center is located on the eastern end of campus in a hotel/office building.
EAP China! Robert Klein

This is the main administration building, which like every other tall building on campus is extremely recently built. This is the nicest one, though.
EAP China! Robert Klein

No event is complete at Beishida without a nice red banner.
EAP China! Robert Klein

The main campus road by which we all get to class and any of the campus services.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Book fair on campus.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Lanhui has a resaurant on the first floor (pictured here) and a dining hall on the second, which takes both meal cards and cash. Get 2 red bean buns ("doushabao") to go ("da bao") to start your day out right.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Xueyuannanlu, the street that runs along the south side of campus. Quite pleasant and vaguely european.
EAP China! Robert Klein

The entrance to the cute local neighborhood next door with gates that seem like a quaint holdover from the 70's. Except they were put up in 2000.
EAP China! Robert Klein

The bulletin board. Great info, but don't trust their recommended places to by phones or the rates they quote.
EAP China! Robert Klein

For the summer, the Beijing study center and staff are located on the 7th floor of our building, extremely accessible always putting on a program or another.
EAP China! Robert Klein

The local neighborhood. I don't feel at all out of place here, but it does feel urban and Chinese (with prices to match). I think inner Haidian is one of the best neighborhoods to be in the city.
EAP China! Robert Klein

I really like this bench, I'm not sure why. There's lot of them throughout the city.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Taxicabs line up outside Xiaoximer to pick up customers, often foreigners or very well-dressed locals. In the late evening the line up along the street with the passenger side door open...many cabbies sleep here at night.
EAP China! Robert Klein

From the balcony (2).
EAP China! Robert Klein

On the balcony of Lanhui looking out into the neighborhood. Across the street is the ??????, the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Haidian is the Boston-on-steroids, from here all the way to Wudaokou it's one school after the other, and all the nation's best including Qinghua (the MIT of China) and Beida/PKU (its Harvard/Berkeley).
EAP China! Robert Klein

Looking the other way...
EAP China! Robert Klein

Outside our window you can see the 4-story Dining Hall across the way and the at Xiao Xi Mer.
EAP China! Robert Klein

My room is nice. The mess is mine, as always.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Linh Dao, of Berkeley, the only person to contact me about China before I went...and who's now my across the way neighbor and roomates with Mayme.
EAP China! Robert Klein

"You are at ease with me, says Yongfa safe."
EAP China! Robert Klein

The reception area at Lanhui. None of the fuwuyuan speak much English if any, but the process is pretty straightforward. Hand them the 450 dollars, sign whatever they put in front of you, get your key and your phone card (w/ RMB). You get really used to signing things that you don't understand here. Ideally, by the end of your studies, you can understand what you've studied.
EAP China! Robert Klein

The entrance to Lanhui Gongyu, the "cheap" foreign dorm (the Ivy league folks are on the other side of campus) where we'll all be staying for 7 weeks, and I'm planning to stay for the next 6 months.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Beijing cabs (with the exception of a few old red ones) are either red and gold or green and gold, and come in your choice of Chinese-made Volkswagen or Hyundai.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Chris Way's happiness in the taxi queue.
EAP China! Robert Klein

When I arrived at baggage claim I couldn't figure out where the big horde of people who were supposed to be waiting for us were and thought maybe they'd gone to bed. Then we cleared customs (which was a breeze, so don't let the hardcore Chinese legalize make you nervous) and then it all became clear. This group of people goes on and on, full of relatives and gypsy cab drivers.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Apparently, the city of Athens (which seems to be going for its Disney version's color scheme) is sponsoring the baggage carousel's at PEK.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Welcome to Beijing.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Finally, China! Finally, UC students who were on my flight from Japan! That's UCLA's Chris Way (from Sausalito who went to University High) who became my roomate because we arrived at the same time. To his right is UCLA's Maymie Chan who became my neighbor.
EAP China!-Robert Klein

The noodle bowl restaurant in the terminal, which was pretty good. I ran into three cadets from the Air Force Academy coming home from an internship in Japan and had a great talk about politics and American foreign policy. One of them also knew a guy on my high school paper, which we both thought was pretty funny given that we were in Japan.
SFO to Narita-Robert Klein

Backtracking to San Francisco for a second...that's a huge backpack packed to fit under the carry-on weight limit, which was never checked.
SFO to Narita-Robert Klein