Strange Things in Beijing

Beijing is a wild city with glittering, new structures stacked up against thousands of years of historic landmarks. All spectacular and deserve your attention, if you're able to escape the Chinese tourists taking photos of you.

Summer of 2010, I embarked on my study abroad experience with 11 other students to the massive country of China to only get a taste of the culture. The trip was short, a month long, but offered a way to become more comfortable with the culture shock by pairing us up with a local university student at BLCU. The girl I was paired with loved beer, food, and American house party scenes in movies. She was heartbroken to hear that I've never been to party that is anything remotely close to a Gossip Girl soirée.

While going out into the city with our group, something strange kept happening. Whenever our group posed for pictures for the school to use for print materials, other people would be taking pictures of us or use our group as the background of their photo. If we ever split up for a second, people would run up with their kids and stand next to us for photos, like if we were Disney characters.

I think this would be a good time to mention that our group was very mixed and a perfect representation of our university at home in Atlanta.

We were all given names when people ran up to us. Usher! Ms (Whitney) Houston! Matt Damon! Snoop, Snoop Dogg! Queen Latifah!

I was Hermione, due to my uncombed, red hair.

There was no time to correct them and even our guide said "It wouldn't make a difference. Just pretend you're Emma Watson."

The whole experience was wild, at home I would never run up to someone that remembered a celebrity. But it wasn't annoying or a bad experience. It was just eyeopening and heart warming how happy these people were to meet us, and little do they know we are just like them. If anything, it added to our exploration of Beijing and made us realize that people from other countries tour their own country, just like we would do at home. We were just an added bonus.