(Last summary post, I promise!)
Interestingly, some of the trends I've noticed with my personal thoughts and development all have to do with questions of identity, which I suppose makes sense since identity is all about the junction between an individual and his/her environment, so when you change the latter you're bound to discover something about the former. I'll close off this blog with a discussion of these discoveries:
Being Chinese-American in China:
It sounds corny and obvious, but you don't really understand how American you are until you get transplanted in a foreign country. You would think this wouldn't be as much of an issue for Chinese-Americans because they already have an element of Chineseness in their upbringing that would make it easier for them to culturally assimilate, but if anything I think it makes it worse because the disparity between how Chinese you thought you were and how Chinese you actually are even greater. At one point it really hit me for the first time how much of a confusion people like me are - in America I'm not really American because I look like a Chinese and in many ways think/act like a Chinese , but in China I'm not really Chinese either because I was born and raised in America, so I've already been removed from my mother culture by simple process of osmosis and upbringing. In other words, if war ever breaks out between China and America I'm screwed. I always used to think this mixture of culture was simply a part of identity - something that makes me who I am, but now I'm starting to realize that the mixture also leaves me straddled between two vastly different societies of which neither I'm entirely part of. That sounds really depressing, but I think that this kind of reconsideration of something I've been conscious of my whole life has been immensely valuable. I've solidified the conviction that I'm more American than Chinese, and for some reason more happy to accept that about myself than before.
Being an English Major in a Chinese Language Program:
This sort of connects to being Chinese-American in China since the language barrier thing makes for a lot of interesting changes in perspective, especially about the nature of language itself. It seems a bit odd for someone interested in the English language to devote an entire summer to a foreign language, but in fact it has done leaps and bounds for my understanding and appreciation of English. I may have forgotten how to say some things after nine weeks of language pledging (which is going to be a problem when I get back to school), but in return I've learned how much of a role language plays in how we structure our thoughts, interpret texts and conversations, explain concepts and evoke meaning, etc. etc. One of the biggest reasons I want to be an English major is to hone my abilities to express myself and think about things at a deeper level through an analytical and creative lens. By taking away the basic crutch of the language itself, I'm forced to see how I can better accomplish those things and to better understand what language can do as a communication mechanism. I'm probably not doing a great job with the expression thing right now since it's a bizarre hour of the night, but I hope to encourage more unusual majors to engage in Chinese language study in the future since it changes how you think at a fundamental level that can only strengthen your approach to other modes of thought.
Being a Daughter in a Stage of Maturity:
Again, this sort of connects to being Chinese-American in China since I had a pervasive sense of becoming closer to my parents despite physically moving across the globe. In general, the length of time and vastness of distance spent from home made me truly realize for the first time how much I have come to appreciate and understand my parents. It was hard for a day to go by without doing or seeing something that I'd want to share with them, whether it was something that reminded me of them, something just plain interesting, something that showed how much progress I'm making study-wise (which is still their dominant concern), or something that reflects how much better I now understand their native culture, etc. Again, this is massively corny and personal, but I found that I missed my parents more than I thought and more than I ever had before -- partially because I was returning to whence they came and partially because I'm at that stage in life where I'm breaking away from them in an attempt to start shaping my own life, which is also the stage where you start realizing how human and yet how important your parents are. Mix in the time I spent with relatives from both sides and it's easy to see why much of this summer was about seeking out the roots while I forge ahead and letting those roots guide the process.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Retrospective Overview of Beijing (aka. The Real Social Study Project 社会调查)
Things I won't miss (recapped and expanded):
- Selfishness. This is at the top of my list because although I met many selfless, good-hearted people in Beijing, I also had a pervasive sense of selfishness that inadvertently contributes to almost everything else that I'll be listing here. It might be part of the developing country thing or it might be a weird cultural backlash to centuries of ethical turmoil, but regardless it's been quite disappointing for me to discover just how true people's negative impressions of modern Chinese society can be. If someone has a seizure or gets hit by a car, anyone's gut instinct would be to show some care and help that person, but in China you shouldn't because you don't know if it was staged or if the situation could be turned against you (pickpocketing, becoming the scapegoat for the accident, etc.) You can follow the rules or do the right thing, but no one else will so you'll only get screwed over unless you follow everyone else down the path of self-preservation. For example, my very first encounter in China was dragging my suitcases to the bus from the airport and before I have time to think, an old lady grabs my suitcases as I approach to put them in the storage compartment and then comes back to ask for tip money. I didn't even want her to do that for me, I have no clue who she is, and I certainly don't want to pay her, but in the end I just produce the 10 kuai she wants and consider it a lesson. Little things like waiting in line, bumping into other people and saying sorry, not smoking in public, not littering, not blocking other people's way, and other common acts of courtesy are simply not part of the culture here, which I found highly ironic given how much Confucianism and Ah-Q mentality stress duty and humility. Chinese people are extremely selfless and polite in private and with people they know, but can be the complete opposite in public with the rest of the world since their sense of public responsibility and courtesy is still maturing. Over the course of my time in Beijing one thing I learned that I didn't expect was how to be rude, selfish, and to lie. It's not something to be proud of, but it's almost like surviving in China has made my skin thicker and more ready for "the real world" where you have to fend for yourself because no one else is going to do it for you. I don't want to give the impression that cultural immersion equates to moral deterioration and jadedness, but rather that it opens your eyes up to a lot of things about humanity and things that you might have taken for granted before.
- Economic disparity. Again, this is part of the backlash of capitalization in developing countries, so as much as I support the decline of communism in China, it's of course also painful to deal with the imperfections of other systems that may take its place. Take the lady I mentioned above. Another reason I voluntarily forked over the money is because to me 10 kuai means next to nothing whereas to her this is how she struggles to get by. And no matter how frustrated or angry you get about being ripped off, how annoying poor people haggling you for money can get, how greedy salespeople can seem when they haggle for every little cent, part of you also can't help but feel sorry for them too. History has not been kind to the Chinese masses, and there are so many people in China that competition is so much worse and inevitable than we can ever conceive of in America. Not only is China swarming with people, China is swarming with poor people. The standard of living is visibly on the rise, but everyone agrees it's going to take a very long time for so many people to attain a normal standard of living.
- Chronic traffic congestion and crazy inefficient transportation. Again, I can drag this back to the selfishness thing because it goes along with the following social rules thing - if no one else is going to go by the rules to make life easier for everyone else, you can't either or else you'll be stuck forever. We had some first hand experience of this with the boats in Hou Hai, but in general you can see it in how cars/bicycles/buses/people just swarm all over the road without any regard for safety or the rules of the road. People push and shove their way into buses/subways without regard for the already sardine-like situation inside or run across streets randomly without regard for cars coming right at them (even though pedestrians are supposed to yield to vehicles in China). It's a bizarre spectacle in a way, and miraculously I haven't seen anyone die yet, but it's a scary/frustrating thing to navigate if you're new to China.
- Pollution. I mentioned this on the first day because it is seriously a problem, even more so than I thought despite everyone warning me about it. It is hard to see the sun or a blue sky because of all the haze (except right after its rains) and if I spend too much time outside my breathing starts to hurt (which is a really bad deal for next year's Olympians...). Even the streets are polluted with litter and the general funk of China. Again I extrapolate this problem backwards to the original problems of Chinese people having not yet matured a sense of how to deal with their rapid-paced economic/technological development and the population problem, both of which I don't see fixing itself in a year or anytime in the near future, so good luck to the success of Olympics 2008.
- Inefficiency, bureaucracy, and things closing early. I'm going to mostly blame this on communism. The transition to an efficient, clean, and orderly system structured by capitalism is slow, so in the meantime everything - from transportation to government - is replete with annoying glitches and inconveniences and bizarre problems. This is really vague, but it's a sense I have of things that contributes heavily to the identity-crisis of sorts that Beijing seems to be going through.
- Identity crisis. On that last note, it's worth talking about how bizarre Beijing is as it's own bullet. Beijing's population includes a really sizable number of people not originally from Beijing, which is understandable as the country's capital. Beijing is also undergoing a lot of economic, social, political, and cultural change as it hurtles towards the Olympics and rides on the general wave of change that's sweeping China. As a result, my impression of Beijing can be repeatedly summarized by "bizarre". For example, Beijing is often known as an experiment ground for architects who don't have enough money to try their ideas elsewhere, so Beijing is a mishmash of crazy different styles - old and new - that don't have an congruence or continuity or sense of purpose. A lot of what I've been describing all along and above - all those "Oh China" moments - all inadvertently reflect the struggle to reconcile the old with the new, and in the meantime make for a bizarre landscape of people, places, and things coming and going as the country struggles to get a solid foothold on everything. It's almost as if China is a teenager trying to establish its own identity but plagued by the influence of its past and of others, America is a middle-aged dude going through a mid-life crisis, and Europe is the Old Man of the West who's just looking at everyone douching around and shaking it's head while it enjoys a martini.
- Staring. This is starting to become a stretch from the original theme of selfishness and identity crises, but it's annoying enough to mention... the lack of common courtesy thing I mentioned above extends to staring, and it's never in a flattering way either but just a bland kind of "you're speaking English I'm going to watch you really closely now and assume you don't feel uncomfortable" kind of way. When I think of a better adjective I'll come back to this one. Anyway, I lost my patience once and barked at these two guys at McDonalds in Mongolia... aiya I'm turning rude =(
- Chinese food. I actually really like Chinese food and always have (it's kind of hard not to when that's the staple of your mother's cooking), but the diet here was definitely too heavy on oil and starch for my comfort, especially cheap student food. I didn't trust anything raw or unpackaged, so it was also hard to include fresh fruits and vegetables of any kind in my diet. And as much as I like Chinese food I couldn't help craving a normal American steak or apple pie every once in a while. The only American food I could get my hands on were overpriced Chinese versions of McDonalds and KFC, which in some ways were even tastier than their American originators but just not the same. This situation improved immensely second semester when we discovered Lush and ventured out to eat more other cuisines (Japanese, Korean, Thai, etc.), but I'm still determined to minimize my Chinese food intake for a while until the cravings start coming back.
- Chinese fashion. It's understandable that Asians have their own fashion sense that's hard for foreigners to understand (i.e. Japanese harajuku girls), but I've seen far too many What Not to Wear candidates in China to trust their understanding of clothes. Some combos just don't work, no matter how trendy it may seem. Also, Chinese women are ridiculously skinny and pale (they carry around umbrellas when it's too sunny out -- white skin is as popular in China as tan skin is in the West), so some things look even worse on average than they probably would on other people. Or sometimes the clothes are reasonable but the choice of shoes is atrocious or the color coordination is flat out impossible to consider aesthetically appealing in any way. I suppose the individualistic upgrade from blue and gray Mao jackets takes time. Towards the end of the nine weeks though, I could sense that our fashion sense was slowly fob-ifying as well and things that we wouldn't have looked twice at before in a Pifa Shichang became candidates for consideration... partially because it's amusing looking at all the goofy English that's printed on shirts, but yea it's time to get away from that -_-
- Chinese people. There are so many of them, end of story. Please see previous post about our trip to Gu Gong and how 中国人山人海 (mountains and seas of Chinese people) can drive one crazy after awhile.
- Squat toilets. Yea I know this is petty and I'm a spoiled American brat with my fancy Western conditions, but it really is quite gross and unsanitary and stinks up the hallway outside our classrooms, so I think it warrants a little moment for complaint xP
- HBA. HBA is grueling, there's no other way to put it. Sure we found ways to enjoy ourselves plenty while here and take it easy (especially the Yale kids), but there is no way around the fact that we were all sorely sleep-deprived, sick of Chinese, sick of classes, and sick of homework by the time we were done. Yale is going to feel like a relief after this summer, which is not something I ever thought was possible.
Things I will miss:
- Oh China moments. Everything that I said above I won't miss because they are things I had a problem with, but in a way I'll miss them anyway because in a way it's the bizarreness that gave my China experience character. The entire trip was like an adventure of sorts because you weren't sure what craziness you would encounter, and getting used to the whole system leaves you with a sense of accomplishment and a deeper understanding of why different societies operate the way they do. Without that, China wouldn't be half as fun, this summer wouldn't have been half as enriching, and I wouldn't be half as appreciative of home 0=)
- Exchange rate. This is rapidly disappearing as the 8RMB:1USD rate sinks daily (it was 7.6 by the time I left), but it definitely converted us from poor college students 贫困学生 to wealthy American brats 大款 for a summer. I spent a lot of money this summer on a lot of things... and although it felt funny (and still leaves a twinge of guilt in my parent-dependent heart), I also realize that combined with the Light Fellowship, the amount I got out of this summer (spiritual and material) far far far exceeds the amount of money I spent out of my own pocket, no matter how you look at it. China is the last place to be frugal (or at least that was the case this summer with the exchange rate still in our favor), be wise about it and enjoy!
- Being in the motherland. For every ten moments of feeling like an outsider or identifying myself as an American or feeling grateful that I'm not a native Chinese, there was a corresponding moment where I remembered that I'm still ethnically and in many subtle ways culturally Chinese as well, and I'm filled with a sense o connection with my roots. I'll talk more about this in another post, but one of the most fulfilling parts of this trip was this heritage connection that I enjoyed as a Chinese American studying in China. It came with a lot of pros and cons, but overall it grounded me a lot and I finally know what it's like to walk around comfortable in the fact that your physical appearance resembles the majority rather than a minority.
- Freedom. Being on the opposite side of the world from everything you're familiar with is daunting, especially as students. For me, this was my first time traveling so far by myself for such a long time. Not only has college started to instill a sense of this need to carve out my own path in world, studying abroad while at college makes this sense even deeper because you are struggling to find yourself in a completely different environment on the macro as well as the micro level. In a way it's exhausting because this is the kind of process that forces you to grow up and take the world by force, but simultaneously liberating.
- HBA. Everyone has much to complain about HBA, but I'm also sure that everyone has many times more things to praise about their HBA experience. I've already described this one in detail so I won't keep beating the subject over the head, but I think it's worth mentioning that the friends I made at the HBA are by far the biggest asset to helping me get through the program with a ton of support and enjoyment, as well as giving me a network of people to continue hanging out with back at Yale and during the Harvard-Yale Game. The small community with a shared purpose is prime breeding ground for strong friendships -- in a way I cherish the friends that I spent every moment with even more than the moments themselves.
- Selfishness. This is at the top of my list because although I met many selfless, good-hearted people in Beijing, I also had a pervasive sense of selfishness that inadvertently contributes to almost everything else that I'll be listing here. It might be part of the developing country thing or it might be a weird cultural backlash to centuries of ethical turmoil, but regardless it's been quite disappointing for me to discover just how true people's negative impressions of modern Chinese society can be. If someone has a seizure or gets hit by a car, anyone's gut instinct would be to show some care and help that person, but in China you shouldn't because you don't know if it was staged or if the situation could be turned against you (pickpocketing, becoming the scapegoat for the accident, etc.) You can follow the rules or do the right thing, but no one else will so you'll only get screwed over unless you follow everyone else down the path of self-preservation. For example, my very first encounter in China was dragging my suitcases to the bus from the airport and before I have time to think, an old lady grabs my suitcases as I approach to put them in the storage compartment and then comes back to ask for tip money. I didn't even want her to do that for me, I have no clue who she is, and I certainly don't want to pay her, but in the end I just produce the 10 kuai she wants and consider it a lesson. Little things like waiting in line, bumping into other people and saying sorry, not smoking in public, not littering, not blocking other people's way, and other common acts of courtesy are simply not part of the culture here, which I found highly ironic given how much Confucianism and Ah-Q mentality stress duty and humility. Chinese people are extremely selfless and polite in private and with people they know, but can be the complete opposite in public with the rest of the world since their sense of public responsibility and courtesy is still maturing. Over the course of my time in Beijing one thing I learned that I didn't expect was how to be rude, selfish, and to lie. It's not something to be proud of, but it's almost like surviving in China has made my skin thicker and more ready for "the real world" where you have to fend for yourself because no one else is going to do it for you. I don't want to give the impression that cultural immersion equates to moral deterioration and jadedness, but rather that it opens your eyes up to a lot of things about humanity and things that you might have taken for granted before.
- Economic disparity. Again, this is part of the backlash of capitalization in developing countries, so as much as I support the decline of communism in China, it's of course also painful to deal with the imperfections of other systems that may take its place. Take the lady I mentioned above. Another reason I voluntarily forked over the money is because to me 10 kuai means next to nothing whereas to her this is how she struggles to get by. And no matter how frustrated or angry you get about being ripped off, how annoying poor people haggling you for money can get, how greedy salespeople can seem when they haggle for every little cent, part of you also can't help but feel sorry for them too. History has not been kind to the Chinese masses, and there are so many people in China that competition is so much worse and inevitable than we can ever conceive of in America. Not only is China swarming with people, China is swarming with poor people. The standard of living is visibly on the rise, but everyone agrees it's going to take a very long time for so many people to attain a normal standard of living.
- Chronic traffic congestion and crazy inefficient transportation. Again, I can drag this back to the selfishness thing because it goes along with the following social rules thing - if no one else is going to go by the rules to make life easier for everyone else, you can't either or else you'll be stuck forever. We had some first hand experience of this with the boats in Hou Hai, but in general you can see it in how cars/bicycles/buses/people just swarm all over the road without any regard for safety or the rules of the road. People push and shove their way into buses/subways without regard for the already sardine-like situation inside or run across streets randomly without regard for cars coming right at them (even though pedestrians are supposed to yield to vehicles in China). It's a bizarre spectacle in a way, and miraculously I haven't seen anyone die yet, but it's a scary/frustrating thing to navigate if you're new to China.
- Pollution. I mentioned this on the first day because it is seriously a problem, even more so than I thought despite everyone warning me about it. It is hard to see the sun or a blue sky because of all the haze (except right after its rains) and if I spend too much time outside my breathing starts to hurt (which is a really bad deal for next year's Olympians...). Even the streets are polluted with litter and the general funk of China. Again I extrapolate this problem backwards to the original problems of Chinese people having not yet matured a sense of how to deal with their rapid-paced economic/technological development and the population problem, both of which I don't see fixing itself in a year or anytime in the near future, so good luck to the success of Olympics 2008.
- Inefficiency, bureaucracy, and things closing early. I'm going to mostly blame this on communism. The transition to an efficient, clean, and orderly system structured by capitalism is slow, so in the meantime everything - from transportation to government - is replete with annoying glitches and inconveniences and bizarre problems. This is really vague, but it's a sense I have of things that contributes heavily to the identity-crisis of sorts that Beijing seems to be going through.
- Identity crisis. On that last note, it's worth talking about how bizarre Beijing is as it's own bullet. Beijing's population includes a really sizable number of people not originally from Beijing, which is understandable as the country's capital. Beijing is also undergoing a lot of economic, social, political, and cultural change as it hurtles towards the Olympics and rides on the general wave of change that's sweeping China. As a result, my impression of Beijing can be repeatedly summarized by "bizarre". For example, Beijing is often known as an experiment ground for architects who don't have enough money to try their ideas elsewhere, so Beijing is a mishmash of crazy different styles - old and new - that don't have an congruence or continuity or sense of purpose. A lot of what I've been describing all along and above - all those "Oh China" moments - all inadvertently reflect the struggle to reconcile the old with the new, and in the meantime make for a bizarre landscape of people, places, and things coming and going as the country struggles to get a solid foothold on everything. It's almost as if China is a teenager trying to establish its own identity but plagued by the influence of its past and of others, America is a middle-aged dude going through a mid-life crisis, and Europe is the Old Man of the West who's just looking at everyone douching around and shaking it's head while it enjoys a martini.
- Staring. This is starting to become a stretch from the original theme of selfishness and identity crises, but it's annoying enough to mention... the lack of common courtesy thing I mentioned above extends to staring, and it's never in a flattering way either but just a bland kind of "you're speaking English I'm going to watch you really closely now and assume you don't feel uncomfortable" kind of way. When I think of a better adjective I'll come back to this one. Anyway, I lost my patience once and barked at these two guys at McDonalds in Mongolia... aiya I'm turning rude =(
- Chinese food. I actually really like Chinese food and always have (it's kind of hard not to when that's the staple of your mother's cooking), but the diet here was definitely too heavy on oil and starch for my comfort, especially cheap student food. I didn't trust anything raw or unpackaged, so it was also hard to include fresh fruits and vegetables of any kind in my diet. And as much as I like Chinese food I couldn't help craving a normal American steak or apple pie every once in a while. The only American food I could get my hands on were overpriced Chinese versions of McDonalds and KFC, which in some ways were even tastier than their American originators but just not the same. This situation improved immensely second semester when we discovered Lush and ventured out to eat more other cuisines (Japanese, Korean, Thai, etc.), but I'm still determined to minimize my Chinese food intake for a while until the cravings start coming back.
- Chinese fashion. It's understandable that Asians have their own fashion sense that's hard for foreigners to understand (i.e. Japanese harajuku girls), but I've seen far too many What Not to Wear candidates in China to trust their understanding of clothes. Some combos just don't work, no matter how trendy it may seem. Also, Chinese women are ridiculously skinny and pale (they carry around umbrellas when it's too sunny out -- white skin is as popular in China as tan skin is in the West), so some things look even worse on average than they probably would on other people. Or sometimes the clothes are reasonable but the choice of shoes is atrocious or the color coordination is flat out impossible to consider aesthetically appealing in any way. I suppose the individualistic upgrade from blue and gray Mao jackets takes time. Towards the end of the nine weeks though, I could sense that our fashion sense was slowly fob-ifying as well and things that we wouldn't have looked twice at before in a Pifa Shichang became candidates for consideration... partially because it's amusing looking at all the goofy English that's printed on shirts, but yea it's time to get away from that -_-
- Chinese people. There are so many of them, end of story. Please see previous post about our trip to Gu Gong and how 中国人山人海 (mountains and seas of Chinese people) can drive one crazy after awhile.
- Squat toilets. Yea I know this is petty and I'm a spoiled American brat with my fancy Western conditions, but it really is quite gross and unsanitary and stinks up the hallway outside our classrooms, so I think it warrants a little moment for complaint xP
- HBA. HBA is grueling, there's no other way to put it. Sure we found ways to enjoy ourselves plenty while here and take it easy (especially the Yale kids), but there is no way around the fact that we were all sorely sleep-deprived, sick of Chinese, sick of classes, and sick of homework by the time we were done. Yale is going to feel like a relief after this summer, which is not something I ever thought was possible.
Things I will miss:
- Oh China moments. Everything that I said above I won't miss because they are things I had a problem with, but in a way I'll miss them anyway because in a way it's the bizarreness that gave my China experience character. The entire trip was like an adventure of sorts because you weren't sure what craziness you would encounter, and getting used to the whole system leaves you with a sense of accomplishment and a deeper understanding of why different societies operate the way they do. Without that, China wouldn't be half as fun, this summer wouldn't have been half as enriching, and I wouldn't be half as appreciative of home 0=)
- Exchange rate. This is rapidly disappearing as the 8RMB:1USD rate sinks daily (it was 7.6 by the time I left), but it definitely converted us from poor college students 贫困学生 to wealthy American brats 大款 for a summer. I spent a lot of money this summer on a lot of things... and although it felt funny (and still leaves a twinge of guilt in my parent-dependent heart), I also realize that combined with the Light Fellowship, the amount I got out of this summer (spiritual and material) far far far exceeds the amount of money I spent out of my own pocket, no matter how you look at it. China is the last place to be frugal (or at least that was the case this summer with the exchange rate still in our favor), be wise about it and enjoy!
- Being in the motherland. For every ten moments of feeling like an outsider or identifying myself as an American or feeling grateful that I'm not a native Chinese, there was a corresponding moment where I remembered that I'm still ethnically and in many subtle ways culturally Chinese as well, and I'm filled with a sense o connection with my roots. I'll talk more about this in another post, but one of the most fulfilling parts of this trip was this heritage connection that I enjoyed as a Chinese American studying in China. It came with a lot of pros and cons, but overall it grounded me a lot and I finally know what it's like to walk around comfortable in the fact that your physical appearance resembles the majority rather than a minority.
- Freedom. Being on the opposite side of the world from everything you're familiar with is daunting, especially as students. For me, this was my first time traveling so far by myself for such a long time. Not only has college started to instill a sense of this need to carve out my own path in world, studying abroad while at college makes this sense even deeper because you are struggling to find yourself in a completely different environment on the macro as well as the micro level. In a way it's exhausting because this is the kind of process that forces you to grow up and take the world by force, but simultaneously liberating.
- HBA. Everyone has much to complain about HBA, but I'm also sure that everyone has many times more things to praise about their HBA experience. I've already described this one in detail so I won't keep beating the subject over the head, but I think it's worth mentioning that the friends I made at the HBA are by far the biggest asset to helping me get through the program with a ton of support and enjoyment, as well as giving me a network of people to continue hanging out with back at Yale and during the Harvard-Yale Game. The small community with a shared purpose is prime breeding ground for strong friendships -- in a way I cherish the friends that I spent every moment with even more than the moments themselves.
Retrospective Overview of HBA (aka. The Reference Guide for Future Light Fellows)
Teachers:
The purpose of HBA is first and foremost to teach Chinese. As a result, classes will dominate a larger portion of your life than you might like and teachers become really big parts of your summer life. Lucky for us the HBA teachers are really dedicated and fun. They were a combination of Harvard/Yale lecturers and graduate students at Bei Yu -- the former would teach lecture classes and the latter would run just about everything else. The student-teacher ratio is something ridiculous like 1:1.5, so you get to know all your teachers on a personal level and feel really comfortable asking them anything or joking around with them. The students are all pretty much sure that our teachers work harder than us, and we appreciate them a lot for that. Our lecture teachers, Feng Laoshi and Li Laoshi, both commanded a lot of respect as well, although the former was also field director the second semester so we didn't have him as a lecturer anymore - a pity since he's the 140 teacher at Harvard and helped compile our textbook, so he has a huge amount of insight into the texts (plus he looked like a panda!). I think he plans on taking a break from HBA next year though, which is even more of a pity =*(
Host Families and Language Partners:
I've been talking about these as I went along, but in summary I found that both were both somewhat time consuming since all you do is talk to them and most of the time you'd rather spend that time catching up on sleep, but both were also really good ways to boost conversational abilities that you might not get elsewhere (including the classroom). Some other Chinese American students opted out of the Host Family since they have family in China already, and truth be told I sometimes wished I had joined them since it only felt like an extra obligation to add to an already packed schedule. But on the flip side I learned a lot from getting to spend time with a Chinese family that isn't actually related to me, my speaking skills improved a lot, and there were plenty of perks like free meals/gifts :D In short, both of these can create some unnecessary awkwardness and stress in your life, but in moderation both are also really valuable additions to your Chinese education, which should be the priority of the summer (besides having fun).
Extracurriculars:
In addition to all the other things that HBA organizes, there were also extracurricular activities such as Erhu (a chinese instrument), cooking, martial arts, singing, etc. that I neglected to mention because I personally found it more useful to spend my time sleeping, doing homework, and exploring Beijing, but they were definitely good ways for other students to take a break from classwork and learn some cultural activities first-hand. At first I participated in the dancing class, but they had too few students so it closed down =/ Hopefully it'll work in the future so that there can be more cohesive dancing acts for the Beijing Night Show.
Language Pledge:
To be honest I'm pretty sure no one in the program actually kept the Language Pledge 100% the entire summer. In a way it's impossible and not practical to do so though, and I highly doubt my language improvement was hampered in any way by the choice moments when I couldn't be bothered to keep waving my hands around and taking forever to describe something really simple or to actually get to know some of my HBA peers on a social level that's impossible with language barriers. The degree to which people violate the language pledge probably varied based on who you interacted with, but given that we all kept up with the Chinese thing for the vast majority of the time for 9 weeks, the effects were obvious and lasting -- the switch back to freely using English again after graduation was nothing short of strange, and I think all of us are going to be tossing in Chinese words into English conversation for awhile. I have to translate an unnatural number of Chinese words into English before I say things nowadays instead of the other way around... craziness...
Beijing Language and Culture University 北京语言大学 aka Bei Yu:
Bei Yu is a good campus for learning Chinese since 7,000 out of 10,000 students are foreign students coming to learn Chinese (mostly Koreans), and thus our teachers/language partners are handpicked from the remaining bunch that are trained in teaching Chinese. The campus is also relatively small compared to Yale and thus easier to navigate/all the facilities are close by. You basically only ever go to a few places on campus within a day anyway (Convention Center 会议中心, classrooms at the main building 主楼, and cafeteria 食堂).
Dorms:
We stayed in the Conference Center 会议中心, which lucky for us meant hotel style accommodations. The rooms are singles with private washrooms and daily room service (the fuwuyuans 服务员 were really nice), so it was even better than living conditions at Yale in terms of privacy and cleanliness, but they were also arranged hotel hallway-style, which makes it harder for social interaction. The latter wasn't as big of an issue since this let us focus on our studying when we needed to and we spent plenty of time with everyone else outside the dorms that it was more than enough to compensate. I'd say a bigger issue for most students was that their showers didn't drain very well.
Food:
In the beginning we mostly ate at the First Cafeteria 第一食堂 for lunch. The food there is insanely cheap (my lunches/dinners were usually 4-6 yuan for food and 3-4 yuan for beverage... coming to a grand total of about $1), but kinda greasy and heavy on starch. It closed after we came back from social study week, so our food bill accordingly increased to about 10-15 yuan for lunch and 20-30 yuan for dinner as we started eating at the restaurants above the cafeteria and in Wudaokou. A big hit among the third/fourth year guys was the Muslim Restaurant 穆斯林饭馆. In short, food in China is cheap (like everything else), and eating is the social point during weekdays/going to occupy a large portion of your time and money, so you might as well go all out and explore/eat well! :D
Transportation:
The most common mode of transportation for HBA students was taxi 出租车, which is definitely more expensive than public transportation but far more convenient. The subway and bus lines close at random times that I still don't remember, and even though their cheap you have to known where you're going and be able to figure out the charts for how to get there. Subway is much more manageable since there's only 3 lines (I think they're building more for the Olympics though), but transportation in China in general is a chaotic/crowded/hot/noisy/confusing mess that you should definitely learn to deal with if you want to fully experience China, but might not be worth bothering with regularly. Taxis are cheap compared to Western standards (10 yuan for the first 4km, 2 yuan for every km after that) and if you split it among 4 ppl it can be very reasonable. People also have great experiences talking to their taxi drivers 司机 and trying to interpret their heavy Beijing accents.
Cell phones:
While I was still home I called T-Mobile to ask for an unlock code for my cell phone and then when I got to BLCU I bought a Beijing Sim 卡 from the Friendship Store 友谊商店 (a convenience store on campus) that included a number for 60 yuan and 50 yuan per month of calling. Unlike American phones, you pay for your minutes and when they get used up you have to go buy more. If you get the plan I got though (25 cents call out, 2 cents call in, 10 cents texts), it really shouldn't be expensive -- I managed to survive on the 50 yuan per month without having to add extra. One annoying thing about taking your American phone is that it won't read Chinese text, so if anyone texts you in Chinese you won't have clue what it's saying.
Cameras:
Bring a good camera, end of story. I brought my smallest/cheapest/worst quality camera I have thinking it'd be more space efficient and less of a heartbreak in case I lost it, but there are so many great photos you'll be taking that a good camera is worth the investment.
Laundry:
The Convention Center has laundry rooms that you buy a laundry card to use, but apparently they made people's clothes bigger, didn't really dry properly, and left strange lint. To avoid that I took my laundry to this little place next to the Friendship Store every 2-3 weeks and was charged 30-40 yuan a load for the full package - wash, dry, fold. It was a bit more expensive than doing it yourself, but saved me a lot of hassle and damaged clothes.
Money:
If you can, change dollars to RMB before you get to China because it saves you the hassle of looking for ways to do it while you're here and ATM surcharges can be quite hefty. Bringing American cash to China is also a good idea since the surcharge is less than ATMs. If you need to resort to ATMs though (most likely), make sure you don't try typing in your pin number more than twice if it doesn't work or else the machine will eat your card. Also, try to take out the largest quantity possible in one go to minimize surcharges -- you'll spend more than you think you will very quickly. I have Chase instead of Bank of America like everyone else, but I just made sure I used ATMs that accept Visa and that worked fine.
Health:
Most people had stomach issues in the beginning and periodically along the way, so just make sure you get the diarrhea meds from DUH that Light provides. It's a natural thing for the body to have issues digesting things in a different environment, and it became a great source of joking by the end （满地拉肚子！）, but of course it's not fun so take care about what you eat and make sure you avoid all the sketchy things (street-side food, raw things that aren't served in a respectable restaurant, too much dairy, etc.). A lot of people also got sick the third/fourth week and then again the last week as our immune systems started failing along with our stamina, so make sure you don't jack up the air conditioning too high and remember to sleep... once in a while... =P
In terms of exercise, different people have different habits. I personally need to exercise or else I feel like a fat 没有精神 slob really quickly, and like Yale it's hard for me to motivate myself to find time for it. The first couple of weeks this was the case, and then I started running on the track outside (it's free and you won't die of heat exhaustion if you go in the early morning/late evening), but things would come up (like torrential rain for two weeks the second semester), so you have to be creative and insistent on keeping to a exercise routine - it improves your mood and concentration immensely. It also helps keep off some of the weight you will inevitably gain in Beijing what with all the cheap greasy food.
Nightlife:
My parents read this so I'm going to be vague 0=) But anyway, HBA is much like Yale in the sense of work hard play hard - the weekdays are for studying and the weekends are for exploring/partying. There is also no point to being in Beijing if you're not going to explore what people do, especially the young people/expat culture. For HBAers, the most popular districts were Sanlitun, Worker's Stadium, Hou Hai, and Wudaokou -- all of which should be described in more detail in the Unofficial Light Guide and www.thatsbeijing.com. In fact, these are both great references for a lot of things to do and see and in Beijing outside of the traditional touristy things that you should try to get around to during the day.
Overall:
HBA rocks. If you want to be good at Chinese and bad at English you should do it. Huzzah! (it's late at night... I'm starting to babble...) Ok in seriousness, I don't think it's necessary that I put into words how much I got out of this program, it's probably evident from my crazy posting all these weeks. For every ten moments I wondered why I was crazy enough to pick to do HBA this summer (aka for all the time I spent doing homework), there was also a moment where I was super grateful I made the decision I did and was learning/experiencing as much as I was. In retrospect I don't have an ounce of regret for doing HBA or going to China -- it was unforgettable, eye-opening, and enriching, all of which was made possible by HBA in conjunction with Light Fellowship. Go for it (it's worth it)!
The purpose of HBA is first and foremost to teach Chinese. As a result, classes will dominate a larger portion of your life than you might like and teachers become really big parts of your summer life. Lucky for us the HBA teachers are really dedicated and fun. They were a combination of Harvard/Yale lecturers and graduate students at Bei Yu -- the former would teach lecture classes and the latter would run just about everything else. The student-teacher ratio is something ridiculous like 1:1.5, so you get to know all your teachers on a personal level and feel really comfortable asking them anything or joking around with them. The students are all pretty much sure that our teachers work harder than us, and we appreciate them a lot for that. Our lecture teachers, Feng Laoshi and Li Laoshi, both commanded a lot of respect as well, although the former was also field director the second semester so we didn't have him as a lecturer anymore - a pity since he's the 140 teacher at Harvard and helped compile our textbook, so he has a huge amount of insight into the texts (plus he looked like a panda!). I think he plans on taking a break from HBA next year though, which is even more of a pity =*(
Host Families and Language Partners:
I've been talking about these as I went along, but in summary I found that both were both somewhat time consuming since all you do is talk to them and most of the time you'd rather spend that time catching up on sleep, but both were also really good ways to boost conversational abilities that you might not get elsewhere (including the classroom). Some other Chinese American students opted out of the Host Family since they have family in China already, and truth be told I sometimes wished I had joined them since it only felt like an extra obligation to add to an already packed schedule. But on the flip side I learned a lot from getting to spend time with a Chinese family that isn't actually related to me, my speaking skills improved a lot, and there were plenty of perks like free meals/gifts :D In short, both of these can create some unnecessary awkwardness and stress in your life, but in moderation both are also really valuable additions to your Chinese education, which should be the priority of the summer (besides having fun).
Extracurriculars:
In addition to all the other things that HBA organizes, there were also extracurricular activities such as Erhu (a chinese instrument), cooking, martial arts, singing, etc. that I neglected to mention because I personally found it more useful to spend my time sleeping, doing homework, and exploring Beijing, but they were definitely good ways for other students to take a break from classwork and learn some cultural activities first-hand. At first I participated in the dancing class, but they had too few students so it closed down =/ Hopefully it'll work in the future so that there can be more cohesive dancing acts for the Beijing Night Show.
Language Pledge:
To be honest I'm pretty sure no one in the program actually kept the Language Pledge 100% the entire summer. In a way it's impossible and not practical to do so though, and I highly doubt my language improvement was hampered in any way by the choice moments when I couldn't be bothered to keep waving my hands around and taking forever to describe something really simple or to actually get to know some of my HBA peers on a social level that's impossible with language barriers. The degree to which people violate the language pledge probably varied based on who you interacted with, but given that we all kept up with the Chinese thing for the vast majority of the time for 9 weeks, the effects were obvious and lasting -- the switch back to freely using English again after graduation was nothing short of strange, and I think all of us are going to be tossing in Chinese words into English conversation for awhile. I have to translate an unnatural number of Chinese words into English before I say things nowadays instead of the other way around... craziness...
Beijing Language and Culture University 北京语言大学 aka Bei Yu:
Bei Yu is a good campus for learning Chinese since 7,000 out of 10,000 students are foreign students coming to learn Chinese (mostly Koreans), and thus our teachers/language partners are handpicked from the remaining bunch that are trained in teaching Chinese. The campus is also relatively small compared to Yale and thus easier to navigate/all the facilities are close by. You basically only ever go to a few places on campus within a day anyway (Convention Center 会议中心, classrooms at the main building 主楼, and cafeteria 食堂).
Dorms:
We stayed in the Conference Center 会议中心, which lucky for us meant hotel style accommodations. The rooms are singles with private washrooms and daily room service (the fuwuyuans 服务员 were really nice), so it was even better than living conditions at Yale in terms of privacy and cleanliness, but they were also arranged hotel hallway-style, which makes it harder for social interaction. The latter wasn't as big of an issue since this let us focus on our studying when we needed to and we spent plenty of time with everyone else outside the dorms that it was more than enough to compensate. I'd say a bigger issue for most students was that their showers didn't drain very well.
Food:
In the beginning we mostly ate at the First Cafeteria 第一食堂 for lunch. The food there is insanely cheap (my lunches/dinners were usually 4-6 yuan for food and 3-4 yuan for beverage... coming to a grand total of about $1), but kinda greasy and heavy on starch. It closed after we came back from social study week, so our food bill accordingly increased to about 10-15 yuan for lunch and 20-30 yuan for dinner as we started eating at the restaurants above the cafeteria and in Wudaokou. A big hit among the third/fourth year guys was the Muslim Restaurant 穆斯林饭馆. In short, food in China is cheap (like everything else), and eating is the social point during weekdays/going to occupy a large portion of your time and money, so you might as well go all out and explore/eat well! :D
Transportation:
The most common mode of transportation for HBA students was taxi 出租车, which is definitely more expensive than public transportation but far more convenient. The subway and bus lines close at random times that I still don't remember, and even though their cheap you have to known where you're going and be able to figure out the charts for how to get there. Subway is much more manageable since there's only 3 lines (I think they're building more for the Olympics though), but transportation in China in general is a chaotic/crowded/hot/noisy/confusing mess that you should definitely learn to deal with if you want to fully experience China, but might not be worth bothering with regularly. Taxis are cheap compared to Western standards (10 yuan for the first 4km, 2 yuan for every km after that) and if you split it among 4 ppl it can be very reasonable. People also have great experiences talking to their taxi drivers 司机 and trying to interpret their heavy Beijing accents.
Cell phones:
While I was still home I called T-Mobile to ask for an unlock code for my cell phone and then when I got to BLCU I bought a Beijing Sim 卡 from the Friendship Store 友谊商店 (a convenience store on campus) that included a number for 60 yuan and 50 yuan per month of calling. Unlike American phones, you pay for your minutes and when they get used up you have to go buy more. If you get the plan I got though (25 cents call out, 2 cents call in, 10 cents texts), it really shouldn't be expensive -- I managed to survive on the 50 yuan per month without having to add extra. One annoying thing about taking your American phone is that it won't read Chinese text, so if anyone texts you in Chinese you won't have clue what it's saying.
Cameras:
Bring a good camera, end of story. I brought my smallest/cheapest/worst quality camera I have thinking it'd be more space efficient and less of a heartbreak in case I lost it, but there are so many great photos you'll be taking that a good camera is worth the investment.
Laundry:
The Convention Center has laundry rooms that you buy a laundry card to use, but apparently they made people's clothes bigger, didn't really dry properly, and left strange lint. To avoid that I took my laundry to this little place next to the Friendship Store every 2-3 weeks and was charged 30-40 yuan a load for the full package - wash, dry, fold. It was a bit more expensive than doing it yourself, but saved me a lot of hassle and damaged clothes.
Money:
If you can, change dollars to RMB before you get to China because it saves you the hassle of looking for ways to do it while you're here and ATM surcharges can be quite hefty. Bringing American cash to China is also a good idea since the surcharge is less than ATMs. If you need to resort to ATMs though (most likely), make sure you don't try typing in your pin number more than twice if it doesn't work or else the machine will eat your card. Also, try to take out the largest quantity possible in one go to minimize surcharges -- you'll spend more than you think you will very quickly. I have Chase instead of Bank of America like everyone else, but I just made sure I used ATMs that accept Visa and that worked fine.
Health:
Most people had stomach issues in the beginning and periodically along the way, so just make sure you get the diarrhea meds from DUH that Light provides. It's a natural thing for the body to have issues digesting things in a different environment, and it became a great source of joking by the end （满地拉肚子！）, but of course it's not fun so take care about what you eat and make sure you avoid all the sketchy things (street-side food, raw things that aren't served in a respectable restaurant, too much dairy, etc.). A lot of people also got sick the third/fourth week and then again the last week as our immune systems started failing along with our stamina, so make sure you don't jack up the air conditioning too high and remember to sleep... once in a while... =P
In terms of exercise, different people have different habits. I personally need to exercise or else I feel like a fat 没有精神 slob really quickly, and like Yale it's hard for me to motivate myself to find time for it. The first couple of weeks this was the case, and then I started running on the track outside (it's free and you won't die of heat exhaustion if you go in the early morning/late evening), but things would come up (like torrential rain for two weeks the second semester), so you have to be creative and insistent on keeping to a exercise routine - it improves your mood and concentration immensely. It also helps keep off some of the weight you will inevitably gain in Beijing what with all the cheap greasy food.
Nightlife:
My parents read this so I'm going to be vague 0=) But anyway, HBA is much like Yale in the sense of work hard play hard - the weekdays are for studying and the weekends are for exploring/partying. There is also no point to being in Beijing if you're not going to explore what people do, especially the young people/expat culture. For HBAers, the most popular districts were Sanlitun, Worker's Stadium, Hou Hai, and Wudaokou -- all of which should be described in more detail in the Unofficial Light Guide and www.thatsbeijing.com. In fact, these are both great references for a lot of things to do and see and in Beijing outside of the traditional touristy things that you should try to get around to during the day.
Overall:
HBA rocks. If you want to be good at Chinese and bad at English you should do it. Huzzah! (it's late at night... I'm starting to babble...) Ok in seriousness, I don't think it's necessary that I put into words how much I got out of this program, it's probably evident from my crazy posting all these weeks. For every ten moments I wondered why I was crazy enough to pick to do HBA this summer (aka for all the time I spent doing homework), there was also a moment where I was super grateful I made the decision I did and was learning/experiencing as much as I was. In retrospect I don't have an ounce of regret for doing HBA or going to China -- it was unforgettable, eye-opening, and enriching, all of which was made possible by HBA in conjunction with Light Fellowship. Go for it (it's worth it)!
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Beijing Week 8 (北京周八)
Haircut:
I got a haircut on Monday, except it didn't really end up being a haircut as much as a style change. The hairdresser somehow convinced me that straightening my hair would make it look healthier and promised he'd only straighten the lower half so it would still retain some volume. My hair's so thin though that all my hair just looks really flat and lifeless now, and it was chemically straightened so it's not going away until the hair grows out (about a year). Great. The only consolations are 1) it was a cheap experiment considering how expensive chemical hair treatments are in the US and now I don't ever have to fear wasting $100+ on it in the future, 2) it looks better if I intentionally poof it while drying, 3) it does look shinier and sleeker and makes me look "more professional" aka "more like a prick", 4) I went to get the haircut with Stanley and his styling was significantly less presentable in public =P
Lesson: Don't get your hair styled in China unless you are willing to risk fob-ification.
Host Family Dinner:
My host family took me out to one last dinner before I left at some expensive place I can't remember now... but anyway, it was yummy and as always even though it took up a lot of time, it was nice to have the sense of a family taking care of you and to practice spoken Chinese with actual Beijing-ers (my Language Partner left for summer vacation after the fourth week). Outside of this family, the only people we really get to talk to are working-class, so if anything it's interesting to get a middle-class/upper-class perspective on things. For example, the former seems to have an idealistic view of America whereas the latter tends to feel the need to point out how China is better or has more potential (or maybe my host family is particularly nationalistic). Regardless, I feel like the older generation has a sense of inferiority-complex and need to prove oneself compared to developed western countries while the younger is more apathetic about the politico-economic implications and is more prone to the effects of western cultural hegemony.
Classes:
The last week went by so slowly and yet so quickly - during the last few days of classes we were all dying to go home and severely depleted of any ability to stay awake in class anymore or focus on what we were learning because we'd already hit saturation point ages ago. Somehow our teachers got us through the last couple of lessons (the return of Feng Laoshi helped) and eased our ending with a manageable final (half open-book/computer). I think my progress over the course of HBA struck me most while I was doing the oral part of the final (speak about a randomly given previously-done-in-class discussion topic for 2-3 minutes straight) -- even though I still garbled a few sentence structures or two I was able to discuss a pretty complicated subject at length using bookish grammar/vocab and without sounding like the idiot I felt like when I did the oral part of the placement exam 9 weeks ago. Even though I hardly improved on the HSK in the end (a meager 20 pts, not enough to put me into a different level =/), I can feel the improvement in everything I say/hear/read/write -- an enormous satisfaction in and of itself. 苦尽甘来 (sweetness comes after bitterness ends).
(At the last day of office hours 答疑 -- basically where all the studying/goofing around happens weekday evenings)
Graduation:
After our final we went straight to the Graduation Ceremony, which was a bittersweet process of relief that HBA was finally over (and the language pledge) and disbelief that we'd soon be saying goodbye.
(The panel of teachers/speakers at our graduation ceremony)
(4th year students and teachers outside afterwards)
Teacher's Dinner:
In the evening us fourth year students took our 小班 teachers out to dinner at a Peking Duck place in Wudaokou to show our appreciation, say goodbye, and finally get to talk to them in English/learn goofy things about them as friends rather than teachers. In some ways they're all even cuter and more immature than we are, which is highly endearing and makes us feel like we got to know a group of Chinese college kids rather than teachers this summer.
(4th year students and teachers at dinner)
798:
In the afternoon a few of us went to 798, an arts district often compared to Soho (or at least what Soho used to be). It was a nice view into modern art after a summer of ancient sites 古迹 and a great way to get me excited about taking art history this coming semester -- I'd forgotten how much I miss the feel of small galleries and studios, each one brimming with its own character and vision.
(Street-side sculptures and graffiti)
(Most of the art spaces used to be communist factories that still say slogans like "毛主席万岁" -- Long live Chairman Mao. It made a lot of the art all the more ironic/poignant, especially because a lot of modern art encompasses its environment and relationship to the viewer, making the space its hung in part of its effect.)
(Fun fact #1: I wore my Yale University Art Gallery Shirt that says "What is art and why does it matter," appropriate no? Fun Fact #2: It's hard to look emo in jean shorts that make your butt look big =( Fun Fact #3: Shameless advertising -- check out www.yingheliu.com if you're into art at all, you can commission a portrait from my mom :D)
(Quite a few galleries were being renovated, which I'm going to take as a good sign for the future of independent Chinese artists.)
(Fun Fact #5: "798" in Chinese is pronounced Qi Jiu Ba 七九八 which is a homonym for Qu Jiu Ba 去酒吧 or "Going to the bar." Viva la boheme.)
More relatives (Grandma and Grandaunt's visit):
On Saturday (while mostly everyone was leaving) my grandma and her sister came from Shenzhen to visit me and stay for a few days to see me off before visiting some family and friends in Beijing. During the day we went to Xidan, a highly commercialized shopping street not unlike Wangfujing to get last minute souvenirs. Afterwards we had dinner at 东来顺, a famous Muslim hotpot restaurant in Wangfujing.
The next day we went to Tian Tan 天坛, a temple built in the Ming/Qing Dynasties for the emperors to pray for good harvests and things like that.
(With my grandma in front of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests 祈年殿, which is the best known structure in the Tian Tan complex besides the Echo Wall, which actually doesn't echo much anymore since there's so many people around all the time)
(The House of the Heavenly Lord 皇穹宇)
(The former has a famous ceiling with dragons and pearls or something, can't really see in the pic =/)
(The Earthly Mount 圜丘坛 - three levels of marble that the Emperor stood at the top of and prayed to the heavens for rain and the like)
(With my grandma and grandaunt in front of the Seven Star Stones 七星石, which are actually eight stones representing the peaks of the seven Taishan mountains and an extra one that the Qing emperor stuck in to show Manchus are a Chinese nationality... yea I don't understand what that means either I'm just reciting this from what I remember of the explanation sign)
Anyway, afterwards we had another fancy dinner at the Peking Duck place in Wangfujing that I went to earlier in the summer. Other than these few things we didn't accomplish since my grandma and grandaunt are two cute but slow little old Chinese women who need their rest, but it was a nice change of pace after 9 weeks rushing around with people my age and their boundless energy.
(See... so cute ^-^)
It was also a nice way to come full circle around since I spent my first week in China with my Dad's side of the family and my last few days with my Mom's side.
With that, it's also time to come full circle with my regular blogging. I'll post a few summary posts in a bit and then in a few hours I'm off to the airport and then HOME! :D
I got a haircut on Monday, except it didn't really end up being a haircut as much as a style change. The hairdresser somehow convinced me that straightening my hair would make it look healthier and promised he'd only straighten the lower half so it would still retain some volume. My hair's so thin though that all my hair just looks really flat and lifeless now, and it was chemically straightened so it's not going away until the hair grows out (about a year). Great. The only consolations are 1) it was a cheap experiment considering how expensive chemical hair treatments are in the US and now I don't ever have to fear wasting $100+ on it in the future, 2) it looks better if I intentionally poof it while drying, 3) it does look shinier and sleeker and makes me look "more professional" aka "more like a prick", 4) I went to get the haircut with Stanley and his styling was significantly less presentable in public =P
Lesson: Don't get your hair styled in China unless you are willing to risk fob-ification.
Host Family Dinner:
My host family took me out to one last dinner before I left at some expensive place I can't remember now... but anyway, it was yummy and as always even though it took up a lot of time, it was nice to have the sense of a family taking care of you and to practice spoken Chinese with actual Beijing-ers (my Language Partner left for summer vacation after the fourth week). Outside of this family, the only people we really get to talk to are working-class, so if anything it's interesting to get a middle-class/upper-class perspective on things. For example, the former seems to have an idealistic view of America whereas the latter tends to feel the need to point out how China is better or has more potential (or maybe my host family is particularly nationalistic). Regardless, I feel like the older generation has a sense of inferiority-complex and need to prove oneself compared to developed western countries while the younger is more apathetic about the politico-economic implications and is more prone to the effects of western cultural hegemony.
Classes:
The last week went by so slowly and yet so quickly - during the last few days of classes we were all dying to go home and severely depleted of any ability to stay awake in class anymore or focus on what we were learning because we'd already hit saturation point ages ago. Somehow our teachers got us through the last couple of lessons (the return of Feng Laoshi helped) and eased our ending with a manageable final (half open-book/computer). I think my progress over the course of HBA struck me most while I was doing the oral part of the final (speak about a randomly given previously-done-in-class discussion topic for 2-3 minutes straight) -- even though I still garbled a few sentence structures or two I was able to discuss a pretty complicated subject at length using bookish grammar/vocab and without sounding like the idiot I felt like when I did the oral part of the placement exam 9 weeks ago. Even though I hardly improved on the HSK in the end (a meager 20 pts, not enough to put me into a different level =/), I can feel the improvement in everything I say/hear/read/write -- an enormous satisfaction in and of itself. 苦尽甘来 (sweetness comes after bitterness ends).
(At the last day of office hours 答疑 -- basically where all the studying/goofing around happens weekday evenings)Graduation:
After our final we went straight to the Graduation Ceremony, which was a bittersweet process of relief that HBA was finally over (and the language pledge) and disbelief that we'd soon be saying goodbye.
(The panel of teachers/speakers at our graduation ceremony)
(4th year students and teachers outside afterwards)Teacher's Dinner:
In the evening us fourth year students took our 小班 teachers out to dinner at a Peking Duck place in Wudaokou to show our appreciation, say goodbye, and finally get to talk to them in English/learn goofy things about them as friends rather than teachers. In some ways they're all even cuter and more immature than we are, which is highly endearing and makes us feel like we got to know a group of Chinese college kids rather than teachers this summer.
(4th year students and teachers at dinner)798:
In the afternoon a few of us went to 798, an arts district often compared to Soho (or at least what Soho used to be). It was a nice view into modern art after a summer of ancient sites 古迹 and a great way to get me excited about taking art history this coming semester -- I'd forgotten how much I miss the feel of small galleries and studios, each one brimming with its own character and vision.
(Street-side sculptures and graffiti)
(Most of the art spaces used to be communist factories that still say slogans like "毛主席万岁" -- Long live Chairman Mao. It made a lot of the art all the more ironic/poignant, especially because a lot of modern art encompasses its environment and relationship to the viewer, making the space its hung in part of its effect.)
(Fun fact #1: I wore my Yale University Art Gallery Shirt that says "What is art and why does it matter," appropriate no? Fun Fact #2: It's hard to look emo in jean shorts that make your butt look big =( Fun Fact #3: Shameless advertising -- check out www.yingheliu.com if you're into art at all, you can commission a portrait from my mom :D)
(Quite a few galleries were being renovated, which I'm going to take as a good sign for the future of independent Chinese artists.)
(Fun Fact #5: "798" in Chinese is pronounced Qi Jiu Ba 七九八 which is a homonym for Qu Jiu Ba 去酒吧 or "Going to the bar." Viva la boheme.)More relatives (Grandma and Grandaunt's visit):
On Saturday (while mostly everyone was leaving) my grandma and her sister came from Shenzhen to visit me and stay for a few days to see me off before visiting some family and friends in Beijing. During the day we went to Xidan, a highly commercialized shopping street not unlike Wangfujing to get last minute souvenirs. Afterwards we had dinner at 东来顺, a famous Muslim hotpot restaurant in Wangfujing.
The next day we went to Tian Tan 天坛, a temple built in the Ming/Qing Dynasties for the emperors to pray for good harvests and things like that.
(With my grandma in front of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests 祈年殿, which is the best known structure in the Tian Tan complex besides the Echo Wall, which actually doesn't echo much anymore since there's so many people around all the time)
(The House of the Heavenly Lord 皇穹宇)
(The former has a famous ceiling with dragons and pearls or something, can't really see in the pic =/)
(The Earthly Mount 圜丘坛 - three levels of marble that the Emperor stood at the top of and prayed to the heavens for rain and the like)
(With my grandma and grandaunt in front of the Seven Star Stones 七星石, which are actually eight stones representing the peaks of the seven Taishan mountains and an extra one that the Qing emperor stuck in to show Manchus are a Chinese nationality... yea I don't understand what that means either I'm just reciting this from what I remember of the explanation sign)Anyway, afterwards we had another fancy dinner at the Peking Duck place in Wangfujing that I went to earlier in the summer. Other than these few things we didn't accomplish since my grandma and grandaunt are two cute but slow little old Chinese women who need their rest, but it was a nice change of pace after 9 weeks rushing around with people my age and their boundless energy.
(See... so cute ^-^)It was also a nice way to come full circle around since I spent my first week in China with my Dad's side of the family and my last few days with my Mom's side.
With that, it's also time to come full circle with my regular blogging. I'll post a few summary posts in a bit and then in a few hours I'm off to the airport and then HOME! :D
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Beijing Week 7 (北京周七)
Classes:
Again, overall things are getting easier to deal with, but everyone is itching to go home so it makes studying an extra struggle. The first few days of this week we read 散文 (literary/poetic prose), which wasn't so bad except that it felt pretty useless in terms of learning language skills that people actually use in real life, and it was frustrating when they asked us to write our own by looking at pretty landscape pictures because there are a lot of things that you could say in English that we have no way of expressing in Chinese past extremely elementary methods.
Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi 汉语水平考试 (aka Chinese Proficiency Test):
We also took the HSK a second time to note how much we've progressed in seven weeks and to have official proof of our Chinese level in case we wanted to come back and work/study. It was still a hideous test that required an unnatural amount of concentration and tactful guessing, but it was also undoubtedly easier the second time around, especially the reading and grammar sections (since those were the biggest things I could improve in and the focus of 4th year). I also got more sleep in advance for this time around, so if I'm lucky I'll go from 6th level to 8th level, although 7th will make me happy anyway. Either way I can enroll at a Chinese University... I'm just pretty sure I don't want to.
(Fun fact: HSK can also stand for "Horrendous Space Kablooie" from Calvin and Hobbes as an alternate term for the Big Bang. In a way, China's HSK is a Horrendous Kablooie of it's own kind.)
Beijing ZhiYe 北京之夜:
Saturday evening HBA put on its annual end-of-the-program show. I ended up in two acts: the fourth year skit (because hardly anyone wanted to do it) and a violin/ballet duet (because Chris Lin-Brande volunteered to play Butterfly Lover's Concerto but didn't think anyone would pay attention to a purely audio performance). Both required a lot more preparation than I had originally assumed and took up my entire Saturday. The Fourth Years are slackers to the max and didn't think about our skit until the day of the show (much to HBA's aggravation) and I am too out of shape to entirely impromptu a 4 minute piece. It was a good show despite the unnecessary stress in the end though - a lot of great imitations and talent and creativity, and a surprisingly good way to show how much bonding/Chinese learning had happened in a meager summer.
Relatives:
Yesterday was my daddy's birthday, although I didn't remember until 3am China time = 3pm EST... but I hope he forgives me. Today my granduncle and his son (my mother's cousin... what are those called?) took the train from Tianjing to visit me in Beijing and have lunch with me. It was a pretty brave trip for an 80+ year-old man to make just to have lunch with a distantly related little girl he's never met before. But that's what family does - they make efforts no one else will bother with for you because if family isn't there for you, no one else is.
My grandma is coming next week to see me off from Beijing too, and I have to meet with my host family one last time to say goodbye, so it's pouring family obligations on top of the many last-minute things that need to be done before I pack off.
Again, overall things are getting easier to deal with, but everyone is itching to go home so it makes studying an extra struggle. The first few days of this week we read 散文 (literary/poetic prose), which wasn't so bad except that it felt pretty useless in terms of learning language skills that people actually use in real life, and it was frustrating when they asked us to write our own by looking at pretty landscape pictures because there are a lot of things that you could say in English that we have no way of expressing in Chinese past extremely elementary methods.
Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi 汉语水平考试 (aka Chinese Proficiency Test):
We also took the HSK a second time to note how much we've progressed in seven weeks and to have official proof of our Chinese level in case we wanted to come back and work/study. It was still a hideous test that required an unnatural amount of concentration and tactful guessing, but it was also undoubtedly easier the second time around, especially the reading and grammar sections (since those were the biggest things I could improve in and the focus of 4th year). I also got more sleep in advance for this time around, so if I'm lucky I'll go from 6th level to 8th level, although 7th will make me happy anyway. Either way I can enroll at a Chinese University... I'm just pretty sure I don't want to.
(Fun fact: HSK can also stand for "Horrendous Space Kablooie" from Calvin and Hobbes as an alternate term for the Big Bang. In a way, China's HSK is a Horrendous Kablooie of it's own kind.)
Beijing ZhiYe 北京之夜:
Saturday evening HBA put on its annual end-of-the-program show. I ended up in two acts: the fourth year skit (because hardly anyone wanted to do it) and a violin/ballet duet (because Chris Lin-Brande volunteered to play Butterfly Lover's Concerto but didn't think anyone would pay attention to a purely audio performance). Both required a lot more preparation than I had originally assumed and took up my entire Saturday. The Fourth Years are slackers to the max and didn't think about our skit until the day of the show (much to HBA's aggravation) and I am too out of shape to entirely impromptu a 4 minute piece. It was a good show despite the unnecessary stress in the end though - a lot of great imitations and talent and creativity, and a surprisingly good way to show how much bonding/Chinese learning had happened in a meager summer.
Relatives:
Yesterday was my daddy's birthday, although I didn't remember until 3am China time = 3pm EST... but I hope he forgives me. Today my granduncle and his son (my mother's cousin... what are those called?) took the train from Tianjing to visit me in Beijing and have lunch with me. It was a pretty brave trip for an 80+ year-old man to make just to have lunch with a distantly related little girl he's never met before. But that's what family does - they make efforts no one else will bother with for you because if family isn't there for you, no one else is.
My grandma is coming next week to see me off from Beijing too, and I have to meet with my host family one last time to say goodbye, so it's pouring family obligations on top of the many last-minute things that need to be done before I pack off.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Beijing Week 6 (北京周六）
Classes:
This week was better than last week now that we've gotten back into the groove of things and the end is in sight. Over the weekend we had to write a 1,200+ word "report literature" 报告文学 piece, which for me ended up being 1,700 words, but wasn't as bad as it could have been since the topic was "American high school life" and I spent the whole day amusing myself by looking words like "punk" (朋克) and "jock" (运动员). We didn't have internet over the weekend though which was annoying since it required camping out downstairs at the Nowhere Cafe and living off mango smoothies in exchange for wireless. Oh China.
Trivia Night:
Like the brunch thing, I only mention this to promote Lush and let future HBA-ers know that they have trivia night on Wednesdays, which is great for massive nerd kick-in and study breaking (once you know how to handle the workload you can motivate yourself to get things done before dinner so that you can enjoy the evening). In many ways being an expat in Asia probably beats being an expat in Europe because 1) it's significantly cheaper and 2) Asians like America. Europeans not so much. Tcha =/
Longqing Gorges 龙庆峡:
The highlight of the week hands down was Longqing Gorges, which is about 2 hours by bus from Beijing. Not only was it a nice break from the city and it's pollution, it was also satisfying for anyone with artistic interests (beautiful mountain/river scenery) and daredevil amusement park cravings (see below). In other words I was thoroughly satisfied with our last HBA excursion.
(There's an elevator inside that dragon that takes you up to the boating area).
(山水风景）
(We're supposed to be looking scared. What for?)
(Bungee jumping!!! In retrospect this was not a smart thing of me to do at all since I was planning on living to see America again, but it was SO worth it... the first drop was easily the scariest moment of my life. I went first because I didn't want the waiting to make me antsier than necessary, even if it meant emasculating the line of guys behind me. I also decided that pretending that this was nothing more than a dive into a pool would diminish the scariness -- WRONG it was absolutely terrifying going head down like that, although apparently it contributed positively to my bungee form. To top things off, after the first big drop and bounce back my shoe came off and was barely hanging off my foot, so I had to simultaneously concentrate on not passing out and not letting my shoe fall into the water until they drove up in a little boat and fished me out of the air with a stick. I'm so grateful though because klutzy things have a tendency of following me to the most inconvenient places and I still made it out successful and alive! Huzzah!)
(It's a bit small but that speck attached to the rope is supposed to be me)
(The survivors!)
(Having lunch like the locals -- shoving noodles in our faces and squatting)
Thai Food and Massages:
After Longqing Gorges we treated ourselves to a Thai dinner (in honor of Yale) and massages (in honor of cheap human labor and being a spoiled American expat) because everyone should experience a one-hour full body massage in a legit place for slightly under $10 when they can. Especially in China where all the stuff about "qi" and pressure points has been in practice for thousands of years so they know what they're doing. I don't know if this is how they do it in the US but each masseuse has a number (not a name) so that you know who to ask for when you come back... personally this sketched me out a bit and I'm not going back anyway, but it was a good massage and the people were really nice (courteous service is hard to come by in China).
Flooding (more reasons why Beijing is really bizarre):
It has been raining like crazy at the most random times sporadically throughout the last two weeks. The rain itself is also crazy, because it'll thunder for a while with no rain and then suddenly there's an hour of tsunami and then it stops, leaving behind rivers in the roads since the drainage system is ghetto (like everything else in China). We were trapped by one trivia night and again today during individual tutoring class. Walking home today was quite an adventure since my flip-flops have no traction and the water was almost up to my knees. I can only imagine how much filth was floating around in that though... urgh...
(At night... it's blurry but hopefully it conveys the river effect)
This week was better than last week now that we've gotten back into the groove of things and the end is in sight. Over the weekend we had to write a 1,200+ word "report literature" 报告文学 piece, which for me ended up being 1,700 words, but wasn't as bad as it could have been since the topic was "American high school life" and I spent the whole day amusing myself by looking words like "punk" (朋克) and "jock" (运动员). We didn't have internet over the weekend though which was annoying since it required camping out downstairs at the Nowhere Cafe and living off mango smoothies in exchange for wireless. Oh China.
Trivia Night:
Like the brunch thing, I only mention this to promote Lush and let future HBA-ers know that they have trivia night on Wednesdays, which is great for massive nerd kick-in and study breaking (once you know how to handle the workload you can motivate yourself to get things done before dinner so that you can enjoy the evening). In many ways being an expat in Asia probably beats being an expat in Europe because 1) it's significantly cheaper and 2) Asians like America. Europeans not so much. Tcha =/
Longqing Gorges 龙庆峡:
The highlight of the week hands down was Longqing Gorges, which is about 2 hours by bus from Beijing. Not only was it a nice break from the city and it's pollution, it was also satisfying for anyone with artistic interests (beautiful mountain/river scenery) and daredevil amusement park cravings (see below). In other words I was thoroughly satisfied with our last HBA excursion.
(There's an elevator inside that dragon that takes you up to the boating area).
(山水风景）
(We're supposed to be looking scared. What for?)
(Bungee jumping!!! In retrospect this was not a smart thing of me to do at all since I was planning on living to see America again, but it was SO worth it... the first drop was easily the scariest moment of my life. I went first because I didn't want the waiting to make me antsier than necessary, even if it meant emasculating the line of guys behind me. I also decided that pretending that this was nothing more than a dive into a pool would diminish the scariness -- WRONG it was absolutely terrifying going head down like that, although apparently it contributed positively to my bungee form. To top things off, after the first big drop and bounce back my shoe came off and was barely hanging off my foot, so I had to simultaneously concentrate on not passing out and not letting my shoe fall into the water until they drove up in a little boat and fished me out of the air with a stick. I'm so grateful though because klutzy things have a tendency of following me to the most inconvenient places and I still made it out successful and alive! Huzzah!)
(It's a bit small but that speck attached to the rope is supposed to be me)
(The survivors!)
(Having lunch like the locals -- shoving noodles in our faces and squatting)Thai Food and Massages:
After Longqing Gorges we treated ourselves to a Thai dinner (in honor of Yale) and massages (in honor of cheap human labor and being a spoiled American expat) because everyone should experience a one-hour full body massage in a legit place for slightly under $10 when they can. Especially in China where all the stuff about "qi" and pressure points has been in practice for thousands of years so they know what they're doing. I don't know if this is how they do it in the US but each masseuse has a number (not a name) so that you know who to ask for when you come back... personally this sketched me out a bit and I'm not going back anyway, but it was a good massage and the people were really nice (courteous service is hard to come by in China).
Flooding (more reasons why Beijing is really bizarre):
It has been raining like crazy at the most random times sporadically throughout the last two weeks. The rain itself is also crazy, because it'll thunder for a while with no rain and then suddenly there's an hour of tsunami and then it stops, leaving behind rivers in the roads since the drainage system is ghetto (like everything else in China). We were trapped by one trivia night and again today during individual tutoring class. Walking home today was quite an adventure since my flip-flops have no traction and the water was almost up to my knees. I can only imagine how much filth was floating around in that though... urgh...
(At night... it's blurry but hopefully it conveys the river effect)
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