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.