My Concentration Exercise

If you've ever experienced adjusting to a new culture, you know how difficult it can be.  For me, almost everything was different-language, culture, politics, grocery shopping.  When you can't speak the language, when you have no family or friends to connect you to the community, it undermines your confidence, no matter how strong you are.  You perceive the world as a child does-overwhelming, strange, and big...  --Chai Ling, A Heart for Freedom

Yesterday, a visiting professor in my educational psychology class told us he tries to write for 1-2 hours a day as a concentration exercise.  It inspired me to write and publish an extra blog post this week, but I mostly ended up reading things on Wikipedia.  (I tend to keep a running list of things which I want to look up on Wikipedia.)  Hmm...perhaps that says something about why I thought a concentration exercise would be good for me.  I did, however, manage to find some interesting things which I thought I could incorporate into a blog post while sharing about my time here.  Hopefully some of you out there are Wikipedia nuts like me.  Here goes.

• The city of Dongguan in the Canton province is one of China's special economic zones and where my mom's side of the family is from.  I learned that it is "China's sex capital" and home to the largest, yet almost completely vacant, mall in the world: New South China Mall.  Pretty much everything I think is wrong with China seemed to be epitomized in what I was reading about this city.  Previously, I only ever thought of Dongguan as that annoying place in the mainland where we always went to visit my maternal grandfather.  Maybe it will feel different to go back with my new-found Wiki knowledge.

• I have gone a few times to a Mandarin speaking Bible study and last week the leader told me about John Stuart Leighton and how he founded Yenching University whose campus was later replaced by my current school of attendance, Peking University.  I did some VPN protected Google searching and found some New York Times articles about him along with a video series from China's CCTV.  He was a Presbyterian missionary, American ambassador to China, university founder, and, well, a pretty interesting person in my opinion.

• I recently met one of 20-something Uighur students at Peking University.  China's ethnic minorities have always been interesting to me, so I had to hide my excitement at having met a Uighur for the first time.  I'm hoping to be able to visit Xinjiang Province, where Uighurs are from, at some point while I'm here.  I also met a PhD student in sociology preparing to do field work in Inner Mongolia to study educational disparities between Mongolian and Han Chinese.  Inner Mongolia is another place I wish I had more time to visit.  Our EAP director is always telling us, "China is a continent, not a country."  Sometimes it feels like Beijing, in itself, is a country feeding my wanderlust for its continent.

• I once wrote a paper on China's 户口hukou welfare system which registers people by hometown and creates all kinds of social issues for the many internal migrants in China, so I've already made many visits to the Wikipedia pages I'm currently referencing.  There is, however, a big difference between writing a paper on something and then experiencing it for yourself.  I recently started a volunteer position teaching English to a class of first grade migrant children through an NGO which creates community centers for them.  It was an interesting experience for me to walk into a Beijing slum and then use Chinese to teach English to children whose Chinese is probably better than mine.  I wish I could show pictures of my cute first grade students, but I'm following protocol and protecting their privacy.

Speaking of pictures, sorry to keep you waiting with this text-heavy post.

Studying for mid-terms means I've  spent some long hours with my trainchinese app.  I'd say I've made pretty good progress, no?

Revisited yang yeom chicken with some Korean friends.

Easter choir director: "He is risen!"  Congregation: "He is risen indeed!"

Easter Buffet :)

Enjoyed traditional Xinjiang food at the halal fast food restaurant where Muslim students dine.

 

So hopefully I helped you learn something new today.  The more time I spend here, the more I realize there is so much to China I wish I could experience and learn about, yet so little I have time for.  It makes me feel like such a tourist at times, and yet also helps me realize there are many things back in the States which I take for granted but can actually be quite fascinating if I look at them through a tourist's eyes.  And to think, I am still so young and the world is so big!  Maybe I am just feeling extra optimistic about the world right now because I just finished mid-terms and am going to Xian tomorrow.  More travel awaits!