Week 2 of Chinese College Life

Immigrants often have a stable set of values from their home culture from which to draw sustenance, whether religious or cultural. But for the children of the Cultural Revolution in China, there’s been no such continuity. They were raised to believe in the revolutionary Maoism of the 1960s and ‘70s, and then told as young adults in the late 1970s that everything drilled into them in their adolescence had been a terrible mistake. Then they were fed a trickle of socialism, rapidly belied by the rush to get rich, and finally offered the hint of a liberal counter-culture in the 1980s before Tiananmen snatched it away. In the meantime, traditional values condemned as ‘counter-revolutionary’ in their youth are being given a quick polish and propped up as the new backbone of society by the authorities.  --James Palmer The balinghou

Yesterday, our EAP program supervisor sent us this article from Aeon Magazine about the generation gap in China.  I highly recommend reading the whole thing, as long as it is, whether or not you've any interest in China.  (Also recommend China Digital Times for many more good reads.)  I think I was listening to some sad music while reading it because by the end of the article I was about to start crying.  The author elaborates on historical and sociological constructs influencing Chinese family life today which really reminded me of why I had chosen to study abroad in China in the first place.  Despite today's sandstorm weather, it also gave me a sort of renewed excitement for being here.  Every day has been such a great learning experience and my time here has really only just begun.

Never seen that symbol for sandstorms before.

Meanwhile, I'm taunted with pictures of the Berkeley campus in sunny California.

As much as I dislike spending time in class sometimes, I've sincerely enjoyed every one of my 口语 spoken Chinese sessions.  The whole class revolves around conversation to give us opportunities to practice speaking.  It's especially interesting because of the diversity of countries people come from.  This week, we had a debate about economic perspectives in our respective countries, one girl lead a discussion about criminal justice and the death sentence, and Japanese students shared experiences about what its been like to study in China.  And though we're still nowhere near fluent, all this conversation happens in Chinese which can make for a frustrating, and yet really enlightening, two hour session.

Of course at some point we had to discuss China's knockoffs and learn copyright terminology.

There's less conversation which happens in 汉语 written Chinese class, but here I get to learn Chinese sayings which I often find to be pretty meaningful.  My teacher wrote these words on the board after explaining the meaning of 损人利己.

We also always have someone from the class do a performance or presentation in each day. My turn on Monday and no idea what I'm gonna do.

Lunch after class with some Japanese classmates.

 Despite the new environment I'm now in, I've also learned there are many things about college life which I guess don't change much across cultures.

Not sure why I even tried but I managed to find a seat for my first study session at the Peking University library.  It was not easy.  Felt like Main Stacks during dead week.

I still forget about dinner sometimes and find myself going out to grab late night snacks. The difference is these 红豆包red bean buns only cost 5RMB (<1USD) and taste like they're worth a lot more.

Before you judge me for being unhealthy, I have also found my favorite fruit stand on campus and have been restocking regularly.

I still have late night dates with the textbook and internet distraction.

These week, student clubs started tabling.  Here's the Sproul plaza of PKU. Sports clubs, volunteer organizations, business people, cat-feeders, etc.  You name it and it was there.  Except, perhaps, religious organizations for obvious reasons.

The view from the other side.  I ended up putting my name down for a few of them. We'll see what comes of it!

I still go to student welcome events where I have to introduce myself a million times like a freshman. Here I'm at an event organized by the language partner program where we wrapped dumplings and ate them for dinner.

Let the Language Learning Begin

They say I'm old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!  --Dr. Seuss

My first full week of classes has already come and gone!  So far I've started my 汉语hanyu Chinese writing/grammar and 口语kouyu conversational courses.  Hanyu has been extremely difficult.   My trainchinese app has been working overtime after I downloaded my Chinese textbook on it and started trying to memorize terms and characters for dictations which we will be having at least twice a week.  I found a cute cafe called the Bridge Cafe in nearby 五道口 Wudaokou where a lot of foreigners and students gather to meet conversation partners or study Chinese.  The environment there makes me think of Cafe Strada in Berkeley but with foreigners speaking either broken Chinese, some European language, or English with a different accent.  Kouyu class is a lot more fun.  We have to answer questions the teacher asks us using new terminology we learn, and since the class consists of students from all over the world, all kinds of interesting things are said in class.  I'll try to remember anecdotes this week so I can share.

Snapped this photo right before entering Hanyu class for the first time.

In Kouyu class.

Postcards from Korea arrived in the US!  Hi Sara!

Night view of the bird's nest from my first week.

I went with a few other UCEAP students to 西单xidan which is a commercial district in Beijing with a lot of shopping malls.  I skipped most of the shopping and went straight to the food court.  The takoyaki here is not bad.

I ate three of these.  It was painfully delicious.

Entrance to the food alley of Wangfujing.  Ready to see some weird deep-fried creatures!

Centipedes?  I'm not sure.  Didn't have the guts to eat anything anyways.

Me with Hannah from Korea at Wangfujing.

We found the Wangfujing Cathedral which is also known as St. Joseph's Church, founded in 1655 by Jesuit missionaries.  It stood out as a very old-fashioned looking building among the more modern looking high-rises in Wangfujing.

And then, I attended church the next morning!

Caught up with a friend from Berkeley over Japanese food. This is Lily looking thoughtful with her cuppa green tea.

I experienced my first sandstorm here this week along with AQI pollution readings in the 500s. Anything over 300 is considered extremely hazardous.  Don't worry about me though, N95's got my back.

Beijing on a bad day.

My suite mate, Sally, treated me to hot pot!  Always good to live with people who appreciate good food. :)

I love the dining halls here because a meal like this would only cost me about one US dollar. Good deals always taste better.

I sat in on this class where the professor took the first hour to have all 100+ students stand up and introduce themselves.  When it was my turn and I said I was from the US, the professor bluntly asked me, "Why do you look Chinese?"  Oh, it was an anthropology class.

Got myself some PKU gear.

I biked around the beautiful Tsinghua University campus which is right next to PKU. It was a lot more western looking compared to PKU which has more traditionally Chinese looking buildings.  Felt like I was back in the US for a bit.

International students got to join a complimentary trip to the Peking Opera! We watched Farewell my Concubine and Monkey King.  I felt all sophisticated and cultured, sitting on traditional Chinese furniture and having tea served to me as I enjoyed the performance.

Made some friends at the opera

Another complimentary trip to the Great Wall!  I'd been there in the summer before, but the view was different with snow.  And I got to ride a toboggan down from the wall for the first time.

The Boya tower and frozen 未名湖 WeiMing Lake on the PKU campus.

I feel a little more like I've settled into a routine here now that classes have started, but there is still a lot that is uncertain.  My class schedule isn't yet finalized, I'm thinking about whether or not to take on an internship, I'm considering volunteer opportunities with migrant families and orphanages, and I also want to leave time for spontaneous, experiential learning in my schedule.  In the midst of a hectic place like Beijing, I also want to leave time for rest and reflection.  The more I think about it, the more I feel like one semester is too short.  Nevertheless, I'm trying to appreciate and absorb each day for what it  is.  Considering the pace at which China is changing, I feel very blessed to in a place where things might never be the same again in the future.

I've Overcome the Firewall

Which means it's time for me to recount what's happened while I've been in Beijing!  I landed here on the 19th and was immediately frustrated by the lack of access to internet at the airport which made it difficult for me to contact people from UCEAP (the study abroad program) and to tell my family I had arrived safely.  Accessing wi-fi entailed walking throughout most of the airport to find a little machine which scanned my passport and gave me log-in information which I would need after waiting a good fifteen minutes for my phone to connect to the network.  I only tell this story because, looking back, it was my first encounter with the many layers of Chinese bureaucracy which exists here.  Much of the past few days has been about learning to meet the right people, ask the right questions, and read all the fine print to make sure I'm not missing out on anything important.  And I haven't even begun to touch on the class registration process or what it was like to find a good cell phone plan to use.  Its been a little overwhelming for my brain which is a bit slow in Mandarin and just coming off a sluggish 2-month vacation, but I am contentedly enduring these trials nonetheless, knowing this whole semester will be an experiential learning process and a surefire way to kick my mind back into shape.

Thankfully, there are little things which make me feel at home in Beijing.  On my first night, I went out to find dinner at a nearby fast food place and ordered these noodles which had a 麻辣spice in it which I love and am never able to find in the states.  It gives your tongue a numbing spicy sensation and is ubiquitous in the cuisine here.  And then I went to a convenience store at the global village which is where the international student dormitories are.  There, I found 旺旺牛奶, my favorite type of milk which also can't be found in the states.  Little things like these made me weirdly excited about being in China.

First meal.

旺旺牛奶。First drink.

The next day was orientation and registration.  I'll spare you the details of that since they're mostly logistics which I'm no good at remembering anyway.  Most of it involved lots of listening and waiting in line.  On the 21st, we woke up early in the morning and had a Chinese placement test to determine our classes.  Later in the evening, I met up with a friend who flew all the way from XiAn to welcome me to Beijing.

At the east gate which I will walk through every day on my way into campus.

中关新园 zhongguanxinyuan The buildings where international students and scholars live.

She took me out every day to enjoy more good food and visit places I had not yet been to in Beijing.  We visited 南锣鼓巷nanluoguxiang and 王府井wangfujing.  南锣鼓巷nanluoguxiang is a more traditional looking street in Beijing that's full of delicious street food, cute stores with cute Asian things, and tourists.  王府井wangfujing is the street in Beijing notorious for weird street foods like deep fried scorpion and tarantulas (none of which I ate) along with large shopping malls with name brand stores (none of which I shopped at).  It was great fun to catch up with an old friend, see interesting things, and be forced to use more Chinese.

火锅 Hot Pot

Skewers of candied hawthorne are a Beijing specialty.

Squid at 南锣鼓巷

This is a part of 王府井wangfujing.  Yes, that stuff on the very left is starfish. More pictures of creepy things to come in my next post.

The glamorous part of 王府井wangfujing.

Okay, now more about the nitty-gritty things.  Besides walking around Beijing, I've also been settling into my dorm and getting to know some of the other UCEAP students.  It's been fun to see everyone's different reactions to things in Beijing since a lot of us have gone out to explore together.  We're a pretty diverse group.  Some of us have lived here and others are in Asia for the first time.  I haven't gotten to know all of them very well yet, but it will be interesting to see how social dynamics play out.  On occasion, I meet people from other programs and countries, but the way our living situation and programs are set up makes it difficult to do so.  I also hear there will be a good opportunity to meet regular Chinese students when classes start and clubs start tabling.  So at this point, I can't really foreshadow what my social relationships will be like with people here though I'm trying to keep an open mind when meeting others.  

And though I genuinely do enjoy new experiences like this, there are still little things about being in an unfamiliar place which make life more difficult than it would be in the US.  The class registration system and other logistical things are always unclear.  (I will never complain about telebears again.)  Most of us find things out through the grapevine.  Air pollution irritates my throat and the cold weather makes my nose runny.  There are also a lot of things which feel uncertain about the coming semester like figuring out who I can trust here, what things to commit to on my schedule, what goals I can realistically aim to achieve, etc.  I'm actually kind of looking forward to having class start tomorrow so I can begin to know more of what this semester will look like.  More to come!

I'm in Beijing!

Blogger is blocked in China and the VPN installed on my laptop isn't working. :(. Fortunately, it's working on my smart phone so I can put up some picture here of what I've been up to in Beijing for the past few days. Sorry, no captions since it's too hard to do on the mobile app, but much of it is self-explanatory!