End of First Semester

At HBA we are supposed to cover a years worth of Chinese in 2 months. This means that each semester is about 4 weeks. I’m going to quickly finish describing first semester in this post so that I can start talking about more recent adventures.

The last week of first semester began like all the other weeks, with a Sunday afternoon at my Chinese family’s home. It was a particularly special Sunday because this was the day my parents were planning on introducing me to Beijing’s special dish: roasted duck. I had already tasted Beijing roasted duck, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them because they were too excited for me. This particular afternoon I was in for a real treat, because I would be dining with my Chinese parents, and all of my Chinese grandparents. We arrived at the restaurant and the evening began. One thing that I’ve observed is that older Chinese people get a huge kick out of hearing Americans speak their language. While we were waiting for food I was subjected to dozens of questions, about Chinese food and Beijing weather and places of interest. It didn’t matter how I answered, they were enormously pleased with any kind of coherent sentence. And then the food started coming. I can’t tell you exactly what I ate that night, but I’ve learned in China that asking what you’re eating isn’t always the best idea. I do know that I ate jellyfish, which does not taste anything like what you would expect. It is crunchy, and prepared with generous amounts of vinegar. My family ordered probably a dozen dishes while we waited for the roast duck (it takes about an hour to prepare it correctly), and they were torn between forcing me to eat (standard Chinese host behavior) and warning me to save room for the duck. When the duck came it was truly epic – they eat everything here. There is a plate of duck meat, a plate of duck skin, and a soup of everything else. It was delicious, or I thought so. My Chinese family was not pleased, and they let the waiter know it. My 4 grandparents took turns yelling at him for several minutes, explaining that it was my first time eating roasted duck and they had ruined it and they wanted another duck immediately. The waiter eventually brought another duck, and peace returned to the table. All in all a very enjoyable night.

The last week of the semester is really intense. By this point you are exhausted and worn out from your first three weeks in China, adjusting to time differences, getting used to the food and water, and of course dealing with the course load. Grammar structures are getting noticeably more difficult and vocab words just keep piling up. The midterm is basically the same as any other test (it focuses on that week’s lessons), but it also includes an essay at the end. Instead of a regular oral exam, people team up and perform skits for the rest of the class and teachers. In general, these skits are pretty amusing, and poorly prepared, since the night before everyone has been studying for the written test. Afterwards everyone gets lunch with the teachers and the week in between the first and second semesters begins. However, this week is not a break, but instead a chance to travel to other parts of China to write a social report on Chinese culture. Students can go to a number of places, including Inner Mongolia, Shanghai, and a traditional monk temple. Second year students like myself are expected to turn in a 1200+ character essay at the start of the following week. I decided to go to Shanghai, to investigate the Chinese business world. I’ll write about that next.

MS

Catching Up

Alright so I am now well into the “second semester” of my program and I have much that I haven’t shared. I’ll start with my trip to the Great Wall.

So several Saturday’s ago we all woke up at 7am and got on buses to go to the Great Wall. The Wall is about 2 hours outside the city, and along the way you get to see some areas of China that are very different from inside Beijing. Upon arriving at the Wall, the first thing that happens is that a dozen Chinese people start shouting at you to buy straw hats and t-shirts and sunglasses. The second thing that happens is that you realize that you really haven’t arrived at the Wall at all, but instead you are at the foot of a small mountain, on top of which the Great Wall twists and turns. I remember looking up and thinking that there must be some second part of the journey, perhaps an elevator or small bus, that brought you up to the wall. This was not the case. The walk up to the wall takes about 30 minutes of often steep stairs and roads. Once you reach the Wall, your journey has really only just begun. You need to “climb the Wall”. In other words, you walk up stairs for an hour and a half until you reach the highest point in that part of the Wall. The whole experience is exhausting. What’s really messed up is that the Chinese people selling you stuff at the bottom of Wall know what you’re in for but still try to rip you off and sell you things that you then have to carry all the way up. The Wall itself is spectacular – you can see for miles and miles in all directions and much of it is still in very good condition. Upon reaching the top, you take a few pictures, look around, and then begin the descent. Back at the foot of the wall, students trickle down in 2s and 3s, soaked in sweat, and sit down at a restaurant to eat. Overall I would say that climbing the Great Wall is the kind of thing that I’m really happy that I did, but that I’m not sure I would be able to do again. The final word: 4 dumplings.

The next day I woke up aching from head to toe. My Chinese family and I had plans that day so I again had an early morning. One of the things I’ve found is that on weekends, you rarely get the rest you think you’re going to get, either because you’re going out late with friends or because you just don’t have the heart to decline every single invitation your overeager Chinese family extends to you. We went to Beihai Gongyuan, a beautiful park. The downside was that we had to walk all over the place all morning, which my legs were not prepared for. Afterwards, at lunch, I mentioned that I had never been to the Forbidden City, which was a huge mistake. My family said that I needed a full day to appreciate it, but that we could go to another park that had a great view of the city. So after lunch we headed to Jingshan Gongyuan (the other park), and walked around some more. This park is an absolutely hilarious place. It is not as pretty as Beihai, but what it lacks in aesthetic value it more than makes up for in character. This park is almost entirely frequented by retired Chinese people who, after working for their whole lives, now only want to sing with other old Chinese people. Every few hundred feet there is a cluster of 10-40 retired Chinese people singing traditional Chinese songs, often being directed by another old Chinese person. They are everywhere. And in between these singing groups, the old people play Chinese’s take on hackeysack. Instead of a ball, they kick, knee, and head butt something that looks like a shuttlecock with feathers between themselves. They are ridiculously good at this, and can keep this up for long periods of time. The whole affair is entirely hilarious, because these old people really move quickly and with uncanny agility juggle this feathery thing. In order to see the Forbidden City, we had to ascend a series of hills. From the highest peak you can look down directly onto the Forbidden City. After this my family brought me to dinner, and would have brought me back to their home if I didn’t plead with them to bring me home so I could study my characters for the next day.

I have a lot more to post, and I will get around to it in the next few days. After being at HBA for this long, the amount of time it takes me to do homework and memorize characters is significantly less than before, so I have more free time now. I only have two weeks left, and I feel like I am starting the final push. It’s amazing how fast it’s gone by, but also how much I’ve learned and seen. Also, from the schoolwork to the weather, I’m really getting used to living here. I will admit I’m a little tired of Chinese food.

MS

A New Dumpling

Alright so I've discovered that continuing with my original long blog format is not going compatible with my time constraints on this program. I just don't have the time to sit down for 30-45 minutes every day or so and write a blog entry, so from now on I'm going to try to write a short entry every few days. Today I'll write about why I have so little free time, and over the next few days I'll try to catch up on the events of the last week and a half, including, but not limited to, my trip to the Great Wall, my plans to go to Shanghai, and eating jellyfish. Hopefully by the end of this post my parents will forgive me for my poor communication.

Alright so I'm basically running on 4-5 hours of sleep a night here, maybe 6 hours a day including naps. I'll quickly re-explain my schedule: classes from 8-12, an hour and a half for lunch, 50 minutes of one on one with a teacher, and then lots of work. I now also have a language tutor for two hours every week, and the longer I'm here, the more grammar and vocabulary I'm responsible for. So here is a typical day:

6:00am - wake up. This is if I've done a good job studying the night before, otherwise it's a 5am wake up.

6:00am-7:45am - review characters, shower, eat breakfast

8:00am - class

12:00pm - out of class, lunch time

1:30pm-2:20pm - one on one with a teacher

2:30pm - 3:30pm - sleep! Or do any grocery shopping / school supply shopping I may need to do.

4:00pm-5:00pm - language tutor on mondays and tuesdays, write chinese essay on wednesdays, study for test on thursdays

5:00pm-6:30pm - make flash cards, (try to) do written homework

6:30pm-7:30pm - dinner. if characters are particularly hard, eat alone and study

7:30pm-9:30pm - teacher office hours! get my written homework checked and corrected and questions answers. often my completed homework after office hours does not at all resemble my homework before the aid of my teachers.

10:00pm-1:00am - study new words. This means memorizing the meanings of 50-80 new words and phrases, their pronunciations, and their characters. Often by 12:00am my studying becomes far less productive, so I set my alarm to 5:00am and pass out.

So that's what I'm dealing with here. It is thoroughly exhausting, but again, definitely a worthwhile investment of my time. Until next time.

MS

Part 2

Alright so, as promised, this is the followup of my last post. This past Sunday I met my Chinese family. My family consists of me, a fellow HBA classmate (now my older brother), and a chinese mother and father. Our teachers introduced us to our family and then we were on our own. They also gave us a photo album, which they apparently expect us to fill up with family memories. My "parents" were genuinely thrilled to meet us, and they told us that while we were in Beijing, their home was also our home. They are incredibly sweet. My "ma ma" is a teacher and my "ba ba" is a chemist. Before coming to Beijing, I had purchased an "I love New York" t-shirt and hat, which I gave to them as gifts. It was a big success. We exchanged phone numbers, and then I had to return to my dorm room to do my homework.

One of the main points that the teachers stress to the parents is that we have a lot of work and not a lot of free time, so they should be understanding if we are unable to spend a lot of time with them. However my parents, the following day, gave me a phone call, inviting me to a very special evening. My Chinese was not good enough to make a convincing excuse, so at 5:00 I found myself in my ma ma's car, talking in Chinese, and explaining that I really had to be home by 8:00 to do my work. If I didn't tell them this, I don't know what time I would have gotten home. It sounded like they had some real big plans for that evening.

Anyway we drove through Beijing for about half an hour, until we arrived at their apartment building. Along the way they pointed out the Olympic stadium and the CCTV building and other landmarks. They are incredibly proud of their city and their country. In the apartment were my ba ba's parents, cooking dinner, dressed in what can only be described as matching daytime pajamas. I apparently now had Chinese grandparents. My ye ye (grandpa) instantly demanded that we sit down and relax and gave us an enormous amount of tea. Their apartment was very small, only four or five rooms, and all four of them live there. My ma ma explained to me that she and my ba ba recently purchased an apartment that they had not yet moved into, so that they could finally live alone.

For dinner I had no idea what to expect. When the plates were brought out, it wasn't very reassuring: a lot of stew-ish dishes and fish and strange unidentifiable brown items (there were also eggs from an unidentified animal). Of course, to be polite, I had to try everything. Nothing was terrible. A few things were actually very good, even though I have no idea what they were. The whole time my Chinese grandparents talked to me in totally incomprehensible Chinese. It turns out that it's not my fault that I didn't understand them, since apparently the Chinese that older Beijing people speak is totally different from modern Chinese. My parents translated all meal. The general topic of conversation was "in what ways is Chinese better than America".

One little surprise I had was that apparently in China burping and slurping and chewing with your mouth open is totally appropriate. Or at least at this dinner. My nai nai (grandma) was really into the burping.

Once I was full, I was forced to eat a ton more food. Once this was done, and it was time to go, my grandparents offered their home to me, and we said good bye. My parents drove me home, and it was back to work.

MS

Internet Again

Apologies for the hiatus. The cafe where I steal my internet from has been having technical difficulties. After my first real weekend in Beijing I have much to tell, and not much time to write, so this will be part 1 of a 2 part miniseries.

For those of you wondering where our class went last weekend instead of the Great Wall, I will say now that the class went to a Chinese Opera, and I did not attend. I've heard mixed revues. Instead, I was playing soccer with some local Chinese students on our school's soccer field. I did not know this, but apparently soccer is a pretty big deal here, and they were all unfortunately very good. The experience was as fun as embarrassing. They had a nick name for me and, while I don't know what it meant, I don't think it was complimentary.

After 10 days in Beijing, I still have not completely adjusted to the time change. I wake up before my alarm every day and want to go to sleep around 9. It's really hard to adjust. Also the weather here is crazy and there were two days last week where it was completely dark by 4pm due to clouds which was unhelpful. I also don't have a lot of time at night to sleep so I have to sleep during the day after class which also throws off my body clock.

Talking to the locals is a really fun way to practice my Chinese and to test what I know, but many of them only want to talk to me to practice their English. It leads to an interesting dynamic, usually with them talking to me in English and me replying in Chinese. No one looks good, and no one understands anything. One Beijing local asked me for my email address, so that I could teach him English over the internet (I withheld my personal information). One thing that I'm noticing is that our teachers can understand us and can hold conversations with us but our Chinese is really difficult for locals to understand. It makes me appreciate my teachers all the more.

Anyway this weekend I went out Friday and Saturday night to two completely different parts of Beijing. On Friday I went to a giant rave in an old factory (converted to an art studio). The whole thing was pretty poorly put together and there was fog from the fog machines everywhere but it was a lot of fun. There were a lot of my Yale classmates there, both from my program and from other programs in Beijing. Also a ton of of locals.

On Saturday I returned to Sanlitur (I had been there the week before), and I went to a club called Vic's. Lots of my friends who have been to Beijing recommended this place to me and it was absolutely awesome. They play a lot of American music and pack a ton of people into a not so big space. There was a live performance of the Chinese hip hop type that was definitely something new.

I also took the Beijing subway for the first time. It is new and clean and air conditioned and has LCD TVs in all the cars. It really puts New York's subway system to shame. It's so new that even Beijing locals need to look at the maps on the cars in order to get around.

The big news of the weekend is a bit of a coming of age story. I bought a bike. It doesn't sound like much, but it's a big deal in Beijing. Everyone has a bike, and if you don't have one, you can't go far. I had to walk long and far to find my sweet ride. I ended up at a small shack in an alleyway, and paid 180 kuai (maybe $25). I had to negotiate the price down from the original 240 kuai. The fact that when they first put the bike together and I rode it out of the store it fell apart helped out. Even my Chinese teachers are impressed that I found a bike for so cheap. Like all bikes in Beijing, it has a "seat" on the back (a flat weave of wires) for a lucky passenger. It also has only 1 gear and minimally effective brakes. It's my pride and joy. Going to the market has never been faster.

Anyway that's it for part 1. The menu for part 2 includes meeting my host family and a very special meal they prepared for me. Stay tuned.

MS

End of Week One

Today I had my first test, thus ending my first week of classes. Tests are divided into two parts: a written exam and an oral exam. The written exam is 2 hours long and consists of translations, multiple choice, and reading comprehension questions. For the oral exam, we need to recite a short essay we wrote and memorized earlier in the week. The whole affair is pretty stressful. Since every night we have so much work, we don't really have time to review previous lessons. The week's lessons add up to a couple hundred characters and several dozen sentence structures, that we have to cram in in addition to our regular homework. As a result, I don't think anyone got much sleep last night. The test itself is not terribly difficult, just enormously frustrating when there is one character out of hundreds you studied that you can't remember. The oral exam was much easier than I thought it would be. After speaking only Chinese for the past week, memorizing 2 paragraphs of Chinese that I wrote took only 20 minutes. I'll soon know if it was as simple as I thought.

After the exam, we had a Chinese Class lunch. Every Tuesday and Friday, the teachers take their classes out to lunch. It is a good opportunity to practice Chinese with the teachers in an informal setting. The teachers also know what to order so lunch is much better than when we order on our own. Everyone is in good spirits because the week is over. It's a win-win. After lunch, everyone is exhausted and passes out in their room.

Even though we've only been here for a week, already everyone walks around the campus and surrounding area like they own the place, recommending restaurants to teachers and strangers and talking loudly in mediocre Chinese. We get some bemused looks, but in general the people on the campus are now accustomed to our presence. Our Chinese has gotten much more fluid, not necessarily much better grammatically, but we can definitely communicate our ideas and thoughts a lot faster, at least to each other. We still have to sidestep around words or sentence structures we don't know, but in general we can carry a conversation.

Talking with the teachers is definitely an ego check, since they correct every mistake we make. However I try to talk to the teachers as much as possible, because it's the only way my Chinese will improve in its accuracy. Every school night the teachers have office hours in our dorm building for several hours. I try to go every night because it not only improves my Chinese but it also increases my homework scores. It can get frustrating talking to the teachers for long periods of time, but every night it becomes easier to understand what they are saying the first time they say it.

Tomorrow we were supposed to go to the Great Wall, but because of recent bad weather, we are rescheduling. Apparently there is a backup activity planned, but for now it is a secret. I hope you're as excited as I am.

MS

More

Since my last post I've had two 1 on 1 sessions with two different Chinese teachers. We have these sessions every day and they last for 50 minutes. These are really intense. There is no where to hide and no way to pass a question on to another student. Every time the teacher asks you a question, you have to figure out what it means and respond. That means a lot of the time the teacher repeats or rephrases the same question sometimes three or four times. It can be embarrassing to ask the teacher what he is saying but the teachers are, as usual, very nice about it, as it is expected that we are going to have trouble, especially at the beginning. Compared to the teachers, I feel like I am talking at a painfully slow rate. Often I have to stop mid-sentence, collect myself, and start over. But even looking back at my session today compared with my session yesterday I can notice improvement. My ears are slowly becoming accustomed to hearing Chinese all the time, so I can pick up on phrases or words that I know much faster. With just two days of school, my vocabulary has grown tremendously. These 1 on 1 sessions really pressure me to engage completely in Chinese for a full 50 minutes. They may be the most valuable part of the curriculum.

Today I ate my first of what I expect to be many weird things on this trip. My friends and I went to a small restaurant in Wudaokou that serves each person a bowl of broth and noodles with an assortment of things to put in the soup and to eat on the side. This assortment consisted of many strips of meat that I can not identify, but it also included a plate of fried honeybees. I know they were bees and not some other insect because they had their wings and stripes and everything else that a bee has. They were also about an inch long each, and fully intact. They are very crunchy and mostly tasteless, but the worst is that you have to chew them for longer than you wish you did, and after you swallow you still have honeybee in your teeth. One of my friends really took a liking to them, but I was content with just one. I give eating honeybees 2 dumplings (out of 5 obviously).

MS