Orientation is starting to wind down. I’m getting a little bored with meetings that essentially say “other cultures are weird, give yourself time to get used to it, be polite to Chinese people, they are different than us” but take an hour to do it. Fortunately, I think the last of the meetings are tomorrow. I meet my homestay family the day after tomorrow, probably. Some interesting things happened, though, like:
1. I started the intensive Chinese classes today. Damn straight they’re intensive – I had to learn forty words last night and forty tonight. This is ridiculous. I haven’t had a problem retaining them in the short term but I have no idea how many I can hold onto for any meaningful period of time. Oy gevalt. The format of the classes is nice, though; for the first hour and twenty minutes all the students on the same level (I tested into third year Chinese, right where I should be, with about 20 others) go over that day’s words and grammar. Then we split into classes of five or six, and spend the first hour of that class reviewing the grammar again, then the final time doing activities based on the theme of the words. All in all, it’s four hours of Chinese, starting at 8 a.m., which is actually ok for me because I’ve been waking up at about six since I got here so I don’t know the difference.
2. I am starting to notice that China has a lot of Chinese people, and Chinese writing, in it. I don’t mean this in a “stupid Emily” way (although, let’s face it, it probably is that way no matter how I mean it), but rather I mean that for such a big city so much on the world stage, there are surprisingly few foreigners here, and not a lot of effort has been made to cater to them. The restaurants I’ve seen rarely have English menus, people don’t know that much English, signs and businesses aren’t in English, etc. I don’t really have a problem with it, but I am pretty surprised, especially after traveling in the European Union where everyone speaks English better than I do. When there is English, it’s usually okay but sometimes not. Examples include a bubble tea place that sold “smoothles” (I thought this was so cute that I bought one), an excellent knockoff Puma bag that actually said “Fuma” on it instead (and the little puma silhouette was smoking a cigar, which you could only see if you looked really closely, but I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE CHINA), and, my favorite so far, a Chinese guy I saw wearing a shirt that said “I love Chna”. Awesome, dude, I’m sure you do.
3. As a corollary to 2, I’ve been the subject of a couple interesting experiences. A couple days ago on campus, a guy, maybe thirty years old, comes up to me and asks me if his English grammar is right on a couple sentences. No big deal, I help him and go to one of my stupid cultural awareness meetings. But today I went to Tiananmen Square (see below), and this guy asked if my white friends and I would have our picture taken with his little daughter. We obliged, and since she was super cute I got one of us with her too. Then later we were in a park and a toddler got visibly frightened of us and ran and hid behind his mom’s legs. It was funny at the time, but you sort of take it for granted in America that no matter what you look like, no matter what your ethnicity, you can go pretty much anywhere in the country, certainly in big cities, and people won’t think anything of it except “oh, an asian/black/latino/etc.” person and will probably assume you live there unless you reveal otherwise. My three white companions and I were the only Anglos in Tiananmen.
4. Why were we in Tiananmen square in the first place, you ask? In the only worthwhile activity we’ve done thus far, we were told to get into pairs and were then given a business card-sized piece of paper with the name of a Beijing landmark or sight on it (the Chinese name, not the English one). We had four hours to get there (it started at 2 p.m.), get something to prove we were there – an entrance ticket, a picture, whatever – and get back. We were assigned a park just north of the Forbidden City, which is just north of Tiananmen square, so we relished the chance to get out of our neighborhood (which, let’s face it, is not full of sightseeing) and see some famous things. I figured out how to take the bus to the subway to the other subway to the other bus using my handy Lonely Planet China guidebook and one of the 345029873254 maps of Beijing my mom gave me before I left, and we set off, getting there with only a minor hitch when we couldn’t find the subway station from the bus stop and had to ask an actual Chinese person, who we could not understand. Once on the subway, we ran into my friend Michael (from my school) and his partner, who were looking for the same park, and became a quartet of stupid Americans on the subway. We got off and walked around the Great Hall of the People, where the Chinese equivalent of the Senate is held, the Mao mausoleum (we didn’t go in), the new symphony hall/opera house, and then Tiananmen square. It wasn’t as busy as I’d expected – no mobs of people, but quite a few were out milling around and taking pictures. There’s not a whole bunch to do there, other than briefly look at some nice Olympic-themed topiaries and escape from people trying to sell you souvenir junk. We then hopped our fourth bus (meeting up with a group of three with the same destination on our way) and finally found the park with about an hour and fifteen minutes left. We paid 2 yuan to get in (I felt ripped off at having to pay to get in even though it was less than thirty cents), and then stepped through the gate. It became clear why I had paid to get in – this was nothing like an American city park, but more of a botanical garden, with a few pagodas up on a hill. We climbed up a dirt path on the side of the hill (there were perfectly nice steps, but we didn’t know that until we were up there) and were immediately treated to an awe-inspiring view of the Forbidden City sprawled out to our south. The pagoda had ostensibly held the remains of a Buddha until the British stole them around 1900, and had a plaque commemorating Anglo imperialism on the base where the remains used to be held. Farther up was another pagoda, this one bigger with an even better view and a Buddha and some incense inside. After looking around a bit, we climbed down and walked through a series of lovely gardens and brightly painted gates, stopping in a bamboo grove to do our best panda impressions (see the picture higher up). After wandering and being upset over the squat toilets, which were the only ones available, we parted ways and Michael and I headed back to campus for another thrilling meeting about being culturally sensitive.
5. While in Tiananmen square, I saw a police officer arresting a guy for selling unlicensed stuffed fuwa (the Olympic mascots). He had handcuffs and everything, and I couldn’t help but thinking, dude, he’s selling stuffed animals, there is no need for this kind of seriousness. But still, smackdown!
6. Unfortunately, I have to take a twelve-day journey to somewhere in remote China in mid-September. My choices are backpacking and camping in Tibet (obviously not, I’d actually sledgehammer my kneecaps to get out of that, and anyone who thinks I’m bluffing doesn’t know me well at all), hiking along the Silk Road (not as bad, would only use a regular hammer), and rafting down the Mekong river to the Burmese/Thai border. This involves NO backpacking and is the one I’ll try for, but unfortunately I’ll be stuck in an indigenous village for three days and it will almost certainly not have plumbing. These trips are ostensibly about experiential learning and self-discovery; I will doubtless learn that if allowed to go for four days without showering I will have even fewer boyfriends than I do now (0, for those of you playing along at home). It’s not all bad though: we get to visit the provincial capital of Kunming, which has six million people and a similar number of flushing toilets, and walk in a tea plantation! And go rafting! Yay! Regardless, I would like to propose another trip for the prissier among us:
SHANGHAI TRIP
Objectives: This trip emphasizes experiential learning in the area of China’s emergent economy. Participants will travel to Shanghai, China’s financial capital, and partake in a homestay with an obscenely wealthy nouveau-riche family, who will treat them right, serve them weird and possibly endangered seafood, and provide them with a valuable glimpse of life as one of China’s newest cultural groups. Activities include meeting with local businesspeople over dim sum and a visit to the Shanghai municipal water center, which is responsible for overseeing all of the awesome, readily accessible Western-style plumbing in the area.
Yeah, that sounds better.
7. I ate dumplings again for lunch today, so time to up the Dumpling Tally!
Dumpling tally: 14
No comments:
Post a Comment