Today was pretty uneventful, which was actually sort of a nice break after wandering around a lot for the past few days. I woke up and went to Chinese and then spent my hour with my language tutor. He’s nice and very helpful when I ask him questions about some of the little grammar things we learn, but I feel like I generally have a decent grasp on the material so I’m usually hard-pressed to find things to talk to him about. What I’d really like to do is work on my listening skills, which are nothing short of atrocious, but I’m not really sure how to bring that up or even how to work on it, short of just listening to people speak Chinese. I’m picking up more and more of what people say the more I’m here, but people speak so quickly and kind of jumble up the four tones used in Chinese, so it can be a little difficult to tell what words they’re trying to use. Beijingers are also notorious throughout China for their accent: they tend heavily toward replacing the –n sounds on the ends of their words with –r sounds, and they don’t enunciate very clearly either. The cab drivers are particularly problematic in this area. Blessedly, my tutor is from a province in central China and speaks lovely Mandarin, the way the people in my textbook talk.
After that I headed off to history class. After adjusting to all the weirdness here - Chinese classes taught without a word of English, store signs and menus I can’t read, the weird fusion of old and new – it’s really comforting in a weird way to have a seminar-style class, taught in English, where you take notes off the board. We are starting at the beginning of the Qing dynasty, which began with the Manchus invading from the north and instituting a Confucian-style government based on ethnic sovereignty while integrating both Han Chinese (the majority) and other minorities. It’s relatively interesting, but I am most looking forward to learning about how things got messed up over there, because at this point it’s looking pretty solid.
I went back to the student lounge on our floor of the foreign students’ building, which is a wonderful place because you can speak English in it,* to study for my first weekly test tomorrow and then attended a brief informational meeting about the long trip we’re going on next week. I got my wish and am going to Yunnan province, a tropical place without malaria. We’re mostly staying in hotels and are doing fun things like touring a tea plantation, taking an 80-mile bike ride around a lake (the path is flat and paved and we’re breaking it up into two days, but the bike butt will still be very intense), and going whitewater rafting. Listening to the packing list and warnings for some of the other trips, I feel very confident in my decision to visit the south. (For example, on the Tibetan backpacking trip: “Every year at least one person passes out due to altitude sickness. If you feel like you’re going to be that person, talk to one of the trip leaders immediately.”) The worst I have to worry about, it seems, is a sunburn, and the temperature never drops below sixty. I’m not entirely sure why I haven’t moved down there yet, now that I think about it. Anyway, I’m kind of looking forward to it, because it means a respite from the 245290873 new Chinese words I have to learn every night.
Since today wasn’t that interesting or meaty, I’m going to field some questions people have asked me. These aren’t really frequently asked, since I’ve heard most of them from only one person, so instead of FAQs they’re just going to be AQs instead.
Q: How are you?
A: I’m fine. Like, if something happened, I’d definitely tell you about it.
Q: No, really. How’s Beijing?
A: Beijing (or, as a couple of people and I have started calling it, “the Beezh”) is an interesting place. You’ve no doubt seen all the pictures of people in shanties with new multimillion-dollar-a-unit condos going up in the background, but it’s still much, much weirder to see them out your window on the train ride into town. I also feel like my impression isn’t super accurate yet, because the city is still in full Olympics/Paralympics mode, so it’s extra clean, extra uncrowded, etc. Apparently there are a lot of street food vendors that will come back once we stop being under so much scrutiny, which I am looking forward to. Another weird thing I’ve noticed is that, at least around my part of town, there is a very, very faint smell of rotting fruit. I don’t notice it anymore except when I walk around certain areas where it’s particularly strong, but it took a few days to get used to. Also, most of the city doesn’t have much personality on face value. If you chose a random, major road, you’d probably find some restaurants and clothing stores on it, but nothing particularly culturally significant. What there is, though, is very well-preserved and seems quite well-integrated into the city (the constantly-being-demolished hutongs aside).
Q: How bad is the air quality? What is the weather like?
A: This is actually a Q A’ed with great F. I have a hard time commenting since I got here after the Olympics, but thus far it has been…middling. Most days are moderately “hazy” (to use the government’s line) but there have been great variations in both directions. For example, last Friday was awful. I couldn’t see the sun all day, the sky had literally no color in it, and the sunset wasn’t colors like it is in most places. Instead, it was just a faint orange circle that kept getting lower and lower until it disappeared. That Sunday, by contrast (the day I went to the Summer Palace) was as lovely and clear a day as you’d see in any major city in the US, with a brilliant blue sky and languidly drifting white clouds. So it comes and goes. The weather itself is mostly hot and humid this time of year; it actually reminds me a fair amount of Chicago.
Q: Have you met any cool people yet?
A: Yes! Most Beijingers are very friendly, albeit a touch incomprehensible. My favorite is the lady who runs a little kiosk across the street from my campus. The kiosk is open at seemingly all hours, selling bottled drinks and cigarettes, but until about ten or eleven in the morning she also has her husband there making jianbing,** the greatest breakfast ever. I come by there so often (for forty cents they’re hard to pass up) that she knows me, and greets me by my Chinese name (Lei Li) and knows how I like my jianbing – not too spicy, with extra cilantro – without having to ask, which is sort of the Beijing equivalent of your barista knowing how you want your latte made every morning. What a sweetie. A close second are the meek but super-sweet women who work at the bakery next door to campus, which is sadly closed for the next two days for remodeling. A closer third is one of my Chinese teachers, a chubby woman in her early twenties named Yu Laoshi*** who must have been a children’s TV show host in a previous life, because she uses this insanely high tone of voice and is very congratulatory. She kind of has to be seen to be believed, but she’s crazy happy and everyone I know loves her.
Q: What’s the best thing you’ve eaten?
A: I don’t know – I wish my host family went out to eat more, because I haven’t gone out to eat a lot (Chinese food is served family-style, so it’s no fun unless you’re with a group). I’ve had some excellent gong bao chicken, which is allegedly the basis for kung pao chicken in the US but tastes nothing like it – here, they use delicious fresh veggies, and the sauce is light and tangy instead of gloppy and overly sweet. I’ve also had delicious versions of pretty much everything I’ve eaten for Dim Sum. In fact, the only things I’ve had that I didn’t like were overly spicy things, which is a matter of personal taste. My host dad’s cooking is hit and miss: some things are really good, like the eggplant dish I love and this delicious thing he makes with bitter cucumbers and vinegar,**** but some of it’s really bland.
Q: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve eaten?
A: Still the blueberry potato chips, but here’s a thing that happened to me last night: I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed when the light bulb went out. I explained it to my mom, who said that she didn’t have the right kind of bulb but would get one in the morning. I rooted around in my bag in the faint light coming from under the door, grabbed an appropriately-sized tube, squirted the blue paste onto my toothbrush, and started going for it. I was so tired I didn’t notice the taste was a little off, and it took me about a minute and a half to realize I’d been brushing my teeth with Lanacane. However, you’re only supposed to call Poison Control if you ingest it, and since I hadn’t swallowed any I just chalked it up to me not being super smart and brushed my teeth very carefully with real toothpaste for an extra long time.
Q: Wait, so if you don’t read the menus how do you feed yourself?
A: When you get street food, which is what I do most of the time, it’s all right there, so you just point at it if it looks good (it all looks good) and then pay about twenty cents for it. Out at restaurants, I’ve had the most success with identifying what the group wants (for example, a spicy dish, something with cold noodles, something with beef, and a soup) and then asking what the waitperson recommends in those various categories. This has never turned me wrong and it probably never will.
Q: What do you do for fun?
A: I eat street food, I explore places (such as the area behind the supermarket, or Nanluogu Hutong, to which I am already planning a return trip) (also the picture at the top is another NLGHT picture), and I go out some nights. If you go to a good place and stake out an outdoor table with a friend or two, grabbing a beer and watching the world go by is a killer way to spend some time. I’m also really excited because I can get into clubs now, which are ridiculously fun. I’m going to try and drag some people to a hip-hop one this weekend.
Q: How touristy is it?
A: Depends. The major sites – the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, etc. – have all their stuff in English as well, but I’m sure that was going on well before the Olympics. There are a few official “Olympic designated” restaurants which have menus in English, but for some reason these have never seemed that good. As a rule, any restaurant that advertises an “English menu” is going to suck, especially if it’s in a touristy area. A lot of the Nanluogu Hutong ones do this too, but they cater more to expats than foreigners, so it’s cool. That street can do no wrong, I swear.
Q: Do you feel like your Chinese is getting better?
A: Yes. Being around Chinese people (and, at home, Chinese television) does really help get your ears acclimated to the sounds of the language, which is what I was having the most trouble with. The great thing about Chinese TV, too, is that it has little subtitles at the bottom of the screen, because different dialects use the same characters to mean the same things but assign them different sounds, and this way people from all over China can tell what’s going on. Reading is often easier for me to understand than trying to listen to people’s Beijing accents, so with this way I’ve managed to pick up some of the major plot points of my host family’s favorite soap opera (the guy and the girl are engaged, but there’s this shadowy “other woman” in the background and the girl is freaking out over it).
Q: What’s the coolest word you’ve learned?
A: It’s actually a phrase: bu san, bu si, which literally means “not three, not four” but is used to describe sketchy or creepy people or things. Many things in Beijing are bu san, bu si, so I’ve had ample opportunity to use this one. Most of the Chinese swears are not that interesting, and the one that I particularly like I will not elaborate on as it is moderately appalling.
If you write and ask me more questions, I will answer them, at some point! Tomorrow will likely be pretty quiet too, but Saturday…yikes.
*Like many other language-intensive programs, IES instituted a pledge that requires students to speak Mandarin exclusively except if they’re talking to one of the program directors, it’s an emergency (“How do you say ‘my dorm is on fire?’ Wo de…um, wo de sushe…AAAAGHGHGH”), or you’re in the student lounge, which is heavily frequented for this reason. However, almost nobody I know takes the pledge seriously anywhere outside the building or after the initial thirty seconds of a conversation. Most of us just don’t have the vocabulary to keep it going.
**Jianbing are a very common breakfast food in the Beijing area. They start their (short, if I’m eating them) lives as crepes, but then a cracked egg is poured over the top and spread out thinly over the crepe, which is then sprinkled with green onions and cilantro and flipped over to cook the egg part. Meanwhile, the other side is brushed lightly with hoisin sauce, soy paste, and, if you want, some chili paste. Finally, this thing that looks like a really thin, crisp-fried wonton skin is put into the middle, and the jianbing is folded up and eaten. They are so good.
***In many cases, Chinese people are addressed not by Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. but by their job titles, so Yu Laoshi literally means Teacher Yu. Similarly, your doctor would be called Li Yisheng, or Doctor Li (but this signifies the profession, not the degree of higher learning), and your mechanic would be Chen Shifu, or Master Worker Chen. Of course, there are also instances when you would call someone Mr. Yang or Ms. Liu. I should have taken Spanish.
****Chinese cuisine has four main flavors: salty, spicy, sweet, and sour. It took me about a day and a half to discover that I love sour more than all the others put together.
No comments:
Post a Comment