Look out, China, here comes the waiguoren

Well, as I'm sure you've guessed, I have indeed made it to China. I wish I could say the trip was easy, that I enjoyed a nice, peaceful flight from the Land of Mickey D's to the Middle Kingdom, but alas, I cannot. In order to become more in touch with Chinese culture, I decided to dive into the tradition of filial piety early and honored my family's timeless tradition of horrible airport luck. On further reflection, I should have realized what was coming. A window seat, a vacant middle seat for extra legroom, and no screaming children behind me? Far too good to be true. As the plane took off I gazed longingly out my window and mentally called out, "Good bye, my homeland! You have been good to me, but now I must leave you and explore the Orient. Take care! I shall miss you!" It all seemed very dramatic to me, and I sort of fantasized myself as being some sort of American Evita ("Don't cry for me, Argentina!") as I was brought my first bag of stale pretzels. Well, at least I did until my plane turned around somewhere over Wisconsin. Yes, that's right. Turned around. I'm still not entirely clear exactly what was wrong since I was listening to my iPod, but I gathered something about improper air circulation over engine parts, a fire alarm going off somewhere, and concern about the plane's safety. For some reason they also decided to leak fuel out of the plane on purpose via the wings, which to this day still doesn't make any sense to me. In any case, an hour and a half later I found myself sitting in the airport again, cast unwillingly back into the mother land. So much for my dramatic exit.

We were lucky that there was another 747 in Chicago that was free for us to use. We were unlucky, though, that it wouldn't be leaving for another five hours. What does that mean? It means that instead of landing in Beijing at 3:00 PM, I would instead arrive at 12:30 AM. Lovely. Now, I want to note right here that during this time I absolutely 100% did call IES, my study abroad program, and notified them concerning my change in flight information so that they could have someone waiting for me at the airport. Given my family history of gross airport disasters, though, do you think that information was successfully passed along? Of course not. So, there I was, luggage in hand, in the Beijing airport with no one, NO ONE waiting for me. Thankfully, I had an emergency contact number in hand and, after some more phone calls, learned what to do. I found out there were more students on my plane, so I found them and we all took cabs to Bei Wai (Beijing Foreign Studies University). By the time I finally stumbled into my room ready for bed, it was 3:00 AM.

Despite a shaky start, my first week here in China has been rather smooth. Right now I'm finishing up my orientation week, so there hasn't been much free time yet, which is probably a good thing since it doesn't allow me time to stop and have a famous Lyndsey freak out session. There have been a TON of meetings concerning every topic under the sun (traveling in China, safety, homestay guidelines, culture differences, history run-downs, etc.), but all have been very useful. I've also had some spare moments, which I've used to explore a bit of the surrounding areas around the university.

Bei Wai is a beautiful campus with lots of greenery, but it's split in half. I am currently staying in a dorm on the west side, but across a major street there's an east side with more academic buildings. To get from one side to the other, you walk through an underground passageway that goes under the road. Beyond the east side there are quite a few shops, a grocery store, and lots of small restaurants. Right now there aren't many food vendors or cars around to dodge thanks to the government's clean-up program in preparation for the Olympics, but they should all be back by mid October. I've done quite a bit of exploring in the small shopping area by Bei Wai, and while I'll spare you all of the details I'll tell you about the most interesting things I've seen and noticed:


When in the grocery store, I decided to check out the seafood section just to see if I'd see something strange but true. I did. Nestled right between the jellyfish and the squid was a medium-sized box of big, brown pupa. And they were still alive. Have you ever seen jumping beans? They reminded me of those. Every once in a while they'd jump and twitch. It was very, very strange. And why were they in the seafood section?

For a quick snack, I ate barbequed squid on a stick.

I am fully convinced 98% of all of the dogs in Beijing are some form of chihuahua. Not kidding. They're everywhere.

I once saw a man walking a magpie on a leash. When my friends and I stopped to ask him about his strange pet, he proudly held his bird up and told us all about him. He declared that he had rescued it from the wild, that he often took showers with it, and that the two were best friends. The bird's name was Huahua, and he let me hold him. Now it turns out Huahua was not just any bird. Huahua was a LUCKY bird, and since I was able to hold him, the man said I would have good luck the rest of the day.

I found a small upstairs cafe called "Stairway to Love Cafe," and my friends and I just had to visit it. I mean, come on. The name sounds like it came out of a Barry White disco ballad. How could you resist? The food was actually quite good when we visited for breakfast. I had chrysanthemum tea and congee, a traditional Chinese rice porridge. Since all of us attempted to speak Chinese to the waiters, we were all given GOLD MEMBERSHIP CARDS. That's right. I'm now VIP in the Stairway to Love Cafe and can get my 12% discount any time, anywhere. All of the other IES students are very jealous, since they visited too and were not offered a card. Clearly I am going places in life.

So far the weather in Beijing has been constantly overcast and the sky is sort of in a perpetual state of gray. There are no clouds, and today I finally saw a small, hazy orange blob, which I figured out was the sun. It's hot here, but not in the sense of temperature. There isn't a lot of heat, but the constant humidity makes you feel constantly sticky and warm.


Now, the best part of my week here has by far been an activity called Mystery Beijing. For Part One, a fellow Skidmore Program student, Kor, and I were given a piece of paper with the name of a famous Beijing site written in characters on it. We were told we had to get to the site, get some sort of proof that we had been there, and return to campus by 1:00. We were not allowed to use any cabs, and we couldn't use English to ask for directions. At first we tried to use the Internet to look for a map and a translation to our site's name, but that didn't work. Finally we translated our site to “jialufa,” which ended up being a very large French supermarket. Since the internet failed us, we decided to be brave and ask for directions. Now, in China there are guards of some form or another EVERYWHERE. So, Kor and I went to some posted in the tunnel between the two halves of the university and asked for help. We explained the nature of our mission, and once they got the general picture they started spitting out directions. However, it didn't take them too long to figure out that our Chinese wasn't good enough to understand them. Now, this is a great example as to how friendly and kind the Chinese are. A Chinese guard personally escorted us out of the tunnel and across the street to an Olympics volunteer station, which was full of college students waiting to help stranded waiguoren (foreigners). They whipped out maps, drew pictures and highlighted routes, and told us the numbers of the busses we'd have to take. During that process, the guards from the passage kept coming up and checking on us to make sure we were being helped and to add their two cents to the flurry of instructions. Once that was all over with, we hopped on our bus. Or rather, we thought we did. Shortly afterwards Kor received a call on his cell phone. It was the volunteers. They had noticed we had got on the wrong bus, grabbed Sammy, Kor's friend who was also completing Mystery Beijing and happened to have been standing nearby, and used his cell phone to call us. They then told us what stop to get off of and where to walk to still make it to our site. So nice! And this wasn't an isolated incident. When talking to other groups, they spoke of people giving them their cell phone numbers and business cards in case they got lost, stopping and calling up friends and family to ask for directions when they themselves didn’t know, escorting them to subways and busses, etc. It was just amazing. The Chinese are known for their friendliness; it’s not just a result of the seven-year Olympics campaign. Well, to make a long story short, Kor and I ended up taking the most indirect rout to getting to the supermarket since we still got lost, but we did take our picture at the enterance and made it back to campus on time.

Now, Mystery Beijing Part Two was far more interesting. It just happened today, and was sort of like IES's version of The Great Race. Everyone was split into teams and we were given a clue that pointed to a famous site in Beijing. There were no rules, so we could use any means and any form of transportation necessary to get there. Once we arrived at the site, we had to find an IES representative and get our next clue that led to a different site. There were seven sites in total, and you had to get to as many as possible before you had to return to campus at 7:30 for dinner.

All in all, we only made it to three sites and didn't end up winning, but the experience was still unforgettable. I had three other people in my group and together we saw Tianamen Square, Jingshan Park, and Beihai Park. Jingshan Park was part of the imperial gardens behind the Forbidden City. It was breathtaking. We had to climb to the highest temple in the whole park, which was quite a hike, but totally worth it. We were able to see the entire Forbidden City stretched out beneath us, which was a breathtaking view. Plus, the temple was very beautiful: traditional tall red pillars, detailed, blue curving triangle roofs with painted scenery, and an 11 foot high Buddha inside. Behai Park was even more beautiful. It was right on a small lake and was composed of several small islands and shores. We had to take a ferry to get to our site, which was wonderful. It was a traditional boat full of carvings and paintings. The park itself was absolutely astounding: canals filled with lotus lilies, bit, huge temples, people practicing calligraphy, kung fu, and tai chi on the sidewalks, big, old trees and flowers, stone bridges.... Our site was a big wall with nine dragons carved on the side. The whole thing was painted, which made it look spectacular. Now, given how beautiful everything was, we spent too much time gawking and not enough time hustling from one place to the next, which prevented us from completing all seven sites and winning. Honestly, I don't care. What I saw was amazing and I wouldn't have whizzed through it for all the tea in China.

Next week looks like both a very promising and very frightening week. I'll start my classes on Monday, and tomorrow I'll meet my host family. That's right! I officially have a host family. I don't know anything about them, but from what I've learned about the host families in general they should be fantastic. I’ve also learned that I’ve gotten a spot on the Silk Road trip for my fifteen-day excursion with IES. That means I’ll be traveling up the Silk Road with my fellow Chinese students, stay with a Tibetan family for three days, spend four days in a Kazak village, ride camels and horses, see the Flaming Mountains and the third largest Buddha in the world, journey through the desert, and make it almost all the way to the China-Russia border. Also, today I took my language pledge. From here on out, no English unless absolutely necessary. I've got to admit, I'm a little scared, but I'm confident I'll make it work somehow. Wish me luck!

Behold! I give you...a BLOG!

Welcome to “Learning to Eat With Chopsticks,” a blog which, as the title explains, is all about the life I will be having in China for (hopefully) this next school year. I will be spending my first semester in Beijing through the Skidmore in Beijing Program, a program which is, not surprisingly, associated with Skidmore College and an organization called IES. My second semester is, as of now, still a little tentative. The Skidmore program only lasts one semester, meaning I will have to go through the application process again (joy oh joy) with another program for the second semester. I have a few lined up and ready to go, so it shouldn’t be an issue. I will either stay in Beijing, or I will go to Nanjing, a city in southern China. I’m putting this decision on hold for a bit until I decide just how much I like living in Beijing. Of course, it’ll also depend on which programs accept me, but that’s another matter. Now, enough with this boring blather.

Like I said, this is a BLOG. Those of you who two years ago were riveted by the weekly email news feed you received when I studied in Spain may be confused by this new format, but I promise this is better. It’ll be easier to manage, you won’t have to worry about deleting emails accidentally, and everyone’s inboxes will be safer, healthier, and less crowded. However, the rules for the past emails still apply to this blog:

1. This is interactive – I know one thing I loved about being in Spain for the summer is that I got to hear all sorts of questions from people back home. “What’s the fashion like?” “Do they eat exotic foods?” “What are bathrooms like?” The inquiries ranged from everything from the simple to the just flat out weird, and I thought it was extremely entertaining. I love answering questions, so please ask them! You can ask me anything, no subject is taboo. Ask away, and I shall do my best to answer in a timely fashion via a “Question and Answers” section in each blog post. However, with the blog there is one thing to remember: EVERYTHING IS PUBLIC. While you’re questions were private when you emailed them directly, when you post them on a blog, everyone can read them. EVERYONE. So please, if you wouldn’t want your five-year-old child to hear it, or if you suspect it might induce a cardiac arrest with your 95-year-old grandmother, I recommend that you do not post it. If you do, it won’t bother me a bit, but everyone else who reads it will most likely be shocked and horrified, and will probably laugh at you. So, if you feel uncomfortable, just email the question to me. My address is LIGray121288@gmail.com. I’ll still answer it, but in a more private fashion.
   
2. Tell me who you are – If you post on my blog, please be sure to write your name before you publish it. Otherwise I’ll have no idea who you are, and that’ll make me sad.
   
3. The more the merrier – I’ve racked my brain and tried to invite every possible acquaintance I know who might be interested in these ramblings, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I forgot someone. So, if you happen to notice that I did, tell me, or invite them yourselves. On top of that, if you happen to know someone (ie: family member, neighbor, friend, etc.) who might want to read this as well, by all means send them the link! I’m doing this partially in order to stay in touch with people, so by all accounts I welcome all readers.
4. Weekly fun and joy – Ok, this rule is a little tentative, but I’m hoping it will still apply. I’d like to give an update once a week. Now, updates probably won’t occur the same day every week, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that there will at least be something new within every seven day time window. I’m still not exactly sure what my schedule and work load is going to be like over there, so this rule may be tweaked slightly based on the situation.
   
   

Now, if at any point during the past paragraph or two you ever thought something along the lines of, “What the-? ‘Blog?’ What is this mystery term?” then you need to read this explanation. Those of you who are more technologically sound can skip all of this. Picture a blog like a giant bulletin board. When I write a note, I tack it on for everyone to see. When I write a different note and stick it on, the older note that I wrote previously is still there. When I write on this blog, the newest updates will automatically appear at the top of the webpage. You can scroll down to read older posts, and, when the number of posts increases dramatically, you’ll be able to click a link at the bottom of the page that’ll take you to even older posts. So, you can view it all at this website, www.learningtoeatwithchopsticks.com, instead of sifting through a bajillion emails. Now, just like with a bulletin board, you can stick notes on it as well. After each update that I make, you’ll see something that says “Posted by Lyndsey at (some specific time).” Next to that you’ll see a link that has the word “comments.” Click on it. Type your note in the box under the phrase “Leave your comment." Next you'll see some big, funky letters. Retype those in the box next to "Word verification." This is just something Blogger.com does for security reasons. Next, scroll down below “Choose an identity” and click the circle next to “Name/URL,” write your name, and then click the button “Publish your comment.” And waala! That’s it. You are now on your way to becoming a blogging star.

Now Lyndsey this is all well in good, you say, but what on God’s green earth made you decide to go to China? And why now, when you’ve only studied the language for one year? How oh how did all of this happen? Good question, I answer. The simplest response is this: It’s the only way to get what I want. Sound like an incredibly vague answer? Well it is. For a reason. You wouldn’t believe how many people have asked me those questions in the past month alone. No offense, but it’s getting old. So behold! My super condensed speed-read version: Lyndsey wants a nifty biology degree from CMU plus two language minors = many, many mandatory classes = no time to take fun, funky, weird courses = inevitable college burn out = decision to clear language credits in fastest way possible to open up credit slots = MAGIC SOLUTION TO STUDY ABROAD = decision to go for a year since a summer isn’t enough to gain language and culture fluency and a semester is impossible due to the college schedule = no choice but to go next year before I start my heavy science courses (Think about it: one year I take organic chemistry, take a year off and frolic in China, and then come back to Genetics 101? Oh no. Baaaaaad idea.). Tada! Mystery solved.

I’m sure you’re thinking this plan sounds unbelievably smooth and clear. Well, that’s what I thought, at least, when my academic advisor and I first sat down and talked about it. You see, I realize now I sort of viewed Chinese like some grand battle strategy, something that would be done and conquered and this grand master plan was the way to make that happen. I never really stopped and considered the language itself and what, exactly, it would be like to learn it. So naturally when I started my first class of Elementary Chinese this summer, I entered with the confidence and self assuredness of a five star general. I took out my books, rolled up my sleeves, whipped out my pencil and was ready for battle, utterly convinced that I would force Chinese into some sort of unwilling submission and have an easy-breezy summer. Oh how quickly the mighty fall.

Chinese proved to be a more formidable foe than I ever imagined it would be. I always knew Chinese would be difficult, but good LORD. Why didn’t anyone warn me?! How could I have been so blind?! All of my carefully laid out battle strategies and tactics were just about as useful as a piece of cardboard in holding back a tidal wave and I watched, horror struck, as they crumbled one by one after a mere five sentences from my teacher’s mouth. To be honest, that first day is sort of like a white blur to me, just a fuzzy haze with the occasional handful of sparkles. I vaguely remember Zhang Laoshi’s (Teacher Zhang) opening remarks to be something along the lines of this: “Welcome to Elementary Chinese I! I will be your teacher, Dongbo Zhang, and you may call me Zhang Laoshi. Now, if you will please turn to page one in your book we shall begin with our first lesson. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!” That last part was me going brain dead, because from then on out Zhang Laoshi spoke pretty much nothing but Chinese. It’s rather difficult to describe the feeling. Have you ever gone to a subway and stood past the yellow line, even though you know you’re not supposed to, and then a train plows past with that deafening roar and you can still hear the ringing in your ears even when it finally stops? Yea, it’s kind of like that. Only I got to feel it for weeks until it finally went away. And the ringing was painful, veeeeerry painful, and usually manifested itself as a headache. As I futilely willed every cell in my body to magically translate the Chinese being thrown at me at what seemed like 100 mph, I slowly began to realize just what I had gotten myself into and I suddenly found the words “HOLY SH#% WHAT HAVE YOU DONE??!!!” flashing in my head in neon lights.

I suspect that many of you, although not all, probably have a similar outlook to the one I had before my Chinese class. You know Chinese is a difficult language, you have a vague idea as to just how many characters there are and something or another about the tonal system, but you don’t really, fully appreciate just how mind numbing it is. I’m not saying this in order to make myself look superior for attempting to learn it, but rather I would genuinely like you to gain a better appreciation for this fascinating language and realize just how different it is from English. So, I’d like to give a brief overview using some of my textbook’s explanations as well as some of my own:

1. 
   Pretty squiggles – Characters are aesthetically beautiful and very fun to write, but extremely hard for a non-native speaker to get used to. Each character represents a different word, and different combinations of characters can mean new words. For example, che (车) means “car,” xiao (校) has to do with schools, and xiaoche (校车) means school bus. Each character has a stroke order, meaning you draw the lines in each character in a specific sequence, which also needs to be memorized. Also, there is no, and I mean absolutely no way to figure out how the character is pronounced simply by looking at it. You have to look it up in a dictionary or hear it verbally pronounced. In addition, the characters mentioned earlier are simplified characters. Originally Chinese was written with traditional characters, which have more strokes to each character and are thus harder to write. In an effort to increase literacy in China during the 1950’s, the writing system was edited to cut down on the number of strokes, thereby making Chinese easier to learn. How drastic is this difference, you ask? Well, sometimes words look essentially the same or weren’t changed at all. Other words have extreme changes, such as with the word keting, which means “living room.” With simplified characters it’s 客厅, while with traditional characters it’s 客廳. Traditional characters are used in everyday life, while traditional ones can appear during festivals, sometimes on signs, and on official documents and such. There are over 87,000 characters in the Chinese language, but you only need about 3,500 to get around and only 6,000-7,000 to be considered fluent. That’s right, no need to panic.
2. Not one but three – As I quickly learned, learning Chinese actually seems like you’re learning three languages: pinyin, simplified characters, and traditional characters. Now, the italicized words mentioned earlier (che, xiao) are how the Chinese words are pronounced (although normally they’d have accent marks to indicate what tone you would use to pronounce them). This is pinyin. Now note, this is NOT how you pronounce them in English. Far from it. You have to learn all the new pronunciation marks. For example /zh/ is really a /j/, /z/ is a /ds/, /x/ is a /sh/, /c/ is a /ts/, and /r/ sounds more like the “s” in the word “usually.”
3. Do re mi – Tones…yea, they’re hard. There are four tones: flat pitch, low to high pitch, high to low to high pitch, and high to low pitch. If you say the same word in the wrong tone, you could be in trouble. For example, e (yes that is a word) when pronounced in the low to high pitch means “goose” while in the high to low pitch means “hungry.” BIG difference.
   Number everything – Chinese uses measure words, words that have no concrete meaning, but help identify the quantity of a certain item. Different types of items have different measure words. There is a similar parallel with English. For instance, you have a dozen eggs, a herd of buffalo, a gaggle of geese, a pack of dogs, etc. The same is true for Chinese. If you’re going to say how many books you have, you can’t just say “I have three books.” You have to say, “I have three ben books.”
4. Now, here is a passage from my book to explain the rest:
   
   

“Chinese is a non-inflectional language. That means it generally does not change word endings to reflect person, gender, tense, number, or case. For example, the verb ‘work’ in English can change to forms such as ‘worked,’ ‘is working,’ or ‘had worked’ to indicate different aspects of the action. In Chinese, the time of an action (past, present, or future) is usually expressed by time words such as qunian (去年) or ‘last year,’ xianzai (现在) ‘now,’ and mingtian (明天) ‘tomorrow,’ rather than by changing the ending of the verb. Moreover, the various aspects of an action (e.g., progressive, completion, continuous, about to happen, or showing past experience) are indicated by aspect particles, such as le (了) (for a finished action or to indicate a change in state); adverbs, such as ye (也) ‘also,’ hen (很) ‘very,’ zai (再) ‘again;’ optative verbs, such as yao (要) (to indicate you intend to do this action), hui (会) (to indicate you know how to, are capable of, or will do this action), keyi (可以) (to indicate you can or you may do something), yinggai (应该) (to indicate you should do this action), neng (能) (to indicate you can or have an innate knowledge on how to do an action), or modal particles, such as ma (吗) (used to indicate you’re asking a question).”

I think by now it’s safe to assume I did not have the “easy-breezy” summer I was expecting. However, I still had a blast learning Chinese, and now through much blood, sweat, and tears I’ve successfully memorized a stack of vocab flashcards that is approximately 9” tall (sorry, too lazy to count them).

To be honest, I’m kind of glad I started this journey in a rather naïve state. I don’t know how things would have gone if I had had a clearer picture from the get-go. I know I would have made all the same choices and would most definitely still be going to China, but I don’t know what my attitude would have been like. Going in guns blazin’ and completely ignorant made me trip and fall flat on my face quite early in the game, but picking myself back up was half the fun and made me even more determined to learn more. That’s a good thing, actually, considering the fact that I’m sure I’ll be falling on my face quite often once I arrive in China. But hey, at least that will make some funny stories for all of you, right?

Well, until next time, I guess I’ll see you on the other side. China, here I come.