Pulse? Check. Breathing signs? Check. Overall survival? Affirmative.

Attention readers! I’d like to draw your attention to a slight change the blog’s format. I’ve come across so many oddities while here in China, and some of them are just too good to ignore. Sometimes these are physical sightings, sometimes they’re weird conversations, sometimes they’re just odd facts and whatnots. Regardless, I have to pass them on. Thus, I’ve decided to add something to each blog post: “Lyndsey’s Strange-but-true Sightings.” And for our first edition…

Lyndsey’s Strange-but-true Sightings:

1. I’ve discovered that all sorts of strange things can be seen when people walk their pets. Today I saw a woman walking a black cocker spaniel….and the dog was wearing SHOES. Not kidding, it really had slippers on its feet. This past weekend I saw something equally strange: a woman walking a rabbit. Or rather, dragging a rabbit on a leash. Apparently rabbits aren’t very good at keeping up and are rather obstinate.
2. The seafood section of Beijing’s Sam’s Club. This is one of my Ayi’s favorite grocery stores, and when she invited me to go with her one day I gladly accepted. You can learn all sorts of new vocabulary at grocery stores. As I shuffled from aisle to aisle trying to discern certain characters, I eventually found the gold mine – the seafood section. In short, I was mesmerized. There were tanks upon tanks upon tanks off all sorts of sea creatures, including sea cucumbers, turtles, crabs, lobsters, about a dozen different kinds of fish, and shrimp (unfortunately, they were not lucky enough to have tanks, but instead were forced to lie out in the open twitching and squirming). How do you buy a live fish from Sam’s Club, you ask? It’s fascinating. Step 1) Call over an assistant. Step 2) Point to the fish you want and have the assistant scoop it out with the net. Step 4) Have the assistant hold the net up high and then with every force in his/her body, slam the fish onto the stone floor. Repeat several times. 5) Hold out a plastic bag and slip the now thoroughly brain-dead fish inside. Who knew Sam’s Club could hold such cultural wonders?
3. This is more of a funny language story than anything else, but still deserves to be noted. “Qing wen” is a very common phrase used by everyone, and is a favorite of foreigners. Since “qing” means “please,” and “wen,” when said with a tone going from high to low, means “to ask,” this phrase has the connotation of “excuse me.” Usually you say it to ask someone a question (ie: “Excuse me, could you tell me where…?”). Now, if you say “wen” in the tone going from up to down to up, however, it means “to kiss.” So, this extremely useful phrase holds innumerable potential dangers for a foreigner since if you say it in the wrong tones, you’re asking someone to kiss you, not to ask for help. UNBELIEVABLY HUGE AND VERY FRIGHTENING DIFFERENCE.
4. At a grocery store, I saw the following in a snack isle: bags of spicy squid and packages of chicken feet.
5. This afternoon I passed a hair salon and saw something incredibly odd. All of the hair stylists in their fuchsia, 60's reminiscent uniforms were lined up outside their store, blasting music, and doing some form of synchronized YMCA dancing. I have absolutely no idea why. I asked some other native gawkers, and they were just as clueless as I. Either that was an absolutely spectacular means of advertisement, or perhaps the strangest public act I've ever seen.
6. My Chinese name is Gao Lingxi, so my parents call me Shao Gao. “Shao” means little, and is a title given to those younger than you as a means of endearment. What I didn’t know, however, was the meaning of my Chinese last name. “Gao” means “tall.” I’m overjoyed. Me, the stubbiest, shortest one of all my friends and nearly all of my family, am at last TALL. I’m so happy I could cry.

This week has been extremely busy and one of survival since it marks the first week of class and, more importantly, the first week of living with my host family. All in all, I couldn’t have asked for a better family. I have five family members: an Ayi (aunt) named Yang Xu, a Shushu (uncle) named Zeng Bo, their son and my didi (little brother), who is eight years old and named Zeng Tian Yu, although everyone calls him Yang Yang, a grandmother (she’s actually Shushu’s mother’s sister) named Xiao Yin, and a goldfish. Together, they create the perfect environment to get to know more about Chinese culture. Since I have three generations in my family, my family is considered to be very traditional by Chinese standards, which is perfect for a foreigner like me. As for work, Xiao Yin stays at home and helps clean and cook, Ayi works at a bank, and Shushu works with computer information security (Since he doesn’t work for the government, I’m guessing this has something to do with firewalls). I also suspect they’re in some sort of fruit juice black market, since three days ago they bought a ton of boxes of apple and orange juice from a neighbor and have been steadily selling them from the apartment. This deserves further investigation later and may make it into the “strange-but-true” section. Together all of us live in a fairly large apartment on the eighth floor. There is a living and dining room, a kitchen, two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a reading room which has now been converted into my bedroom. The apartment building is just one of many in a very beautiful residential complex. It’s a gated community, and all the apartment buildings overlook a small park in the center. The park is really lovely. There are all sorts of public exercise machines, which people use regularly in the wee hours of the morning, fountains, small ponds, little pagodas, and statues. There are always people walking inside it and I almost always see people doing tai chi in the mornings, old men playing Chinese chess in the afternoons, and several families and their children playing in the evenings. My family gets up extremely early in the morning (as in late 5:00-ish), but they still provide me breakfast and we always eat dinner together. I’ll write more about Chinese food later, but I should mention something important about my family’s cooking styles. My aunt is originally from Sichuan, and my uncle and Xiao Yin are originally from Hunan. What are these two providences famous for? SPICY SPICY FOOD. So, every night for dinner at least two dishes make my eyes water. One night I had to sneak back to my room and smother my mouth with peanut butter because my tongue was on fire. The food is delicious and although I’m not a big spicy fan, I love dinners. I’m just going to have to gradually build up a tolerance and get myself to finally realize that those long green strands are peppers, NOT green beans.

My family is a priceless resource for learning Chinese. They all have just the right language levels to make my language abilities grow at a rather alarming rate ("We can rebuild her...make her better, faster, stronger..."). Yang Yang is learning English, so I get to help him with his homework and he can teach me some new elementary-level words. Ayi and Shushu speak Chinese and are also fairly competent with English, so if I’m forced to speak a bit of English they usually understand me. Together we speak a type of Chinglish pidgin language. I’ll speak in as much Chinese as possible with maybe one or two words in English and they’ll do the same back to me. Sometimes they’ll also do the reverse, speaking English with one or two words of Chinese, so that they can try to gradually improve their English speaking abilities. All in all, I serve as an informal English tutor, and they serve as my Chinese tutors. Xiao Yin, on the other hand, speaks no English, so with her I get to try to speak exclusively in Chinese and learn strategies to make it past the language barrier. So far I haven’t been able to get very far with the goldfish, but oh well. Thanks to all of them, my vocabulary is exploding. For example, last weekend Ayi, Shushu, Yang Yang and I all went to the Summer Palace. It was a gorgeous day, making it the perfect time to go. As we meandered through the park and gazed at the beautiful temples, buildings, and scenery, we bonded by teaching each other words. Together, we all learned the words for “magpie,” “willow,” “ginkgo,” “mulberry,” “river,” “lake,” “dragonfly,” “butterfly,” and, my personal favorite, “cicada.” I also taught them the phrase “to spend time” and they taught me the phrase “ren shan ren hai,” which is the equivalent to English’s “a sea of people.” I’ve found myself saying this a lot when I take the bus to school every day. I’ll elaborate more on traffic later, since that in itself could be an entire blog entry.

I do have to admit, though, things have been a little nerve-racking for me. Of course there was some initial awkwardness when my family and I first met (especially when they insisted on carrying my heavy luggage) that we’re still trying to get over a bit. Although they insist that I’m now a family member, I’m still trying to work past some of their perceptions that regard me as a guest. I essentially have to fight to carry my dishes into the kitchen and I’m still not allowed to wash anything. I’m going to have to work on this, since I really want to be able to help around the house. There’s also the burden of being their first exchange student. With Magdalena, my Spanish host mother, I was the ninth student so she knew all of the basics – talk slowly, use small words, explain cultural differences, suggest activities for the weekends, introduce family members and local hangouts, etc. With my Chinese family, I have to explain these points to them myself. I’m still trying to get them to realize that when they speak to me in Chinese, the reason I sometimes don’t understand is because they’re speaking too fast, not because I can’t translate, so it’s not an excuse to break out into full-blown English. Plus, being the first one is an enormous pressure for me. If I screw up, does that mean they’ll never want another foreign student to stay with them again? Overall, though, these fears and difficulties have been small, and our time together has been getting more and more amazing.

Class has also proved to be excellent. I have four classes: a Chinese history class, a government and politics class, a modern culture and research class, and, of course, my intermediate-level Chinese class. The Chinese class is taught exclusively in Chinese. That, combined with IES’s language pledge, which forces me to only speak Chinese when on campus and in the classroom), is also helping me learn Chinese a lot. My culture classes, though, are taught in English. I have government once a week for three hours, history and culture twice a week for an hour and a half, and Chinese four times a week for three hours. Now, studying abroad does not equal a year of vacation, or even easy schooling, for that matter. Far from it. My work load is enormous. I learn about 40-80 new words (not including the new words I learn from my family) and about 20 new sentence patterns every two days – one day of introduction, one day of in-class practice. Think that’s fast-paced? Students in the 400 level Chinese classes learn over 100 words every day. IMPOSSIBLE. The culture classes are not picnics either. My final project for the culture class is a 12-20 page final paper on my own organized research project that utilizes about 50 interviews, and the other two classes have their own essays, tests, and reading assignments. In short, Spain was a cake walk compared to this. But never fear! My teachers are amazing and extremely enthusiastic in class. I love their teaching styles and every class is always interesting. In addition, I meet with a private tutor four times every week. Her name is Mung Chun, and our sessions always last for one hour. So far we’ve used it as a means of practicing my Chinese conversation skills.

One more thing before I end this rather long post: I want to conclude with a forecast of some skills I should be incredibly good at when I return to the US, and should be extremely interesting for all of you to watch:

1. Using chopsticks – Since Ayi said I was already very good at using them and demanded to know how I had learned to eat with them (thank you sooooo much, Laura), I’m going to be crazy good by the end of the semester. ‘Nuff said.
2. Speaking Chinese – Well, I had better be able to, otherwise I’m going to be super mad. Although for some reason, everyone already insists that I speak great Chinese. Usually the pattern is as follows: someone sees me on the street, realizes I’m foreign, and yells, “HALLOOOOOOOO!” (aka their version of “Hello”), to which I always reply “Nihao!” Suddenly the light bulb goes off. “Oooooooooooooooh. Can you speak Chinese?” “Dui, yidiar. Wo shi liuxuesheng.” “NI DE ZHONGWEN HEN HAO!! FEICHANG FEICHANG HAO!!!” (Translation: You’re Chinese is VERRY good.) When this happened the first time, I thought to myself, Who, me? Me with my whopping one year of Chinese? Ha, surely you jest, stranger. And then it kept happening. All I could think of was, what’s wrong with these people? Are they not hearing my horrendous Chinese? I could tell that they weren’t making fun of me, so I had no way to explain their behavior. Finally, after about the 150th time of this type of experience plus with some guidance from my teachers I realized two things. One, the percentage of foreigners who come to China and can speak Chinese at any level is a very, very small percentage. Even if you are only at the most basic level and can only say a handful of words other than “nihao,” you are sure to impress. If you can actually put a sentence together, you’re a genuine novelty and sometimes even draw a crowd. Two, the Chinese are just extremely friendly and warm and are always so grateful whenever they see someone learning their language. Even when it’s bad, any level of understanding is greatly appreciated.
3. Dodging cars – I am starting to become the human equivalent of Frogger, but if you don’t hear from me in a couple of weeks, assume I’ve been hit by some form of motorized vehicle.
4. Pushing – There are no lines in China. If you want to buy something, see something, or get off the bus, you PUSH. There is no other option. None.
5. Charades, Pictionary, and some relevant parts of "Cranium" –It’s mind-boggling how far hand waving, doodling, and making funny sounds can go. My family is already beginning to learn there is a clicky, humming noise I make when I don’t know a word and have to dive for my pocket dictionary, and as a result they wait patiently. In addition, I think I’ve successfully imitated every Olympic sport with my hands alone.

Well that’s all for now. I know this was a long post, but there’s a reason for that. You won’t be hearing from me for a while since next week I leave to go explore the Silk Road for about fifteen days. Yea, be excited. By the end of my trip, I’ll have travelled so far north that I’ll be closer to Berlin than I will be to Beijing (I believe our final destination is right by the border between China, Mongolia, and Russia). So stay tuned for many exciting stories! I’ve also had some requests for pictures, so that’ll be coming soon too.


Until next time!