I put off writing this blog post because of how much there is to say about China. Mostly, I worry that I will not do it justice. I have been keeping a journal to attempt to capture my everyday thoughts and, I guess do things that people do when they journal, but even when I reread the entries I keep finding polar opposites scribbled down to describe one day’s worth of experiences. But let me try to paint a picture. If Rome was ambling, Beijing is frantic, the unbaked colors of the houses and the familiar foods in Italy have been replaced by Beijing’s neon lights and steaming buns replete with who-knows-what-but-I’ll-eat-it-anyway. Everything is in motion here. Even Chinese characters on store signs flash by quicker than I can try to read them, and on the subway, digitized ads zoom alongside the train, projected onto the wall outside. Moving to Beijing and starting this new semester happened so quickly that I did not have much time to orient myself.
The first few weeks I felt as if I were running down a flight of stairs, not paying attention to where I placed my feet, and at any second I could have missed a step, and ended up rolling down the rest of the way. But it has been quite a while since I have thought that, and now I mostly walk around laughing at my own attempts to communicate or at my ineptitude in most social situations that I can only define as foreign to me. For example, take my first ever interaction with the barista who makes coffee in the small café in my dorm building. I was sitting in there one afternoon, the second week of classes, typing away at some homework when she walked up behind me, closed my laptop and pointed at its logo. She then stated, “I have.” My first thought was, Oh my God, what did I do to offend her? It took me a second to process her two words. Then of course she reopened my laptop, pointed at its meager i3 core sticker and said “[something, something, something] wu,” basically telling me in Chinese that she had a more progressive i5 core. She proceeded to ask me how much I paid for mine, and somehow, not understanding much of each other’s language we compared prices. Throughout our conversation, for lack of a better word, all I could think about was that some stranger walked over to me, closed my laptop, and possibly deleted the last few lines of my work. And situations like this happen to me every day, where I’m minding my own business, and someone literally renders me speechless. The second I get over my surprise, I cannot help but laugh at the hilarity of these situations.
Another huge part of my life is my Beijing roommate. She was born and raised in northern China, and I am her first foreign roommate. Honestly, living with her has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. She takes my obsession with odd fruit and chestnuts in stride, and doesn’t mind that I laugh every time we have some cultural misunderstanding (which occurs on a weekly basis). Like the time I got sick, and she refused to stay away from me, but put her coat on in our room so she wouldn’t catch my cold. Or the time she matter-of-factly stated that the funny picture I took, with me scrunching up my face was “not pretty.” She also tells me when I’m being crazy, like when I’m asking her to come buy more fruit with me, or when I’m talking about completing the most dangerous hikes in China (…kidding, mom). Not to mention all the fascinating conversations we have about China, and what her life will look like as she prepares to graduate. Of course, I tell her a great deal about the U.S.: no, we do not all get drunk every night; yes, many of us like nature; no, not everyone is religious; yes, we do eat odd things like oatmeal for breakfast; and yes, many of us are addicted to coffee. Ultimately, I tell her the way I live my life without realizing that she assumes all Americans do it the same way. In fact, once she said something along the lines of Americans aren’t lazy because they like rock climbing. I had to break it to her that most Americans probably don’t love rock climbing, and I can be lazy and still love rock climbing. It is understandable how very confusing this phenomenon is.
One of my favorite people in the Middle Kingdom (China: translated directly from Chinese… yeah, I’ve learned some things) is my Chinese professor. There are only seven students in the language class, and it’s almost three hours each day, four days a week, so it was inevitable for us to pick up her mannerisms. Now, we all do this low grunting sound whenever we agree with a statement someone makes, and we prolong the grunt when we need to show that we are hearing and comprehending a more complicated statement. We also repeat things like “yes” in Chinese three to five times to sound more authentic, and we do it with the confidence of real Beijing-ers. Every few pages in my Chinese notebook, I have written down quotes my professor says in class, and they are mostly remarks to Emily’s more convoluted (and incorrect) sentence structures. Our professor’s favorite comment to tell her is, “No, it’s weird. Chinese would not say.” Of course we all laugh incessantly because we realize just how awful we probably sound, making up new sentence structures according to English, and trying to fit in more information and bigger and cooler words. It’s such fun. Chinglish has even begun to permeate our lives outside of class, as we add in a smattering of Chinese adjectives to our everyday conversations and phrases that are exceptionally satisfying to utter in Mandarin, such as “I don’t know” or “can you?” or “forget about it.” Again, we probably sound terrible, but it’s an addictive habit. I have found a great motto to live by in Beijing: it’s 50% confidence, 50% Asian. I may not be Asian, but I sure as heck can try to be confident… *wink*.
And so life goes on. My next post will be about the two week-long trip the entire program took to the southern Chinese province of Yunnan. But before that, here are the pictures that made the cut. Enjoy…
This took placce a few moments after exiting the Beijing airport for the first time. You can see from their excited faces that jet lag has not yet kicked in, but oh boy, did it.
I am all about safety first peeps, but after wearing the mask twice I decided the mask life just isn’t for me. The great thing is, it’s completely a personal choice, and many people I know wear it on days of particularly bad air quality. You can also buy fancy masks with distinctive designs and multiple air vents that make you look like a super villain like Bane. Apparently the blinged out ones are counterfeit so, though they keep you looking cool, they also keep you breathing in all the pollution.
As part of orientation, we signed up to go see a Kung Fu show at the Red Theater. I was so severely jet lagged that I kept falling asleep, only to be startled awake by the harsh clanging of gongs and synchronized chanting of a horde of jumping men. To make matters worse, the theater was unheated so each time I woke up I felt like I was slightly freezing to death.
This is one good-looking bunch of people waiting to be seated at a cool restaurant in a mall. Yes, the mall life is strong in Beijing, and this one has some really good Chinese restaurants. Whenever we go with people from different provinces in China they end up ordering some of their favorite foods, and we get to try dishes that we would otherwise never think of getting.
I am obsessed with taking pictures of all oddities that one would not find in the U.S. This includes quite a bit of really funny Chinglish on public signs and things like this. This gory sticker is attached to many of the subway train doors where this awful accident could happen to you. The thing is, I have yet to see people lean on the train doors or poke their fingers through the “Gaps.” It works.
Roohi loves sweets. You look away for a second, and when you look back, she’ll be eating Swedish fish or lychee flavored gummy worm things. So as we walked through the Hutongs (this really hip area of alleyways with a ton of boutiques, bars and young people) she bought cotton candy larger than her head. It ended up costing the equivalent of three meals, but she could not have been happier.
This is my roommate, laughing because we broke our shower, and a handyman was trying to fix it. The handyman came back when she wasn’t home, and I was trying to explain to him that our water still kept turning from ice cold to boiling hot and back again every time we took a shower, but all I knew was the Chinese word for hot, so I kept trying to mime shivering. His response was to turn the faucet on, and let me feel the perfectly lukewarm temperature. I kept saying “not good, not good!” to each of his “good, good.” It got more and more heated on my part, with me not being able to convey that you have to wait a few minutes before the water stops working correctly. The entire time his one eyebrow stayed raised with bored indifference to my frantic arm flapping and crazed eyes. Finally, he walked out of the room as I kept pathetically calling out to him in Chinese, “Not good, not good, not good!” This is a great example of how China could be a tad stressful the first few weeks.
These two pictures are of the Lama Temple and surrounding area. Most of my pictures happened by the tubs of burning incense as it was so cold that day. I’m pretty sure I lost a few toes to frostbite, but it’s okay. You win some you lose some. The temple grounds truly are beautiful.
Here is one fruit picture. Stay tuned for more. My new favorite cool fruits are: dragon fruit, papaya, start fruit, passion fruit, Buddha fruit, this red date thing, and a bunch of other fruit given to me by my roommate, which I will honestly never remember the names of. Note to self. Do not eat papaya seeds. As I helped myself to a heaping plastic spoonful of my newest fruit adventure, my taste buds were immediately overwhelmed by the instant, caustic flavor of bitter pepper kernels infused with odd herbs that left my eyes watering and my stomach in shambles.
A whole group of us went to this all-you-can-eat buffet of pretty bad quality, where you have to cook your own food. I probably would not go back, but watching your seafood cook, and hoping you cooked it long enough to evade food poisoning sure keeps you interested in your meal.
