Drumbeats and Guqin Plucks: Three Quarters Later

My bike has changed. Dark grit-covered bike chains with frozen grease, slanting basket, tire frames with occasional dents and bents - the wear and tear are obvious. My pant legs get dirty every time I bike from my apartment to school. Though the bicycle only has one gear, every time I bike it feels as if I'm cycling up a hill, sixty-degree incline. To be honest, I didn't notice the increasing resistance. I prefer to walk now - I don't feel the anxiety of racing against crazy taxi drivers and dodging other cyclists when I just watch others get into accidents.

I used to be able to recall where I learned every character, sentence structure or chengyu, but now all the hanzi just swim in my head, randomly making an appearance at the tip of my tongue rather than on call. Before, I struggled to find the right word, but now I struggle to find the best word. Limited vocabulary is a damper on expression, but a rich vocabulary itself is a bottleneck as well when you are trying to find the best synonym among a group of words that have the same meaning. However, I realized the only reason I couldn't find the best word was because I was in a hurry to express my thoughts, resulting in sentences that when crafted look like magnets held together and split apart by string. My progress reports at IUP reflected high test marks, but one comment united all the teachers - I am rushing this language. My classical Chinese teacher is skilled in calligraphy, but the other day I realized he was also skilled in graphology - "Your characters are hurried and impatient, just like you." According to my Chinese astrology forecast, the Ox year will be a year that challenges the patience and perseverance of those born in the year of the dragon. It seems that the zodiac is harmonized with my Chinese education. This past semester at IUP, I was blessed to be studying with some of the program's most experienced teachers. I hope that during my last two semesters I continue to study with the program's best teachers and build my love for the language and culture. Along the way, it wouldn't hurt to find this Patience thing that everyone says I don't have.

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Deck the Lanterns: Christmas and New Year's

Christmas trees are everywhere. Every website, every shopping center, every restaurant - seeing a green plastic pine tree laced with blinking lights next to small golden Daoist statues was interesting - even IUP had a decent sized Christmas tree to greet everyone who climbed up to the fifth floor. Not many students nor teachers at Tsinghua or IUP seemed to get into the holiday spirit - "it isn't my holiday," they say. I wonder if advertisers really know their consumers' thoughts when they decide to buy huge trees to park in front of shops.

At IUP, we get one day off for Christmas day. On the night of Christmas Eve, Jill (my roommate) and I met with friends for dinner, and what Christmas dinner is complete without Korean barbeque? I somehow became the designated cook. No matter - listening to my older colleagues' high school stories of sniffing coke and clashes with the police while slicing up the meat to fry in the center charcoal pit is more interesting than bringing up cheesy holiday stories and jokes about chestnuts roasting in an open fire. Afterwards, classmates and some of the younger teachers got together for spiced cider and treats at a student's apartment.

Life doesn't stop on Christmas in Beijing - the streets are still crowded with glove-sellers, corn-sellers and jianbing-sellers. After Wudaokou's streets were renovated during the Olympics, the number of illegal vendors on the streets have increased, led noticeably by jewelry sellers from Qinghai and Tibet. It's hard to walk up the stairs to the subway station without stepping onto the yellow rug and torquoise trinkets of these westerners. During the evening, vendors begin to sell sparking sticks and puppies barely a month old. Elderly men shake porridge tins as I walk by, mumbling coarsely, "Shengdan kuaile, shengdan kuaile" (Merry Christmas).

Five days later, IUP let its students and teachers rest another day to celebrate the new year. A former IUP student hosted a party on the east side of Beijing, The party reminded me of frat parties - dim lights, living room floor slightly sticky because of spilt beer, unfamiliar faces - a small American microcosm in the middle of China. I left half an hour before midnight,

taking a taxi to the center of the Chinese universe - the Forbidden Palace. The taxi stopped a good 300 meters away from the entrance because of police blockade. In front Mao's huge portrait, foreigners and Chinese gathered, moving around while taking photos to prove to the world that they stood in front of the palace on New Year's Day (like I did). I forgot my watch, but conveniently a circle of expats started yelling the countdown for everyone to join in. Ten minutes after the cheers and hugs and moos, cars and buses started whizzing across the palace as usual, the police and guard cautiously looking about for potential bombers or terrorists.

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Charlie Brown Theme Song: Post Thanksgiving

It is cold in Beijing.
Well, it's been cold for the past couple of weeks. As soon as I got off the train from Shanghai, I saw everyone trekking in large overcoats and fleeces. I bought a new jacket and some new clothes to replace some of the shirts and pants that I brought from home. China's laundry machines, though good at cleaning, are horrible at preserving clothes.
This module at IUP, I am studying classical Chinese. I'm glad that I went to Hangzhou and Suzhou - classical poets refer to specific objects and scenes that can only be found in southern China. My teacher is having me memorize every lesson character for character. I feel like I'm back in Elementary Chinese when I prepare my classical Chinese lessons, but without the agony of encoding grammar patterns or the pressure of preparing for different classes. I am also studying from a book designed by IUP called Academic Topics. It is basically a collection of speeches by professors from various professional fields. We are learning to speak more like the writers themselves. In a nutshell, we have to prepare the lessons as if we are experts on the topic at hand.

I really enjoy the course so far - the topics are much more engaging than those of previous books, and the vocabulary is much more useful.
Yesterday, IUP hosted a student-alumni mixer event at the Element Fresh restaurant bar in Sanlitun. Unfortunately, I felt sick and nauseous throughout the mixer and didn't really get to speak to many of the alumni. Director Laughlin didn't feel great as well - in fact, a lot of people were feeling aches and cramps. I need to go to the hospital and get that flu vaccine.

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Autumn Leaves sung at Presto: The last nine weeks

November 8th ~ 16th
After the final exams of the first module, I headed south to Suzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai. I do not dare to recap all my experiences, I think the reader will read to death about temples and gardens.
Hangzhou's West Lake was a nice change of scenery from the gloomy block buildings of Beijing. I rented an orange tourist bike and biked all around the stone bridges and gardens surrounding the water. It reminded me of home - the blue skies, fair wind, open roads reminiscent of Main Street. North of West Lake, I visited the Yue Fei Mausoleum, erected for one of China's greatest patriots. His grave is a huge mound like those of deceased Ming dynasty emperors. Across from his grave were the statues of Qin Hui and his wife stripped naked, kneeling as if begging for forgiveness. Yue Fei was a general for the Southern Song dynasty that could have potentially united China a very long time ago, but because of Qin Hui's desire for wealth and power, he was executed with no reason given (莫须有). History punishes and condemns anyone like Qin Hui, "traitors" to the country, or 卖国贼. Yue Fei was such an important patriot that the Chinese government requires that students must read at least one book about Yue Fei and study his poem Man Jiang Hong (满江红).

Suzhou, in a nutshell, is a canal town filled with gardens. Frankly, I only enjoyed the city museum designed by the architect I. M. Pei, whose wealthy family once owned the Lion Stone Forest here. Besides that, I found the city to be rather cramped and dirty. Perhaps the weather or the large number of tourists was too much of a contrast after visiting Hangzhou. The gardens make Suzhou famous. Mirrors are hung at specific locations around the garden to give the illusion that the garden spills out into other chambers. In ancient times, poets sat on benches among shrubbery and pagodas, musing nature and society.
Shanghai is a mixed bag. Skyscrapers and three story cement remnants from the sixties and seventies stand side by side, expats roam the streets like locals while Chinese tourists take pictures madly like foreigners, one-legged or extraordinarily crippled beggars open taxi doors while shaking coin cups in the faces of passengers donning the latest fashion from Louis Vuitton and Dior. I stayed in a cozy little hostel behind the Tomorrow Square, a skyscraper that mixes the design of tesla coils and buildings from the Jetsons. Shanghai is an easier city to walk and explore than Beijing. From my hostel, I walked all over the French Concession, Nanjing Donglu, the Bund, the Old Town and Pudong. During the day I experienced street food in the coiling alleyways of Old Town, while during the evening I sampled homemade cocktails in Lounge 18 on the Bund. Though I love Shanghai as a city, it feels anti-foreign. Sure, expats work in the companies in the special economic zone and live in corporate apartments that look over the city, but the locals keep to themselves, yelling in blurs of Shanghainese. I know that the city government is working furiously to prepare for the World Expo in 2010 - in the central People's Square subway terminal, they even have a huge green digital clock reminiscent of those posted all over Beijing counting down to the Expo day. Government officials hope that by 2010, the city population will be "5% foreign." Only then is Shanghai "a true international city." I wonder if the Shanghainese want that.

October 31st
Speech day. At IUP, we have to prepare speeches on the sixth week. The following is a speech about globalization (全球化), discussing how to globalize oneself in a globalizing world.
虽然我们经常用全球化这个词，但它给社会带来的莫大的影响并非人人都清楚。全球化的发展意味着人类社会将被重新构建。有句歌词说得好：“这世界变得越来越小。”随着传媒技术的高速发展，互联网以惊人的速度遍布整个世界，经济全球化日益现实。网络不声不响地进入了每个城市，想在如果没有它人们似乎无法生活下去。在时下的世界里，可口可乐和麦当劳的广告铺天盖地。在每个城市的大街小巷都可以听到英文。虽然大家似乎对全球化所带来的物质享受感到欣喜，但还有一些为传统文化的未来感到忧愁，尖锐地批评它所带来的不良的影响。所以，各个国家也在尽量保护其传统文化遗产。为了消除传统和现代建筑的冲突，建筑师在千方百计地设计一些融合这两种建筑的特色的高楼大厦。为了让这一代的年轻人了解过去的习惯，各市政协会举办特殊节庆活动来让大家亲身体验不同的文化。有的城市甚至为了所谓的“保护”抵制外国文化融入人民的生活，生怕全球化使我们丧失个性。 “全球化我不怕，可怕的是找不回自己。”我们似乎把这句口头禅作为了一种生活方式。但何必如此呢？我想，越来越多的人在国际商店购物或者喝星巴克咖啡反映出了大家都迎接全球化的态势。为何我们只能在所谓的“文化”中找回自己，而甘于在全球化的生活中迷失呢？在我们的现代汉语词典里，文化的意思是“人类在社会历史发展过程中所创造的物质财富和精神财富的总合。”换句话说，文化是一种形式，可以是多种多样的，不只是我们想保留下来的遗产。文化本无国界之分，只能在缺乏创造力的人们的脑海中受到了限制。全球化也并不是一种新的现象。虽然这个词直到1962年才出现，但事实上，原始人类的迁徙和繁衍过程完全可以被视为早期的全球化。大约五万年前，我们的原始祖先最先出现在非洲东部，他们慢慢分散到包括南北美在内的世界各个角落。那时候，由于人类交通技术有限的缘故，全球化发展得比较慢，但现在已经可以用先进的技术以迅雷不及掩耳之势改造世界了。我们“找不回自己”的恐惧的根源也便在这儿：我们没有时间习惯千变万化的社会。所以，一个星巴克牌子出现在故宫，我们不由得感到突兀。 我认为文化中的精神财富比人类更易于全球化。我们在美国的华尔街上可以用中国的红砖绿瓦建成高楼大厦。许多生意人可能会吃惊，但我却不然。只要我们有足够的资源，我们可以把任何东西从一个地方输送到另一个地方，可是人的思想却难以改变。当我们跟不同文化背景的人聊天的时候，我们会不会乐意接受并使用对方的思维方式？我承认我不会——我看，老师和同学们也都深有同感。我想问：我能否把自己全球化？很多社会学家已经预测，在全球化的影响下，各个国家的文化势必会融合成一种文化。我们所保留的历史遗产无非是一种日记而已，让我们回忆或者学习人类的精神和奇妙之处。 王国维在他写的《人间词话》说每个学者得“必经过三种之境界。”旨在让每个人系统地全球化，我想出了一些境界。其一，“对他客观，对他宽容。”“他”是指不同的文化。在我们从小形成的对世界的成见的阴影下，我们不可能理智地对待某一现象。只有我们以客观的态度来面对世界才能变得宽容。其二，“追他而迷，为他而创”我们不能只当一个旁观者，我们也得亲身经历文化才能理解。当我们理解的时候，我们也可以创新，为文化做出些贡献。其三，“纵观颜色千百度，蓦然回首，原色犹在，独形异矣。”在我看来，文化不是为一个群体所拥有的，而是人类共享的。即使文化是人的精神的表现，但也得承认不同的群体会因生活环境不同而使用不同的方法来创造文化。如果我们将来在故宫或者在其他的名胜古迹和古典园林里看到洋快餐或者现代购物中心，我们不用觉得突兀，其实我们是少见多怪。当我们看惯了必胜客挨着一家传统茶馆的时候，我们看到的是文化的现代形式，一种文化，一种颜色。 文化和全球化不是不容互相的，是息息相关的。当我们觉得两种文化存在时，两种文化就存在。但我们习惯了文化的融合，那就是一种文化。我们的任务就是达到只看到“原色”的境界。如果你会看原色，我会向你多多指教。

October 29th
Outside the main gate of my apartment, an old man sits, passing time by looking at passersby and taking care of his two white dogs that get dirty in the grass easily. One of the dogs likes to smell my pants and lick my index finger - the other bitch just nips and barks at the former dog to get away from me. The old man is in his 80s, wearing a simple V-neck with worn black dress pants and vest, throwing on a light blazer for the wind - I just call him "老爷," or grandfather. I occasionally talk with him, trying to discuss some of the colloquial phrases I've learned. The man can't write characters, but he knows so much about Confucius and Chinese history from a working man's perspective. He doesn't like to play Chinese chess or poker with the men around the apartment corner - he just smokes the day away, steadily going through a pack of cigarettes as he watches the willow trees. The weather is getting cold these days, and he spents more time couped in his room, like the pigeons and sparrows that he shelters outside his window.

October 25th

I feel like I've hit a critical point in learning Chinese. Synonyms are bumping into each other, sentences are getting more complex and the line between formal and colloquial Chinese is getting blurred. I find myself thinking unconsciously about the fine differences between two words with the same meaning but different characters. My ideas and arguments are understood by my teachers and friends with more ease and less hiccups, but I'm getting unnecessarily wordy. By taking a class on colloquial Chinese this semester, I've been able to talk more like a regular Chinese person among my friends here. But, I find it harder to talk with taxi drivers, my first intermittent conversation partners in China. Yes, they understand what I'm saying, but when they ask me to repeat a very formal academic word (书面, as the Chinese say), I find myself watering down the beauty of a sentence that I took time to construct into simple sentences. I don't think the fact that I have a bigger vocabulary makes me better or more Chinese than them - I think that studying professional Chinese desensitizes you from something my colloquial Chinese teacher calls "language environment" - that is to say, I should know not to say among my friends that a girl may a protuberant butt when I can just say her ass is big, or that talking about Confucianism or Chinese medicine isn't something that everyone prepares for. To develop this sensitivity to the surroundings is still a work in progress, but by thinking about the words that I learn beyond their fixed definitions, I find myself more sensitive, or “敏感."

October 12th
Music never seems to escape me in this city. A couple research students that I met at the Beijing Language and Culture University invited me to attend a rock concert called the Midi Festival on the outskirts of the fourth ring. Aside from getting lost and asking a million people how to get to the concert, we comfortably arrived at the concert arena, a small music college geared for churning out China's rock artists. Clusters of students in surplus military gear stood outside makeshift tents, an outer ring of cigarette butts growing thick around them. On stage, a French alternative rock group keeps its listeners' heads nodding and hands waving. A couple of kids waved large red flags saying "Independence for Rock Music! Rock Revolution in China!" while running into people all over the place - perfectly raucous.
On the either side of the arena, a smaller stage was set for Chinese rappers freestyling to the beat and melody of Kanye West's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger." I'm not exactly sure what they were rapping about, but it had something to do with making money, buying bling, getting girls and beating any other crew that would dare challenge them. The sight of them with fake gold necklaces, oversized sweaters and fake Nike Air Force Ones was enough excuse to leave.

September 22nd
A couple days earlier, I helped plan my roommate's dinner birthday party. In her search of traditional fried duck in a local hutong, I found a lovely restaurant south of Tiananmen Square that has somehow maintained its hutong integrity and duck taste compared to the Quanjude crap.
As for me, I needed any food resembling homemade food - namely, Korean food. I haven't celebrated my birthday with my family for a few years now - during high school it was because of band competitions, during college it was because of the distance. I found a restaurant that served close to authentic Mee-Yok-Gook (미역국, seaweed soup). Traditionally, Koreans eat this soup to remind themselves of the pain that their mothers endured during pregnancy and to thank them for giving them a life.
I've never felt more homesick.

September 16th

I got a call from a friend if I wanted to see Avril Lavigne in Beijing. I thought she was joking, but in a serious voice she offered a VIP ticket to watch the Canadian rock star in a private booth. I ended up at the Wukesong Basketball Stadium a few hours later.
Nobody actually buys the VIP tickets individually in China - they are all bought up by corporations and companies seeking to give their employees bonuses that extend beyond a lump of cash. So, my fellow Lavigne fans were composed of Chinese men in their fifties and expats from Texas and Kentucky working for major oil companies. I think they just came for the champagne.
About fifteen minutes into the concert, the floor in front of the stage was crowded with the real fans - the college and high school students and pop rock enthusiasts dressed in proper gear and laced with glow sticks. Suddenly, the security turned on the lights, the stage manager came on stage and commanded everyone to return to their seats before the concert got canceled. "This is for the safety of the performer and for everyone else's safety."
Since when was Avril afraid of having her fans a few feet away from her? And what does the stage manager have to fear? She is no Cui Jian - revolutions are not start by songs about skater boys and muddled infatuation.

September 14th

Zhongqiu Jie, or the Mid-Autumn Festival - the day for family and friends to get together, to find a place to see the full moon when it is closest to the horizon and to enjoy mooncakes. Nobody wanted to go with me to Houhai to actually see the moon, so I went by myself. Unfortunately, I had to share paths with other couples walking slowly, nibbling mooncake crusts, talking about sweet nothings. A girl looked at me with pitiful eyes as I asked her boyfriend to take a picture for me. Fortunately, the scenery was beautiful. Though the photo that I've uploaded was taken later at night, the moon was red only minutes before, truly 朦胧.

September 12th

As a reward for her hard work as an intern of the 2008 Olympic Games, Danni got a couple tickets to go see the Paralympics from her boss. Not really interested in the Paralympics and already caught up with academics, she offered me the tickets to see the powerlifting finals. I sat among a sea of Chinese flags and red plastic clappers. When the Chinese competitor came out, everyone just rose to their feet, the stands shaking with their cheers. On the television, I heard the familiar cheer "Zhongguo Jia You" (Go China!), but instead I heard a chorus of children led by an enthusiastic teacher yelling "Yundongyuan Jia You" (Go athletes!). Very fitting - to see the blind and the wheelchair-ridden athletes pump more than 300 pounds into the air is not something to cheer based on nationalities, but based on the human spirit.

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Sun YanZi's annoying high-pitch songs played during breaks: Back at IUP

The transition back to IUP was smoother than I had expected. The weather in Beijing is cooler, not nearly as humid as when I had left it. All the trees on the Qinghua Campus are in post-summer bloom. I completely missed orientation, so the faces that I passed by between breaks were unfamiliar, except for the faces of a few Yalies. However, the teachers all say hello as I pass by - I'm glad I haven't been forgotten.

For this module, I am taking courses called "Participation," Broadcast Chinese and Colloquial Chinese. The vocabulary lists are simpler than I had expected, so I spend less time preparing for each class. I find myself reading more Chinese magazines, especially Shenghuo ZhouKan (Life) and Jinrong (Finance), and talking about the things I read with friends and teachers. My Chinese is getting more fluent and my responses to questions are getting longer, but in the midst of all I want to say I drop little characters like 就 or 都. I try not to get extremely excited or angry when I express my thoughts, even if what I say calls for such emotional outbursts. Feelings cloud grammar.

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Concerto: Basan Part 2

The plane ride is unusually quiet – I suppose everybody on this flight isn’t used to waking up early for check-in. Genevieve, my travel partner, is also asleep, tired from staying up with a few IUP students. Surprisingly, Li Yun laoshi, the education director of IUP, sat next to me for the trip to Sichuan. After an aerial Chinese breakfast of white rice porridge with ham/cucumber and mayonnaise sandwich, we reflected on the summer session in Beijing. Li laoshi confesses she misses teaching. The administrative side of education means filing paperwork and scrutinizing over teacher salaries and sick day leaves, never really any contact with the students. For this summer, I have definitely attained my goal – to improve my Chinese fluency. I am much more comfortable and confident living in China. I can survive on my own while conversing with others about everyday topics. While traveling, I wonder if I can put everything I’ve studied this summer to test.
For the remaining time on the plane, I forced Li laoshi to teach me some Sichuan dialect. The differences are not very distinct – instead of saying “wo bu zhidao” for “I don’t know,” it is “wo bu xiaode.” However, profanity is on a different aesthetic plane.

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David Bowie, Damien Rice, and Dave Matthews Band in a mixed whirl: Dongwangzhuang 东王庄

"你好. Please show us your student ID," says the service attendant.

"I'm just going to my room," I reply.

"We still need to see your ID."

"I don't have mine on me."

"It's for your safety."

"Against what?"

After a few more seconds of haggling with the attendants, I climb the three flights and tread the hallway down to my dorm room. The aftersmell of an overused mop lingers. As I take off my shoes, a droplet of water from the ceiling soaks into my shoulder. The air conditioner is still not fixed. The ceiling panel is darkening with spots of black and green. After a swig of Pocari Sweat (a popular beverage in Asia, also known as Monkey Sweat), I lay down on my hard bed. It is moist.

On the fifth floor whiteboard, someone has put up an advertisement - "2BR Apt in 东王庄, 3000approx./month, if interested call Wiley!" During my hour break, I call Wiley. Immediately we set up a meeting to look at the apartment and meet the landlords. The landlords are an old couple who live in the vicinity. The wife, Ai-yi, reminds me of my grandmother - the way she wields her fan threatens her timid husband, who doesn't collect money until Ai-yi spreads her fan.

Outside, I hear the hooting of pigeons and chirps of sparrows on the first floor balcony and overworked air conditioners groaning. The elderly yell at each other - the accent is too strong for me at this point. With the smack of a playing card on a makeshift wooden desk, a man showing off his round Buddha stomach yells "Wo Cao!" (Profanity) Around the wastebins, ladies squabble over the ownership of a few plastic water bottles.

As soon as I sign my lease agreement with the landlords, I bike back to my dorm and scramble to pack everything before the Foreign Student Affairs Office closes for the night. After an hour, everything is squeezed in two pieces of luggage, two bookbags and two boxes. Unfortunately, no taxis are around. A white unmarked car drives up.

"Where are you going?" he asks.

"Dongwangzhuang. I need to move a few stuff as well. Will your car handle the weight?"

"No worries."

The man looks like he was part of some Chinese gang with his huge tattoo on his deltoid enlarging every time he flexes. We quickly stuff all of my clothes and books into his trunk and are on the road. If all unmarked cab drivers are like this man, then I don't know why I'm still riding state-regulated taxis. He gives me recommendations on the best restaurants, best markets to buy household goods, and best places to meet Chinese girls. "My neighborhood has too many of them. Come by, we'll have some baijiu (vodka, but not really) and I'll introduce you to a few." We exchange phone numbers. He promises to call.

The first few days in the apartment I furiously organize my library, clean the kitchen, dust my bedroom, mop the floor and pay the internet bill. I have announced that I will hold a "happy hour" at my place for IUP students to mingle and bond over wine and snacks. Fortunately, I am sponsored by IUP with an allowance of 500RMB. After running around the Lotus Center and only finding disappointing Great Wall red wine (a soury excuse for vinegar), Jason and I head to the Carrefour store in Zhongguancun. The Carrefour store in Beijing is the size of Costco, but nothing is sold in wholesale. That doesn't seem to stop the locals from taking advantage of the lower than average prices and the wide selection of imported goods. Fortunately, in the evening lots of IUPers come to warm up the apartment. I'll admit it - the happy hour was a good cover for my housewarming party. Over Alcantra and Merlot, we pass the night identifying Chinese emperors and government officials on playing cards. I was hoping for a rowdy game of Kings.

As with any new environment, time is necessary to adapt. My daily commute to IUP has doubled. I actually have to learn to cook, force myself to go the market and buy cheap packaged noodles, or drag myself to the restaurants in the area - the cafeteria is no longer fifty meters away. Over Skype, I've asked my mother for a few recipes. Apparentely, to make a good stew, all I need is some vegetables, ground meat, cooking oil, spices and water. I've also been pestering the teachers to teach me some Chinese plates. In any case, would anyone like to be my foodtaster?

While at one of Beijing's best jazz clubs called the OT Lounge at Jianguomen, Carol told me of a doctor who learns another language to see life from another perspective and wrote a book about her reflections. I suppose I am attempting the same thing - to approach life from a younger perspective, to force myself in a strange environment that changes as fast my vocabulary and thoughts change. This past Friday, IUP held its Speech Day. I related my years working as a waiter in San Francisco. I expected the speech to be difficult because I was using Chinese, but because I was speaking about bundles of experiences and emotions buried in my mind and heart, the speech wrote itself on the podium. I am surprised how much clear my thoughts are when I speak Chinese now - perhaps its all due to more subtle adjectives and verbs that are now in my vocabulary, but I do not feel the need to memorize anymore. I speak from the gut.

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Suite: No Hands （无手）

The library – an easy haven for a student after hours of Chinese class on chairs that uses your sweat to glue you to the seat. Air-conditioner, big tables, plenty of books, magazines, dictionaries and movies on Chinese history, culture and medicine, cold drinking water fountain, fellow classmates to remind you that you’re not the only one confused between synonyms – the library is an easy haven. But for all its amenities, it asks you to pay a price that Chinese cannot do without – a voice. Silently writing characters is important for memorization, but not practicing the recordings with your voice and reading the textbook only allows for visual understanding of a language that depends on tones. The library is a false haven.

Saturday, July 12th 2008

Tony and a group of IUP students suggest a trip to Panjiayuan (潘家园) for a change of scenery. After train-hopping at Xizhimen and a quick taxi trip, we end up in front of a huge outdoor market. Scrolls, calligraphy brushes, paper posters from the Lei Feng, monuments and miniature dolls of Mao Zedong, statues of Buddha, and antiques from the turn of the 20th century are organized in neatly filed rows throughout the market. Rows of merchants sit leaning on walls or big statues, or if they’re unfortunate to be on the sunny side of the row, madly swoop their fans across their faces. I approach one stall to find a motley of broken Buddhas, rusted Cultural Revolution hair clips for women, old bronze coins, and a stone dildo flanked by two miniature forms of goddesses that remind me of India. One long aisle in the back of the market features millions of books sprawled out on the ground, including plays about model CCP children and love lost for the glory of the Party and countless copies of The Outlaws of the Marsh and Dream of the Red Mansion. Unfortunately, this aisle has no roof, and sellers are forced to rest on small stools or a sturdy stack of books squeezed in metal closets that every seller has.

The same evening, I rush through subways to meet my friend Danni (丹妮) at a famous hutong (胡同，the northern way of saying alleyway) called 南楼鼓巷，or Nanlouguxiang. I get off at the wrong subway station, and ask countless passers-by, elderly people and police officers, running through narrow alleyways with classical courtyards saved from bulldozing. Old men crouch together in front of small stores yelling at each other – the accent was too strong for me to figure out the conversation’s main points. Children run in the opposite direction, kicking a soccer ball amongst themselves and against the walls of the alleyway. Finally, I find 丹妮, and together we browse through the hutong, lined with restaurants, tea shops and specialty stores geared for tourists. Over dinner, Danni reveals that she is an intern at the Olympic Rowing competition site, and hints that she can get me a seat at the finals for a ticket price of about four dollars. As an Olympics intern, she gets to wear the red uniform. Volunteers wear blue, judges wear gray – I’m still trying to figure out who can wear green, yellow and orange.

Friday, July 18th 2008

The midterm is today. The weeks of not having tests to prepare have allowed me to relax and just read poems from the Tang Dynasty and listen to random radio broadcasts about classical music, the dangers of walking with flip-flops and love stories. A couple hours after I am finished with the test, I talk with all of my teachers to discuss mistakes I’ve made on the test and possible improvements to my study methods to make greater leaps of progress.

After the test, I meet with Zhou Laoshi, my first-year Chinese professor, and Dean Marichal Gentry, the Dean of Student Affairs at Yale. Fortunately, the rainy weather broadcast is wrong, and we enjoy a humid but still pleasant afternoon walking around the royal playground of the past dynasties. The scene isn’t different from last year – hundreds of people and local elderly circle Kunming Lake to glimpse at Empress Dowager Cixi’s stony vision of the Chinese navy (in the background, right). To avoid the tourist crowds, Professor Zhou buys us tickets to ride a boat to Suzhou Jie. Suzhou Jie reminds me of Venice, but with a broader waterway, more trees, stone bridges and oriental architecture that do not float. We wander into a store covered with Guilin fabrics. Dean Gentry buys an orange cloth with two dancers, reminiscent of African tribal dances - pity he couldn’t bargain for it.

In the evening, we meet the Light Fellows at the Duke Chinese program and IUP, Yale alumni in China and Yale-China Teaching Fellows at an amazing roast duck restaurant. The Duke Light Fellows have tests every Friday…I’ve forgotten that I had to endure the same torture while at the Harvard program.
I won’t see Professor Zhou or Dean Gentry for an entire year – while I am curious what China will be like after the Olympics, I wonder what I’ll be like after a year in China, what Yale will be like in a year. It’s more than a year away, but I wonder if I’ll be ready for the culture shock that Kelly talked about.

At Sanlitun, I lounge on a rooftop bar with Jason, a classmate, and a few of his friends from the States. Upon asking him what China will be like after the Olympics, he responds in similar confusion, “Thinking what China will be like after the Olympics is like thinking what life will be like after having sex with Madonna.”

Saturday July 19th, 2008

IUP hosts its second field trip to 798, the modern art “factory” of Beijing. The area was originally a weapons factory zone built using money from East Germany, but eventually factory owners rented the area for artist seeking studio and exhibition space. While there are still some active factories, it has become more economical for owners to rent out space to the artists than to manufacture products.

I never really learned how to appreciate art, but 798’s art seems to have two paradoxical purposes – to criticize China and to praise China. Some exhibitions clearly try to preserve classical art techniques, but juxtapose Western motifs like Salvador Dali’s melting clocks with calligraphy. Other exhibitions express frustration towards the government. One painting features a few Chinese men with similar shirts that have a logo modeled like Tiananmen Square, but their smiles are horribly exaggerated, simply fake. The only common thread throughout all the works is confusion – everyone knows the country is developing, but nobody knows where the country is headed. Repeating the title of a famous Chinese history book, everyone seems confused where to search for modern China.
The only exhibition that really stood out and related to my thoughts on China “The Dustproof Cloth” by Yao Lu. Yao uses dustproof cloth manipulated by computer art editing programs to form poetic images of beautiful green mountains that remind one of an ancient mystical China, but upon closer inspection, the green dustproof cloth covers mounds of shoveled dirt and disaster sties – it covers the ugliness. The mountains, mounds of dust and theft, is Yao’s symbol of contemporary China.

I met with Danni in the evening to go to 王府井, or Wangfujing, to enjoy the street food. Wangfujing is like the Times Square of Beijing - lots of lights, huge TVs covering building walls, lots of people. At one point, the TV played the Chinese Olympic cheer. All of a sudden, the children around me clapped and cheered in unison along with the commercial. Even the adults around me muttered the cheer under their mouths. After wandering around the huge bookstore and specialty stores around the plaza, we went to the street food stalls. I had legs of octopus, lotus rice, and strange balls filled with fish, sticks of candied grapes, and coconut milk. According to one of my teachers, eating scorpions is beneficial for skin quality. I don’t know about the scientific proof behind that relation, but the scorpions were delicious. They tasted like potatoes. Jason says that Xian has better street food – I wonder if I’ll have an opportunity to go there in the future. The scorpions are supposed to be better there. The seahorses looked at me with these pathetic eyes, so I skipped them for today.

Since I bought a bicycle in China, I’ve been practicing to ride without touching the handles. After nearly crashing into speeding cars, actually crashing into a couple pedestrians and replacing one ripped tire after a nasty crash into a tree, I can now comfortably bike without hands. My experiences and reflections in China can be, I think, summarized by my bike. While talking with Dean Gentry, I realized how confused I still was about what I wanted to study at Yale and do later in life. I’m done with my premedical studies and MCAT, but I’m not sure if I want to pursue medicine. Throughout sophomore year, studying Chinese was an escape, a source of procrastination, from studying organic chemistry and physics. But here, all I do is study Chinese. As Dean Gentry summarizes, “You can think of the path you’re biking on as your Chinese education. In the beginning, you’re getting used to the environment, your studies, so it’s completely understandable that you hang on tight to your plans, to the handles. Everyday, the people who you come across encourage you to try their jobs, to try new experiences. As the let go of what you’ve considered as your life plan, it’s natural to feel uncomfortable, so you’ll force yourself to refocus on your original studies, on your original path – you’ll hold the handles. But as you grow confident in your ability to communicate and relate with the people around you, you let go of your own plans – you let the bike curve as the front wheel curves about. However, you’re still moving on one path – Chinese. No matter what job you pursue, in China you have your Chinese education as your foundation, your path.”

Biking back to my dorm late at night, I see nobody in the street, so I let go of the handles. I’m still uncomfortable if the wheel turns too much, and to be honest, I’m still not sure what to do with this language that I’m dedicating a year to, but at least I’m experiencing and learning something new everyday.

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An American Sings the Olympics Theme Song: 北京欢迎你

Mondays are never great. After a weekend of not having someone hound over my grammar, my danbanke(one-on-one) teacher rips my sentences to pieces and assigns pages of grammar assignments, topping off with a note of encouragement, "Your Chinese is a little better."

Tuesday are awesome. I review everything the night before, I make sentences without missing predicates or objects and without confusing nouns for verbs or adverbs for adjectives. The teacher is more benevolent with the compliments: "Not bad."

Thursday is unusually unusual. On the white communication board, Cui Laoshi (teacher) has a message, "Are you interested in talking to elementary school students? Contact me!" Hey, I love kids. I leave her my cell phone number, and by five in the evening, a man calls me to plan the event. Plan? What plan? I'm just talking to elementary school students, aren't I? Regardless, I agree to meet - anything beats the studying routine. At the Tsinghua East Gate, I am greeted by the man, Mr. Shang and the host for the event, Ms. Danni Zhang. Together, they explain I am talking to school students about American high school life, how to study English and my opinions on the Olympics. They want me to prepare crafted responses ahead of time "to avoid misunderstanding." Mr. Shang further requests that I sing. I don't know many songs, so I blurt out the first song in my head, "What a Good Boy." They finally mention I need to memorize the Olympics theme song, "Beijing Welcomes You." I figure, hmm, still nothing much - a few questions and a couple songs for a few students. Mr. Shang says he will give me 300 yuan for my efforts. It's just a small talk, I say.

The next day, I excuse myself from class and head for Beijing Transportation University (北京交通大学). Mr. Shang leads me to a big building, and soon I find myself in the backstage of a large auditorium. I cannot see the seats in the audience, but the raucous noise of impatient children echoes to the back. "Didn't you say I was talking to a handful of students?" I ask uncertainly.

"Yes, a few students selected for their English speaking levels. They are the only ones asking you questions," says Mr. Shang. "Danni, quickly introduce Ricky!"

In seconds, I walk onto the center stage of the lecture hall, facing hundreds of students and teachers. I stand next to Danni for a bit, and then she hands me the microphone for me to introduce myself. Well, what the hell, I think, might as well make the best of it.

The entire activity seems like a TV talk show - cameras and camcorders near the stage click and flash, while the audience laughs and applauds. After going through the prepared questions, the students ask their questions in accented English: "Why are there so many presidents from Yale?" (Because Yale is awesome) "Where have you been other than Beijing? Where do you want to go?" (Henan, desperately want to go to Yunnan) "Do you have a girlfriend?" (Next question - "Your English is very good," I compliment)

We play a guess-the-word game, themed around the Olympics. I do well, except for one phrase ("Citius, Altius, Fortius" - do all Chinese kids know this too?) I give a less-than-thrilling performance of "What a Good Boy," but everyone claps anyways. As some sort of sick joke, Mr. Shang plays some incredibly fast Indian-Chinese fusion rave music and asks me to show everyone how Americans dance. (Note: I graduated from the only high school in the San Francisco Bay Area that banned freak-dancing.)

Finally, the students on stage and I sing "Beijing Welcomes You." Fortunately, Mr. Shang hands me the lyrics. After Danni formally announces the conclusion of the event, the students in the audience stand up in relief. The students that I spoke to push me to give them my email address, but Mr. Shang points me from camera to camera to pose for group pictures. Junior high school girls seemed especially eager. (Yay?)

I related all of this to Mr. Laughlin, the program director, over lunch. "Typical," he says, "for the naive foreigner to get caught surprised by the grandiosity and scale of Chinese affairs."

Hardly typical, methinks.

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The Yankee Doodle Theme Song from Barney: Let's go to Class - Everywhere

This cold is not going away. Runny nose, fever, hoarse voice complicated by constant Chinese practice everyday, has made the cold drag on.

The first week of Chinese was appropriate for my sickness. The first two lessons basically covered health. By the end of the week, I was able to tell everyone exactly what symptoms I had, the details of a restless sleep and my sensitivity to light.

IUP is thorough. At HBA, I remember covering hundreds of words, knowing definitions of characters but glossing over usages. Here, the teachers grind each word's usage into you. For example, I know about ten ways to express going to sleep. Each term is used in a slightly different way. While the locals will understand what you want to say, they will not correct your words with the correct synonym. Fortunately, all the IUP teachers are patient and eager to help, whether I take their class or not.

Yesterday, a group of students and teachers went to a village preserved since the Ming Dynasty called 爨底下, or Cuan Di Xia. The village is shaped like a round bowl filled with rice, with the landowner's house on the highest spoonful. Most of the structures were maintained for more than 400 years. Tourists come to eat the local cuisine, which is supposed to be unique. My hunger didn't detect anything outstanding, to the cook's disappointment. However, I saw an old lady making cornbread in a great big metal bowl over an open fire. Her hands must be like insulated gloves - she would touch the bowl to flip the patties with her bare hands! Although the fresh bread was meant to be served to the awaiting customers in her restaurant, she sold a couple for the IUP troop to share. The unsweetened bread was the best thing I've had since living in China. The American southern cornbread cannot compare.

Everyone explore the town on their own. I found myself with the teachers, talking in Chinese throughout the day. Had I been with the other students, I don't think I would have appreciated or understood the town's culture, religion and geography deeply. The local geography is confounding - some places are labeled "Eight Mysteries Pool" and "Nine Meditation Stones," but when I actually hiked to those areas, all I found were cesspools dark with algae and nine boulders. I bet if I made a sign that said "Tree of Richard" next to anything resembling a branch, someone would take a photograph. Others areas were breathtaking - river-cut passageways with caves and cavities, single bell temples surrounded by vast green mountains.

Back in my room, I can only imagine my hike through fading memories preserved by these photographs. Outside, I hear American students in drunken stupor. There are a lot of foreign students on campus now as the actual university students leave and summer language program students move in. My opportunities for a Chinese-only environment dwindle in Wudaokou - with English in one ear and Korean in the other, hearing Chinese is a luxury. Maybe if I willingly try to not understand English and Korean, I can get by. Realistically, however, I have told other Koreans and Americans who see me as foreign that I am Chinese. It works - unless I'm talking with another Chinese.

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Etude: Nuts and Bolts

Finally I am able to log onto my blog. I wrote a test message lest my entire entry gets deleted by clicking on "Publish Post."

The Ministry of Public Security in China has changed their internet traffic monitoring methods over the past year. I am not only hopping over the Great Firewall, but over three other hurdles, collectively coined "The Golden Shield Project." From DNS address redirecting to mirror sites to site-by-site regulation, the government is really bottlenecking the flow of information. I can't help but think of Professor John Wargo in the School of Environmental Sciences ingraining the adage "Whoever controls information controls fear and security" when I think of the measures that the MPS has taken to prevent me from accessing this blog.

For any Light Fellows and Yalies in China, this is how I am accessing the internet:

1.) Download and install the Cisco VPN Client (Ver 5.0.01.0600) from the Yale Software site.

2.) Connect to "Yale resources and home networks." You may have to log onto your school's network site before you connect through the VPN Client.

3.) In the statistics box, you should see no packets discarded under "Packets" and Transport Tunneling "Active on UDP Port xxxxx."

To test, I've tried Wikipedia, BBC, NYTimes, Facebook, Youtube and other sites traditionally blocked. I haven't had a hiccup.

This entire week I've been in transit or in bed. My flight, though long, was merciful. Every few hours, I looked outside the window to see the world below - Canadian forests, Alaskan mountains, Siberian tundras, Japanese islands, Chinese farm fields - and looked around the plane, which was filled with anxious high school students wearing bright orange shirts reading "Explore China Camp" and sleeping tourists from Philadelphia and San Francisco.

At Tsinghua, I've run around all over the campus, the Haidian area, and Wudaokou to get a cell phone, books, toilet paper, medical checkups and a bike. Yes, a bike. Last summer, I thought bike-riding was suicidal in Beijing because of everyone's disregard for traffic regulations (imagine a taxi skimming your back wheel while a pedestrian walks across you and a bus honks at you to get out of the legal crosswalk area). However, Tsinghua's campus is at least five times the size of Beijing Language and Culture University's, which hosts HBA. Granted, I've gotten the cheapest strolling bike I could find and had to repair it twice already (the damn seat kept bending and pushing into my thighs). I've been hit by a taxi and hit a few old ladies because the brakes are a joke, but the bike is wonderful. I'm not quite ready to hold an umbrella in one hand and talk on the cell phone with the other, but I'll get there.

The students at IUP are all, to some degree, crazy about Chinese culture, philosophy, history, literature and/or food. I'm one of the very few who's interested in public health in China and North Korean refugees, but even so I find myself enlightened by conversations with my classmates over meals. Almost everyone has just graduated college, is pursuing a M.A. or Ph.D., or already in the workforce as a journalist, film critic, historian, lawyer or consultant, looking to refine their Chinese skills. Though we are all united by our love/hate relationship with China, our life experiences define us individually. One guy who was in the Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan had to work at a U.S. Air Force Base as a head chef when the government failed in 2003. He didn't have to know how to cook - he just had to keep the Kyrgyztani ladies away from the American soliders, and vice versa. Another classmate, a recent graduate from Georgetown's famous International Relations program, has traveled the world, has no upper tolerance for spicy food, and knows more about the Korean media star Rain than most Koreans know.

For now, I can't wait for classes to start. My textbooks, called Thought and Society and Frankly Speaking, seem very interesting. My room still needs some furnishing, but whenever I'm in here I feel like I'm in jail, with the cold floor, hard bed and stale air amplifying the sense of entrapment. I'd rather be outside, bike around town and breathe in polluted air. Unfortunately, a sore throat from the pollution and a night of karaoke with Yalies leaves me no choice but to watch some Chinese soap operas and chew Vitamin C pills.

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