Concerto: Basan Part 1

My travel itinerary is complete. Unfortunately, I have not reviewed my Chinese textbooks for the final. I’ve been passively listened to the text recordings while perusing my Lonely Planet guide – anyways, language can’t be crammed, so what’s the point of glancing through thousands of words to stuff into my short-term memory? My ideal plan is explore Sichuan province and then travel through Tibet. However, my Chengdu travel guide is arguing that I cannot be granted a travel permit into Tibet using my permanent residence permit. In case I cannot go to Tibet, I will travel south to Yunnan province, but I sincerely hope that I can get in. My hiking bag is half-packed – I’m still debating whether to take two or three pairs of boxers.

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“中国加油”Cheer: 8 years in 8 hours

Every morning on the way to IUP I bike past a neighborhood park equipped for elderly ballroom dancing sessions, pick-pong matches and young late-night forbidden kisses. The red countdown board stands at the entrance informing everyone how much time is left before the opening ceremonies down to the second. I feel a surge of excitement reading "0000 days, 3 hours, 9 minutes and 53 seconds" - finally I'll see the fruit of years of preparation by China's Olympics Committee. However, the polluted sky suggests rain - where are the silver iodides that were supposed to rend Beijing's sky clear?

Jason and I take a taxi to Hardy's hutong near Yonghegong and Nanlouguxiang. Through narrow cobbleways and past stained windows we find a traditional siheyuan (four-corner roof hutong). We walk to the entrance with a row of empty imported beer bottles lined outside a window. The ambiance inside is beautiful, but I see no air conditioning machines. Two electrical fans swing its heads back and forth, weak breezes cooling sweat beads on everyone's noses. Hardy brings out a few cold beers.
"How much do you pay a month for this place?" I ask.
"1500," he replies.

As more people arrive and crowd the hutong, I escape outside for fresh air. An old man with a towel swung over his neck watches me as he cools himself with a paper fan. Untrimmed shrubs, two yellow parakeets and four red-eyed turtles surround him.
"Old man (courteously said), how long have you lived here?" I ask.
"About six months." he says.
"Only six months? You look like you've lived here much longer than that."
"Oh yes, I used to live north of here where that big building now stands. The government razed my hutong."
"Did the government give you enough compensation?"
"Meh," he chuckles, "it'll do, I suppose."
His wife brings out a bowl of green beans to snack on.

The group finally starts walking towards Ditan Gongyuan, a park about fifteen minutes away from the hutong. As we walk across an overpass, I notice the highway below is completely empty. Red and blue lights on top of police cars blink along the highway every fifty meters. I rest my water bottle and umbrella on the stone fence and prepare my camera, but a guard in full military regalia approaches me and tells me to take my belongings off the fence. "I'm just taking a picture," I say.
"Please remove it, or we will fine you." he warns. "And please don't take a picture."
"But when will I ever see Beijing's highways empty like this during rush hour?" I complain.
After staring at me for a couple seconds, he says, "Take it when there are no cars in the highway then," he instructs.
As he watches me carefully, I hold my water bottle between my legs and snap a photo. "Why are you guys here anyways? Why is this highway empty?" I ask.
"Government officials are passing through here. The officials from Austria just passed by. We cannot allow anyone to take pictures of these officials. Anyone taking photos of officials will be suspected as a terrorist."
"Did the officials from the United States pass by?"
"Yes."
While musing the thought of President Bush passing under my feet, we continue to walk to Ditan Gongyuan. Under the park gate, we see lit-up Fuwa mascots on a roller coaster made of flowers. Hardy and a few guys buy pizza and champagne from a local restaurant for everyone for dinner. After a few bites and gulps, we hurry through the park to the big TV screens. The gate to the closed TV area is already packed with people. Onlookers begin to cheer as the red countdown board next to the screen reads "5 minutes." Everyone quickly squeezes through and finds patches of grass to sit on. The TV darkens as the stadium lights go out. The drum countdown show excites everyone to yell in mixed unison, "Ten, nine, ba, qi, liu, five, si, three, er, yi..."

After Zhang YiMou's 80,000 cast show, portions of the crowd break into modest to crazy applause for various international athlete delegations. When Taiwan comes on as "China Taipei," the park breaks into cheers and claps. As soon as the camera pans to Chairman Hu, the claps die down to smatterings. When the American athletes come out, the audience goes nuts as some people swing American flags and shirts over their heads on top of fences and platforms. When the screen shows President Bush, the audience splits into claps and boos. Finally, when China's 1,600 delegation enters the stadium, the watchers all stand and roar for Yao Ming and the athletes donned in red and yellow suits (tomatoes and eggs, as my Chinese teacher calls them). As soon as Li Ning lights the scroll torch, everyone cheers as they runs toward the gate. I hear some people complain in pain about cramped legs and tired eyes. My friends invite me to a bar in Chaoyang - I refuse. Four hours of looking at a 10 by 12 TV has drained me.

On the subway back to Wudaokou, we share plans for the upcoming weeks.
"Are you going to see any of the events?" Anjli asks.
"No, I don't want to go to them," I say.
"What?? What are you going to do after your program ends?"
"I don't want to be in Beijing...I think I'll head south toward Sichuan or Tibet."
"Can you get into those areas? With the protests and disasters, will you be allowed to travel there?"
"Meh, better now than before the cultures there are China-fied."

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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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Test

Cisco VPN Client 5.0.01.0600

Connected to "Yale resources and home networks"

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Second Prelude: 机不可失，时不再来

My flight leaves for Beijing in about seven hours.

I had hoped to spend the days leading up to today thinking about where I would like to visit, what I would like to experience. I had a taste of Chinese culture by trying to rent an apartment close to Tsinghua University through emails with the landlady. My Asian neighbors offered contact information of their relatives in China and bordering countries. I perused through the Lonely Planet travel guides and Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China as much as I could. However, I'm still clueless. Perhaps I'm better off not planning at all. After all, I made my goals - to master the Chinese language and to understand Chinese society and culture - purposefully broad in order to force myself to travel and try everything while I am abroad.

I wonder what the next twelve months will bring. Will the silver iodide pellets bring clear skies on 8/8/08 for the opening ceremonies? Will Liu Xiang, the reigning world champion in the 110m high hurdles, take the gold again? Will Beijing change drastically after the Olympics? Will I drastically cut my hair? Will the winter snowstorms and spring snowstorms be short? Will Wenchuan and the surrounding areas recover from the earthquake by next May? Whatever happens, I hope I'm there to witness it.

The sun is rising.

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A Techno Rave: Shift Happens

I remember having a conversation with a few Light Fellows about why we applied for the fellowship in the first place. Yes, it's an all-expense covered study abroad session - yes, the Olympics are happening - yes, Japanese pop culture is amazing - yes, Korean boys are cute (not really) - but everyone agreed that East Asia was the new metropolis to experience, that it was important now to understand the cultures, politics and economies there while we are still in college to prepare ourselves for a globalizing world. "The West has shifted"... East Asia is the new "West," as hackneyed this phrase is getting nowadays. After a summer in China, a semester's worth of writing about globalization and cosmopolitanism in China and a couple years of Chinese language, I'm still confounded as to what this shift is. I found this slideshow and TED video appeasing (and aggravating, ironically) my confused mind. I hope you enjoy.

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A Poorly-rehearsed Musical: Love during Earthquakes

I was perusing my feeds on Chinese blogs, and came across this post by Mr. Wang Xiaoshan on a love question made by one of the entertainment section editors of a newspaper.

Here is my rough translation of the question:

"An earthquake can test how you express your love. When an earthquake first happens, what is your first reaction?
A: Hide under a table in panic
B: Open a window
C: Drop everything and run outside
D: Stand in place out of fright.
Analysis: Individuals who selected A are rather alert and protecting of their love. If their love is revealed, they become nervous. They get so nervous about their individual partner's devotion that if they can't relax, they'll just get weary. Individuals who select B are stable, steady lovers. After they fall in love, they become more steadfast and more confident about their charismas. For those who select C, once they fall in love they are crazily filled with energy, as if everything on their minds has just been liberated. For those who select D, they fall in love like diving into a river headfirst. Other than their significant loves, they don't think of anything - their grades and work all suffer, and everything else is just in an awful mess."

So, since we students across America are taught to hide under their desks to protect their spinal cords from being severed by falling debris, are we protective nervous lovers?

Mr. Wang notes that the editor was sacked. "I don't think he should have been sacked," he argues. "This editor was just more heartless than the others."

How can any newspaper try to comfort its readers by comparing love to tragedy? (Unless you're one of those melancholists in a permanent pre-Juliet Romeo state or Peter, my friend who has given up on dating) A disaster and loss of life calls for grief and support, not amateur psychology. Since China has an unprecedented amount of domestic press coverage on the earthquake in the Sichuan area, it has been amazing to see the solidarity of the Chinese people in pictures of bright-eyed children holding candles and volunteer workers digging through rubble. Now is a time to connect broken families, through radio programs like "Phone-in for Peace"; to reestablish the education system and get students back in school; to get to rid of earthquake side-effects that threaten more lives, like quake lakes. Albeit the question's attempt to distract worried minds from the death and destruction caused by the earthquake, its humor points only to remind its readers of lost love and unnecessary self-criticism.

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New (or should it be old?) Sounds: Chinese Neighbors

I don't talk to my neighbors. Actually, all the families in my neighborhood are fairly self-contained, limiting all communications between houses to formal greetings when a couple neighbors coincidentally check the mailbox at the same time, or when one walks by another mowing his or her lawn.
I live in those edge city phenomenon houses built by KB Homes, in the planned labyrinths of suburban houses that look identical every two or three doors down. My community is ethnically diverse - white, Hispanic, Asian, Indian, Russian - but before I digress I'll focus back on the theme of this entry - my Chinese neighbors.
The Chinese neighbors coagulate. When I leave the window open, I can hear them from as far as five houses down. Before I studied Chinese, I subconsciously blocked out all the raucous unintelligible gossip out of my head, but after finishing Chinese 150 at Yale, their furious shouts started to make sense:
"Wife, you've cut the bushes too much!" says a husband.
"Just go to work, I know what I'm doing," replies the wife, the sounds of bush scissors snipping.
I worried that I would have to resort to textbook recordings and Youtube videos in Chinese to consolidate my Chinese before going to China, but listening to the everyday conversations of my neighbors, at last understandable through all the tones and phrases, I decide to venture out of my room and talk to them.
Fortunately, I don't have to initiate the awkward hello, knock on their doors or wait by the mailbox until they come out of their houses. My mom, being the ideal neighbor, actually talks with them, so she just calls one, relates my desire to speak Chinese and sets up a date for me and a neighbor.
Jenny, a middle-aged Taiwanese mother, lives next door. The first part of our first conversation together consists of my apologies for not even saying hello after living next to each other for more than three years. Jenny, instead, just waves it all away and compliments the fact I could express apology in Chinese. After her first flattering statement, I just start from Chinese 115's "您过奖了" and enjoyed our talk.
While she was differentiating 丢掉，失去 and an assortment of other synonyms related to "to lose," she teaches me "丢掉脑袋." These characters mean, literally, to lose your brain. If you say something that's considered offensive towards the government, you can 丢掉脑袋. It was a pet phrase in Taiwan when Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-Shek) was still around, censoring the media and the press. I'm not sure if this 俗话 is used on the mainland, but still a useful colloquialism, no?
Hours go by in a flash, and soon she has to pick up her daughter. She criticizes her daughter's poor Chinese, wistfully voicing her regrets, "If my daughter can at least recognize characters, I'll be happy!"

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A Couple of Staccatos

The Northeast Blackout of 2003

China's Cyber-Militia

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An Off-Broadway Show: A Place to Live.

April 7th : Ms. Jia, the housing assistant at IUP, sent a short email with a long attachment. With Tsinghua University Foreign Student Affairs Office’s lack of immediate response on the availability of dorms for IUP students, Ms. Jia urged all students to find off-campus housing as soon as possible. The attachment, The Renter’s Handbook, reads like Moses’ commandments - “When negotiating with the landlord, thou shall demand accompaniment to the police office to file for the residency permit” - “Thou shall demand the landlord to operate all appliances to ensure proper usage.” While I was still at school, I didn’t have time to find an apartment, so as soon as I got home I went through one housing site after another, my Chinese electronic dictionary in one hand, the mouse in the other, searching for an affordable place. The Olympics hype cranked up rent rates up to twice the usual rates at most places.

I found an apartment in the Huaqing Jiayuan complex, not ten minutes from my university campus. Fully furnished, safe, close to the market and school - for twice the price of the university dorm (6500RMB per month). Considering that it was the lowest price tag I had found within such close proximity to my Chinese program, I sent an email to the landlord, agreeing that I will live in her apartment for a year and requesting wire transfer information as well as the lease agreement, on which I would send her a scanned copy of my signature. I informed the Light Fellowship Director and asked for a increase on my summer housing budget.

May 20th: Ms. Jia sends another email: “DORMITORIES AVAILABLE! Reserve quickly!”

Frustration.

The next few emails I exchanged with the landlord to cancel the lease, at least the ones she sent me, weren’t pretty. A Chinese neighbor told me that the first affirmative email I sent was as good as the lease agreement or any red Chinese print seal. I was lucky, the neighbor said, to not have been demanded some fee for canceling everything that I had negotiated.

As much as I enjoyed exchanging letters with the landlord in Chinese, the days of this pleasant-culturally-ignorant-and-naïve-American-student-studying-Chinese personality ended. I feel as though the landlord let me go not just out of her kindness but because I didn’t know the subtle formalities in Chinese business.
Chinese business lesson #1: Know the customs.

On a brighter note, my visa just came today. The visa company even gave me a plastic cover for my passport.

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Nocturne: Mothers

At the beginning of my sophomore year, I secretly planned to stay at school until the dorms closed. After a couple weeks of hanging around with the family, I couldn’t accustom myself to the slow pace of home. College was moving, exciting. Funny how I ended up being the first person back home out of all my suitemates.

If we decided to wage a war against our moms, moms would win without using nuclear bombs or using unmanned surveillance technology. No, their strategy is much more fundamental – it attacks basic needs. Cut off the homemade food supply, let the mundane college food collect its toll. Keep communications to a minimum during exams so that your child doesn’t know how you are and cannot use you as a source of procrastination.

Surrendering wasn’t hard. No one can live without food and love.

That’s my mom – reeling me in with 돼지보쌈, 된장찌개, and the latest gossip on the antics of Korean housewives she meets at her English school (the gossip is worthy of a blog entry – stay tuned). With mouthfuls of 김치 and the assortment of 반찬 that she has prepared, all I can do is nod to her sarcastic criticisms of Korean mothers. Defeat is tasteful and enjoyable.

I found this rather touching article about single mothers in China dealing with their own set of hardships.

“When we argue that a woman owns the uterus, and it’s her right to decide whether to deliver the baby or not, people won’t buy it,” said Yuan Xin, director of psychology at the Consulting Center of Nankai University. “If you are a woman, your personal choice is monitored and supervised by a lot of others, and they expect you to do what everyone else does.”

How frustrating it must be to be a strong woman in China. If you’re trying to make yourself into a 职业女性，society calls you 女强人 or 三八。 We can all remind ourselves through the lyrical genius of Oveous Maximus:
“Picture 270 days – 270 days where bones lift and organs shift to make room in the womb for you and I the future generation ‘cuz when you’re born it’s appreciation…‘don’t cut off the hand that feeds you,’ but we do when we oppress women on so many levels, our perceptions of them less than equal…a woman’s leche is pure…pure like my mother for raising two boys single with two jobs trying to make singles just to put food on the table…the way I see it, this will always be a man’s world, under a woman’s supervision.”

Some suggestions to all Light Fellows and travelers: Get a webcam. Set up Skype for your mother and teach her how to use it so that you she can worry less about you while you’re in China. Hug her…and eat her food while you can.

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Allegro: Farewells

I thought I had reading and finals weeks scheduled perfectly. Hours of studying punctuated by meals with friends and occasional daydreaming in the Sterling Memorial Library courtyard, daily packing of some luggage as I take my finals.

The problem is, one meal is not enough.

Scenario: We meet. Surprisingly, we both arrive on time, not on Yale time. At salad, we'd start to remember random, recent memories of us together. At roast chicken or some New Haven-fied Lo Mein, we move further into the past, reflecting on how we first met and ridiculous first impressions. At dessert, we're so deep into memories we hardly have to time to say goodbye. Hastily, we promise each other to meet at the next Harvard-Yale tailgate, or that he/she'd visit me while I'm abroad. After a handshake or a hug, we each take what farewells and wishes we can offer and walk away.

Half an hour into my physics and environmental politics notes, a text vibrates my cell phone. The friend wants to meet for coffee before I leave.

Honestly, I don't know when I'll get the chance to meet all the juniors and seniors I've grown close to since my freshman year. All I have is a one-way ticket to Beijing, return date unknown.

Maybe I'm overexaggerating.

I find adopting Athabaskan language near the conclusion of every year useful. Athabaskan is a language spoken by Natie American tribes in parts of Canada, Alaska, Oregon and California. After most conversations, closing remarks are exchanged with a final "goodbye." Athabaskans, however, feel no obligation to say "goodbye," or any closing remark. In fact, Athabaskan languages have no word that means "goodbye."
Mary TallMountain is more eloquent than I am to express my thoughts:

What do you say in Athabaskan
when you leave each other?
What is the word
for goodbye?...
We always think you're coming back,
but if you don't,
we'll see you some place else.
You understand.
There is no word for goodbye.

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Ode to Smoke-free Joy

Yesterday marked the first of a hundred days before the Olympics festivities begin, but today BBC World News reported something even more joyous. China will ban smoking in Beijing in most public buildings. The government authorities say that they want to present China as a healthy, modern and clean city, but ironically the ban still allows smoking in restaurants and bars. Oh well – at least non-smoking areas are mandatory in cafés now. Although a sunless gray white sky will depress me, at least I won’t have to worry about environmental tobacco smoke clogging my lungs and arteries.

“For every three cigarettes lit worldwide, one is smoked in China.”

Although the ban gives me reason to anticipate China even more, something tells me that people will still smoke in public areas, paying off the enforcers 1 yuan at a time or something. 毕竟，关系扮演重要的角色。Let’s hope that 100,000 enforcement members are enough to lower ambient nicotine levels in Beijing. I also hope that Beijing will maintain this ban after the Olympics, but I doubt that the Chinese tobacco industry will stay quiet…

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March: Korea's Ivy Craze

Time isn’t just ticking – it’s getting louder. As the semester draws to a close, Yalies get ready for a final hurrah on Spring Fling Day before confining themselves to libraries for finals. As the Olympics opening ceremony gets closer, shouts from rallies by the world and anti-rallies by the Chinese intensify. Interpol warns China of a major terror threat, didn’t our internal terror-radars detect this? Amid final exams, housing worries and last moments with friends, time is getting louder. (Maybe I’m just hearing my heart beat.)

I usually write specifically about China, but NYTimes published an article I couldn’t resist talking about – South Koreans’ Love of the Ivy League. Mr. Sam Dillon describes the lives of students at two prep schools in South Korea – Daewon Preparatory School and Minjok Leadership Academy – renown for their high success rates of students getting acceptances to American universities, particularly the Ivy League colleges. Student preparation is rigorous – studying from as early as 6 a.m. to as late as 2 a.m. or later (Some students apparently don’t sleep). Surveillance is intense to make sure students are not falling asleep as they cram for AP, IB and SAT tests. Aside from enduring the hard academic life, students also participate in clubs and sports.

I’m simply amazed that students in Korea have to go through that academic torture to get to the Ivy League. My own path to college admissions didn’t seem nearly as academically intense. During high school, my life was consumed by the marching band. Early morning practices, Tuesday night practices, Friday concerts and Saturday competitions defined my junior and senior years. I ran on the cross-country and track and field teams because I lacked the hand-ball coordination to play any other sport. On holidays and summer/winter vacations when I didn’t have marching band, I worked at my parents’ restaurant in San Francisco. I took my sets of APs and SATs, but I didn’t have time to study for those tests all day. My test scores were nowhere close to what Daewon and Minjok students are averaging.

I hope that the Korean education system changes so that the students have time to devote time to other things than standardized tests, such as volunteer service and independent projects. I feel like my Korean friends are burnt out while they’re at Yale, looking at a class as just another set of tests and essays to cram and write for. High scores are important to prove one’s understanding of a topic or one’s intelligence, but the cramming culture destroys the point of learning – to enrich one’s life. I understand that Koreans value education as a means to a better and happier life, but education itself is an art to enjoy. When history is reduced to dates and events, when science is reduced to facts and formulas, when language is reduced to grammar and structure, where is the beauty of learning? Mr. Dillon mentions that one girl is preparing for nine AP tests, none of which she’s taking classes for. She “buys and devours textbooks,” cramming into the wee hours of night. Question: why?

Fascinating.

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Aria: Annoying China

Reading the news these days really makes me wonder how much of the Beijing I got acquainted with last summer will change. The International Herald Tribune's article “New Rules for Expats in China” (4/23/08) reports on the recent law changes for foreigners in China and stories of law enforcement. The duration of stay offered by a tourist or student visa is more volatile, and the motley of rules that foreigners had been able to circumvent seems to be slowly enforced as the Chinese government and police react to “lewd” behavior and recreational drug use.
For one, China seems to discriminate people from countries that have protested along the Olympic torch relay. A French café owner in Beijing, complying with the rapid change in visa law despite the short notice by the government, cannot get a new visa. Complaining for a reason, the policeman responded, “It’s because you’re French.” A Swiss and a German planned to travel to China together. The Swiss tourist got a visa for thirty days. The German got one that lasted five days. They canceled the trip. Businessmen who travel liberally from Hong Kong to China are not pestered by visas that they never had to bother with. I haven’t read anything about an American tortured by the bureaucracy of the visa, but I’m worried.
Interestingly, the Chinese government denies any change to visa regulation. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu says, “The Chinese people will welcome foreign friends in a warm, enthusiastic and open-minded way.”
Why now? Why does the Chinese government decide to enforce so many laws on foreigners before a ceremony that they hope will attract foreigners? I can understand that Beijing wants to clean up its nightlife scene of all that it deems to be hedonistic excess, but won’t these sorts of restrictions only create regrettable repercussions? By setting up obstacles for us to boggle through just to get into the country, China is only ruining its reputation in our minds.
I’m already annoyed by all the housing issues I’m facing. Tsinghua University is reluctant to offer the Inter-University Program any sort of on-campus housing, so I may have to negotiate with local landlords to rent an apartment for a year. On the bright side, it’ll be an adventure on its own, but I’m also reading emails from the housing assistant at my program that landlord will be especially conniving to rob “foreign suckers” who cannot effectively bargain. Should I take this as a call to study some vocabulary on renting? IUP has already sent out their 学生租房手册. I almost deleted it, but it seems it’s my guide for my first two weeks in Beijing. Beautiful.

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Movements

一件小事 (3/7/08)
“This is boring,” I think as I sit at the hospital, waiting for Dr. C. to come so that I can continue my dehydration research. “Not only are there no kids who vomit or shit water coming in these days, even the doctor is late.”
I close my Chinese book. I just reread Lu Xun’s “Yi Jian Xiao Shi” (一件小事), reviewing all the characters aimlessly. For our weekly writing assignment, we were assigned to write about our own little incidents similar to Lu Xun’s story. I exaggerated my first experience at a church, pondering as I watch the student seated several benches closer to the preacher how he can drink ridiculously and fuck a girl on Saturday night, yet wake up to come to such a holy place. I conclude that no religion can teach a person morals and virtues – one guides oneself. Whatever, I used new Chinese words to write that essay. I clear all the enrolled patient files, check with the nurses and doctors for any sign of the late doctor, and leave.
The New Haven winter wind is finally easing on this eve of Spring Break. The cloudy sky casts a dark blue hue on the buildings and cars. Fluorescent street lights pop on one by one. Across from the hospital’s main entrance, a man stands by his flower stand, soliciting on the grieving. The street lights cast shadows on the orange-dyed roses and blue daffodils neatly rolled into bouquets, $25 each. I walk faster, thinking of the lab reports that need to be written, waiting back at my dorm. The night paints another shade of black.
I pass by Subway and remember that all the dining halls are closed now. My stomach growls quietly. I take my MP3 off and step inside the store. A man in blue scrubs directs the sandwich maker to leave the olives off his sandwich. As I look up over their heads to see the sandwich selections, the waiter greets me. “Can I help you?”
“Uh…what’s the special deal today?” I glance quickly at the daily list. Friday – 6 inch tuna, $3.99. “How much is a footlong?”
“$6.42.”
“I’ll just go with the cold cut combo footlong, please.” (It was about a dollar cheaper.)
She works through the salad bar, looking up every now and then to see my nods of approval as she adds lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers on top of the deli meat. She presses the sandwich down and twists the wrap with one hand as she clicks on the cashier machine.
“You do accept credit, right?” I ask.
“No,” she replies.
“Oh. Debit then?”
“Our credit card reader is broken man,” says the other sandwich maker. He points to a sign taped onto the salad bar’s glass pane. “CASH ONLY.” Great – I have no cash.
“Is there an ATM around here? I can get cash really quickly. You don’t have to dispose the sandwi— ” I plead.
“I’ll pay his sandwich,” says the man donned in blue scrubs.
The waiters look at each other. I stand dumbfounded, mouth hanging open. I recover my voice, “No really, I just need an ATM, I can get cash really quic—”
“Don’t worry,” he mouths, as he hands a twenty to the cashier. She hands back the change to the man. “Give it to this boy.”
My face flushes. “Sir, this is too much, I can’t accep—”
“You’re a student, don’t worry man. Just be nice to somebody else.” He takes his sandwich and leaves the store.
I sheepishly take my sandwich, his change, and leave the store. My face is still red from his unexpected acts. The sandwich weighs heavily in my hand. I don’t deserve to eat this sandwich, I think, confused why he would do such a thing. What had I done for him? I don’t even know him. All I know is that he works at the hospital.
Raindrops make black polka dots on the gray cement. Fortunately, I am back in the college courtyard. Back in my room, I lay the sandwich on my table. I don’t know what to do with it.
I feel like Lu Xun right now.

错误 (2/28/08)
I’ve been making silly mistakes that I should not be making anymore, resorting to simple grammar to express my thoughts, squabbling over the slight variation in meaning between two words, listening to Chinese songs over and over, hoping to memorize the lyrics that I feel I will never have the chance to use in real conversation because of the difference between 书面语 and 口语. Today, I struggled writing an essay for my Chinese 150 class for an entire evening, only to see it edited sentence by sentence, word for word by my good friend whose Chinese is much better than mine. I stare at it now, wondering where I went wrong, lost on what I need to improve. Maybe I just need more sleep, but I know the same problem will annoy me tomorrow.

My friend gave me wonderful advice, however, on how I could improve.
“Sometimes,” he says, “you just have to use that word wrong so that you can see what your mistake is.”
I go back to the dormitories thinking I can use the characters I’ve learned in class perfectly. But when it comes to these Thursday nights before my essay is due, I struggle. I could submit a poorly written paper, receive a low grade with plenty of red corrections, correct it and resubmit it for full credit, but that’s just cheating for a better grade. I may learn something, but it would be learning that was initiated by the teacher’s corrections, not my own initiative and thought. Using a new word to the best of my understanding and then being corrected is more rewarding than saying disorderly bullshit and having the teacher muddle through your thought.

过程 (2/22/08)
It’ll be impossible to fill in the gap between last summer and now, so I will start where I can and hopefully remember to write more tidbits as time goes by.
I'm fascinated with Korean and Chinese history. I can't read my assigned readings for classes because I'm so absorbed in the books I borrow from the library. Nobody has ever taught me my homeland's history, and it would seem difficult to understand Chinese culture if I don't read some Chinese history. I spend hours at the East Asian Library at Sterling, delving into dynasties and kingdoms, mounting dictionary after dictionary on my desk - Chinese-Korean, Korean-English, Chinese-English, Korean-Chinese - and my physics book remains in my backpack, forgotten until past midnight, when I realize I actually have to do some work that's graded.
The program I will be attending this summer and (hopefully) for the next academic year is called the Inter-University Program, affectionately called by its alumni IUP (see the link on the right). The beauty about this program is its small class size (1:1 teacher student ratio) and focus on speaking and writing. My friend who went there last year is pressuring me every time he sees me to study guwen (classical Chinese), but who walks around speaking ancient Chinese? I'd rather take the Contemporary Idioms course, or Chinese Journalism. According to my friend, classical Chinese will improve my Chinese in every technical field - I'm not as convinced, but I have plenty of time to think.
I usually don't wake up to study, but lately I've been getting up before my 7:30am alarm for a cold shower before trodding off to Commons dining hall to eat while going over the languages I had studied the night before. I don't consider studying languages actual studying... it's just a hobby, a passion. Polish is getting harder (keeping up with the pronounciation is ridiculous), but I speak it every time I meet the Polish cashier lady at the Slifka Center. I'm mixing my French with Chinese. It's so hard to express something without juxtaposing a Chinese pronoun next to a French verb. "wo voudrais une pingguo."
I hope I'm not spreading myself too thin.

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