More Tingly Than Hot

My computer is back up and running (for now), but I never figured out what caused it to crash in the first place so we’ll see how long it lasts. The last couple of days I have had a lot more interaction with Chinese people other than my teachers thanks mostly to my new language partner and my high tolerance for spicy foods.

Last week I had my first session with my language partner, an energetic 24-year old Chinese girl named Bi Hui Hui. We have a Chinese tutor session for an hour and then I help her with English for an hour, although we don’t always work on English for the whole hour because she thinks her English isn’t very good and says she gets embarrassed, even though my Chinese isn’t half as good as her English. Either way I have really benefited from our meetings (we met four times last week and once already this week) and hope that she will continue to want to meet throughout the rest of the semester. I really get to practice on normal everyday situations and I’m always asking her about encounters I have and what phrases and expressions I should have used. It’s also the most exposure I get to a Chinese person as our talks have been more candid than I would have thought because of the language barrier. But she has been super nice and even got her boyfriend to help me work on my computer last week when it wasn’t working and is very patient with me while I butcher her language. She really likes to sing and is taking part in a campus wide karaoke competition on Friday which I have hinted at attending even though she assures me it won’t be very interesting.

Over the weekend I was dining at the dumpling restaurant that I often frequent when I was able to strike up a conversation with a broad-faced Chinese man sitting across from me with a badminton racquet and a gruff voice. Through the smell of the vinegar and soy sauces splashed on the tables, the steam and sweat rising from the tiny, bustling kitchen area, and the strong aroma of the egg and chives soup that dotted most of the tables, he caught a whiff of the spoonfuls of crushed pepper I was shoveling into my dipping bowl. He told me that I must really like hot food and then asked me where I was from. I told him I was an American and we switched between English and Chinese while discussing how long I had been studying and how long I was staying. When he had finished he stood up and said goodbye and evidently was too distracted to remember to pay for his meal. I didn’t notice either until the petite but stern owner briskly scurried past me and out into the hall looking for the alleged malefactor while mumbling under her breath. About 30 seconds later she walked back into the room shaking her head and smiling and counting her money.

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Down and Out in Beijing

I am having some computer problems so I won't be able to post any new blogs for a while. I can't keep Windows up for more than about five minutes before it freezes but hopefully I'll be able to get it fixed pretty soon. Hope everyone is doing well.

Great Wall

I was able to visit the most famous attraction in China this week, the Great Wall, during a school sponsored trip on Thursday. We left around 8 in the morning and it was about a two hour drive north of Beijing. The area we visited is called Mutianyu, a very well-preserved section and therefore a popular tourist destination. But since it was a Thursday morning it wasn’t too crowded, even though it was a perfect day to go with clear skies and a slight chill to cool you off after the long walk up the mountain (the steps were super steep and it took us about 40 minutes with several breaks). The fall is a great time to go to Mutianyu because it is surrounded by wooded areas and really makes for a colorful landscape. We walked along the wall for several hours taking pictures and watching for Mongols attacking on horseback from the north.

Two things that struck me while walking around were the sheer immensity of the project (the walls and fortifications stretch for some 4,600 miles) and then the seamless blending of the wall with its surroundings. One famous Chinese historian contrasts the Western view of man conquering nature with the Chinese view of man bending to nature in order to sustain such an enormous population. That idea is supported by the almost organic wall that winds up over the backs of the ridges and then slides back down into the valleys in its serpentine attempt to hide itself in the vegetation. For the trip back down the hill I road on a sled-like conveyance with wheels that rolled down an aluminum slide like a bobsled. They put my safety concerns to rest by offering a one RMB (the Chinese currency) insurance policy, or about 14 US cents. Overall the trip was terrific and my high expectations were certainly met. I hope to return at some point and maybe visit some of the other sections of the wall. I posted some pictures under the link below.

Great Wall

Hilarious In Translation

We’re through the first week of classes after the break and ready for the rest of the semester. I’ve identified Listening Class as my weak point and realize I have a long way to go in that area. Trying to understand men is the most difficult because they tend to keep their mouths closed very tight and sort of mumble out of the backs of their throat. I’ve tried to watch more Chinese television (a real tough assignment I know) so we’ll see if that helps. My Speaking Class is the favorite class of most of my classmates. The teacher is a very jovial Mr. Wang (one of about a billion Wangs in this country, the most common surname) who makes class quite lively and comic with his constant berating of the Italian girls’ accents and historical digressions on Confucius. He diverts from the lesson plan more often than the other teachers and attempts to give us useful words that the textbooks may have omitted.

My death defying adventure of the week was riding on the back of my classmate’s moped on the way to lunch. As I’ve mentioned the traffic is quite helter skelter and yesterday was no exception. Fortunately or unfortunately he was a fairly experienced driver which meant he felt comfortable weaving in and out of lanes, speeding up then slamming on the brakes as we approached intersections, and passing on the inside and outside shoulders. There is a white metal fence that divides the highway and I don’t think he understood that my knees were forced outward further than his because my left kneecap was inches from drubbing each post Three Stooges style. Despite the gravity of it all I was too foolish to actually be scared; it all seemed to be happening on tv or in a video game (watch out for that old lady! Dodge the bus, dodge the bus!). I knew we had lost the game when a Russian sped by us on a sport bike doing a wheelie down the main thoroughfare, after which my classmate, who is French, turned toward me and said “crazy Russians”.

The above picture is a warning sign posted in our dormitory inside the laundry room. Most of their mistranslations are innocuous grammar errors but this one took me a second to decipher. Nevertheless I’ll keep my voice down to avoid any cascading sock-avalanches.

A Thousand Moons and A Thousand Words

The holiday week is almost over and students that took trips are beginning to return to campus. I stayed in Beijing and made several short excursions to different parts of the city and thought I would post pictures of the places I visited. None of them were too glamorous and the attractions were more the people themselves than the landmarks. On Tuesday I went to the Beijing Worker's Stadium, the American Embassy (which was closed), and some small shops. Wednesday I went to Beida, China's most prestigious university, or as my guidebook describes it, MIT and Harvard rolled into one. And on Friday I went to the Houhai Lake region, a kitschy tourist trap but still a nice place to walk. All in all a good week. You should be able to click on the picture below and it will take you to "10-1 album" where you can click on the first picture and then scroll through the rest.

10-1 Week