Good Mourning China

At midnight on August 15, 2010, every bar, club, and restaurant in China stopped playing music, much to the dismay of foreign clientel -- some of whom were trying to celebrate their friend's birthday (ahem). All entertainment-based television channels and many websites were temporarily blacked out. In their place, a paragraph of simple white text on a dark background announced the reason:

'Dear subscribers,

To Mourn the Zhou Qu landslide victims, the State Council of the People's Republic of China has announced that August 15, 2010 will be National Mourning Day. To express our deep condolences, the relevant agencies are to suspend relay of overseas channels with limited landing rights that contain entertainment programs over the announced period. Hereby we express our gratitude for your understanding and cooperation.'

The interesting part was, the vast majority of nightlife establishments remained open and accessible, they just weren't playing music. Translation? You can go out on National Mourning Day, just don't have any fun.

Of course, upon discovering the rationale behind the blackout, we felt saddened and a little embarrassed that we had initially reacted in such a selfish manner, but as the day went on it became clear that perhaps the restrictions imposed on National Mourning Day were a little over the top. Entertainment television stations remained blocked until at least noon, at which point they switched over to non-stop CCTV coverage of the disaster and relief efforts. The hotel I was staying in had 70 TV channels, 69 of which were broadcasting identical CCP programing, while the remaining one did so in English.

News content followed a very obvious pattern as the day came to a close. First up were startling images of flooding and wreckage. By mid-afternoon, a repeating reel of government officials mourning in droves beneath flags at half mast dominated the footage. The day ended with individual stories of heroicism and ordinary citizens coming together to overcome their collective sadness. People who watched the events unfold on TV must have gone to bed satisfied, ready to put the landslide behind them and get on with their lives.

Today I find myself wondering, 'What aren't you telling me CCTV?' I can't imagine the rescue and restoration efforts are going as smoothly as we were led to believe, nor can I ignore the images that we were not shown: homeless people sleeping on muddy streets, hospitals overrun with victims of water-borne illness, anyone even mildly discontented with the way the state has proceeded. It seems like something is missing.

And with that I proclaim the benefits of a privately-owned media. While the Chinese government may have succeeded in creating a feeling of resolution among its people, it has decidedly neglected to divulge the entire truth in favor of saving face. It may be more efficient to overlook problems in this way, but it is certainly not fair to the people of Zhouqu.

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Bing Bao Mao Ze Dong

At HBA we talk about a lot of politically sensitive issues, most recently Tiananmen Square and the questionable appropriateness of hanging a giant portrait of Mao Ze Dong above its main gate. Foreigners, being all too quick to judge the practices of the Chinese government, love to point out that this kind of institutionalized worship for a political figure would never fly in a place like the United States.

And that's when our teacher said, 'Don't you guys have a MOUNTAIN with four ex-presidents' heads carved into it?'

...Oh yeah. And it doesn't stop there. If you've ever been to our nation's capital -- which oh by the way is just one of many US cities named after the founding fathers -- you start to get into some serious worship stuff: the world's largest stone phallus, dedicated to Washington, opposite an enormous stone statue of Lincoln, carved stone reliefs honoring the men of the Philadelphia Convention at every turn.

We struggled for a few minutes to justify these national monuments while remaining critical of Mao portrait. In the end, we were pretty much forced to give it up. As far as the People's Republic of China is concerned, Mao Ze Dong was the guy who started it all. I guess to them it doesn't really matter that he killed a ton of people in the process, or that Americans are inherently biased against the Chinese Communist Party. What it comes down to is that China wouldn't be what it is today if it weren't for Mao, and for that the Chinese thank him.

Americans seem to have this distorted outlook on China which I think is the result of a flawed education system. When we're young we're told it's this magical place with thousands of years of rich imperial history, and when we get older our textbooks frame Chinese communism as a hiccup in that storyline, as if Mao and his party came along and destroyed what was once a utopia. But if we think of the PRC as a relatively new country with just 50 years of history as we rightfully should, it becomes a lot harder to critique. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Cultural Revolution was a good thing, and I'm not saying I support communism. I just think it's important to take a step back and really think about why Mao gets his portrait hung at Tiananmen before we go off about brainwashing, a lack of political freedom, and crimes against humanity.

And with that, I leave you with this glorious piece of CCP propaganda.

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Chinese Countryside: Day 4

Our fourth and final day in the Chinese countryside was probably my favorite, yet I struggle to convey it in words. Despite the fact that our morning was wasted at the most boring museum in the world -- literally just a few artifacts and placards stuffed into an old building in what used to be part of a temple, things really took a turn for the better when we left our cushy accommodations at the hotel and set off for the farm where we'd be sleeping. Here's a picture of an awesome tower we saw. It has nothing to do with the stupid museum except that we saw it on the way:

I have no idea how we found them, but our host family was made up of some of the nicest, most hospitable people I've met in China. When we arrived mid-afternoon at their courtyard style house, they greeted us with copious amounts of tea and fruit and insisted that we rest and unpack before anything else could happen. It was pretty clear that although the village was very poor, our family seemed to be the most well-off. Within the complex that was their house, there existed both a traditional, dirt floor section and a much newer part with modern looking couches, a TV, a secondary bathroom complete with solar-powered water heater, and tile floors. Certainly not a mansion, as evidenced by the status of their main toilet (below), but privileged enough to cause us to take notice.

Afterward, the family gave us a tour of their village -- a series of dirt roads winding in, out, and around decrepit walls, farmland, and buildings in various states of disrepair. But if there was any feeling of pity or slum tourist guilt that should have pervaded the afternoon, it was ameliorated by the giggling gaggle of eight-year-old kids that followed us around. They treated us like one of their own, demanding that we race them, carry them on our backs, sing, skateboard, play their games, show them our computers, and teach them English.

I spent about two hours with the most studious one of the group going through his textbook and helping him work through the exercises, and quickly realized that his school's English education methods are seriously behind the times. Rather than focusing on in-class discussion, speaking, and listening comprehension, teachers use a method which I'm going to translate poorly as 'translation contrast'. Personally, I think there are circumstances where direct translation becomes a viable option in second language acquisition, but not as a sole means to an end. The result is that students don't really care what a sentence means or where it fits into the context of a conversation. They just want to know what each word means individually. Furthermore, pronunciation is hindered by the fact that most teachers can't accurately pronounce English phonemes, and students often use Chinese characters or their romanized pronunciation equivalent to represent English syllables. Since Chinese lacks many English sounds, it is impossible to learn proper English in this way. It also leads to fantastic sentences like this one, used to represent the pronunciation of 'I like vegetables, he likes fruit.':

矮来客围着台布，害来自法律。 = Ai lai ke wei zhe tai bu, hai lai zi fa lü. = The short guest is binding the tablecloth, harm comes from the law.

All in all, staying with the farming family was a very rewarding experience. We were lucky to get a chance to witness first hand the sharp contrast between China's cities and rural areas. But more importantly, we got to meet a group of really great people who fed us, played with us, and engaged us in a sort of exchange few people ever have the privilege to enjoy.

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Chinese Countryside: Day 3

Today we spent an entire day at the home of one of the two middle-aged 'uncles' who've been leading us around all week. Although he is not farmer, Zhang Shu Shu lives in a farm-style house in the middle of an enormous plot of farmland with his wife and son. He'd also invited three or four students who were only vaguely related to the Zhang family, but who were about our age and wanted to take advantage of an opportunity to engage in cultural exchange with American college students. The majority of the morning was devoted to introductions – to the family, the house, and its surroundings. We helped fetch water from the well and clean some fresh fruit, then set out to find some farmers to interview. Unfortunately, the one I found didn't really want to talk to me. He was busy weeding his field with a hoe. I asked if I could give it a try, to which he responded, 'This work is too tiring, you will not be able to tolerate it.' I told him I'd done the same exact thing many times in my own backyard. Mistake. He handed me the hoe in disbelief. In reality, the piece of land he was working on was about three hundred times as big as my backyard, but having opened my big fat American mouth, I felt obligated to spend at least half an hour toiling away under the hot sun, without one of those Chinese farmer hats that look silly but are actually quite effective. I didn't feel too bad about how tired I was until I learned that the man for whom I was filling in was over 70 years old. Ouch.

After working up a sweat in the fields, we moved to a shady area near a lake, where we spoke at length with the kids about education, Chinese, English, names, writing systems, diets, and arm hair (which they were extremely surprised to witness first-hand). They were all extremely well-educated, especially Zhang Shu Shu's son (above). Although I could not possibly deduce such subtlety from our dialogue, a teacher mentioned later that she thought he spoke with the air and vocabulary of a philosopher. One of the vague-relative-student girls, whose summer assignment was to write about 90s generation aspirations and life goals, managed to ask me about a million questions for which I had no answers: 'What do you want to do after you graduate?', 'What kinds of things do Americans my age think are most important?', 'Do you think you'll live in America your whole life?', etc. Am I supposed to know? I think we both found the situation scary and telling. Meanwhile, our conversation was punctuated by a number of photo-ops with no underlying rhyme or reason, which seems to be a characteristic of Chinese-American cultural exchange. 'Oh hey! You're standing here! Wouldn't want to forget this!' *Snap*

For lunch we walked a mile down the road to a restaurant where guests can eat on raised platforms approximating the size of one-and-a-half king size beds (below). In most northern Chinese farming families, this platform serves as both a dinner table and shared sleeping area. It's incredibly uncomfortable to squat on for an entire meal, and I can't imagine doing so for my entire life. Within 30 minutes we'd decided to move to another room, where Zhang Shu Shu and the authentic Chinese people were sitting at a table with chairs. Clearly, the Chinese do not value tradition as much as comfort. They'd decided earlier that this was the best seating arrangement -- not because they didn't want to talk to us, but because they were worried we would not be accustomed to the kinds of food they wanted to order. I'll say it again, I'm so glad I eat everything. It makes intercultural interaction so much easier, especially in China, where the majority of host etiquette is rooted in food and drink.

At the risk of side-tracking this story beyond recognition, I will tell you that during lunch, an old Chinese man approached us and demanded to know, in an accent so comically brilliant Russell Peters could only hope to imitate it, 'WHERE IS YOUR COUNTRY?', a funny enough question on its own, that has since become a competition of sorts among members of the Chinese countryside group -- who can provide the most elusive correct answer? Under Canada? A few thousand miles that way? Of course, we knew what he meant...

After lunch we were supposed to go to a reservoir to talk to some local fishermen, but by the time we'd walked all the way there (two miles back in the direction from which we'd come), a terrible thunderstorm had rolled in, making it impossible for us to return. Instead, we waited out the storm in a shack smaller than a one-car garage with an engaged couple who'd been taking wedding photos, their family, and a little old man who sold turtles and giant snails out of a big blue plastic bag with a little water in it. The smile on his face when he pulled one out to show us was priceless – I wish I had a picture, but I was too busy taking photos of our situation in the shack:

The day ended with a group dinner back at the hotel, paid for entirely by our two fabulous 'uncles'. We exchanged toasts and thanked them for a great three days, as we would be leaving them the following morning. Halfway through our meal, the hotel owner interrupted to invite us to breakfast the next morning, yet another manifestation of the movie star treatment we'd been receiving since our arrival. We accepted graciously, and went off to bed with full stomachs, looking forward to our final full day in Yuxian.

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The Great Monkey Soldier Conspiracy

I know I should be working to edit and post days three and four of Chinese Countryside, but something more important has come up. By now, the 'news' that Taliban insurgents in Pakistan are training monkeys to shoot down American soldiers with AK-47s has no doubt made it to the US. I'm done with this nonsense. When the story first aired on CCTV (China's main news network) along with an article in China People's Daily (CCP newspaper), the teachers at HBA were eager to share it with us. While sentences rife with images of banana-slinging army battalions gradually sneaked their way into our grammar patterns, I sat back and considered the plausibility of the claims...

Monkeys can be trained to learn basic sign language and complete memory games. Teaching them to fire weapons at soldiers wearing certain characteristic uniforms is just a series of memory games right? Sure it would probably take awhile, but any group who successfully cultivated a little monkey army would gain the element of surprise and most likely distract the opposition with a wild monkey chase. I had no reason to disbelieve my teachers, and the facts seemed to work out, so I went along with it.

The Great Monkey Soldier Conspiracy has been problematic for two reasons. One, it earned me the stupid nickname xiao houzi (little monkey) for my gullibility. Two, it highlights a reliability problem in the Chinese media. Granted, the New York Post is equally if not more guilty of running the story after a debunking by US Military officials, but I find it fascinating that not one of our teachers questioned its authenticity after the original air date. If you haven't read the article, you should. It's good for a laugh. This made-in-Hong-Kong video spoof is also funny, even if you don't understand the Chinese.

Makes me wonder how I ever thought this was feasible...

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Chinese Countryside: Day 2

Aside from the Netherlands wasting my valuable time by losing to Spain at four in the morning, today turned out to be a great day. We spent the morning and early afternoon at Song Jia Zhuang Elementary (above), a boarding school which serves students in grades three through six from 27 surrounding villages. Principal Li, a charismatic man somewhere in his forties (?) welcomed us into his office with plentiful offerings of fruit and tea, and gave us a brief overview of the school's stats. Believe it or not, Song Jia Zhuang is a boarding school. Students are allowed to go home once a week to visit their families, and spend the rest of their time studying the usual elementary school staples – math, science, grammar, etc. – plus a few unique ones like morality. Shudder. Here's a picture of the schoolyard:

In general, daily life for the 600 something students at Song Jia Zhuang proceeds as it would for any American child. There are no assembly lines churning out math whizzes, no propagandists calling on students to surpass the US, no evil overlords bearing down on them to ace every test. The kids like to play and have fun, and surprisingly none of the questions they had for me were education-related. I was expecting extensive inquiries about the American university system, but all we got were things like, 'Are we like American kids? What are the differences?' and, 'What do American kids like to do for fun?' I was not prepared to answer them. Struggling, I offered, 'Well, American elementary school students don't speak Chinese...' missing the obvious, 'They don't board,' but oh well. Another difference I discovered later lies in the workload. Each student has 40 minutes of homework per class per night. That's about what I had in high school on a busy night, but looking at their smiling faces you'd never know.

We traveled next to Xigubu, a village that was established in what used to be a fort/castle/lookout. Constructed almost entirely of earthen bricks, the place is a perfect demonstration of China's current position at the confluence of ancient and modern lifestyles, as you can see here:

Everyone was really excited to see us, and all welcomed us into their homes to look around. Each consists of a main courtyard where families plant subsistence crops, and an indoor part where people live one family per room and sleep and eat on a giant bed called a kang. In keeping with the theme of defying expectations, the rooms also had electricity, TV, and computers. It was absolutely not what I imagined. We quickly made friends with some little kids, who followed us around for the rest of the day asking us questions and making fun of our rudimentary Chinese skills. At the edge of the village was a temple, from which you could get the sense that Xigubu would become a tourist attraction in a few years as soon as the rest of the world realized it existed. With time to spare, we wandered aimlessly through it until dinner.

For dinner we ate mule.

After dark, we gathered with pretty much everyone else in town at a giant outdoor stage to watch a kind of performance that would never fly in America – several farmers dressed in 'fireproof' suits launching ladle-fulls of molten iron at a stone wall, which erupted into fireworks upon impact. Amazing. Anyone watching the looks on our awestruck faces would have thought us no older than the ten-year-olds we were with. By the end of the night, we had become such great friends with these kids that we decided to give them English names – one of our favorite if not slightly imperialistic pastimes of this trip. It was then that something strange occurred that I still can't wrap my mind around. The boy whose name I chose, Cody, became immediately quiet and reserved after receiving it. He seemed not to like it for some reason that I couldn't understand, nor would he talk to me about the problem. Things got awkward from there, and I left that night not really knowing what had transpired. I got different answers from every teacher I asked, 'The name has no meaning to him', 'Boys are shy when it comes to English', and 'Maybe it was too hard for him to pronounce' to name a few. The whole experience left a sour enough taste in my mouth to wash away the delicious muley flavor that lingered long after dinner had ended. Oddly enough, although I'd been speaking and interacting in a foreign language the whole time, in a village I'd never been to, this was the only part of the day I feel like I didn't comprehend.

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Chinese Countryside: Day 1

Day one began with an early journey to Beijing West Train Station, which unlike the city's air transportation system, bears little resemblance to its western counterpart – except for, you know, the trains. Imagine a room exactly the size of two Applebee's, filled with hundreds of Chinese people. Half an hour before departure, an announcement is made and everyone jolts upright, out of their seats, and into what could vaguely be described as a line, with utter disregard for order or personal space. The crowd escapes gradually through the ticket-taker bottleneck and out onto the platform, where smaller groups assemble outside their respective train cars. With just 15 minutes to spare, the doors open and passengers are herded inward. Because no one has any idea where their seats are located, the result is a sweaty mess of bodies slipping past one another and blocking others as they fight over limited space (yes, there were standing passengers on our two hour train ride, and yes, they did try to sit in our seats). Let's just say my experience at the train station taught me the meaning of the phrase 'Chinese fire drill'. I was taken aback by the foreignness of the whole affair, and perhaps even a little angered, but as I was reminded by the teacher who accompanied us, 'When in Rome...'

Once out of the city, the landscape quickly changed from flat and barren to mountainous and green. The cloud/pollution cover subsided, giving way to welcoming sunshine and increased visibility of some of the most beautiful sights I've seen in my time here: hillside villages surrounding lakes, farms planned out neatly in steep mountain ravines, and other various glimpses of what the area was probably like before urban modernization. Two hours later, we arrived in Shacheng, where we caught a bus that took us to Yuxian, our final destination.

As we progressed from Beijing, we became more and more of a local spectacle. There we were, five Americans strolling down the streets of Hebei Province, luggage in hand, all the while speaking poor Chinese to each other for no apparent reason. It's an image to which the folks at Beijing Language and Culture University have become accustomed, but in a small city like Yuxian with relatively few white tourists (I've seen one, he was leaving as we were arriving), groups of Americans the size of ours are treated like packs of exotic animals in a zoo. The analogy became a little too real when we were fed crunchy puffed rice snacks by a particularly intrigued middle school girl at a park near our hotel. Everyone has their own unique reaction to us, but the one element they have in common is 'surprise'. Some just stare, others call out, 'Hallo!' in their best attempts at English, while still others bring their small children to meet us and take pictures. Our presence provides both entertainment and educational value, and parents jump at the opportunity to introduce us to their offspring. In the end, we are surrounded by large groups of oglers far more often than is comfortable.

It's worth noting that even the teachers who were with us could not escape the glares, laughter, and videotaping. If people could accept that five foreigners had indeed made it all the way to their city and could carry on a basic conversation in their language, they still wanted to know how in the world two Chinese grad students had found us. I'm sure this is a topic that's been written about time and time again, and I almost considered leaving the whole foreigner side-show commentary out of my blog altogether, but after mulling it over for a few hours I just can't believe any of it actually happened. I find myself hard-pressed to think of a situation in the US – even decades ago – in which foreigners would be regarded with such incredulity. I guess this is something I'll just have to get used to, but it is nice to know that finding people to interview for our projects won't be difficult.

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Some Photos

My Chinese life hasn't been notably picturesque as of late, but my blog is lacking in Light Fellowship-required photos and my family is starting to get antsy, so here are a few I didn't plan on posting:

One of myriad lion statues at The Forbidden City. The statues' architectural styles change as you move deeper into the complex. Also... this picture came out really good and I'm still not sure why.

More of The Forbidden City. The place is huge.

Trip to Beijing Opera. Most of the photos (which you are allowed to take) came out poorly because the actors rarely stop moving for more than a second. The show was about a group of bandits who steal silver from some corrupt official and are then reprimanded by the gods. They win in the end though. Go bandits. We sat in the front part of the theatre, where the staff serve you food and tea before and throughout the show. Very different. Very interesting.

Yes, Beijing Opera has subtitles (in both English and Mandarin, since the actors use a dialect modern Beijingers don't fully understand). Most of the time the translations are botched to hilarious extents, which some say is done purposefully to bolster the entertainment value of a dying art. Sorry about the poor quality of this one.

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A Note On Language

Note: This article may contain jargon. Sorry.

Introduction

I didn't plan on recording any of my linguistic musings in this blog, but on a day as impossibly hot as this, with five hours of sleep under my eyes, I am cranky and ready to expose the Chinese language for what it really is – an elaborate, centuries-old hoax, created with the intention of drawing in oblivious foreigners and selling them knockoff goods at 1000% profit. Okay so perhaps I'm exaggerating, but I swear if you are attentive enough, you can spot the internal inconsistencies that lay bare the contents of this 'ancient Chinese secret'. I caution you, regard my examples with skepticism and suspicion:

Chapter One – Words That Mean Nothing And Have No Function Except Sometimes When They Do, And Other Times When They Have Other Meanings

了 – By far the most complex particle employed in the language. Marks completion of action when placed after a verb, often unnecessary due to contextual time-word clues. Paradoxically, also paired with expressions of immediate future action. Many verbs cannot be followed by it. Often mandated by sentences describing changes of state, but hardly follows a predictable pattern – it's a gut feeling kind of thing. AND you'll find this slippery bandit at the end of negative imperatives (e.g. don't do such and such).

就 – Used seemingly at will to add a sense of immediacy, concrete or abstract, to a phrase. May appear with or without relevant time words like 'now' and 'soon'. May or may not mandate the addition of a final 了. On occasion, its only function is to emphasize a predicate.

会 – Usually means 'to possess the skill to be able to do something', but this is not the meaning we are concerned with. Covers most incidences of future actions, containing everything from 'might' to 'will'. You also have to insert it randomly all over your weekly assignments, according to corrections I've received. This one I'm getting used to... but that doesn't let it off the hook.

还 – I'm told this means 'still', among other things ('also' and 'sort of'), but am repeatedly corrected for using it in places where English would necessitate its use. I also encountered it today in a sentence that meant, 'I thought I was playing music for a cow.' I don't see it.

I'm almost positive there are no real rules governing these words. The fact that native Chinese people often can't explain them to me only strengthens my belief that their use is based on instinct and habit. Admittedly, one should expect to find areas of difficulty when learning a new language, but to have still not mastered these four words after two-and-a-half years of study is intolerable. It'd be a different story if I could find a foreigner learning Chinese as a second language who understood the use of these words completely, but unlike the more common American Spanish student with a solid grasp of the subjunctive mood, this kind of expert is nowhere to be found.

Chapter Two – What Do You Mean That's A Noun?

From the beginning, I've been thoroughly horrified by what I perceive to be a severe lack of understanding on the part of the Chinese when it comes to parts of speech. On day one you learn that many words you thought were adjectives function as 'stative verbs' in Chinese and do not require the use of 'to be'. 'I very hungry', 'You not tired', 'We very beautiful', etc., these are all accepted and in fact, the only correct way to express such sentiments (oh, unless you want to add an 'am' for emphasis, then it's totally fine... go figure).

Moreover, words like 有用 (lit. 'to have use' = 'useful'), do not maintain the parts of speech they carry when literally translated, but rather change parts of speech to accommodate their dictionary definition. That is to say, no matter how much you want 有用 to be a verb phrase, its meaning is 'useful', NOT 'to have use', and that's an adjective.

This phenomenon became particularly obnoxious today during class when we learned the idiom 摇钱树 (lit. 'to shake the money tree' = 'a thing that makes you a lot of money'). Yet another logical verb phrase lost to the nouns. A profession, person, or other thing may be called a 'shake the money tree' if it makes you money (e.g. 'You are my shake the money tree'). Unfortunately, you can't jokingly tell someone who complains of having no money that they make shake you if they so desire because you are the money tree (meaning you have money to give them), as I learned the hard way in class. Apparently Chinese analogy-based idioms lack the freedom English idioms enjoy. The Chinese idiom seems to lose the vivid imagery associated with its constituent parts, leaving only the brittle dictionary definition, which cannot be altered for comedic or poetic effect. This is a shame. I find great beauty in being able to respond to an inquiry of, 'Cat got your tongue?' with, 'It took my tonsils, vocal chords, and epiglottis, too.' The intensification of this idiom is comprehensible and mildly funny, unless you don't know what an epiglottis is, in which case there's just no hope for you.

Conclusion

I'm deeply sorry I had to bore you with this, but I want to capture my thoughts about the complexities of the Chinese language so that one day, when I'm translating original Confucius and Sun Tzu, I can look back at my former self and laugh. It stinks that the calculated, mathematical schema existing behind every language is so difficult to find in this enormous country, but my main concern is simply that much of our teachers' criticisms and corrections stem from their desire to ensure we understand the meaning of words before we start flashing our poetic license at every 2,000-year-old historical idiom that gets in our way. I fear they may be prematurely stifling a desire to use the language creatively. This is not an excuse for laziness. I want to learn real Mandarin. But I also don't want to be corrected for imagining phrases a native speaker could get away with.

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Chinese Family

My Chinese family consists of Wang Shu Shu (Uncle Wang, which he demands to be called because he is too young to be my father), his wife and two-year-old son, both of whom I have yet to meet, and his complicated niece-type person thing, whom I address as 'older sister'. Whether it's a cultural norm or a facet of their personalities I am unsure, but they are all especially welcoming, polite, and interested in what my HBA sister and I have to say.

During our first encounter, which was arranged by HBA in a classroom on campus, we learned that Wang Shu Shu is a professor at a local (forestry?) university. He's never been to America, but he plans to go next year to work on what he called an 'almond project'. Sounds lucrative. The Chinese love our nuts. His niece is an English student at Beiyu, the shortened Chinese nickname for Beijing Language and Culture University, where we stay.

The next weekend Wang Shu Shu, his niece, and her mother (visiting from Xiamen, southern China) took us out to see the Olympic complex. Since the conclusion of the games two years ago, the whole area has become a nightmare of a tourist trap. One cannot walk three steps without being hassled by a souvenir-peddling local whose command of the English language is limited to salutations and basic phrases denoting consumer satisfaction (Make you happy! Very cheap!). Nevertheless, the Bird's Nest and Water Cube are impressive feats of engineering and architectural design, as is the Olympic Park, a vast area of open land nearby which was a neighborhood just 5 years ago. The government paid residents something in the ballpark of one million RMB to pack up and leave so it could replace their houses with neatly trimmed shrubberies and a man-made lake. What a beautiful tragedy.

To cap off the night, Wang Shu Shu treated us to one of his favorite foods at a local, relatively upscale restaurant: lamb's back. The meal was served hotpot style -- the staff brought out a large bowl of lamb vertebrae soaking in water and placed it on a heating element in the middle of our table. We ordered our own additional vegetables and sides and added them to the mix as it heated, effectively creating a meaty stew unlike any I've ever had. My recommendation? Definitely a must-try. Don't be deterred by the awkward nature of the food's name, it's actually quite good. A lot like baby back ribs. Do take care to ensure your meat is cooked all the way through though, I've heard horror stories about hot-pot style meals.

Our meal played host to many a lively and entertaining conversation, as well as several (perhaps too many) toasts. As my eyes wandered around the restaurant to other tables, I quickly realized excessive toasting was just a part of Chinese culture. People will take advantage of any opportunity to raise their teacup emphatically with a hearty cry of ganbei (lit. dry cup), indicating that everyone else should do the same. I enjoy this custom. It adds an element of excitement and camaraderie to mealtimes which I believe is lacking at the American dinner table.

Wang Shu Shu and his family are taking us out again this Sunday. I'm not quite sure what we're doing yet, but if last time is any indication it's sure to be a lot of fun.

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Food

First, let me begin by apologizing for my recent lull in new posts. The following entry is one I've been brewing for quite awhile now, and after gathering the necessary photographs it is finally ready to be served.

Food, an essential defining characteristic of any culture, is the most important part of my life here. Every dish brings with it a story, every meal an opportunity to try something I never have. In fact, of all the instances of culture shock I've felt since arriving in Beijing, none compares to the overwhelming alien feeling I get from a trip to any Chinese establishment that sells food. The supermarket is no exception.

Someone confirm for me that I have not gone crazy -- the Chinese supermarket is at least ten times brighter and more colorful than the American equivalent. There's so much going on here I could spend hours in every aisle playing 'What the heck is that?' and taking pictures (which I did successfully for about three minutes before a security guard came and told me to stop). And for every additional product and color you can find within these walls, the glorious supermarket administration has hired about two extra workers, such that the establishment is overstaffed to the point of comedy. One woman's sole function is to ask dairy section passersby if they would like milk or yogurt.

The supermarket is an exciting place full of countless potential taste excursions at bargain prices, but is also entirely too overwhelming if you do not yet know what you're looking for. For this purpose we have restaurants and on-campus snack-shacks. For the first few days, whenever I passed by the snack stand on the first floor of the BLCU Conference Center, I made a point to try out one new Chinese drink a day, chosen at random until I had a solid understanding of China's beverage offerings. Aside from the expected Coke, Sprite, and Pepsi (which are slightly less fizzy but decidedly the same flavor as in the US), typical options include iced red and green teas, milk tea, pickled plum juice (insanely popular among natives, but rather difficult to stomach I find), a variety of iced coffee flavored beverages, orange drink (more like Tang than any kind of juice I've ever had), chocolate, strawberry, and regular milks, and Sprite with green tea flavor (someone tell me if this is a uniquely Chinese phenomenon or if you can get it in the US and I just don't know), of which my favorite is cold milk tea. Coffee, as we know it in the States -- hot water filtered through ground beans, is nowhere to be found save Starbucks (pictured below), which has undergone some variation of its own. I had to buy a box of instant packages just to savor the taste. Last but not least I will include yogurt in the beverages category because traditional Chinese yogurt (which you can buy on the street in little clay jars for 2 kuai) is meant to be consumed through a straw. It is also flavorless and delicious.

But it would be a crime to forget solid food. Generally speaking, my experiences at Chinese restaurants have consisted of large numbers of people ordering several dishes and splitting the bill. Because menu-reading is one of my weak points, I don't always know what I'm eating, but I usually like it. Real Chinese food is vaguely reminiscent of the food you'll find in an American Chinese restaurant, the principle differences being that it's a thousand times better and that you don't feel sick after eating it (most of the time). Average, every day food is also impossibly cheap. There's a restaurant on campus that sells 50 dumplings for 20 kuai (about $3.33 US). But the most striking and unique feature of Chinese cuisine are the flavors you can't find in the US. For example, blueberry and cucumber flavored Lays potato chips, red bean anything (don't know why this hasn't caught on, it's delicious), green bean / pea ice cream (pun it up, it's delectable), chocolate and sticky rice covered ice cream, green tea flavored candies, and any number of deserts coated in a thin layer of doughy rice dough (I clearly have no idea what it is).

The 'traditional' Beijing breakfast consists of an egg and a fried dough stick, which I don't particularly care for. I usually opt for red bean paste filled baozi, small rolls made with rice flour. Lunch varies, depending on whether or not we have Zhongwen Zhuozi or 'Chinese Table' with our teachers. On these special occasions twice a week, the teachers take us out to a restaurant where they order massive quantities of food for us to try. On my own or with friends I usually get dumplings or a bowl of noodles with some kind of meat. These kinds of dishes are as similar as they are delicious, so it doesn't really matter whether I know what I'm ordering, or even whether I get what I order. I thank God every day I'm not a picky eater.

The only way I can think of to give you a good idea of the kinds of food I've eaten here is to list some of them, so here it goes: lamb's back, Beijing roast duck (pictured above), spicy beef noodles, spicy string beans, stringed tofu, pockmarked tofu, really old eggs mixed with tofu, beef stew, tomatoes and scrambled eggs (particularly common), red bean pie, taro pie, pork, chicken, and vegetable dumplings (eaten with vinegar NOT soy sauce... something I learned quickly here), zongzi (sticky rice with filling wrapped in bamboo leaves and boiled... sort of like a Chinese tamale, eaten traditionally during Dragon Boat Festival and pictured below), spinach and peanuts (common appetizer), black mushrooms, and various cabbage/lettuce-like leaves soaking in watery dressing. I usually coat everything I eat in the spicy sauce that can be found in almost any restaurant, which is basically ground up chili peppers sitting in their own oil. Chinese people get a kick out of this, a fact that must be related to the quick judgment they pass on foreigners who can't eat spicy dishes.

Well, that's about it for food. Of course, this is the sort of thing that will continue to bring new adventure after new adventure for the remainder of my stay here, especially considering the influence of my HBA-arranged 'Chinese Family', one of many that have volunteered to take students out to eat, see Beijing, and welcome them into their homes. I'll write about them in another entry, but for now...

再见
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Beijing Countryside: Living With Farmers

At the end of last week, we all had to decide where we were going to go for our week-long social study project between the first and second four weeks of class. As much as this week was one of my main reasons for choosing HBA, I knew the pressure would be on to pick a worthwhile study location. The options were many and varied, including everything from touristy trips to Qingdao and the Shanghai World Expo to more culturally significant excursions to Inner Mongolia to staying in Beijing and studying local businesses.

Despite my original excitement about the oversubscribed Inner Mongolia trip, during which students enjoy a day riding horses and sand-surfing in the desert, followed by an authentic Mongolian barbecue that night, I elected to travel with a few others to the nearby province of Hebei, where we will be investigating the life of a developing farm-town. The schedule is still not set in stone, and much of it will depend on the research topics we choose, but it looks like there will be opportunities to visit an elementary school, work and talk with local farmers, attend a farmer's market, and eat a few meals with some of China's poorest and hardest working people.

I have no idea what my research topic will cover, but I'm sure it will come to me when I get there with little need for brainstorming. Last Wednesday HBA had a professor and former Chinese government think-tank member come to talk to us about the disparities between life in Chinese cities and life in the surrounding small towns. One of China's most pressing social issues is accelerating the development of these poor areas to match the living conditions of cities like Beijing and Shanghai. The problem is that high-paying city jobs attract both families who want more for their children and top graduates from China's best universities. The result has been a surge in urban population with little hope for development in poverty-stricken rural areas, and according to this article, a rapid increase in job competition amongst recent college graduates. The government's plan is essentially to solve many of these problems at once by developing a number of medium-sized towns around large cities like Beijing within the next ten years. I don't know if it's possible to force-feed suburban sprawl to a people in such a way, but it's certainly interesting, and serves as an affirmation that I've chosen a fruitful social study project location.

This entry is mostly just a hold-over until my treatise on Food, which has taken nearly a lifetime to write because of the workload but is finally almost finished. Until then...

再见
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Chinese Medicine

Saturday night, I started to feel sick. But with nothing more than a minor sore throat and an impending low feverish feeling, I chalked it up to a long day of yelling in the hot sun at Mutianyu. By Sunday morning things had only worsened. Back home, I normally wouldn't have gone to the doctor for symptoms like these, but being in a foreign country so far away from home, I thought it best to get myself checked out early. To the yiyuan I went. Turns out I have strep throat -- the (Western trained, probably American) doctor prescribed me some antibiotics and sent me on my way. But that's not what this story is about.

To get to the hospital, we had to take a cab. I sat in the back while the HBA secretary sat up front and dealt with the driver, a feat I was in no state of mind to attempt. Although I did not understand the entire conversation that followed as we made our way through the crowded streets of Beijing, I was able to pick out a few simple -- and shocking -- sentences.

'You should take him to a place where they practice traditional Chinese medicine...'

'This isn't what you've called a normal fever. It's a different type of sickness...'

'There's a certain type of tea that will make this go right away...'

As the ride continued, the driver began probing deeper into my chauffeur's personal life...

'Are you married yet? You're getting old, you should get married soon...'

As disturbing as it is to receive such advice from a taxi driver, the situation represented a fantastic and rare opportunity to explore the views of an ordinary Chinese citizen. On the relatively international BLCU campus, chance encounters like these are few and far between. Listening to this man in from the back seat in feverish lethargy, I could not help but think back on everything I'd heard and read before coming here...

Beijing is at once an ancient and a fledgling city. Rapid modernization has brought together sparkling new infrastructure and traditional Eastern ideas in a way that is uniquely Chinese. At the confluence of these two are people like my friend in the cab, driving a modern car to make a buck while clinging tightly to antiquated notions of Eastern medicine.

For now, I'll stick to Azithromycin, which after two days has already ameliorated the swelling considerably. What an intriguing adventure getting sick in China has turned out to be.

再见

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The Great Wall

On Saturday, HBA made arrangements for any interested students to visit the Great Wall free of charge. Unwilling to pass up such a fantastic opportunity, I eagerly hopped aboard the chartered 'New Moon Bus Limited Company' vehicle to Mutianyu, an older part of the wall with relatively few tourists compared to major sites like Badaling. After about an hour's drive through some of the poorest villages I've seen here so far, we arrived at the base of the Wall. Because the structure itself is built along the crest of a mountain, you can't just drive along next to it, climb up, and start walking. It's actually enough of a hike from the parking lot to the top to have you working up a sweat before you even get there.

The view from the top of the Mutianyu section is impressive. The Wall extends as far as the eye can see in either direction (admittedly not very far given the Beijing pollution, but you know what I mean), negotiating sharp inclines and winding curves in a way that appears almost natural. What an astonishing feat of human engineering.

With a whole day ahead of us, we decided to turn left (which I'm assuming is west) and walk as far as we could before the renovated part of the Wall ended and the wild, time-worn part began. Contrary to what I had thought, walking the Wall is not at all like strolling down an ancient elevated walkway. It's more like intense hiking -- like climbing a bona fide Stairway to... um... Nirvana? The sun is unforgiving. The shade provided by the towers -- insufficient to beat the heat. All along the way vendors pressure you to buy their overpriced water, which you absolutely need to stay hydrated. (Luckily we'd brought plenty of our own.) For me, the physically demanding nature of the geography called into question the effectiveness/necessity of the Wall's original function as a means of protection against invading nations. The mountains themselves seem to form an impenetrable natural barrier which no army would ever attempt to scale.

After about a three hour walk, we reached the 'non-tourist area', where the Wall becomes unrecognizable beneath a forest of vines and shrubbery. We carefully attempted to traverse this section for a few minutes before realizing that it was pretty much impossible. The silhouette of the overgrown wall, however, continued far into the distance.

Having now seen a small part of the Great Wall, I feel inclined to visit other sites. One of the disadvantages of such a large-scale tourist attraction is that you feel like you haven't really and couldn't ever possibly experience it in its entirety. Hopefully I'll be back.



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HBA: The Program

Class -- like the enormous building where we attend it -- is overwhelming, to say the least. We meet Monday through Thursday 8:00 am to 12:00 pm with a 50 minute one-on-one session in the afternoon. The morning is split into dabanke (lit. 'big class'), which is given in lecture format, and xiaobanke (lit. 'small class'), which consists of four students and a teacher, who prompts us with questions that require the use of each day's new vocabulary to answer correctly. Having tested into third year Chinese here, my daily workload is as follows:

• Read one three to four page chapter of our textbook.
• Memorize approximately 90 new words and their characters from this chapter.
• Complete a one page homework sheet from the current day's lesson.
• Memorize a short paragraph from the current day's lesson to be recited the next day in our one-on-one session with a teacher.

Every Friday we take a test on the week's four new lessons, after which we are expected to give an eight to ten minute presentation on one of the topics covered. This means writing a pretty hefty essay (400-500 characters) every week. (For those of you potential Light Fellows reading this in the future, that's four times as much as one is ever expected to produce in L4 Chinese.) The course is fast-paced and unforgiving, but totally doable. You have to keep in mind that when you're here, you have all the time in the world to devote to learning the language.

But HBA is certainly not all work and no play. The pre-departure meetings held by the Light Fellowship made a concerted effort to remind students not to let the daunting workload get the best of us, but frankly I've been so busy with things outside the classroom I haven't had time to think about how much work I have. For example, yesterday I met with my language partner, one of many Beijing Language and Culture University students about our age, who are assigned to hang out with us for three hours a week and basically take us wherever we want in Beijing. I plan on asking her to take me to a clothing shop so I can laugh at, take pictures of, and probably buy T-shirts with poorly translated English expressions on them. (My favorite so far is 'Passion Because South Africa People Style'.)

On weekdays, we also have the option to participate in several extra-curricular activities including cooking, calligraphy, and erhu (traditional Chinese instrument) lessons. On the weekends, HBA organizes trips to Beijing's many sites of cultural and historical significance. This Saturday we'll be going to the Great Wall.

Well, that's pretty much all I have to say about the program for now. Under the language pledge and the weight of a demanding workload, I'm learning a ton everyday. But before I go I'd like to share one unrelated but still noteworthy point of interest. Today is Dragon Boat Festival in China. Without getting too far into it, it's a holiday. As far as I understand it, because this year Dragon Boat Festival falls on a Wednesday, the government decided to swap several days of the week and last weekend. Schools and government offices remained open through Saturday and Sunday, and closed either Monday or Tuesday in anticipation of today. This struck me as extremely foreign. It's one thing to be able to give everyone a day off for a national holiday, but to literally change the weekend? That's powerful stuff. Good old Chinese government.

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Beijing: The Journey and First Impressions

到了北京阿！Well, I'm finally here, and let me just say things did not go smoothly. I chose an indirect flight with an airline called China Eastern, which (based on the reports of a few other HBAers) I do not recommend. CE is apparently notorious for arriving late and ruining everyone's travel plans -- case in point: my first flight from JFK to Shanghai was delayed three hours, causing me to miss my connecting flight to Beijing. The airline tried to appease the inconvenienced with a night in its staff hotel and a hot breakfast in the morning, but when I found out several other classmates had had similar issues the day before, my anger was renewed.

Transportation issues aside, a flight of such great length was a new experience for me. I drifted in and out of sleep for most of it, waking only for the occasional in-flight movie or meal. After sleeping a few hours in the China Eastern hotel and taking a final hour-and-a-half flight to Beijing, I was jet-lagged and confused, but ready for the reveal...

The sky in Beijing is gray... a lot. Locals say it's the weather, foreigners say it's the pollution, it's probably a combination of both. Nevertheless there are apparently very few 'nice' days here -- not a huge deal, but not seeing the sun is depressing after a few days.

Food is cheap... and delicious. Of course, the cost of living in Beijing is generally lower in every respect than in the US, but food is conspicuously inexpensive. My breakfast this morning cost the equivalent of one US dollar. Lunch for five this afternoon was two dollars each. A giant 600 mL bottle of Yan Jing beer, which people seem to drink any day of the week and any time of day, can be had for about 50 cents. I don't want to elaborate too much here though, expect a full entry on food to come.

This brings me to currency. I exchanged $150 US for about 999 Chinese RMB at Shanghai Pudong Airport. My wallet immediately became useless. As you can see in the picture below (missing a 50 yuan bill, which I just didn't have at the time of the photo), the bills are all different sizes, which becomes extremely frustrating if you use one of those small flip wallets that hold only a few cards and some cash. It's also exceedingly difficult to organize the money in any logical way that doesn't cause a huge delay when you're in line at a restaurant or supermarket. Again, not the end of the world.


The dorm facilities are exquisite. HBA is housed in the Beijing Language and Culture University Conference Center. Each student receives a single which includes a bathroom, television, electric teapot, and yes, air conditioning. It's hot outside. Some students had minor problems with TV and air conditioning not working the first day, but they were all quickly resolved by the very friendly Conference Center staff. It's safe to say the rooms are the only part of Beijing that feels like home. Everything else is new, exciting, and a little overwhelming.

I spent the first few days getting organized -- purchasing a cell phone (complete with texting and and enough minutes for two months: $40 US), setting up my room and internet, finding the bank, the supermarket, etc. I have a lot to get used to here. Living on your own at school in the US is one thing, being in a foreign country on your own is another altogether. Anyway, we have our first day of class tomorrow, which means I have a lot of work to do, so until later...

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About the Title

Having chosen a most esoteric title for this blog, I feel I owe somewhat of an explanation.

My grandfather, Richard H. Gilliland passed away last Thursday. He lived a long and fulfilled life, part of which he spent in Beijing, serving his country as a United States Marine during WWII. Pop, as he was called by his grandchildren, was the reason I became interested in China. I grew up on his stories from the war, sprinkled with broken attempts at the few Mandarin words he'd picked up overseas. As I continued to explore the language, he and I would often exchange thoughts on China's past, present, and future over sandwiches and old photographs. He loved the fact that the family had come full circle -- I'll be turning 19 in Beijing just like he did.

I want to dedicate this blog and my trip to my grandfather's memory. Although I won't exactly be fighting a war during my stay, I'll be futzing around the same city and seeing the same sights at the same time in my life as he did. In his final days, one of the things Pop wanted most was a picture of me on the Great Wall like the ones he'd taken years ago. This blog is the place where that photo will eventually come.

Which brings me back to the title. In brainstorming ideas, I knew I wanted to incorporate a little bit of my grandfather, a little bit of China, and a little bit of myself. 'Chopsticks and Rice' is the obvious China reference, with Pop and Dick (which is what everyone else called him) representing my grandpa. Finally I threw an 'H' into 'Rice' to get my own name without completely destroying the integrity of the original word. I love puns.

Well that's all for now -- gotta pack pack pack. My next post -- hopefully regarding the smooth and flawless travel process -- won't be for a while as I will not have guaranteed internet access until Monday.

再见

Richard 'Dick' Howard Gilliland

1927-2010

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