Saying Goodbye

My last week in China was hectic. Running around to goodbye dinners and farewell parties for me and the other semester students offered little time to see any last minute sites. 
Nevertheless I was able to go to the big Chinese History museum at People’s Square. After seeing all the exhibits I was walking out when a couple of Chinese university students asked me to take their picture in front of the museum. Afterwards I talked to them for a while. They practiced their English and I practiced my Chinese. I told them all about studying at East China Normal University, how much I loved China, my host family, sports I played, and how much I liked Chinese people. Since they were tourists from up North, I knew more about the city than they did, and I was able to give them some tips on good places to go and see. I also told them which Universities to go to when they studied abroad in the States.

In that moment I realized how far I had come in studying Chinese. I could speak mostly Chinese with these people and get my point across. I also understood many cultural references and historical events they talked about in our conversation. After I left them and walked back to the metro station (and while I was getting lost in the labyrinth of shops around the subway), I tried to reflect on the goals I had before coming to China and how well I fulfilled them.

I had three main goals. My first goal was to understand Chinese culture and it people. I know I accomplished this goal extremely well. I always asked my host family what they thought about Americans and people from other countries, notably Japan and Germany, whom they still resent due to World War II. I have learned how strong family ties are in Chinese families. Three generations of my host family live together and they all get along and spend as much time together as they can. The older family members make many sacrifices for the younger ones, more than one would expect in America. Conversely I also got an idea for the drive for success that many Chinese have. My host father works away from home, coming home once in four months. He wants a better life for himself and his family and he is working as hard as he possibly can to reach this goal. This is both a noble lesson in determination and discipline, but it also fits into the larger picture of the declining health of many Chinese due to their overworked lifestyle.

I also wanted to develop my language skills. I wanted to be able to speak conversational Chinese after the first semester. I definitely surpassed this goal. I had many conversations with friendly Chinese on the streets, just like those people at the museum. I studied fairly well, but the end goal is to retain my knowledge, and to do that, I plan to continue studying on my own here in Australia, and to take courses in college.

My third goal was for some form of personal growth. A huge part of taking my gap year was that I had to learn or grow in some way that I couldn’t learn just through college. I can identify three ways in which I have grown. Firstly I have developed a better ability to manage my time. In high school, I would procrastinate, procrastinate, and then procrastinate some more, waiting until the last possible moment to get things done. In reality, this wasn’t an acceptable way to get my work done, and it hurt me a lot without noticing it. In China, it’s not that I had an overwhelming amount of work, but I had a lot of things that needed to get done. So even if they were not a huge amount of work, I still needed to budget my time properly. This is a crucial skill that I needed to develop before going to college. Another skill I developed was to be more accepting of people. Studying with people all over the world at ECNU and becoming friends with people from all over the States through CIEE, I learned not to judge people by their stereotype. Finally I learned to appreciate other cultures while living with my host family. Seeing how other people live, allowed me to absorb the best part of their culture, namely the importance of family and studies, and blend them with my own culture. I feel extremely happy with how I developed. Mission accomplished.

 

TypePad Conversations » Answer this question!

 

Food

Being here for only a semester, I was aware that I would be leaving this month, but I didn’t realize how soon that would be until I received an email from one of the ciee coordinators telling me to vacate my housing in 13 days. Seeing that my stay here is coming to an end quite rapidly, I wanted to look back on some parts of Shanghai culture that I didn’t have time to blog about before due to various reasons, most likely I was too wrapped up in school work or blogging about my immediate situation to make comments on my observations of Chinese culture. In this post I would like to talk about food.
Talk to anyone about China, and one of the first things you will be told is the importance of food. Food is gathered around in celebration, to cement business deals and family ties. Every region in China has its own dishes and flavors. Chinese are very proud of their regional foods, and it is a misconception to label any food in this country as “Chinese”. It’s better to identify it as Shanghainese, or Szechuan, or Cantonese. Shanghainese cooking is known for its mild flavors, sometimes sweet. Just like my host family, they eat white rice at every meal, as opposed to Northern China, including Beijing, where noodles are the staple. The signature dish of Shanghai is Xiaolongbao. They are dumplings with a little meat inside as well as some soup broth. They are a little sweet, a little salty, and very good. You have to careful when eating them because when you bite into the dumpling and break the casing, the scalding hot broth can fall out and spill all over you. I noticed my host brother eats them with a spoon underneath to catch all the broth, which after all is the best part. Shanghainese food also consists of a lot of seafood (we’ve had a different kind of fish for dinner almost every day this month), including hairy crab which is considered a delicacy. Modern day Chinese eating habits are influenced heavily by contemporary Chinese history. Apparently when the CCP relaxed their strict communist policies, including ration stamps, in the 80’s, there was a rediscovering of old family recipes of the 1930’s, pre-communist era. This has allowed for the flourishing of different types of cuisines today. Unfortunately another effect of people’s increased affluence is the rise of fast food in China.
One of the most obvious signs of globalization in China is the ubiquity of American fast food brands. The Chinese have wholeheartedly embraced companies like KFC, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and of course McDonald’s. There is usually one of each of these restaurants around all the heavily used metro lines, as well as in all the numerous malls here. At Zhongshan Gong Yuan, a park, busy metro hub, and 9 story mall near to my house, there are no fewer than 4 Starbucks on the same block. Just like in America, now that people are busy with their jobs, and have no time to shop for food, many are likely to go buy fast food. There’s also a bit of pride in eating fast food. In America it’s some of the cheapest food available, but here its cost is midrange compared to other, cheaper foods, which explains why Pizza Hut is a fancy sit down restaurant here. In a country where “people were literally eating bark, in the 70’s” as our history teacher told us, and ration stamps were discontinued not that long ago, the more food you can get, the better. Studies show that the Chinese are growing overweight at alarming rates. At the present, it’s not very obvious from walking around the city, but if you look closely, you begin to notice quite a few obese people, especially children. It seems the older generations continue to cook the traditional dishes and shop at traditional outdoor markets, but the younger generations have begun eating out more and cooking less. In my host family, Grandpa does all the cooking and he makes very good dishes that are very healthy. Both my host brothers are extremely skinny, but they always talk about how much they love KFC and brag about how many wings they can eat there. I wonder what they will look like when they grow up if they continue to eat like this.


Andy eating a Xiaolongbao

TypePad Conversations » Answer this question!

Midterms and Thanksgiving

 

 

So I've been pretty busy over the past few weeks studying for our midterm. Last week our midterm for writing and oral class was scheduled and so I had to study accordingly. The writing midterm was definitely the harder of the two, but I knew that ahead of time, so I spent more of my time studying vocabulary flashcards. Studying Chinese or any language that doesn’t use our alphabet is annoying because you have to take the extra step of not only learning how to say the Chinese word for whatever English word your studying, but you also have to learn how to write it, this is often the harder part. Chinese characters also have stroke order that needs to be memorized and tone that I still haven’t mastered (2nd tone, where the tone rises is really difficult for me). I also went over all the Chinese grammar we learned. The order of a basic sentence in Chinese is Who, When, Where, Do What. For instance: I, yesterday, at the restaurant, ate food. Completely backwards to English grammar, but it follows this order pretty rigidly and isn’t hard to understand. The test was long but pretty straightforward, lots of character writing. I knew all the words and I felt pretty confident about how I did; I’ll find out my grade tomorrow.

Coincidentally my midterm was on the same day as Thanksgiving. That night ciee took all the college and gap students along with our host families to a hotel which served a huge thanksgiving dinner. The food was really good, all the Thanksgiving staples were there: lamb, pork, mashed potatoes, pumpkin soup, and of course turkey. They also served sushi and sashimi, which my host brother liked. It was good to be with the rest of the ciee people, and it was nice of them to celebrate the holiday, but I couldn’t help but feel homesick. After the dinner we went home and I was supposed to get some final studying in for my oral midterm the next day. Of course once I got home I realized I was way too tired and stuffed to do any such thing, and I went to bed.

The next day I was regretting my decision to not study the night before. For our oral exam we had to go into a room, one by one, and answer any questions our teacher might ask in Chinese. I was really nervous, speaking a foreign language confidently is hard for me, and I have a much easier time recognizing characters on paper than words someone mumbles. I repeatedly let other people go ahead of me and switched places in the order so I could go later on in the day. Eventually my time came, and I went inside. My oral teacher was very nice and explained each part of the test in English which was really helpful to me. I didn’t recognize a couple words the first time she spoke them in her sentences, but after a couple “shen me’s” (what?), I was able to figure it out. The whole test lasted less than five minutes. Neither of the midterms were very difficult, nor are the grades that important to my overall stay in China. But I worked hard for myself; after all it was I who wanted to come to China in the first place, I should think I would want to work hard on my tests.

 

ECNU Bonding

This past Monday and Tuesday East China Normal University offered a trip to all of its international students to travel to Hangzhou, a large city only a few hours by bus southwest of Shanghai. About half the students including myself and some of the CIEE students decided to attend. For 80 kwai, about 12 dollars, it was too good of a deal to pass up considering we were provided with a bus ride, a hotel, breakfast, and sightseeing activities/tours.

We set off at 8 in the morning on Monday and mostly slept the three hour drive down. Before dozing off, I was able to see the amount of Urban sprawl Shanghai has. Even when we were way out of the city, we would still pass overpasses stacked three levels high. It looked like a cold version of Southern California. We stopped at a huge rest stop filled with odd packaged foods—Chinese versions of gas station food. I didn’t buy any of them too scared of what I might find when I opened it. Upon arrival in Hangzhou, we went to its famous attraction, West Lake. West Lake is a large lake filled with tour boats and long walking paths along the water’s edge. There are Pagodas and other towers dotting the hills around the lake. I enjoyed these walks with my friends, as the lake was big enough that you could actually find some peace and solitude, unlike the packed trails in Zhangziazie. My friends and I walked into a small, local fan dian (restaurant) for food. Learning from my trip to Hunan, on which the food made me sick, I decided to skip most of the food we ordered, and stuck with the baby bamboo (tastes like really crunchy asparagus). After lunch we all went to a nearby Pagoda, climbed it, and took all our stereotypical Chinese tour pictures that are a requisite with any trip to China. My German friend, Rob, and I took turns posing with stone lions, rusted Buddhas, and Koi ponds. I tried to get a picture with a Chinese military guard—these guys stand at the entrances to subways, in high tourist areas, and evidently parks as well, wearing a typical Communist olive-green military uniform. Anyway, he wasn’t having any of it so we got out of there.

After more touring, we all piled back on the buses, expecting to go to our hotel in Hangzhou, right across the lake. Instead we were told we would be driving for another two hours. I then dozed off, only to wake up and find that our bus was in the middle of nowhere. We figured that we were getting what we paid for, namely an extremely cheap motel out in the countryside. Luckily at the last second, a decently large city appeared that we stopped for the night at. I still have no idea its name or how big it was, but it had a KFC right next door and KTV across the street, the two most prevalent chains in China, so we knew it couldn’t be too much of a backwater.

The next day we went on a cruise of another lake, the 1,000 island lake. Our boat took us to three separate islands that were designed almost like theme parks. One island had snakes you could pet, another had a chair lift that took you to the top, and the third stop was collection of islands, connected by rope bridges. These islands, had Koi ponds where you could feed the massively fat fish, bird cages with peacocks and falcons, and random things like a bungee trampoline. The whole trip was quite fun, but so random. At no point in the trip did we know what was coming next, which led to a lot of surprises and made it interesting, but sometimes really annoying, like when we got back on the bus at 3:30 and found out we wouldn’t be stopping for dinner on the five hour ride home.

While our trip to Hangzhou wasn’t as culturally enlightening as our CIEE trip to Hunan, it was a lot of fun and a good way to get to know a lot of people from all the different Chinese classes. I met a lot of new people on the trip and it’s fun to walk the ECNU campus and trade stories with people about the trip. This is just one of many student activities ECNU holds for its students. Another event I was at was their sports day, which was a combination of pick up soccer, basketball, ultimate Frisbee, and various other games with a picnic and music thrown in. The result is that the campus here is very close and everyone gets along well. I have been able to meet students from all over at these events and learn a little about where they’re from and why they came to China. Most students either came to China to A) Experience a foreign culture and learn a new language, B) Gain a leg up in business or specialize in Chinese business or C) Learn Chinese and stay here for University. I would say I’m my reasons for coming here are a mix of A and B but learning about other people’s motivations for coming halfway around the world is fascinating. I can only hope when I start University in the States my school is as diverse, friendly, and community oriented as East China Normal.

Is that a Turtle? or a Terrapin? One of our many enlightening conversations on the trip.

TypePad Conversations » Answer this question!

Into the Interior

Last week we all went on a Ciee trip to Western Hunan. We went to a few villages but our main trip was centered around a place called Zhangjiajie which is famous for its mountains. In fact the mountains inspired the scenery for the movie Avatar.
We left for airport on a Sunday night. Flying in China is a lot like flying in the States—I was wanded down, had my toothpaste confiscated, and we had to arrive a couple hours early. I didn’t know whether to trust a Chinese domestic airline…at night…during a rain storm, but the flight went fine. Upon arrival in Zhangjiajie, we met our tour guide and bus driver for the trip, drove to our hotel, and then collapsed into bed. The next day we drove to a village populated by the Miao ethnic minority. Miao’s live in South-Central China and are ethnically and culturally different than the dominant Han people. The tourist village was pretty kitschy but we got a good flavor of what traditional Miao dress and customs looked like. We also got a good taste of what rural poverty in China looks like. The village only became a tourist site this August, before that it was just a village. We could see the rice patties and the litter in the stream and the low living standard. Still the people looked happy and were very nice and I had a lot of fun, especially reenacting some of the Miao’s customs.
Afterwards we continued on to Fenghuang, an old town with some famous former residents from China’s past. Fenghuang was a good lesson in Chinese tourism—very long lines and very crowded streets with lots of tour groups wearing matching hats led by those infamous flags (I’m sorry to say our tour guide had one as well). There were almost no Westerners in this town which I enjoyed, finally we got to see “the real China” that everyone claims we’re not seeing in Shanghai. Some highlights of Fenghuang for me were crossing the river on stepping stones (I rescued a woman who fell off the stones into the icy mountain water), introducing some locals to American rap—they weren’t big fans, and having the power in the entire town go out right as it was getting dark, it came on two hours later to applause from the whole town.
Due to my repeated hitting of the sleep button and the consequent lateness and missed breakfast, the next day started with a breakfast of Chinese cakes—think Twinkies without the filling, bought from a convenience store. We started on the road in our minibus headed back to Zhangjiajie. The roads were bumpy and I’m pretty sure dirt paved in some places but the scenery was amazing. Our fearless driver took any opportunity he could to pass slow vehicles, darting past dump trucks, just before an oncoming car appeared around the corner.
After another five hours we were back in Zhangjiajie. We took a walk through part of the massive nature park we were to tour the next day. The mountains were absolutely amazing. They were tall columns that rose up a thousand feet or more, covered in trees they were truly astounding. It’s true they inspired some of the scenery in Avatar, namely the “Hallelujah Mountains” in the film. Consequently the park has capitalized on this, putting up posters with large blown-up screen shots from the movie, and with a large video screen out front playing Avatar footage, as well as naming one of the mountains “Hallelujah Mountain.” Even in this remote part of China, halfway around the world, for better or worse, Hollywood’s presence is felt. Walking and running (I wanted to get some exercise in after all those bus rides) through the park was amazing, but what was truly entertaining was watching the Chinese tourists. Clearly most of these people were not locals, they were in large groups, had tour guides, and wore expensive cloths and street shoes meant for the city, not hiking. It was interesting how they handled being surrounded by nature. Many grown men in their 40’s and 50’s would just shout for no reason in the middle of a valley surrounded by their entire tour group and listen for the echo, others would jump and try and sway every rope bridge they came to. It was really funny watching people experience nature for what I can only guess was their first time. Some of the peacefulness, purity or whatever you want to call it, of the park was ruined by the tour guides with microphones, sedan chair (yes people actually hired other people to carry them around a park), gift shop stands, and constant cigarette smoking that is characteristic of China.
After the walk we went back to our hotel for dinner and then went right back out, to a performance celebrating the history and culture of Western Hunan. There was dancing, and walking over fire, and balancing acts, it was well done but I was too tired to pay much attention. That night I slept so well, which was good because I would need it for the next day of marathon hiking.
The next day we took our long awaited tour of the Zhangjiajie Park. We took buses, trams, walking trails, and even a cable car, crisscrossing the park to take in its best views and scenery. The mountain hiking was not too difficult and a great way to breathe in some fresh air after the smog of Shanghai. The signature mountains of the park were spectacular and we saw them from every angle imaginable. By the end of the day, we collapsed into the bus that took us back to the airport.
I arrived back home at 2 am, getting 5 hours of sleep before jumping back into my school routine the next day. It was a great trip; we really did a lot, as well as learned a lot. It also doubled as a great respite from the constant Chinese studying (at last count, my friend calculated we have learned over 400 words). I’ve returned refocused and rededicated to learning as much as I can in the two months I have left here.

I didn't take this picture (I'm experiencing more technical difficulties). I got it at www.chinafacttours.com, but these are the views we witnessed in Hunan.

TypePad Conversations » Answer this question!

“Ni Shuo Han Yu Ma?” “Dui, Yi Dianr”

In just two months my Chinese has improved amazingly. My vocabulary has expanded from literally nothing (well 3 phrases, ni hao, zaijian, xie xie) to almost 100 different words and phrases that I can not only say but write as well. Our teachers at ECNU are very good at giving us new words every class but always a manageable amount. We learn to write the characters or (han zi) the same way Chinese school children do, by copying them over and over. The key to remembering complex characters is to break them down into strokes. By remembering the stroke order of the word, it becomes a matter of muscle memory rather than a recollection of what the complicated character looks like as a whole; for example, usually if I can’t remember what a character looks like, I try to write the first few strokes, then, usually, the rest comes back to me since I’ve practiced writing that character with that particular stroke order so many times. Sometimes one word is made up of three or four characters like tushuguan which means library; the only way I can remember this is to go by stroke order.

A vocabulary with less than 100 words may seem pretty limited, but it’s allowed me to communicate and get around in the city with a lot more confidence than when I spoke no Chinese. Walking around the city my friends and I will spot signs where we recognize characters, and we will try to puzzle out what the sign says or at least try and understand phrases within it. More fun than trying to translate street signs is striking up conversations with random Chinese people. Being foreigners, we are actually treated with more friendliness than if we were native Chinese (don’t ask me to explain this phenomenon; I don’t really think it’s true in America). My friend Kelly is a pro at this, he will walk into a fruit market just to learn fruit names and practice his grammar, and he’s always striking up conversations with our waiters and waitresses at our favorite café, the Eurostar. My conversation skills are coming along as well; I like to talk to my neighbors in the elevator. Whenever someone comes into the elevator, I take out my earphones and smile at them to show that I want to talk to them…it usually works, but sometimes I end up awkwardly staring at an old lady with a stupid grin on my face on the ride down from the 30th floor. Sometimes people like to practice their English with us, so we have funny conversations where the Chinese person is speaking in fractured English and my friend or I will respond in simple Chinese. One topic that always comes up in conversation is my age, which is always amusing to me. No one seems to be able to pin down how old I am, once a Chinese student I met thought I was 20, but the majority of Chinese people think I’m about 16. Once the crossing guard on Ningxia Lu asked “ji sui?” which is how you ask someone who you think is under 13 how old they are.

A lot of times I worry that I’m not really learning Chinese, but just memorizing words for a test and then forgetting them. Going out into the city and practicing my conversation skills has shown me that I really am progressing. A lot of times words that I thought I had forgotten come back to me in the moment, and I reinforce them in my memory by using them in conversation. Living in China while studying Chinese really keeps class interesting and helps mark my progress in class. It has made studying much more enjoyable and is a huge difference from studying a foreign language abstractly in a classroom.

TypePad Conversations » Answer this question!

Culture Shock

It might seem odd to be talking about culture shock after more than a month and a half in this country. Talking with many of my fellow students however, I’ve learned that many are just now coming out of the last stages of culture shock. In the Ciee handbook, culture shock is broken down into four general phases and these phases take time to transition through. My own experience was brief but intense. After about a week and half of what is labeled as the honeymoon stage of culture shock, in which I found China new and exciting, I began to feel frustrated with the lack of control I had over my daily life and activities. I felt like my host family would completely surprise me in the middle of the day and say, “We go to the park and then have dinner and then go to my uncle’s house…in one hour…and you’re coming,” which meant I would have to change my plans for the whole day. This feeling of lack of control was combined with me catching a bad flu. Lying in bed for days, sick as a dog, completely isolated—this was not a fun experience. The low point of my entire trip was sitting in the waiting room of the Shanghai Family Hospital for 2 hours, alone (the doctor took so long that my host mom had to go back to work to catch a meeting), slumped over in a chair with a fever. When I came back to school, I was behind in my Chinese classes and I still felt weak from my sickness.

However even after I was recovered from my flu, I still felt this ambiguous feeling of sadness. Luckily Ciee prepared me for this. From the beginning of this program I have been warned many times about culture shock. In fact, I thought the coordinators might be harping on it too much. “How bad could it be,” I thought to myself; “I never felt it the first time I studied abroad.” Of course the insidious thing about culture shock is that it’s so vague that you can’t identify what it is if you’re not looking for it. Looking back on my time spent in Italy, I realize that I did experience it; I just didn’t know what to label it. So when I started getting these intense feelings of sadness that couldn’t be nailed down to any real cause, I knew exactly what was happening, and I took steps to stop it. I spent more time with my host family, I applied myself in school, and I tried to sleep at normal times. I also tried to create some kind of a routine which helps make life here more predictable. What’s been really important to my routine is joining the gym, Mind over Body. In this foreign city, it’s great having something that I am so familiar with as going to the gym.

I’m very proud of how I handled culture shock. After that one miserable week, I haven’t felt even a pang of it. How I handled it has also given me insight into helping my friends in the program, some of whom have had a much harder time with it than I. One of my goals when studying abroad was to learn how live independently and productively and to develop problem solving skills for daily life, in confronting culture shock I think I reached my goal.

Heaven on Earth

To be honest I can’t believe it’s already been a month since I moved in with my host family. It’s seems like not so much time has passed, but comparing myself now to myself a month ago, I’m amazed with how much I’ve seen and learned. I can now get around in this entirely foreign city. I can speak a fair amount of Chinese. And I’m starting to break through the cultural barriers on the surface of Chinese Society to see the more subtle yet important characteristics of what it means to be Shanghainese.

I wanted to write a piece looking back on my first month in China, focusing on the trips to important sites in the city organized by CIEE. I had planned to incorporate the videos I’ve taken. Unfortunately even though I have a proxy through the firewall, Youtube isn’t uploading my videos. Instead I will use some photos I’ve taken: less immersive, but still something you can look at. So far I only know how to upload one picture to a blog post, so I’ll do series of them.

 

This picture is a view of Xin Tiandi. It literally means “new heaven on earth”. It’s a brand new development that restored a neighborhood of traditional Shanghai Shikumen houses. Inside these restored houses are fancy restaurants, boutiques, clubs, and bars.

Xin Tiandi is a favorite of tourists and expats, and it was the first area I visited outside my neighborhood. I was surprised by the contrast between my neighborhood which is very much working class Chinese with very few Westerners (I get stared at almost every time I leave my apartment because not only am I a Westerner but I’m very blond which makes me even more noticeable.) and Xin Tiandi which probably has more Americans, French, and Australians in its bars and cafes than Chinese.

The area is a great example of the shifts in Chinese society and culture. The area was originally an old neighborhood of densely packed Shikumen houses. In 1921 the first meeting of the Chinese Communist Party (attended by Mao Zedong himself) was held within the old neighborhood. The site has been turned into a museum, but it couldn’t be in a more ironic spot. Surrounding the old house are brand new high-end, Western stores and restaurants—nearby there’s a Lacoste and Bathing Ape store and around the corner is a Starbucks. In fact, judging by my own observations, Xin Tiandi seems to be a favorite meeting place of Western businessmen who have come to town to invest in the special economic zone that is Shanghai (essentially a government sanctioned capitalist zone).

One block over from the communist party’s first meeting place is Shanghai’s Rolls Royce and Lamborghini dealership. As I looked into the windows, staring at cars that cost over 2 million renminbi, I noticed what lay behind the dealership: an alleyway where a few stray dogs played which led to a huge warren of apartment buildings. These buildings are much older than my apartment and they don’t even have running water. Apparently they used to cover the area that makes up Xin Tiandi but the government moved all the people out to make room for development. In time these people would be moved out to the suburbs as well to make room for expansion. On this block I could see firsthand the excesses of Shanghai’s rapid expansion in the most positive and negative ways. It’s a good example for a country that is rising fast but is having trouble coming to terms with the old communist rationale that the government’s job is protect all people equally. As I walked back to the heart of Xin Tiandi, another example of this rapid expansion was pointed out to me. The lake in the middle of the Xin Tiandi park was roped off, with a “do not cross” line around it. Apparently the local residents in the nearby housing project would come to the lake at night and bathe, swim, and collect water from it and bring it back to their apartments. A funny but sad example of Shanghai’s growing pains.

School Starts

Last week I started my classes at East China Normal University. First at registration, I took a quick placement test and was assigned to the level of yi-yi (1-1), the lowest level. Since I don’t speak any Chinese besides what my host family has taught me, this didn’t bother me.
ECNU has a fairly big campus and the building for international study is on the opposite end of the main gate, where I enter. The next day was the first day of classes, and I hadn’t calculated for such a long walk. By the time I reached the building for international study, I was already running a little late. I quickly scanned the massive lists of students, looking for my assigned classroom, but I couldn’t find my name. I went back and combed each list thoroughly before finding the name Nick written at the bottom of one of the lists. During registration I hadn’t bothered to give my full name, assuming they already knew it.
It was the first day and I was already ten minutes late to class. I walked in and sat at my desk. The teacher said nothing but gave me an icy look. I was prepared for this, in orientation they said that showing up late to class is considered extremely rude (unlike in America where it’s acceptable?). My teacher was in mid lecture about how tough of a teacher she is and was going over the attendance policy “Miss 1/3 of classes…you cannot pass.” She also said the two major tests for the semester were in November and January. I knew I wasn’t going to be here for the second test but I thought now was not the best time to draw more attention to myself.
Despite this first impression, my teacher, Ms. Chen, is very nice. She gives us the longest break between classes of all the teachers, and she teaches more slowly on those days when everyone is tired (like when we have classes on the weekends). She taught in Paris for 18 years, and whenever the Fa Guo Ren (French) students get confused she will stop and explain in French.
Our class is extremely diverse. I am the only American, and I’m also the youngest. My conversation partner, who sits behind me, is a 40 year old Canadian woman who lives in Spain and is taking a year off from her accounting job. There are 6 French students including two French born Chinese who know the language already and just coast through with little effort. Ms. Chen clearly wants them to change to a higher class, but they enjoy sleeping in class too much to do that. There is also a Russian, Belarusian, and two Kazakhstani students, all of whom speak Russian and they are always talking in the back trying to explain what is going on to their friend who speaks no English. There are also a random assortment of other nationalities including Turkish, Palestinian, Canadian, Italian, Korean, and Mexican, all in a class of only 27.
Our class follows a very set format, every day we arrive at 8:30 and review for about half an hour. Then we have a Ting Xie which literally means “listen and write”. It’s a dictation test where we must write down the Chinese character for the word Ms. Chen calls out. After the dictation test we spend the rest of the class learning new words and how to write and say them. Tone is very important in Han Yu (Chinese), so learning to say a word takes much longer than in most foreign language classes. At the end of class we will review all our new words, usually about ten or eleven. Out homework is to copy the words, at least ten times each into our notebooks to be collected the next class. Class ends at 11:45. Even though Chinese is very foreign to me, and I’ve never studied it before, the continual practice, doing the same thing day in and day out has helped make it predictable, and I’ve had an easier time so far than I did studying other foreign languages.

The First Week

It has been a week since my plane landed in Pudong International Airport. From my arrival at the airport, to my first meal with my hosts, to my time spent in orientation at East China Normal University, what has stood out is the friendliness, hospitality, and curiosity shown towards me by the Chinese people.

After touchdown, I was greeted at the terminal by Wang Rui, the CIEE gap year intern. After a short while I was greeted by the rest of the gap year students as their planes landed. We then took an hour bus ride from the airport into downtown Shanghai. Along the way, we got our first glimpses of the city from the highway. Shanghai is more spread out than New York or Boston, and due to its population, is truly massive. We watched as the landscape transformed from suburbs not unlike American suburbs to denser apartment complexes punctuated by large numbers of construction cranes.

Arriving on Ningxia (Ningsha) Lu (road), we stepped off the bus and were immediately paired with our host families. I was met by Helen Wu (my host mother) and her father, known to me simply as grandfather. They guided me to their apartment on the 30th floor of their building. Upon arrival I was given a bowlful of Moar (an edible fungus that is quite slimy, one of the few Chinese dishes that I don’t like) and some sugarcane, before I went to bed.
Over the past week and a half, I have learned a great deal about my host family and will try to quickly summarize them here. I live with Helen Wu, her parents, and her two children, Arnold and Andy. Their father, Sam, goes away on business for months at a time. The whole family is extremely nice to me. Grandma and Grandpa are retired and live at home with the family doing the housework, including the cooking. One of the first phrases in Chinese I tried to learn was to compliment Grandpa on his cooking. My host mother, Helen, took me, one day, to Zhongshan Park, and her place of business “Sport City” a huge athletic store that occupies the bottom floor of a shopping mall. Her English is a little limited so I don’t completely understand what she does there, but she is either a manager or a buyer for the store. Her eldest son Andy (In Chinese culture there is a huge distinction between eldest and youngest son), is almost fluent in English and he translates for me when I need to communicate with grandma and grandpa. Arnold is younger, he speaks very little English since he is in grade school, but he still hangs out in my room, hoping I’ll let him play games on my computer.

As for CIEE and the language program, we have been in orientation all this week. We were introduced to Chinese culture, learned the layout of the city by going on an all day scavenger hunt, visited the children at the migrant school whom we will be teaching English, and went to the expo yesterday. We also went to an acrobatics show. The gymnasts were amazing, performing a dozen different routines from hoop jumping to interpretive dance set to the music of Titanic. Over the stage was set a huge banner giving “A Warm Welcome to All Our Friends from Abroad,” a fair example of Chinese hospitality.

I am having trouble uploading videos since I have to set up a youtube account (which is blocked along with facebook by the government). Look for videos in a later post from our drive through Shanghai, our visit to the migrant school, and motorcyclists from the acrobatics show.