Week 3

Two weeks have passed since my last entry. We took our midterm this morning and now I’m getting ready to leave for Shanghai in a few hours. We spend the next week doing “social studies” which will conclude in the longest essay I will have ever written in Chinese. There are about 8 different options including traveling to Inner Mongolia, studying martial arts at the Shaolin Temple in Henan, and staying in Beijing to research various topics such as the Olympics, architecture, or education. The Shanghai trip focuses on economics and modernization. I’ll write more about it when we get back.

One of the highlights of the past two weeks is the fact that FOUR different people have complimented me on my Chinese, three of whom proceeded to ask me if I was Chinese/what in the world my background is. I get this question a lot considering it’s pretty hard to tell my background from looks alone. I’ve finally mastered my answer and Chinese people tend to get very excited when they find out I'm half Chinese, usually leading to further discussion. Yesterday I was buying dinner and I had a 15 minute conversation with the fuwuyuan about my life and she couldn’t stop smiling the entire time. It was so adorable. Immediately after, I was walking back to my dorm and another guy stopped me to talk about America's education system. We were chatting for a few minutes before I realized he wanted to be my tutor in exchange for helping him with his English. He was a bit sketch, though, and considering I already have five different tutors, I told him my friend was waiting and had to leave. But anyway, the point is I am constantly being bombarded with these situations to improve my speaking ability and as a result, I’ve seen huge improvements.

I’ve also visited my “Chinese host family” twice. Most students have a standard family consisting of a mom, dad, and siblings, but my situation is a bit unusual in that I just have an older sister. She’s about 28, teaches English at a nearby school, and is just plain awesome. She used to work at BeiYu and that’s how she got involved with this program. The first time we met her she took us to meet the rest of her family. We ate for 5 hours straight at their house while the dad made side comments about how I don’t look Chinese, thinking I couldn’t pick up on any of it. I felt they were constantly judging my speaking/listening ability, which was undoubtedly very questionable two weeks ago but made me feel uncomfortable to say the least. Nonetheless, everybody else was all really nice and it was really interesting seeing a typical family in Beijing since my only exposure has been my close relatives, and almost off of it, minus our one trip to China in 1996, has been in the US. The thing I took away most from the night was in regard to Chinese eating customs. I already understood how important food is to Chinese people since my grandmother is literally OBSESSED with food. I’m serious, I could go a year without seeing her and the first thing she’ll ask me is, “What have you eaten today?” and immediately shove some food my way. Actually, I was Skyping with my parents a few nights ago and my grandmother came into the room to say hello and without fail, the first words out of her mouth were “Are you eating there?” I mean, what does she think? It’s difficult because although I know she treats food as means of expressing her love, I can’t help but get frustrated. So when my host family pretty much refused to eat until the three HBA students had a good 10 minute head start, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. They literally take food and put it on your plate and 90% of the conversation consists of “Eat more! Eat more!” I guess it really is true for the entire culture! But when I look at it from a different angle, it’s actually a pretty amazing part of their culture. Family relations pretty much revolve around eating meals together. As I said earlier, this meal literally lasted five hours and when I compare this to America, I can’t help but note the contrasting importance of family to each culture.

But back to the Dad’s weird comments… It’s funny because I’ve encountered this attitude before, but it’s one of two extremes – the people here tend to be either really annoyed that you can’t understand them, (like my Chinese dad), or extremely friendly and will engage you in conversation like the fuwuyuan I wrote about earlier. I’ve had some pretty awesome cab drivers, some of whom have expressed surprisingly honest views about their government and taught me most of what I now know about Chinese culture. Others have kept me laughing by teaching me the most absurd words from the Beijing dialect – for example, “Jerk Mmm-ya” pretty much means “Today I…” The majority of people I interact with are on this “really nice” side, but still, seeing the other side has really shocked me. I know not everybody in the world is nice and I’m obviously going to run into different kinds of people here, but it just seems like more than I expected.

Ok, we’re leaving for Shanghai soon so I have to go finish packing. I’ll be sure to update when I get back!