Spring Break

Spring Break is finally here! I'm officially done with my midterm exams, classes and teaching. I'm leaving tomorrow morning and will be gone for 10 days with limited access to email. I'm first going to Shanghai to visit my friend Eric, during which I'll get to go to his cousin's wedding! Then I'm going to Zhangjiajie, where they filmed the scenes from Avatar (where they filmed the scenery, everything else was of course computer animated). Then I'll be going to Guilin and Yangshuo, where I'll be visiting my friend from last semester, Kevin. I'm going to be on a tight schedule, but it should be fun. Stories and pictures from each place will be posted ASAP!!

Library

Last Friday I went to Xianlin campus (where the college students live, I go to class where most of the graduate students are) of Nanjing University to hang out with some of my friends that live there. When asking if they wanted to hang out, they responded with "Of course! You can come visit us whenever you want! But we have a lot of homework to do!" It was a lot of fun, they took me out to dinner and we walked around the campus and chatted. Besides that, we spent the whole time at the library. The shocking thing for me as an American college student: as it got later and later on a FRIDAY night, the library got more and more crowded. There literally was not one seat open (as far as I could tell) when I left the library at 10:00 pm. "It's like this every night of the week," Xinyi said, "Everyday after 4:00 pm it's almost impossible to get a seat." She asked if it was like that in the US and I said, "Usually only during finals time." And then she said:

"Oh during finals time you have to wake up at 5 am and get in line in front of the library by 6 am and take a number. They have as many numbers as there are seats in the library. If you get there after 6:30 am you probably won't have a seat for the rest of the day."

This is why China is crazy.

Smile

A few pictures my friend Xiaohu took when we went to the cooking school last week. The first picture is me. The other two pictures are of my good friends here, both are friends from last semester: Sean and Vince. I thought these pictures were really good, I wanted to share them!

Language and Culture: 不能分开 (Can't be Separated)

My first two English classes went very well last week! The biggest challenge for me is that their English ability ranges from knowing very little to being pretty conversant in English (example: a 40+ year-old Phys. Ed. major that hasn't spoken English in 20 years versus a 25 year-old English major. You can imagine). As a result, adjusting my speaking speed is the biggest challenge. On the first day, I started out speaking relatively slowly, and several students asked me to speed up. After speeding up, however, I had a number of students asking me to slow down. Finding that middle ground is going to be difficult. For my first class, we did introductions, and as expected considering that I am for many of them the first white person that has taught them English, they were very curious about me and asked me a lot of questions. They are very sweet and several of them have already invited me over to their homes to eat dinner and one of my students got me free tickets to a soccer match. 

For the second class we discussed "Meeting Guests and Saying Goodbye." Each class is three hours long and at the end we have one hour to discuss certain topics. So I introduced it with the basic idea that language and culture are always fundamentally intertwined. You cannot separate the two or else you will never truly learn the language. I think the topic was a little bit too difficult for them, but I hope in the end that they enjoyed the challenge. So I opened it up with the idea that although the Chinese word for "foreigner" is used quite frequently, in English the word "foreigner" is usually quite inappropriate. And that got me thinking...

For those of you who do not know, Chinese people refer to any person from any country outside of Asia as a 外国人 waiguoren or "foreigner." This is directly linked to the race difference, as they refer to Koreans, Japanese and other Asians by their nationality. I explained to them that it is appropriate to use this word in Chinese, for example: when my American friends and I are speaking with one another in English, we actually say "waiguoren" when we are talking about someone who is not Chinese. Why? Because the word foreigner in English is not normally used so the word "waiguoren" is quite difficult to translate. The word 外国人 "foreigner" literally means "a person from outside the country." On the other hand, 中国人 "Chinese" literally means "a person from the middle country." If you look at the word itself 外 "wai" means outside and quite literally is the opposite of 中 zhong, or "middle" which is the word for a Chinese person.

You know how China used to be referred to as the Middle Kingdom, right? Well actually, it still is. The word for China is 中国 zhongguo, which literally means the "middle country." Note how the character 中, the word for middle, is quite literally a rectangle with a line down the middle to symbolize the meaning for "middle." As a result, when Chinese people are talking about anyone who is not Chinese, they say foreigner, which for them is the antonym of the word for Chinese. This is the root of the translation problem.

So we talked about some appropriate translations for foreigner. Namely that we use the person's nationality to describe them, and if we don't know their nationality, we use their continent, ie "European." Other appropriate translations are "not Chinese," "international," and "westerner." We talked about how this reflects the fact that the US is a very diverse county so if you say foreigner it is really not clear what you are talking about. An African? A Chinese American? An Australian? It could be anyone, really. In addition, if a foreigner is walking down the street in the US, you can't actually tell they are a foreigner by looking at them, whereas in China, you know immediately if someone is foreign or not. I explained to them that we have the same thinking that they have towards other Asian ethnicities (in that they would never call a Japanese person or a Korean a foreigner), but that our thinking doesn't just refer to people of Caucasian race, on the contrary, for us that idea refers to everybody. As a result, the word foreigner is rarely used.

If you live in the United States for a certain amount of time, not only do other people and yourself slowly start to consider you American, but also you can gain citizenship. Whereas I could live in China for the rest of my life and not only never be able to hold citizenship (citizenship is restricted to people of the Han Chinese ethnicity and the 56 designated Chinese ethnic minorities only) but also that I will always and forever be called a foreigner, or in some interpretations, an outsider. As a result of these cultural differences, connotations and interpretations, the word foreigner is not always appropriate.

We also discussed how the different ways that we address people reflect cultural differences. China actually has a very complicated system of addressing people, depending on if you know them, if you're friends, if you're family, if you're co-workers, ect ect. For example, if you don't know someone and they are at least 20 years older than you, then you call them "aunt" or "uncle." If they are less than 20 years older than you, you call them "older brother" or "older sister."

If it is a boy that is only a few years older than you, you can't call them older brother or else people with think you are dating. Instead you can call them 帅哥 shuaige, which literally means "handsome brother" but more colloquially is translated as "hot boy." I know, weird right? If you call someone brother people think you two are dating, but if you call them "hot boy" then people don't have a second thought about it or blink an eye.

On the other hand, if you are friends with them it is a little different. If they are a girl and older than you, then you call them by their name and add "older sister" to the end of it. For example, my friend Tingting is 婷婷姐 or tingtingjie, with means "Tingting sister." With boys, you can call them by their name or just 帅哥 "hot boy."

As you can see, this all clearly reflects the way the language and culture can never be separated under any circumstance. This all reflects China's complicated filial system, as well as filial piety and the fact in China the whole family used to live under one roof. Today, they still consider themselves "one family" under their socialist system of government, and as such still refer to strangers and friends as family members.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. This weekend was nice, I went out to dinner with my friends Pingping and Fangfang on Thursday, and a group of us took some of our friends out to eat Sichuan food (Read: SPICY but delicious) on Friday. Also on Friday CIEE took us to a Chinese cooking school to learn how to cook Chinese food and I learned how to make 麻婆豆腐 which is basically really spicy Tofu. My friend 小虎 Xiaohu (his name means "Little Tiger") took some really cool pictures and I will try to post them soon.

Things are still going great here in China, but I suffered two setbacks recently. In February, I applied for an internship for the Fall 2010 semester with the Department of State Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and after a phone interview with the North Korea Desk, I found out that I was rejected from the position. Secondly, I took the HSK test this morning (Chinese version of the TOEFL) and I'm pretty sure that I basically failed it. I have been looking into going to grad school for International Relations at the Johns Hopkins University branch at Nanjing University, but I need a really high score on the HSK to get in. It was disappointing because I've been feeling relatively good about my Chinese language ability, and then I went into an Intermediate level test (it wasn't even the highest level of the test) and I probably knew less than half the questions.

A New Job

On Friday afternoon I got a text message from Pingping asking if I'd like another tutoring job. I said "Sure!" After all, I really need the money and I figured I could handle another 2 hours a week tutoring someone in English. Even better, she said it would be during the week, not on the weekends, so it wouldn't interfere with travel plans. She said, "Ok, great. Go to meet them in the dorm in 1 hour." So I rushed over to school and quickly discovered that this was not exactly a tutoring job. I would be teaching 16 Chinese government officials English six to nine hours a week in preparation for the Youth Olympics that will be held in Nanjing in 2014. Woah. I looked at my student roster. All of them have at least a Master's Degree (some have PH.D's) in some sort of field or another. I'm definitely not prepared for this. But I decided to stick with it, not only because it pays well and it will be a resume booster, but also because I think it will be interesting and give me an opportunity to teach Chinese people real, practical English (something that the Chinese people desperately need). We'll see how it works out.

I just finished up my lesson plan for my first class, which will be held tomorrow. After reading over the textbook, I almost puked. Some of the greetings that were in our book that I'm supposed to teach them are awkward so I changed them (as indicated by the arrows):

Hello, Miss, you are so pretty today. --> NOTE: only say to a friend, if you are male please do not say unless it is a close friend: Hi Susan, you look very pretty today, I like your dress.

How do you do! --> How are you?

Hello, this is my friend Li Ping. We are in the same company. --> This is my friend Li Ping. We work at the same company / business / department.

Oh and just as an extra fun thing, below are a few translated excerpts from a foreign policy journal about Deng Xiaoping that I found particularly interesting for those of you who enjoy these kinds of things.

"If you want to fight for and protect world peace, you have to fight against hegemony and oppose power politics. Superpowers everywhere point there fingers and scold other countries, recklessly interfering with other country's domestic politics, which has caused some countries and regions to have even more complicated conflicts and turmoil. Western countries are right now utilizing their economic superiority and economic support as bait to try to market their own social systems, economic models and way of life in small and mid-sized countries. As a result, they are with uninterrupted acceleration leading political affairs in these countries into turmoil and crisis. Originally these countries had developed economies and stable societies."

True? Absolutely. Heard about Iraq and Afghanistan recently?

"China will not under any circumstances change just because of one incident, will not depend on any superpower or country clique, and still will not succumb to any country's pressure. In the international society, we only speak publicly of justice, we only do official business with affairs that we know, and in this way we will be able to win over the third world's interest in peace and sustain their trust, as well as strengthen China's international position. Deng Xiaoping entrusted that the definition of independence and self-reliance was to truly have no alliances with any countries. China is regarded as a big country and a poor country, and if China were to form an alliance with any superpower this would more or less restrict and hinder China, in regards to foreign relations, to maintain complete independence, and also would not be beneficial for world stability."

Extreme? A little. Ever read an opinion column from the United States' point of view?

Update on My Life

First off, I just want to let everyone know that I had a nice birthday just simply because everyone in the US wished me a Happy Birthday by some mode or another of technology, and I went out to lunch with my friends at a fantastic restaurant. The best thing that happened was on Friday one of my good friends from last semester, John, and his girlfriend Tingting took me out to dinner (actually at the same restaurant where we had lunch on my birthday since the food was so good). It was such a nice birthday present, not only because the food was more on the expensive side, but more just because I got to hang out with John and Tingting. To me, just having a nice relaxing night with two good friends was better than anything else. After dinner we went and got tea together at a coffee shop (or should I say tea shop) and chatted together for a couple of hours. So much fun.

Secondly, just an update on my language progress for those of you who follow my blog and are interested. On the up side, I can have long, relatively in-depth conversations about life in general in Chinese. I almost never speak in English anymore, excepting the every once in a while when I hang out with my American friends on the weekends. I can watch TV with virtually no problems (I was watching TV the other day and didn't know the word for "high-interest loan" so I was confused why this poor girl was so upset until I finally admitted to myself that I needed look the word up in the dictionary). My strongest point is my listening comprehension AND (drum roll please) I can talk to people on the phone in Chinese!!!!! That was probably the hardest thing for me to do last semester and I'm so happy I finally got over that hurdle.

On the downside, my grammar is absolutely atrocious, I stutter a lot, still have a thick accent, still have to stop in the middle of a sentence if I don't know the word for something and explain the situation. For example, I forgot the word for tire (which was silly because it's actually a transliteration from English), so when my bike got a flat tire I had to explain to my host family that the black round things on my bike didn't have air in them. I also struggle with reading comprehension. Most of all, I can't really talk all the naturally and smoothly yet and I can't talk about politics or the economy. This is the area that I want to improve the most because when I am talking to someone in Chinese I can't articulate my feelings as well as I would like. This is particularly frustrating if I don't agree with what someone is saying and I want to prove him or her wrong but I can't. So my goal is that by the end of the semester I will be able to have a successful political argument.

Thirdly, just an update on my daily life in general. From Monday through Thursday, I have Chinese lessons for four hours a day, from 8 am to 12 pm. Besides that, during the week I usually meet up with friends for lunch, meet with my language partner (who has become a good friend of mine now), meet with my Chinese tutor, go to my elective class (which is Chinese current events), go to Kungfu class in the evenings, and do homework.

I am also currently doing an independent research project (kind of like writing a thesis... in Chinese) on Deng Xiaoping's foreign policy, and how it influenced world politics and Chinese international status, as well as foreigners' reactions to his foreign policy. Currently I am still getting familiar with his policies by reading Chinese Foreign Policy Journals; it takes me a good 3 hours to finish just a short article so hopefully it will get easier. So I meet once or twice a week with my "research coach", as we call it (I can't think of a better way to translate his position), who is a graduate student in international politics at Nanjing University. Right now it is super challenging but I am looking forward to conducting interviews and writing the paper. This is probably the highlight of my college education thus far. It's so nice to sit down and read a policy journal article in Chinese and actually understand it and just be like, "This is what all the blood, sweat and tears have been for the past two and a half years. This is why I'm in China. This is why I'm spending so much time studying a foreign language. So I can read articles like this and truly understand why a culture is the way it is, why people think the way they do, why policies are written the way they are and why the global political climate is the way it is." It's incredibly satisfying to finally know that all this studying has not been in vain, but I can actually use my skills to conduct research. I'm going to post sometime this week some translated excerpts from one of the articles that I found particularly interesting so that those who are interested in foreign policy can take a look.

On the weekends, I usually travel somewhere, and you can see some of my pictures from Yangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou on my facebook. This past weekend was the first weekend that I wasn't traveling, so it was nice to take a break and relax. When I'm not traveling, I hang out with my friends, usually go to a bar or a restaurant, do homework, hang out with my host family, and study for the HSK (the Chinese equivalent of the TOEFL). This weekend I took my host brother out to eat with some of my friends and I think he enjoyed hanging out with kids older than him. He is really tall for his age, particularly Chinese boys his age, (he is the same height as I am) so he was shocked that everyone we went out to dinner with was taller than him. It was pretty funny. So that is my life currently! Things are going well!

p.s. Just a random note about Chinese culture that I found out this weekend when I went to visit my friend in her dorm room. Boys can't enter the girls dormitory and vice-versa. I mean, I thought Grove City College was insane for having a curfew and kicking boys out of their dorms after 11:00 pm. Here you can't even step foot inside the girls dormitory. What they would think if they knew I had co-ed bathrooms my freshman year of college.....