Quarantine

1. The NYT reported today that in Chongqing six people were sentenced to death and one to 18 years in prison, after being convicted of corruption. (And some extra: during my first week in Beijing, Scott told me, “They’re all corrupt.” By this he meant that everyone is involved in financial corruption of some sort, but the ones who get convicted have gotten on somebody’s bad side. In this case, it seems as if Bo Xilai needed a popularity boost.)

2. Yesterday, China Daily reported that a 32-year old Russian student at Beijing Hang University died yesterday of H1N1. He is the first foreigner to die of the disease and the eighth overall in China. (My news: our teacher told us about this yesterday and another one told us today. We’ve been warned not to go out of our rooms if we feel sick. Unfortunately, this week everyone in our dormitory is sick, including Bolette, Dario, Renata, Mei Mei, and - worst of all – me. Though I don’t have a fever or any of the main symptoms of the flu, I do have a phlegmy chest cough and an achy body. I went to class today, but I may not go tomorrow, even though I have a small test. In related news, in order to protect themselves from the virus, Chinese students have been wearing masks everywhere over the past few days. The masks are so popular that they’ve become a fashion statement. Vendors are selling masks with different patterns and cartoons on them, so people can get creative if they want to. A few lucky souls will get a mask when I return home…) 

3. The temperature has risen a bit from its frigid below-freezing temperatures on Saturday thru Tuesday to stable, dreary, and cold ones. A lot of people think they got sick from the abrupt change of temperature. I’m sick because Mei Mei was hacking a lung for a week.

My grammar teacher and I engaged in a mini-quarrel today, or, rather, continued a small argument that started yesterday, after I was made to humiliate myself in front of my class.

So, here’s the story: Yesterday, He Laoshi gave us a dictation, which is a small test administered to test our character memorization skills. I had studied enough, but managed to get one out of the thirty wrong. In order to make sure that I wouldn’t get it wrong again, Ms. He asked me to write the character on the wall, and then asked the class whether it was right or not (Dui, bu dui?). My fellow students answered in low mumbles, “Dui?” “bu dui?” and were finally given an answer when our teacher screamed (in a friendly manner…) “BU DUI!”

After class, I made a point to go up to Ms. He and ask her why she felt it necessary to embarrass me in front of the class (”Wo bu hao yi se! (I was embarrassed!)” I screamed). She responded (with a smile, of course) with some talk about opportunities for the whole class.

This morning I had grammar class again, and when Ms. He asked me to write something on the board, I responded, “After yesterday’s dictation, I will not be writing on the board.” My teacher didn’t respond at the time, but pulled me aside during our mid-class break to talk to me about the issue. This is more or less how the conversation went (in Chinese, of course!! working on the skillsssss):

Ms. He: Mo Li, I understand that you are still upset about the dictation yesterday. I want to explain to you that coming to China is not only an opportunity to learn Chinese language, but also and opportunity to learn about Chinese culture.

Me: So, your style of teaching is reflective of Chinese classrooms all over China

Ms. He: Yes!

Me: So, why do you feel the need to embarrass me?

Ms. He: Because, if I show that you did something wrong to the whole class, it will leave a deep impression on you, and then you will learn better!

Me: So, if you embarrass students, then they will learn better?

Ms. He: Yes!

Me: OK, but I really don’t like it when you do that.

Ms. He: Well, don’t worry. I treat everyone equally; everyone gets their chance.

Me: OK. Well, thanks for explaining it to me!

Ms. He: No problem!

The end. So, yes, public humiliation strategies in the classroom leads us to its obvious (or is it?) origins. Maria thinks the style is Confucian, some beg to differ.

Dear readers: comments on the perils of Communism aren’t desired, as I can bet I know what most of you are thinking. (Ah! I’m starting to censor my own blog…is China rubbing off on me?)

On October 24th, Jiaoda is presenting a cultural fair/performance for its students and the Beijing community. Last week, the international office asked us to attend a meeting about the fair, at which we were told that we could do an exhibition or a performance. The American and Canadian students – we had to link up since there are only two Canadians, but I’m not sure that doing this will be that successful in adequately highlighting Canadian culture and history — should we just post pictures of Mike Myers and Alanis Morissette? –  will be doing an exhibition. What we weren’t told, though, is that the office would be requiring the Chinese language students to participate in the performance section as Chinese song performers.

Today, our class was asked to attend an extra session of “class” after our 4-hour stint in the morning in order to practice Beijing’s most overplayed welcome song in the history of the world, “Beijing Huan Ying Ni (Beijing Welcomes You).”

Check out the video here.

Can you find this shot in the video?

 I mean, I love the song. I’m excited about singing it. I’m not excited about memorizing the entire song or having a solo line. I’ve heard that colleges in China like to show off their international students, but I didn’t think it would happen at Jiaoda, a school with such a high academic profile. In short, I was wrong.

It’s funny that we’re rehearsing this song now, right before the National Day. All of the teachers are  just in happier, sing-ier moods. Our speaking teacher made us all sing our national anthems in class today. Yang (Chinese-American from Long Island) and I had a pretty hard time getting past the first few lines of our national anthem – nothing is sacred in America. Then again, Dario, my BFF from Spain, couldn’t sing his anthem and chose to sing a French hit from the ’80s.

I must say, the Saudi Arabian (Sale), Swedish (Maria), Peruvian (Nataly), and Thai (Ban) students knew their anthems best.

People are getting hurt in Beijing and our teachers are worried about us. I’m having a hard time finding articles on it, but our teachers told us yesterday - yes, we had class on Sunday, had to make up for the nine-day vacation we’re about to have to celebrate the sixtieth – anyway, told us today that a few foreigners have died over the past two weeks and that we should be careful!

Wish I had the whole story, here is some of it. And here is some more. My friend, Johnny, told me that his teacher told him to get out of Beijing.

No worries, there are plenty of gigantic tanks with soldiers holding mammoth guns around…I feel safe enough.

Scare or no scare, people are ready to party. There’s a lot of nationalism going around, and even our teachers are showing pride.

Flags are hung outside of homes all over the city

Friday, our grammar teacher made up the sentence, “Wo jue de Mao Ze Dong liao bu qi. (I think that Mao Ze Dong is praiseworthy.)”

I want to update on the Great Wall and the hutongs, but I’m having a hard time writing about my touristy adventures. I’d rather post pictures of babies and Chinese flags. So, here are some photos from my recent walks around Beijing and on the Wall. (Really, I don’t want to show myself on the Wall because I was sweating like a sick cow in Saudi Arabia (it gets to 132 degrees in the summer there!).) There really is so much to say about both the hutongs and the Wall. I really enjoyed the feeling of being there – consummating my wish to see these thousand-year old (or more, or less…) structures that used to have real relevance and use for various dynasties over the past 2000 years. I must say, the Great Wall was inordinately, fascinatingly, breathtaking-ly, mindblowing-ly, distressingly, and unfathomably long.

The view from the top of a steep portion of the Wall

 It just curled and rose and twisted and extended forever (around 5,500 miles, actually).

Baby on the wall!

Interestingly, and maybe not so safe-ly, there were many children climbing the Wall. Bolette and I did the walk together and were stopped many a time for a picture with a baby. We also stopped just to play with some of the kids (and also to catch our breaths).

The touristy flavor was also really amusing. The hutongs had bookstores that featured both Obama’s works and Mao’s. Notebooks that featured sexual acts lined the bookshelves, but so did notebooks with images of Communist propaganda (commentary or what?) and ancient sayings. The Great Wall was magnificent, but clearly a mammoth structure that needs to be tended to at all times – workers were carrying a large piece of timber (I think) up a steep slope while we were there,

Laborers of a sort carrying a heavy block of metal up the wall

and we spotted six others laying down stone for a new addition to the easy walkway back down to the ticket area, where one can find a KFC and a Starbucks

waiting for your arrival. My friend, Mechal, happened to find a touristy spot in the form of a bear attraction. I have a video clip of him throwing apples to these bears; you can only see the bears if you take a roller coaster down from an area of the Wall to a random zoo.  The file is too big for the blog, but I’ll try to edit it and post it soon.

Apparently, everyone must touch the Wall when you reach one of the uppermost portions, so I have a bunch of pictures of me touching the Wall with Bolette, with Mei Mei, and with other friends. Many Chinese tourists also touched the Wall, and thought it would be fun for Bolette and me to take pictures with them touching the Wall, as well. I didn’t get any shots of this, but I did get one of a really happy family just after they touched!

Post-touch

Post-touch glory

There were many victorious moments on the Wall and it was really fun. But I think one visit is enough for this trip. Some people are thinking about going back to sleep on the Wall (yes, on it), but I was fine with my free two and a half hour excursion there.

Random note: In addition to my bout of heat exhaustion at the Wall, my computer has been working on overdrive, too. I had to delete a ridiculously new and angry Trojan off of my computer today (thank you CA anti-virus technicians) and do a system restore of my computer. So, I’m happy to say that my computer is up and running as well as it was on August 30th, 2009.

My haircut!

My beautiful new dictionary!

was a free 2 GB SD along with your 800RMB purchase (yeah, they’re kind of pricey). While it’s practically a sin to “lose face” in China, Swedes and Americans don’t worry about that so much, so we decided to go back to the snickering associate and buy a dictionary from her. When we got back, we talked for a bit and decided to be nicer than she had been, which went over well, because she decided to compliment us on our Chinese instead of laugh at it. When we were just about to make our purchase, she brought up – can I hear the “dun dun dunnnnns” – a fa piao issue. Look back at my quarantine entries for my problems with these last week. Apparently, the machine that prints these government-stamped receipts wasn’t working today, so they had to give us – and try to imagine this happening at Best Buy – hand-written receipts, with the promise that they’d call us when the fa piao were ready for us to pick up. That means we’d have to go all the way back for the receipt. Plus, they had some enigmatic issue with my name, so they wanted to put both purchases on Maria’s name, which we both did not concede to. It was quite bizarro, I must say.

Tomorrow, Bolette and I will continue our exploration of the city. I’m looking forward to bargaining and purchasing a fall scarf or two. I really like traveling with Bolette because we’re both not fantastic at kou yu,which means spoken Chinese, and we’re usually underheard when we’re with speakers who are better than us. So, tomorrow we’re going to try to speak as much as possible.

Thus far, I’ve met international students from over ten countries: Thailand, Brazil, Sudan, Cameroon, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Peru, France, Ivory Coast, Indonesia, the United States, Pakistan, and Belaruz. Every single one of these students have been able to speak English – almost fluently. While it’s great to be able to chat with people from all around the world, it’s disheartening to think that I am from a country that does not require its students to speak a language on a level much higher than that of a kindergartener.

On another note, everyone is so friendly in this international setting. I guess this is because people don’t feel the need to size others up when there isn’t any relevant competition involved. By this I mean that when Americans meet one another, they usually ask questions about careers, education, etc., and then proceed to compare each others’ answers against their own. In an international setting, one may ask the same questions, but the self-reflexivity disapperas. I’m not concerned about how much money a chemical engineer from Sweden makes, or if it surpasses my income, or if it challenges my own potential problems with my choice of career. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but it’s something I’m noticing.

On a more personal note, going to NYU for three years has trained me to move in and out of classrooms without the intention of meeting many new friends or sticking together after class ends. At Jiaoda, everyone’s on a rampant hunt for friends and everyone’s interested in each other’s cultures/histories/languages. We go out to lunch after class and make plans for the evening, and then we hang out during the afternoon because we all live on the same floor.

After being by myself for the first week of my stay at Jiaoda, I’m really not used to all of the plans and the hanging out and the doing homework together. I sound like a recluse, I know. Of course I’m taking people up on their offers, but it’s still new and fun just to go to lunch with people or go out for a beer. How sad!

Speaking of beer, I drank a beer on the street yesterday. It was quite the fun time. Renata, from Brazil, was shocked at the fact that we can’t drink alcohol on the street in the New York area.

Tonight I’ll be going into the main city area of Beijing to he hen duo pi jiu. That means I’m going to drink a lot of beer. Tomorrow I’m going to go with Yang, an American and recent Stonybrook graduate from Long Island (who is a Deadhead, by the way, and loves to go to Dark Star Orchestra concerts!) , to the Bird’s Nest. I’m not exactly sure what the Bird’s Nest is, but I think it’s one the main sites of the 2008 Olympics.

Until then!

Today was my best day in Beijing to date. I’m a bit too tired to give all the details, but I’ll certainly fill in the blanks in another post. Here’s my day in list form.

1. Got up, went to the office, then head off to my intermediate level class, where I spent three hours learning Chinese.

2. Went to my dorm and moved, and met Renata, an MBA student from Brazil, on the way.

3. Moved into my dorm room, then was asked by Renata if I wanted to chill. Gladly accepted and met her Sudanese friend, Mei, on the way.

4. Was treated as the newbie for two hours before heading back to the office, where I was told to go to the Bank of China.

5. Head over to the Bank of China and saw a child peeing on the ground and a neon sign that read, “Fragrant and Hot Marxism” over a restaurant. I am not sure what to say about that.

6. I successfully attained a bank card, but this was mostly due to the fact that the staff spoke pretty good English. My school will use this card to put money into my account.

7. Head back to school, bought some cleaning supplies for my room, and withrdrew some money from China Construction Bank (woohoo!)

Mei Mei and Me

8. Put my room together and met my Thai roommate, Mei Mei, who’s really awesome!!

10. Went for a walk down the main street east of campus with Renata and Mei. Renata showed me this store this store that magically morphed from flower shop to nail salon to lingerie shop to pirated DVD store in around ten steps. It was pretty impressive. I bought Bruno, which I’m pretty excited about!

11. Went back to my dorm room, hung out with Mei Mei, wrote a blog post and went to bed!!

I’ll fill in more fun and weird details later.