Quarantine

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?)

I wrote my last entry just as I was heading out the door to go to Xi’an, a very old and famous city twelve hours southwest of Beijing – by train, that is. The trip was short and sweet; I, along with four others, left Beijing at 9:24 PM on Saturday the third and returned at 7 AM on Tuesday the sixth. I have a lot of fun stories and beautiful pictures. I’ll write about it all shortly. But first I’d like to talk about something else: the Beijing nightlife scene.

Last night I went to three different party spots in the city, all located in the middle and east sections of the city, but all vastly different and inordinately fun. If you want to see Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese bands – male bands, that is – playing original work, you must go to Mao’s Livehouse (www.maolive.com). The venue is similar to one you may find in Williamsburg or Alphabet City. The outside facade is designed to look like a warehouse and the interior is similar. The walls are adorned with graffiti and record label banners; the hall itself is a big room with a fairly large floor space with a raised stage. Though the venue can accomodate rocked-out scene, the fun level varies immensely depending on the nights you go, so it’s important to choose your date of attendance wisely. (A group of us hit up this spot a few weeks ago and found the lights on and some fans sitting on the ground watching a mellow band – suffice it to say we left immediately.) Last night was a brilliant night to go, as bands were lined up to play all night and all of the Chinese students were still on vacation. Maria, Isabel, and I got there at around 9:30 and caught a Taiwanese band, Burn, finishing up a set. Their music is pretty catchy if you like alternative rock from the late 80s and early 90s. We heard a song that I’m pretty sure was a rip off of R.E.M’s “Losing My Religion.” The lead singer was an adorable, skinny, suspender-wearing Taiwanese guy with bleached hair (well, partially bleached) and a not-so-great voice. His energy was there, but his sound just didn’t deliver. Nevertheless, we all found ourselves nodding to the beat and enjoying the scene, which, I must say, did not resemble that of a Williamsburg one at all.

Chinese college students don’t go out as much as American students (really, students anywhere else in the world) do. That’s number one. Secondly, if students or young people go out, they won’t drink nearly as much as one would expect at a club scene or concert. Women, especially, drink less than men. While we were in Xi’an, Isabel told me that her language partner never goes out, because, to her, going out is considered dirty, gross, obscene. Of course I can go into an analysis of this attitude towards drinking – but I think I should keep it simple. I actually think that the situation is fairly simple.  Either you go out and you’re not studious or dedicated enough, or you stay in and you are a good girl or boy. On this particular night at Livehouse, the venue was filled to half of the hall’s capacity – there were only around six foreigners in the spot. It was nice to see so many people out, but it was clear that people were going out to hear music; no one was holding a drink, and no one stopped off at the bar after the show was over. The lack of drinkers did make me feel a bit more conscious of the beer (or two, or three?) that I inevitably hold in my hand on a night out, but I’m alright with it.

I haven’t even made it to the second set, have I? I must talk briefly about it, because it was much better than Burn. The band had six or so musicians, all men, all young, all about rock and hip-hop and beards and generally being more beautiful than any of the other Chinese men any of us had seen in Bejing up until that point.

Lucky Monkey playing at Mao Livehouse

Anyway, I have their album, and I will make everyone that I know in the States listen to Lucky Monkey (www.luckymonkey.org), not because their music is especially amazing, but because they do a hip-hop rendition of a popular nationalist song we heard for 24 hours straight on October 1st. Aren’t rock and hip-hop about counter-cultural sentiments at their foundations? The utter irony is enough to warrant constant listening.

The concert ended after Lucky Monkey’s set. While the Beijing crowd piled out as if the building was about to burn down, the foreigners (waiguoren) lingered to chat with the boys of Burn and LM. I ended striking up a conversation with one of the guitarists from Burn, who spoke a bit of English and wanted to practice on me, but let me speak Chinese for the majority of the conversation. “Oec”  – as he’s called by his friends –  explained that while playing in a band is fun, his real dream is to graduate with a PhD from Princeton (okay, yes, I got excited and did talk a little bit about you, Joe) in Physics. First though, he has to complete a mandatory year in Taiwan’s military. Because I’ll be in Taiwan next spring, I thought it’d be good to exchange number and emails, so we’ll be hanging out next spring! I told him I’d help him prepare for the TOEFL, an English proficiency examination for foreigners, and he said he’d help me prepare for the HSK, a Mandarin proficiency test.

When the conversations all but died out, we decided to go to an opium den-themed bar, Bed, which is located in a small hutong that even taxi drivers don’t recognize (or is it our Chinese?? No, this time the driver really didn’t know the hutong. But I’ve actually been kicked out of a cab before because the driver didn’t understand what I was  saying – okay, that’s not true. He understood what I was saying, he just didn’t want to go to the destination….another cab driver understood it perfectly!!) Remember when I said that young people don’t really go out in Beijing?

Isabel on a bed in Bed

Well, that’s true of the savvier scene too during the weekdays. Bed, which is considered one of trendier bars in the city, was empty when we arrived at 11:30. It didn’t matter though, because the owner of the place let us sit anywhere we wanted. Usually you’d have to pay 400 rmb to sit in the nicer sections of the bar, which feature nineteenth-century style beds that patrons actually have to take their shoes off for before climbing in. The bar is dimly lit and must be really nice on a Saturday, when the owner brings in a DJ to play house and techno beats. The three of us got to scramble into the nicest bed and tried to imagine what being an opium addict at a opium den in a narrow hutong in Beijing must have been like 150 years ago. It was hard to imagine, since we were drinking whiskey and cokes and smoking cigarettes with Jack Daniels ashtrays (I’ve only been bumming, if anyone cares - just trying to be honest).

The bar was nice, but too silent for our last night out before resuming our daily classes (Saturday-Friday this upcoming week – weekend classes to make up for our extravagant holiday). Dario and Mechal kept calling us, anyway, to remind us that it was imperative that we celebrate Mechal and Vincente’s birthdays at Mix, a gigantic meatmarket of a club, in front of which everyone had collected themselves. After gingerly exiting our bed, we headed out of the hutong (not before I mistakenly told the owner of the bar that I’d be back with all of friends. This Saturday? she asked. I had to tell her that we all had class and assured her that Yexu xia ge xing qi de zhou mo wo men yao hui lai!  (Maybe next weekend we’ll come back!)). When we got to Mix, we found around fifteen of our people there, who informed us that girls were free, the club was crowded as all hell, and it was time to go in, NOW.

The club is housed in a mammoth building. Security guards greet you at the door and shove flashlights in your bags, then they make your check your coats and bags (I held on to mine) before corralling you onto the dance floor. Before you can enter the gyrating mass of bodies,

The only image my camera would pick up of the scene at Mix

a free drink is handed to you by the bartender (no explanation as to the contents), and then, finally, you make your way to the fun. The three hours that I was there was a bit of a whirlwind. The club is a really great place for dancing, as the DJ spins really current hip-hop beats and mixes in some pop songs in between. No Chinese songs, though, just American and British. Somepeople acquired a corner table in the back of the bar, so I hopped from table to floor over the course of the nether hours.

We ended up leaving at 3:30-ish. Before going to my dorm, though, I picked up some circular dumplings (baozi) at our favorite spot right outside of the south gate. It was great to be there so late, because we got to see a young guy and his mom (?) preparing the baozi for the morning’s breakfast crowd. I asked him how many they make every day, and he said around 2000 pieces, which is quite a lot, don’t you think?

Tonight marks the last night of our vacation. We’re celebrating by going to a sushi restaurant on the other side of town. It’s a little pricey (we have to make reservations), but it’s a necessary ending to a peaceful yet productive and active break. Thank you, Chairman Mao, for kicking out the Nationalists sixty years ago. But, also, thanks to those involved in Cross-Strait relations for allowing Taiwanese people (young musicians, especially) to come back to China and show us a good time.

Marching Military Women

I saw national pride last night when I went to qianhai, a lively bar area along one of Beijing’s many lakes, and saw older couples dancing to traditional songs,

Playing hackeysack

 young people playing with a hackeysack-esque feathered ball, and old men writing traditional characters with a large paintbrush and water on stone slabs. However, today’s parade and the evening performances seemed to lack those images of comfort and contentment that I saw in the demeanors of the revelers at qianhai.

I woke up just in time today to watch the military parade, the preparation of which I wrote about in one of yesterday’s entries. All of the pins, therapy, and threads certainly paid off, because the soldiers walked in unison with a precision matched only by last year’s Olympic Opening Ceremony.

Jiaoda students returning from the morning's military parade

Among the military marchers were some interesting groups, such as the women soldiers who wore white go-go boots and sported small white pistols, and the student groups, 1000 of which were from Jiaoda.

I have yet to speak with any Chinese friends about today’s parade, but I have the feeling that while a majority of the viewers felt proud about China’s magnificent display of military prowess (planes flew, missiles sat  atop of large tanks), there were others who found the whole day’s event  a  bit too elaborate. Many of the people around Jiaoda hold the former opinion, but I did spot some young people snickering at the television tonight during one of the many traditional dances that took place at Tiananmen Square this evening.

I’m looking forward to asking my language partner about her National Day experience. Was it merely a day off for her? Did she feel a connection to the CCP? Or was it a day that confirmed her belief in her nation’s ability to defend itself from its enemies?

Yesteday, a journalist from the NY Times walked around and got people’s opinions. To me, the most intriguing element of the responses was that many people were just happy about China being strong, when it had been so weak prior to 1949. But this strength does not exactly belong to the CCP, because several people also quoted the 4000-ish years prior to the iffy time in the 19th and 20th centuries as being very strong times for China. The article reminded me of a conversation (in Chinese, yes!) with one of Maria’s friends, a Chinese graduate student at Jiaoda, who explained to me how history was taught to her in middle school and high school. In middle school, the students learn about ancient history through the 19th century. In high school, the curriculum focused heavily on the period between 1860 and 1949, China’s weakest period, in order to highlight the country’s current strength. That China is strong is not up to debate, as seen in the countless articles on China’s ownership of American debt, but it’s interesting to think of whether or not the government’s core ideology is still strong or not. The Times’ article argues that people in Beijing are quickly losing its grasp of Communist allegiance and values, but I’m not so sure that one day (or perhaps a few) of interviewing random people on the street can really determine that.

Soldiers stand at attention for the flag lowering ceremony

The New York Times has an article in today’s paper on China’s National Day preparation details. I knew there were fewer birds flying around the city…

Tomorrow I may head down to Tiananmen Square for a glimpse of the majestic pillars and the carpeted stairs. For now, I have sufficed with Mei Mei’s brilliant image of soldiers standing in front of Tiananmen for the flag lowering ceremony that will be going on daily up until the National Day Parade.

Nationalism, nationalism, nationalism. It’s fun to see so much of it, but I don’t exactly love getting roped into the performative aspect of conveying my own love of China. I love China on my own terms, but today I got really fed up with the constant congratulatory and repetitive performances that I always have to participate in as a foreign student at Jiaoda. This morning, all of the scholarship students were told to attend a meeting at 1:30 pm. No explanation, no description, just “be there.” So, all of us went over after lunch, expecting some sort of explanation as to why our money came a month late (just got 4500 RMB though, so I’m okay financially for now) or when we should be expecting our monthly allowances in the future. Instead of this, however, we were given a presentation on the progress of the country over the past sixty years by a member of the China Scholarship Council and the president of Jiaoda. I learned that China has 1.4 billion people, half of which are women and half men. I learned that there is good food in China and that China has many provinces. I also learned that each person now has 26.2 meters squared of living space, whereas they only had 3.6 meters squared twenty years ago. After the presentation, ten foreign students came up and told the group why they love Beijing.

After around two hours when some administrators gave us an intermission to prepare a video, a group of us decided to leave, agitated and distressed from the meandering monologues from students and administrators alike.

I’m not sure if I will attend another meeting based off of an unclear and generally deceptive invitatation.

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.

60th anniversary of PRC panda - found at the zoo

As many people reading this blog may know, October 1st marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Because of this great event, the government has instated many preventive and preparatory measures to ensure that the day will go well – without any interruptions.

Prevention: No one may enter campus without flashing a student id card at the campus gates. Though international students are required to show their student cards, the government is more interested in Chinese students, who are not allowed to bring any students from other universities to their own. This is because the government does not want to take the chance of allowing any student-organized protests.

Preparation: The first full rehearsal for the upcoming parade was held on Friday. In order to halt foot traffic around the Tian’anmen Square area, the government closed down many subway stops, and, in turn, blocked the way home for many commuters.

Prevention: A group of us took a walk around the wangfujing area tonight, a section of the city reminiscent of Times Square. We decided to walk a few kilometers west to Tian’anmen Square, but found that the road was blocked off a few hundred feet before the entrance. Though cars and buses were allowed through, pedestrians were not. It’s interesting that the square is off limits even though the rehearsal ended last night at 5 am. A few of us have conjectured that the government is wary of pedestrians a. dirtying up the place, or b. placing explosives around the area.

Prevention: As a means of ensuring that no one will be injured or killed during the parade, the government is not allowing anyone who lives in a building or is staying at a hotel on the parade route to look outside of their windows during the parade. Those who have not been granted official access to the parade will have to watch it from their tvs  and not from their windows, roofs, or stoops.

I made good on Liu’s offer today and took a walk around the neighborhood this evening. I forgot to take my camera, so there aren’t any visuals. Hopefully my words will create the vision that is the Jiaoda campus and its radius.

On leaving my room, I decided to take a long walk down a crowded block called “Jiaoda East Road.” During the day, Jiaoda East Road seems pretty bland. There are a few marts, trillions of hair salons, some clothing shops, liquor stores, pharmacies, banks, and real estate offices. At night, though, everything is lit up with neon lights and tons of street vendors line the streets, selling wares from toys to pirated dvds to clothes to peaches. Tonight seemed like an especially crowded night, probably because all of the new students arrived today accompanied by their parents, and everyone seemed to want a night on the town.

On my long walk, there were a few things I noticed that caught my attention.

1. Children can urinate on the street in Beijing. A few days ago by my hotel I saw a mom take her baby’s pants down and face the baby’s genitals towards a plot of grass, where the baby eventually built up the courage to pee. Tonight, I saw a young girl squatting between two cars, shamelessly urinating to her heart’s content.

2. Women who are friends tend to hold hands in China. Because homosexuality is strictly hidden and contained  in mainstream culture, I’m going to assume that the several female couples I saw tenderly gripping one another were not significant others, but friends. Maybe we should take up that practice in the States.

3. I finally found the gigantic statue of Mao that is so often publicized as one of Jiaoda’s claims to fame. In the mid-20th century, when Chairman Mao named Jiaoda as a major institution of China, the university christened him by putting up this gigantic statue. I’ll get a picture of it for you in the daylight.

My sojourn was pretty short, so there isn’t much else to say. A highlight for me – but probably not for my reader – was that I found a China Construction Bank on my walk. This bank is linked to my home bank, Bank of America, and therefore allows me to make free withdrawals.