Summer 2012

Well summer 2012 is officially over! 

Tuesday was the first day of classes, at least for some of us. Classes technically started on Monday, but some of us lucky ones didn’t have class until Tuesday.

So on Monday I took the time to enjoy my day, sleep in, and even did laundry! The laundry machines are all in Mandarin so that made things a little complicated. Then we had to hang dry all of our laundry outside, except it was so humid, most of my clothes didn’t drive. They say they close the roof gate at 5, but really they close it at 3 which always throws everyone off, especially on the days that they decide to leave it open, they can never just make up their minds! Once everyone was out of class, we adventured to a “fancier” Trust Mart, Chinese Wal-Mart – literally owned by Wal-Mart. When I say “fancier” I mean that in relative terms, there is still unwrapped meat sitting on ice and live fish tanks in the store. I guess they want everyone to have fresh food! It’s always interesting to visit the Trust Mart. Some of the guys went to a real Wal-Mart after, but some of us decided to just not make the trek. Crossing the street once again proved to be entertaining with all of the bike lane, mopeds, bikes on the sidewalks, etc. It’s crazy! On our walk we saw some iconic American symbols such as the Playboy Bunny and the Camel (cigarette) symbol, but neither of them were their American equivalent. Playboy was a men’s outdoor clothing and recreational store and I don’t even know what Camel is. I just find it interesting that they use our symbols and try to be so Western, yet they are so different all at the same time.

This is how you know school is starting
And that you're in China... 

Tuesday, I started school finally! It was interesting to say the least. The day started out with Mandarin where we learned all the different tones. Our professor has to be a student; she looks like she is about 20 years old I swear. Mandarin was fun though, minus the fact that a bunch of students walked in 20 minutes late because they got lost, but it was still fun. Pronouncing Mandarin is so difficult with the position that you put your tongue for some of the words and some of the ways that the letters are pronounced. We had to continue through the class and each pronounce the vowels individually and get graded by the professor as we went. We are convinced that she is an English major studying here or at least a grad student, who knows at a school of 70,000 people?! I then had a two hour break where I and two other friends went to our favorite dumpling place. You know it’s bad when you show up there, they recognize you and basically know exactly what you’re going to order! It was funny. The waitress is so cute, I’m pretty sure she is about 16 or 17. I also think it’s a family business. She was reading my friends Mandarin dictionary and writing down words in English and trying to learn from our Mandarin book while working. I give her props for trying! I used the rest of the two hour class to simply relax before starting my next class.

The next class was Contemporary Chinese Culture and Society – much more exciting than it sounds. Our teacher speaks almost perfect English and is hilarious – he slightly reminds me of one of my favorite professors back at SPU. After introducing ourselves for the first half of class we took a break (they really enjoy their breaks here) and then he talked all about Chengdu. He gave us a list of about 30 places to visit around the city and in the province, unfortunately we won’t’ have time to visit all of the places, but that’s just another excuse to come back and visit (not that I need anymore!) He then got into some interesting topics about Tibet and the way they do their burials. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Tibetan culture, but it’s very traditional and very extreme. The Tibetan religion is Buddhist, extreme Buddhism. They believe that you are reincarnated after you die, if you are good you will be reincarnated into a good animal or person but if you live a bad life you will be reincarnated into a bad animal or a very poor person. I also found out that they don’t eat fish. The Tibetan people don’t like gossip, so if you have gossip, you are supposed to tell a fish. Why a fish? Well fish don’t have tongues so they can’t spread the gossip around but they are full of everyone’s gossip and secrets, so they are considered dirty and bad. The Tibetan people also do a water burial as one of their forms of burials, and the fish eat the flesh, so the fish are also considered to be bad due to that fact. They believe that if all of the body is gone, the soul can pass easier to heaven. They also do Celestial burial which to me is just too much, but I admire the dedication to their religion. During this they either cut all the meat off the bones and separate it, cut it up, and feed it to the vultures, they also crush the bones and mix them with barely and feed them to the vultures. Once again, the same concept – if all the remains are gone, the soul can pass to heaven easier. They also sometimes just cut off the limbs and do the same thing, just depends on what they feel like doing that day I guess? The Tibetan’s are very dedicated. The goal of many of their lives is to make it to the Holy Lake or Mountain. Some people drive; take the bus, or train, while others walk. Many of the ones who walk never make it, not only due to the distance, but also due to the fact that every other step they get down on their hands and knees and pray to Buddha. I don’t necessarily believe it, but I admire their dedication. If they can do that to their “god”, why can’t we be that dedicated to the real God? Kind of makes you think a little bit.

Hot pot :)

The rest of the day was good, made fun of the kids doing Kong Fu. It was more entertaining than anything else, not only to us, but to all the Chinese passerbyers. One minivan full of 7 Chinese people stopped and got out their fancy cameras to take pictures of the “Westerners” doing Kong Fu. It was just as entertaining to all of us. After that we went to a third type of Hot Pot, this one is individual hot pot. You can either get a small bowl to yourself or share a larger bowl with others at your table and put it in your bowl along with rice. This Hot Pot is not cooked on the table in front of you, is decently cheap, nice because everyone can pick out which stuff they like and want, and was super tasty! I am starting to absolutely love the food here!!!!

Tuesday night was one of the most interesting nights I’ve had yet – I went for a bike ride around town. Riding a bike here isn’t like toddling around Seattle; it is like driving a car more or less. You ring your bell and people move out of the way for you, you obey traffic laws to an extent – except you can drive on the sidewalk, and it is just an experience like no other. I have to say I slightly enjoyed ringing the bell and making people move out of my way because everyone here does that to me all the time! I almost crashed once or twice – once was weaving in between cars, the second time was trying to avoid other bikes coming at me and I swerved and almost ran into the railing... whoops! I was borrowing my friend’s bike which we later found out has a flat tire, so it wasn’t completely my fault in me defense! It was fun though and quite the workout. I think the city becomes even more alive at night – I don’t think this city ever sleeps! People were out everywhere – people walking, people shopping, groups dancing around in the parks. This city is great! There is always something going on in the parks whether they are dancing, doing Taiji, doing calligraphy with water on the pavement, or just hanging out. It all looks so fun, but if you did any of that at the parks in Seattle, people would thing you were psycho! Everything here is just so family and community oriented.

Fancy fountain we found exploring

Wednesday was another lazy day. I didn’t have class until 445.  So I took the opportunity to sleep in and explore the city a little bit. A friend and I explored out the south gate and found lots of cool stuff! We found more exercise parks, another place that sells flat bread; it is the Muslim Chinese people from the northwest provinces of China, local shops and people, several cats on leashes, and more. It is exciting to wander around the gigantic city and just see what you can find. We also went west and explored some more – found a Hong Kongese restaurant, a fancy office building, some cool fountains, and even managed to order lunch on our own! Granted all we did was point at what we wanted on the menu and say a word or two, but it’s a lot better than we had done before. We also discovered a decently nice Hotel 8 for $10 a night (hint hint if you want to come visit!!) along with some other nice stores to shop at and what not. It was fun to just get out and explore new places! I love interacting with the locals and seeing all of the interesting things around the city.

Chinese fast food?

I think the best part of Wednesday though was calligraphy class. Why? Well a few reasons… First of all our calligraphy teacher speaks virtually no English. All he can say is “sorry”, “next class”, and “do you speak Chinese” so needless to say it was an interesting class to say the least. Second of all, he didn’t know how to use a computer. I had to figure out how to turn it on and between three of us students we turned on the projector, put the screen down, and turned the computer on – even with all the buttons being in Mandarin. Third of all, we watched calligraphy videos for 45 minutes. I like calligraphy, don’t get me wrong it’s beautiful, but watching drawing videos that we can’t understand for 45 min is not fun at all!!! That class will make for an interesting quarter to say the least.

Thursday was another full day of classes. It once again started out with Mandarin which was fun, learned a few characters, and all laughed at each other as we all tried to pronounce a few words. Some of the letters in the Chinese language are hard to pronounce, let alone the words containing these characters! After Mandarin, we went to lunch where I managed to order my own lunch all in Mandarin! It’s not a lot but still a step in the right direction.

“wǒ yāo yīgè niúròu jiǎozi”

“I want one order of beef dumpling” J

In the afternoon we had business class… let’s just say that was a whole piece of craziness all in itself. Our professor is really nice but SO hard to understand. He also speaks French so he has a British, French, Chinese accent – trying figuring that one out! And he slurs all of his words together; let’s just say I had a hard time staying awake. We talked about globalization for 3 hours. Though it is interesting to get his point of view considering many US companies outsource their work to China. We are going to have a debate with some of his Chinese business students in a few weeks over the question of whether China is stealing American jobs and whether it’s their fault or not. I just like getting to see the other side of the whole story.

Cafeteria Food!

That night our friends took us to the school cafeteria which was SO good! 2 RNB for a giant bowl of spicy noodles which equals about 33 cents! I am excited to get my student ID card so that I can go to the cafeteria more often. There are about 10 on campus which is awesome! Oh and fun fact there are phone numbers all over campus, turns out they are numbers for people to call if they want to get a student id card. So instead of getting a fake ID for not being 21, they have fake ID’s for student cards, which I just think is so interesting. After dinner, many of the students like to go walk around the campus to walk off their dinner before they go study and what not. So one of the girls, Emma, and I went on a walk around campus and had an awesome conversation. I admire their determination in school and it made me think about how much we take advantage of education in America. The education system in China is solely test based and if you don’t do well on the first test you take when going from elementary to middle school then you will be placed in a lower middle school, putting you on track to not do well. Then if some kids aren’t good test takers but they are smart, then they have no hope for education, and if someone is a good test taker but doesn’t know how to apply it then they still get to go to college. It’s confusing and highly criticized here, even among the locals. Emma is an English and communications major I believe and she’s a senior. Now she’s trying to decide which type of graduated school to go to because she eventually wants to get her PHD in intercultural communications. However if she goes to a taught grad school, as she called it, it’s what she’s more interested in but it will cost her more because there are no scholarships for it. However, if she goes to a research based school then she will most likely get a large scholarship and it will be easier for her to get her PHD. I just admire the dedication that they have to education and making something of themselves. They take their education very seriously and study a ton in order to do well; failing isn’t an option for them in any way, shape, or form. It just put a lot of things into perspective for me in terms of education and showed me how important it really is.

Then that afternoon we had the best class, Taiji. First of all our teacher is 30 and looks like he is maybe 23 if that! Second, he is amazing at kung fu and taiji. Third, he used to be a stunt double in big movies. Pretty sure he was in a few Jet Li movies and what not. Fourth, his name is Li Wei which is pronounced leeway which just makes me laugh a little bit. We quickly became the main attraction in the square where our class was. People were watching from the windows of the stairwell next to where our class was, people walking by snapping photos, and even joining in for a little while. I just think it’s so funny how fascinated they are with groups of westerners.

A small taste of home!

Thursday night was a fun one. My friend and I were going to go find a noodle place but took a wrong turn and decided to go adventure out the east gate instead. The east gate is beautiful at night, not during the day. During the night the river bank is completely lit up and is absolutely beautiful. That whole side of the city is lit up with high rises and beautiful lights. So many people were out and about and there are parks everywhere! We crossed over the river and passed a waterfall sort of thing that changes the height of the river, found people dancing in parks in big groups, saw people walking everywhere, found a light up fountain that changes colors along the river and even ordered our own dinner in mandarin! It was fun and of course it was the night that I forgot to bring my camera! Figuressssss. But that just means I will have to go explore again!

Friday was another lazy morning which was nice. Then I went to find a new dumpling place, but we ran out of time so we went back to our normal place. Then we went to our Sin-American relations class which I think is actually my favorite class. The professor used to work for the military for five years, worked as an interpreter and a translator, worked in the foreign affairs office for the government for a while, and lived in Phoenix, AZ for a while – Phoenix is Chengdu’s sister city. So he has a very strong Communist pro-China mind set. Most of his information is propaganda based and much of it blames America for everything. So it is an extremely interesting point of view, but after all isn’t that what we came here for? Another perspective! I am really looking forward to the rest of the class and seeing things from the Chinese perspective! We got out of class early because our teacher wanted to give us some free time to go research the subject more, but let’s be  honest it was a Friday afternoon, who is going to go study in the library? A bunch of us ended up playing soccer or football with the PLU students and a few random Chinese guys. Some of the Chinese guys were really good, others were decent and ball hogs. One guy called himself Christiano Renaldo, it was kind of funny. Halfway through the game more people joined so we went full field, let me tell you it was exhausting. And this time instead of getting a concussion from a softball, some of you know that story; I almost got a rib broken from a soccer ball. It was simply an accident, but one of my friends kicked a shot on goal and instead I blocked it with my side. I got the wind knocked out of me pretty badly but beyond that I was fine.

Only white girl! Out with our Chinese and Taiwanese friends

That night was the semester kick off of English Corner. A place by the gym on campus where people from all over the city go to practice their English! I was amazed at how many people were there ranging from little kids to older generations. There was a dad and his 7 year old son there, the dad was teaching the son English and translating from Chinese to English on what to say to me, it was adorable! So many of those little kids are just like the ones in America, playing video games, watching zombie movies, playing in the dirt, and playing games. I also had a group of middle school girls come up to me and try to talk to me, along with college kids, people in their mid-20s and more! It was fun talking to random people and hearing how determined people were to teach English. Foreigners quickly become the main attraction. The thing that struck me the most was something the father said, who is a doctor by the way, he said “Do very many people from your country apply for the opportunity to come to our country?” When I answered him no, he replied “Why? So many people from our country try for the opportunity to go to yours even just for a little while.” It just made me realize how much we take advantage of the freedom that we have in America. At the very least we have unemployment, a government who takes care of us and takes care of us (more than they take care of the people here!), houses to live in, water we can drink out of the tap, and so many more opportunities! I think that so often we forget about that fact, but regardless of how one feels about the government or different laws, at least we are protected.

My roommate bought a scooter here and found out that many of the scooters people buy are stolen. The police know, but they are paid to turn their heads. The police also will pull people over and take their scooters just for the heck of it and there is nothing that the people can do about it. A lot of the people here have little faith in their government, most people, especially girls, know nothing about politics here, and there is no direct voting in China. People vote for representatives who then cast their votes. My friend Emma told me all about politics, she is very smart, and told me that a lot of people claim to be Communist but actually aren’t. There are a lot of different political parties in this country and many people aren’t actually communist contrary to popular belief, but there is nothing they can really do about the government without it being fully suppressed.

Ryan.. AKA Chocolate
From Taiwan! 

Tracie.. Also from Taiwan!

Lynus :) 

Friday night we took some of our Taiwanese friends and our Chinese friends to a bar and grill and hung out with them for a while. It was entertaining, I am starting to learn that they are just like us. Granted, there are some cultural differences, but it’s amazing how much we have in common. My friend Lynus, she’s from Taiwan, loves Starbucks just as much as I do and peanut butter! She opened up to me about random things and asked for my advice on different situations. It was so sweet! We are already talking about visiting each other after this trip, she speaks really good English! Her and her friends even invited me to go on a trip with them for a weekend here in Chengdu! They are the sweetest people ever!!! Anyways, Saturday night we had to get our Chinese friends home by 12, they have a midnight curfew at their dorm. It was pouring rain outside, thunder, and lightening – it was awesome and so beautiful! There was also an earthquake in the province below us on Friday. I was on Skype and thought I felt my bed shake, but I shook it off. Later on I was on my laptop still and saw the screen shaking, but when I looked on the news it wasn’t anywhere and no one else had felt it, I thought I was going crazy! But later Emma, my Chinese friend, asked me if I had felt it and I saw it all over the news. Over 80 people have died and 150 injured,  prayers would be awesome for them if you could! The earthquake was only a 5.6 I believe, but it was really shallow, and felt all the way in Beijing and Hong Kong! It was crazy! Watching the storms and stuff roll into Chengdu was beautiful though, there’s just something about thunder and lightning that I love.

Bamboo Park!

Emma!

Saturday was another beautiful day, there were even some blue skies which never happens in Chengdu! Our group went to Wangjiang Park, which means “bamboo forest” (it’s also the name of our campus! Sichuan University Wangjiang campus). Anyways, it was absolutely beautiful! It is a huge park right in the middle of the city with a small river, historic sights, traditional architecture, and over fifty types of bamboo. It was so peaceful and beautiful. People were all over the park doing Kung Fu, giving lessons to kids, taiji, dancing, drinking tea, playing Mahjong, relaxing,  playing cards, and spending time together. It is just so serene. There is even an amusement park for kids with a mini roller coaster, carnival games, bumper cars, and swings. It looked so fun! After the park my roommate and I came back and relaxed then went shopping with Emma and Louise. They are working at the International Cities conference and instead of volunteer tshirts this year, they have to wear nice black pants and a white blouse. It was so fun shopping with them, they are bargain shoppers just like I am! We even had Chinese fast food which is nothing like fast food in America – duck was one of the options! We ordered Kung Pao chicken but they were out of it, yet another difference between Chinese fast food and American McDonalds would never run out of Cheese burgers. Instead we had chicken and mushrooms, rice, interesting tomato soup, and winter melon that tasted more like squash. It was an experience to say the least. While shopping and dinner was fun, it was getting there that was the main experience. We took the bus which is nothing like taking the bus in Seattle. First of all, it’s A LOT cheaper. Second, you think the buses in Seattle are crowded, wrong! On the buses in Chengdu you are packed in like sardines with well over 70 people on one bus! The bus driver slammed on his breaks and everyone got shook around but no matter which way I fell I was cushioned by people. J  It was crazy! The rest of the night I learned new card games and tried new snacks with the people from Taiwan, I absolutely love them!

Once again, Sunday was a lazy day. We slept in and barely moved all day. I applied for a job teaching English that I will hopefully have an interview for in the next few days. Then I finally got up to go to lunch around 3:30 where we ordered giant plates of rice! I have never eaten so much fried rice in my life! And we even managed to order mostly in Mandarin, it took a while but we figured it out. Then I came back and relaxed again. Then we went to the market and found a DVD stand. They have hundreds of DVDs that range from seasons of shows to different movies. My friend bought some so I’m waiting to see what the quality of them is before buying some. The best part of the day though had to have bee this evening. About six of us got together for dinner and began talking about the Bible study we are starting. It is really encouraging to be surrounded by that group of people and to just be able to open up to them, it’s refreshing. We are going to meet every Sunday which is really exciting! After Bible study I was talking to Lynus again about our days and when I brought up Bible study and prayer her eyes lit up. Turns out she is a Christian as well and has been trying to find a church, so she is going to join our Bible study. She even had her English/Chinese Bible that her grandfather had given her, it was really encouraging.

Well one week of school has passed and wow what a week it has been. So far no homework, but I am interested to see what this week has in store!

You can rent boats and row through the park!