Getting to Know the Teachers

IUP has Chinese Table every week, but it's never actually at a table. The activities have ranged from touring Wudaokou, to playing mafia, to this week's barbecue. The most surprising thing about the barbecue: the size of the grill.

Hua Laoshi and one of two grills. Can it feed 30 people?!

Surprisingly, the food was never in short supply and some people decided to skip dinner, but I was among the teachers and students who opted not to. So, we all went out to a Yunnan restaurant (by the way, I've been there many many times and definitely worth returning), ate yummy pineapple rice, and rice noodles, and Chinese mashed potatoes, and much much more.

During dinner, we played a Chinese version of rock paper scissors/truth or dare with chopsticks! A little hard to explain, but basically one person starts our with a pair of chopsticks. He/she plays rock paper scissors with the person on one side and the loser takes one chopstick. Repeat on other side with other chopstick. Since you're in a circle, the chopsticks keep getting passed around until someone ends up with both chopsticks. And then it's truth or dare time!!! Definitely a great way to get to know the teachers...hahaha.

Biking Accomplishments

Having almost conquered my fear of biking (hindered by two experiences, one in which I biked into another bike and one where I nearly ran into a pedestrian had he not grabbed my handlebars and stopped me), I took my new bike-riding abilities to the streets of Beijing yesterday. And, not only did I not get myself (or anyone else) injured, I, who always bikes with both hands firmly grasping the handlebars, managed to send a text message with one hand while steering with the other! Hoorah! Up next: biking in the rain, one hand holding an umbrella...

Fun

Kaoyu and KTV with classmates and teachers after our midterm.
The teachers all rode their bikes, but we were too chicken to bike 20 minutes on Beijing streets during rush hour.

A friend and I went out for cake and got asked to fill out a consumer satisfaction survey. Putting our newfound Chinese knowledge to good use - we could actually read and answer all the questions! (the girl did laugh a little though because it took us longer than native Chinese people to fill it out)

Thanks to Carol Yu, former Light Fellow at HBA/IUP, for recommending this tiny kimbap place in Wudaokou. It's called Shrek, and super yummy.
You eat at the bar looking onto the street.
The owners got really confused when my friend and I spoke intermittently in Chinese/English/Korean (only for food names) and couldn't figure out where we were from...

our kimbap

"napkins" on the wall

Shrek really is tiny. that's the Jeans West store next door.

I heart IUP teachers

Tomorrow is our midterm, which isn't stressing me out nearly as much as I think it should, as evidenced by the fact that I am surfing the web and updating my blog. But as I was preparing for this midterm, I was struck by how thoughtful and dedicated the teachers are, so I thought it would be worthwhile to give a few examples:

- for tomorrow's midterm, there is a section devoted to chengyu (aka. 4 word Chinese proverbs). my danbanke teacher Song Fang Laoshi composed a very lengthy essay just for me, with fill-in-the-blank chengyu spaces, all because I said I wanted to practice some more!
- my classmates and I somehow started talking about Harry Potter during class one day, so the next day my listening hebanke teacher Yu Yan Laoshi came in with a few pages of the Chinese translation and worked it into our class!
- for this past week, I've been sticking around IUP studying until dinnertime since I'm unbelievably unproductive at home. I've been leaving at around 7, when some teachers are coming back from dinner and going back to work. And they get there before 8 am everyday!

After the exam in the morning, we will have one-on-one chats with each of our teachers to go over the exam (they correct it during lunch!) and discuss our views on the class. Much as I hate tingxie (ie. dictation), I will be asking my danbanke laoshi to start giving me tingxie everyday. I've found that while I can use what I've learned, I'm having a hard time remembering how to write the characters. I will also be talking to my other listening hebanke teacher Zhang Yilin Laoshi about how she could make her class more interesting and less awkward.

And then, at night, we're going out for kaoyu (ie. baked fish) with some of the teachers, and perhaps karaoke!

Cultural Crossroads

After nearly two months in China, I'm starting to become numbed to the environment around me. What might have once struck me as odd or amusing (like how Beijing plans to ban 1/3 of its cars for the Olympics), now just seem commonplace. I dismiss things with an oh-that's-Beijing, that's-China sort of attitude. On one hand, I am blending into the culture much more than I ever have before, but on the other, I am losing my drive to evaluate the world around me. Instead of just accepting things as they are, I've stopped questioning why they are the way they are.

It was refreshing, then, to go to lunch yesterday at the home of a fellow IUPer and talk about East/West differences - in education, in business, in values, etc. All of us were 1.5 or 2nd generation immigrants straddling two cultures. While I've always realized how unique of a situation it is to understand two cultures, I never recognized my role in light of that knowledge. This couple, though, being older and married, was discussing how they should raise their kids: where to raise them, which traditions to carry on, which new ones to adopt, which ideals to merge... Having grown up in both worlds, we take them as they are, but when you need to process and pass them on, you realized how complicated navigating a middle ground can be. To borrow from (and reword) Spiderman: with great knowledge comes great responsibility.

Thoughts on IUP

IUP truly does give you a lot of freedom. Not only can you do whatever you want with your time outside of class, you can also discuss almost whatever you want in class. For instance, today in danbanke (one-on-one), even though my lesson was on the Chinese education system, we talked about the 2008 presidential elections while still using vocab and grammar structures from the textbook. And even in hebanke, because it's such a small class, there's a lot more room for discussion, too.

I will admit that sometimes the teaching is a little stilted. It really does depend on the teacher, if he/she is flexible enough to pursue the topic at hand while still directing you to use vocab and grammar from the lesson. My danbanke laoshi, Song Fang laoshi, is amazing!! She really tries to cater the lesson to my interests, and listens very patiently while I explain complicated things like how the lesson on being healthy (written in the 80s) is completely wrong about the causes of the common cold. She has also drawn me little diagrams of how I should place my tongue, since I have trouble distinguishing s/sh, z/zh, c/ch sounds. Everyday, I also get a little post-it to remind me of all the words I mispronounced and slowly, but surely, my accent is becoming much more accurate.

Two of my hebanke teachers are also great. My classmates in my reading hebanke and I get along marvelously - I think our teacher, Li Lu laoshi, is pretty amused by our silliness, but our comraderie makes for much less awkward situations. For instance, we were practicing the measure word 一番, which is used for periods of time. Example: 高兴一番 (to be happy for a while)， or 打扮一番 (to get ready - ie. get dressed, put on makeup, etc.). So she asked one of the guys in the class, "if Wen was to 打扮一番, how would she look?" [pause] [everyone (myself included): uncontrollable laughter] my classmate: "If Wen were to 打扮一番, she wouldn't be so ugly." [more uncontrollable laughter]

My classmates in my listening hebanke are much more serene (they're also much older, one is 28 and one is 30), and so we don't laugh quite as much, but we have very lively and mature discussions on topics like feminism, spending habits, parenting, etc. Unfortunately, we're all a little thrown off by the teaching method of one of our teachers, Zhang Yilin laoshi. She is the most regimented of all my teachers in terms of sticking to the textbook. To liven things up, she tries to crack jokes or ask funny questions, but they don't always come across and we end up in awkward silence. When we have difficulty saying something, she is much more eager than our other teachers to finish our sentences, oftentimes not the way we wanted to finish them. Also, she overly stresses the details of the recording (for instance, last week's lesson was about people's reading habits and the future of books, and she kept asking us which person in the recording liked which book). It was really frustrating because details like that don't help us learn vocab/grammar. We're contemplating whether or not to go to her and discuss this, or go to Zhang Kai laoshi, who oversees the teaching here and encourages us to go see him with any concerns, however minor, that we may have. I think we'll wait out this week and see if we have specific complaints/suggestions for her.

Last week, Zhang Kai laoshi called a quick assembly and stressed that we're at IUP to learn 方式 (method) as opposed to 内容 (content). If we can't say what we want to say (content) correctly (method), then we should say something simpler but correctly (ie. choose method over content). So sometimes, class will be boring. I agree that that's a very valid point, so perhaps some of our frustrations stem from saying something we don't really want to say because we don't know how to say what we really mean. In any case, the teaching method in classes is something IUP is definitely working on. Charles Laughlin is the new director and is meeting with all the students this week to get to know them, find out our concerns and suggestions, etc. I met with him today, and that was definitely one of the things he wanted to address.

Otherwise, though, I'm loving IUP. Food around Wudaokou is amazing - my classmates and I are currently working our way to all the restaurants around Qinghua, at least the places our teachers recommended. The teachers are also super approachable outside of class. Last week, two of us played tennis with our teachers. This week, Chinese table will be playing mafia with all of them!

Being "Chinese"

I don't ever tell Chinese people I'm from the US. I always say Chongqing, where I was born. Even when I went to get my glasses fixed and was forced to answer (the size of my screws were much smaller than those on Chinese glasses), I just said "abroad." I somehow feel like native Chinese people treat Chinese and Chinese-Americans differently. Maybe it's the assumption that Americans must be arrogant and rich that makes me uncomfortable. Or the fact that it's easier to strike up a conversation as a fellow Chinese. Or because I still see myself as Chinese, despite having grown up in the states.

Most of the time, I can get away with being a "southerner," although sometimes the way I dress gives me away. When I do successfully feign Chinese, I find myself facing an entirely new set of challenges - I am expected to converse with the vocabulary and fluidity of a native Chinese. Sadly, sometimes my language ability raises questions. Over and over, I've been greeted with the skeptical "where are you really from?" glances. (Thankfully, people thus far have been too polite to actually ask.) All the while, I see my American friends constantly praised for their linguistic prowess. To be honest, it's frustrating. As much as I improve, I'm still not good enough, at least not until I truly become a native-level speaker. And there's a long way to go...

Simatai

A few pictures from the Simatai section of the Great Wall. It rained pretty heavily on the way there, but fortunately not while we were climbing. The other good news: the rain really cooled the temperature. The bad news: much of the Great Wall was veiled in fog.

view from the "top" (the rest of the wall was roped off and under the watch of two guards)

The highlight of the trip was ziplining down from the Great Wall to river bank below. The elderly man selling tickets for the zipline warned us not to get too excited since even he thought it wasn't fast or thrilling enough, so instead of going one at a time, my friend and I got strapped in together. (Since the zipline runs only on momentum, we figured the heavier, the faster - and it worked!)

the view on the way down

evidence that I actually rode the "flying fox"

Reflections on Week One of Class

Remember how I said the workload wasn't that bad? I take it back. When the weekend rolled around, I got slammed with essays. Three, to be exact, ranging in difficulty from write an e-mail to a friend who's having a hard time at work, to defend why gun sales should be restricted, using vocabulary and grammar from two lessons that discussed health and fitness...

If anything, IUP definitely focuses on learning to use our newfound vocabulary and grammar in various contexts. No tingxie here. Instead, classtime consists of intense verbal drills, first using the vocab as it's used in the lesson, and then using them to discuss widely disparate topics. Even though at times the lessons seem rote, it is definitely working. A fellow IUPer and I were out Friday night, and found ourselves using a lot of our new vocab comparing the status of women in China and in western cultures.

note:
Unlike the other programs, IUP's language pledge is only in effect at IUP and at IUP-sponsored activities. Outside of class, we can speak whatever. This is mostly because there are many grad students and professionals in the program (average age this summer is somewhere around 26) for whom a language pledge outside of class just isn't practical. Everyone seems to like speaking in Chinese, though, so thus far, I've really only spoken to IUPers in Chinese.