Cultural tidbits

The second week of being here totally flew by! One thing that's struck me in Chengdu is how friendly everyone is towards foreigners. Everyone wants to talk with us and is willing to help us out as well. A few of us went to the People's Park (Renmin Gongyuan) on Friday, an awesome park in the center of Chengdu. (Next to the enormous statue of Mao in the city center.) At the park, a man was doing calligraphy with a brush dipped in water on the sidewalk. It was kind of like chalk art and very cool. But anyway, the man immediately saw us and wrote “Welcome to America” in Chinese characters. He then proceeded to teach my friend about calligraphy for almost a half hour. I wish we were more welcoming towards Chinese tourists at Harvard. My tendency to vaguely point lost tourists in New York and Cambridge in the right direction is shameful in comparison to the hospitality that we've received. The Chinese students whom I've gotten a chance to interact with have gone out of their way to take us around, show us the best food, and introduce us to KTV (!).

KTV would be reason enough to bring me to China. On Friday I finally got to try it out and see what all the hype is about. Basically, for three dollars (18 kwai) a person, we got a private room with karaoke including English and Chinese songs from 8 pm until as late as we wanted to stay. (One of our Chinese friends booked it on a site that essentially brings people together to buy something like KTV in bulk, which is one of the reasons we got it so cheaply.) The atmosphere of the room was awesome, complete with a strobe light, two karaoke screens, and several microphones. It was awesome. I was also exposed to Chinese music for almost the first time, including a rap artist named MC Hotdog (not kidding). And even the Chinese students knew “My heart will go on” from the Titanic, which had everyone in the room singing/shouting. It was so much fun and if it existed in America, I probably wouldn't do anything else with my life. It's pretty popular here, though apparently more so among high school students than college :P

We also visited Mount Qingcheng yesterday, which is one of the most important centers of Daoism in the world, and also visited the site of an ancient irrigation system. We had another guided tour, except our tour guide didn't tell us much about irrigation or Daoism unfortunately. In fact, the the trip seemed kind of similar to our trip last week to the the Leshan Buddha and Emeishan due to the fact that everything is so touristy. There are the same ski lifts up the mountain, ice cream and cucumbers being sold as you hike up the remaining steps, photos at the temple at the top, and souvenir stands. The main difference was that in this Daoist temple, there was a giant statue of Laozi, the famous Daoist philosopher.

I did learn about the Daoist principle of non-action (“wu wei”) articulated by Laozi. Our tour guide from last week told us this, and then remarked that Americans always seem to have something to do. (Or at least, we think we have something to do.)  I feel like Chengdu is a very laid back city.  People have time to lounge in restaurants and sit at tea houses in the park.  People in Chengdu understand non-action, perhaps.

My Chinese is also slowly but surely improving, but learning a new language definitely has a steep learning curve. Pronunciation and tones are difficult, and so when I try to say something people often don't understand me.   (Also since there's a different dialect spoken here in Sichuan.)   I'm also not a fan of memorizing characters, but it's necessary I suppose, and rewarding when I can recognize a character on a street sign. I want to continue studying it when I get back to school, because I would love to be able to come back to China in the future and actually speak it.  Plus of all the languages in the world, Chinese will probably be more useful to me in the future than, say, Latin.