Very good fun (很好玩 )

My 老师 (teacher) is the coolest! On Wednesday instead of our usual 中文语 (Chinese) class, we watched the movie “Beijing meets Seattle.” With English subtitles because I'm not that good yet. The movie apparently has connections to the movie “Sleepless in Seattle” which I haven't seen (whoops). It's a romantic comedy about a woman, Jia jia, who is pregnant out of wedlock, and thus cannot legally have her child in China. (That surprised me, and then I thought back to the strictness of the One Child Policy.) Since Jia jia's boyfriend is a mean rich dude, he gets her a visa to America to (illegally) have her child there. Apparently, there are such illegal centers run for pregnant Chinese women who want to have a baby in the states and return to China. In fact, someone told me that one of her friends went to America to have her baby, for the sole purpose of getting her child American citizenship. Besides learning about the unfortunate circumstances of these pregnant Chinese women in America, the movie also generally reinforced my sense of my own luck. It is extremely difficult and expensive to get a travel visa from China to the US, let alone to gain citizenship, and I'm here in China chilling out thanks to the generosity of Sichuan University and Harvard.

Then yesterday, our teacher took us to dinner and to KTV. “Chi chi fan, chang chang ge, duo hao a!” as our textbook would say. (We've been making fun of a line in our textbook dialogue about going to the park that reads “Kan kan hua, hua hua chuan, duo hao a!” which translates to “Smell the flowers, row a boat, how lovely!”) We had also learned a Chinese song in class called Wo de ge sheng li that I'm obsessed with.  My friends and I sung it twice over the course of the night, in addition to some throwback Back Street Boys and Avril Lavigne.

I'm also pretty happy with the amount of Chinese that I've learned in 8 weeks. 谢谢老师！(Thank you teacher!) I definitely credit my teachers for assigning us just the right amount of dictations (听写) and homework, in addition to in class speaking practice since there are only 6 of us. The other factor has been that I actively try and practice speaking Chinese for a bit per day to my Chinese friends.  I sound absolutely stupid and end up resorting to English eventually, so it's a miracle that anyone puts up with me speaking. But I think that's the only way to learn. In addition to improving my speaking, I've noticed that I can understand a lot more than I was able to just a few weeks ago. It's really gratifying to be able to understand something that my Chinese friends say to each other, considering that when I first got here I was scared of tones and basically just knew how to say “how are you” (你好吗).

Yesterday, I said goodbye to one of my dear friends that I've met here. After lunch, we all decided to go to a teahouse and continue talking. We ended up hanging out for over four hours between lunch and drinking tea, something that I wish I did more with my friends back home. People here are busy, but they make time for friendship and good food/drink. I've noticed that people here ask if you have to go somewhere or do something, rather than asking if you want to continue hanging out. With the default assumption is that you continue hanging out! Anyway, sitting at the teahouse felt like the perfect way to say goodbye to these friends and it was the most relaxing/lazy thing to sit around drinking tea. My two favorite parts about Chengdu I'd say – friends and food :)

And then today, I was officially appointed as the new empress of China. Well, not quite, but it seemed that way from the crowds that I attracted at huang long xi (“yellow dragon river”), an ancient town near to Chengdu. While the town was pretty, there were a few too many people and shops selling water squirt guns, ice cream, and other things for it to feel authentic. The highlight of our trip was that there was a shop that let you dress up in a traditional Chinese outfit and get professional photographs for 10 元。 (Less than two dollars.) Unable to refuse a bargain, we all dressed up in outfits and got our hair styled (part of the two dollar package..) Since we're such foreigners (laowai), we came out of the store to get our professional photo taken and accidentally attracted a huge crowd of at least 30 people staring at us and taking photos. If we were freaks before, we're even more freaky dressed in traditional Chinese attire. The pictures came out well, too.   

Chengdu Rush

I've been having too much fun to sit down and write a blog post!  Where to even start...

I think the best part of being in a new place is the opportunity to do crazy things that you would never do back home. Yesterday in Kung Fu class, we practiced Chinese boxing. I had never tried boxing in my life and was at first reluctant to try and punch the pad that my instructor was holding as hard as I possibly could, both from the front and from the side. But by the end of class, I was able to execute a basic sequence of punches and kicks. Hai-ya! The other crazy thing that I did was race around Chengdu on Sunday with my roommate and a couple of amazing Chinese students. They had designed a scavenger hunt called “Chengdu rush” in which we divided up into teams and had to complete various tasks at various destinations around Chengdu including People's Park, Chun Xi Lu (commercial district), the Tibetan district, and other places. It took us five hours of racing around the city by bus and on foot, but we finally completed it and all went out to a traditional Sichuan family-style meal afterwards :) The fact that Chinese students designed an entire scavenger hunt and then ran around the city with us all day is a testament to how hospitable people are here.

On Saturday, we went to the manor of Liu Wencai, a former landlord in Sichuan province. The Communist party preserved his house not because of its beauty, but as an opportunity to show how evil he was. Needless to say, Mao's rise wasn't a dandy time for landlords. One professor sang us an old “red” song today which translated as something like “down with the landlord, divide up the land” to the tune of “Frere Jacques.” Propaganda abounded in Liu Wecai's house. There were pictures and statues of the stereotypical scary, oppressive peasants and starving, hardworking farmers.

 Next, we headed to the “anti-Japanese war” museum, which is what the China-Japanese conflict around the time of World War II is called here. The portrayal of the war was also extremely one-sided, with adjectives like “brutally” and “violently” preceding pretty much every instance of the word Japanese.

Another thing that I've been observing here is the status of women. Communism advanced the rights of women significantly, with the introduction of such things as the marriage act in the 1950's, which basically allowed women to divorce their husbands. 45 percent of engineering students here are female and girls outscore boys in general on the Gaokao (national college entrance exam), according to the former VP of Sichuan University. Of course, just as in America, things are not equal. There is a significant wage gap between men and women, and the “Leftover women” idea that a woman over 30 will never find a husband is still pervasive. That being said, I think that China is doing better than India by leaps and bounds when it comes to gender rights, and has improved infinitely from a hundred years ago in China when foot-binding was still popular.   (If the bones in a woman's foot are broken, she literally can't leave the house...)  One interesting thought that someone mentioned to me is that with the introduction of the One Child Policy, women's rights had to improve, because the sole female child of the family ought to be able to make a living to support her parents.   

I've been trying to make the most of my time before I leave in just eight short days... :(

Pengyou

"Everyday when you're walking down the street, everybody that you meet, has an original point of view..." -Arthur

I've spent this week almost exclusively hanging out with my 中国朋友 (Chinese friends, or "pengyou").    I met one friend while getting milk tea from a hole-in-the-wall restaurant 10 feet from my dorm/hotel.   She was really nice and so we exchanged WeChat IDs.   (WeChat is a hybrid of texting and Facebook in China, since most people don't have either traditional texting or Facebook.)  After spontaneously deciding to get lunch together, we found out that we're both from big cities, study STEM, love ping pong, and are both rising juniors.   Her English is great, and she wants to study in the US for her master's degree.    We got along so well that we spontaneously decided to play ping pong for over two hours the next day, and yesterday we went and explored an ancient road in downtown Chengdu together.   While I've been focusing on cultural difference in my writing, I also feel that I have to acknowledge similarities too.   This friend and I joke that we're actually the same person, except that we live halfway across the world from each other.  (*Cue hand holding*)

Meanwhile, another 朋友 (friend) took me to play ping pong (you may be noticing a theme) and also showed me her dorm room.   Even though I kept hearing that the dorm rooms here are really cramped, I don't think I appreciated just how little space the students get until I saw it for myself.   In this 4 person, one room graduate student dorm (undergraduates are 6 to a room!), there was literally only room for four raised beds, with one's desk below the bed, bunk-bed style.   But I think what would really kill me if I had to live in the Chinese dorms is the fact that bathrooms are outside.   No, I'm not talking about hallway bathrooms, I'm talking about outside-the-building outside.    There are long shower lines at night, too.   I know that people ultimately adapt, but I still appreciate just how lucky I am to have such great housing at Harvard.   And no one likes the dorms here.

I've noticed that my outgoingness is both good and bad here.   For the most part and with many exceptions, I've found that Chinese students are on the shy side.    It's good that I'm outgoing, because I've started the majority of the conversations with students, and once I start them people are happy to talk to me.   One girl who I met sent me a follow-up WeChat saying: "I was too shy to tell you in person, but you're really nice!"   (People are way too nice here.)   The downside of my extroversion is that I forget to slow down and let my friends get a word in!    And it's yet another cultural difference - I talk way too much.

I also ate hotpot (火锅) on Monday, which is a Sichuan speciality.   I'm impressed that I was able to eat it.   Upon my arrival, I'm not sure I was brave enough to pick out the vegetables from the meat in a spicy chilly oil stew with chopsticks.   But now I think it's delicious and don't know how I'm going to go back to American food.  It's almost easier to be a vegetarian here, to be honest.  The prevalence of various deliciously spiced vegetables here puts the "veggie" in vegetarian, whereas in America I gravitate towards more pasta/carbs.  

Speaking of carbs, we went to Pizza Hut for the fourth of July.   Nothing like Italian-food-appropriated-by-America to celebrate our independence.   My Chinese teacher (老师）told me that Pizza Hut is so much better in Asia than Europe/America, but it tasted the same to me.

It's hard to decide which part of being here is better, the friends or the food.  (The food, obviously.)   But joking aside, I've always heard that going abroad is a life-changing experience and I don't think that I fully understood why until this week.   It's because you realize that life is both the same and dramatically different over a game of ping-pong with your 朋友 (pengyou).

Pandamonium

This past weekend my good friend Lisa from elementary school happened to be in Chengdu!  We explored the city all weekend, walking at least 5 miles a day for three days straight. I went to the giant statue of Mao in the city center, people's park, the Tibetan section, and most importantly... PANDAS.  Xiong mao.  Adorableness.   Most of the pandas in the world are in Sichuan province and so there's a large panda reserve/research base.  My favorite panda was one which just kind of sat there and kept its food on its chubby lap.  Apparently pandas spent 2/3 of their time searching for and eating food.   I think pandas and I are alike in that way.

I think I saw more white people at the panda reserve than I have during my entire stay in Chengdu. It's a huge tourist destination.  While pandas are extremely adorable, I find it kind of silly that people come to Chengdu to see the pandas without exploring the awesomeness of the city.   

A lot of people refer to Chengdu as an "international city."   The fact that I can shop at a Walmart just 15 minutes away from my dorm (complete with AC and Western toilets) encapsulates how rapidly China and the world are globalizing. And the fact that I had a mini-reunion with my best friend from elementary school not in New York where she goes to school, but in Chengdu, because I had posted a status about it on Facebook. Yet despite the Western food, living conditions, and general ease of travel, it doesn't feel truly global because it's not diverse. I can shop at Walmart, but then the girl who spoke a bit of English and helps me wanted to take my picture afterwards since I'm such a laowai (foreigner).

I am constantly surprised by the lack of racial diversity in Chengdu. After all, there must be some ex-pats from America, India, and the rest of the world who have decided to settle here.  (There are some, but they all live in the same neighborhood.)   I think that in addition to the overwhelming majority of ethnically Chinese people, foreigners largely remain segregated from everyday life. In what I suppose is an effort to welcome foreign students, even full-time international students at Sichuan University live in separate and nicer dorms from the Chinese students. I was talking to a group of Sri Lankan medical students studying at the university and realized just how strong this segregation is. The Sri Lankan students all live, talk, eat, and study together. The girl who I was talking to complained that learning Chinese is hard on top of studying medicine (which it definitely is).  But it didn't seem like she had learned much Chinese after being here for a whole year outside of class.  (She didn't know what "zhongwen" (Chinese) meant even though everyone here calls it "zhongwen"over "Hanyu")  Given that I can't even order bubble tea without learning how to say it in Chinese (“jinju nai cha”), this showed me that she doesn't usually interact with many Chinese people.

So while Sichuan University is trying to position itself as a leader in fostering international collaboration, and there is currently an awesome two week program bringing students from all over the world here, the campus itself is not diverse. I can't imagine what Harvard would be like if the international students lived separately, and if there were entirely separate universities for Black/Hispanic/Asian-American minority students (see my previous post on minorities).

Which brings me to the final great moment of the weekend: the opening ceremony of the olympics...I mean the opening ceremony for foreign students at Sichuan University (the two week international program I just mentioned).  The opening ceremony turned out to be an enormous affair complete with a smoke machine, "What does the fox say" rendition, Chinese operatic singing, Kung Fu by physical education majors who painted their bodies gold and hit each other with bamboo, Bollywood dancing by the extremely talented Sri Lankan students, and... us.  Of course, Harvard kids are good at everything, so we can make them perform alongside Sichuan University performance majors, right? It was actually hilarious. We did two-part acapella, since another student on our trip also does acapella. And while it could have been worse given our total of three rehearsals, we started out on the wrong pitch and the whole thing was just comical compared to the other acts. I think that this encapsulates the extent to which Harvard (which actually has a name in Chinese: “Hafuo”) is more of an ideal than an actual place.

Besides Ivy League privilege, I'm witnessing white privilege way more blatantly than I would ever see in America. A friend judged an English contest for four-year-olds this past weekend, and being white was definitely in the job description.  (At least he was qualified for the job, unlike this man.) I don't think I would ever be invited to judge an English contest here. I actually think I would have a better chance of teaching Bollywood dance, about which I know nothing.

(Title credit of this post: shamelessly stolen from my friend Lisa.   Panda photo also stolen from the internet since my pictures are on my phone.)