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).