Ligers, Tigers, and Midterms – Oh my!
Since this is an academic program there’s understandably a fair amount of academics that go on up here in Harbin. With academics comes midterms and with midterms comes crying (before, during, and after). Let’s just say I know a lot of different ways to describe tears falling down my face in Chinese (none of which came up on any of the tests…all that studying for naught).
Due to (or perhaps, in spite of) the academic rigor, I have learned through in depth study that American study techniques and Chinese study techniques are wildly different. Most Chinese students (engineering students in particular) will go to the library, work for hours on end and have most, if not all of the material memorized, ready to ace the test. American students (sample size: me) will buy a lot of snack food, spend too much time trying to decide if Ritz crackers filled with yogurt are the best things or the worst things (they’re the best), and then take a four hour nap in the middle of the day.
This is not to say, of course, that I failed. Nay! I… think I did ok. Well enough, given the circumstances: second language and a recent, overwhelming desire to do literally anything else other than memorize Chinese vocabulary pairs. I had four tests: literature (words and made up analysis of words – these are my most essential personality traits), composition (not a lot of opportunity to make stuff up – this was my hardest test), computer application essay/speech (speaking about computers? I got this.), and then pronunciation. Pronunciation is a whole ‘nother ball game. As soon as I sit in that chair to read the passages I apparently lose all motor control of my mouth and all I can spew out are syllables that sound more like someone speaking underwater than “Chinese.”
Actually, I just have horrible pronunciation all the time. Examples:
- Asking the neighbor girls if they have sperm as opposed to a mirror (Jing1zi vs. Jing4zi)
- Say I just kissed a guy as opposed to having just asked him (Wen1 vs. Wen4)
But enough about school and Chinese. You’re probably here for the titular pictures of the ligers and/or tigers. Unfortunately, there aren’t any good pictures of the ligers (the bus driver wouldn’t let us get out, go figure).
Harbin: Life as an Alien
Living in Harbin China, for those of you who don’t know of Harbin it’s a 6 million person city (larger than Rome, Italy and Paris, France combined!) in far Northeastern China, easily makes one forget about the outside world. Everyday I live my life as an alien. Sounds strange, but honestly, sometimes I feel like I am an alien here. Not many can speak good English, people stare at me (people crash into posts and cars because they turn around to keep staring), people stare more when I respond easily to them in Chinese, and they keep all of the foreigners in two buildings on the HIT (copied from MIT) campus. I also must inform you that almost all of the foreigners are from Russia, the Middle East, or Africa, but mostly Russians. If you have blonde hair, as I do, everyone will automatically think you’re Russian. Thankfully, I am not because according to the Chinese: “Russian girls are incredibly attractive and skinny when they’re young but when they’re older they become fat.” However, whether or not this is true…I have no idea. I actually became curious enough, because literally every Chinese person in Harbin will tell you this, that I tried to look it up. Sadly, I failed to find evidence one way or the other.
Life as an alien in Harbin has its advantages. Chinese people usually are more open to talk to you because they’re curious as to why you came to Harbin; a lot of the clubs let you in for free then will give you free drinks; and people usually have more patience with you. Also, awing people with your intense Chinese skills always feels good after all the hard work. As an alien, you would think people would normally try to keep you out, but my roommate and the other random Chinese friends I have made in the three months that I have been here have proved this theory incorrect. My friends and I frequently go out to dinner, to bars with our roommates, and even go to the gym together. Sometimes, when my roommate NaNa (very easy name to remember) begs hard enough, I will agree to go to a KTV with her. I sing terribly so I usually try to spare others the pain of hearing my voice.Life as an alien also ends up with people going out of their way to help you. We’re such an oddity sometimes that people will walk around a city trying to help you find the best massage place and get you the best price….on a Sunday night around 9 (that’s past Harbin local’s bedtime, they prefer to go to bed early and rise early). However, sometimes life as an alien becomes frustrating. You just want to fit in with people, people not to stare at you, and people to give you a fair price without having to bargain extra hard. But every time I become frustrated and want to go back to Europe or the States where I don’t stand out, someone goes out of their way to be nice to me or being an alien allows me to have adventures I would never able to have outside of China, then I no longer resent being an alien in China.
Mansaf
Goodness gracious this rice is hot, I think to myself as I plunge my hand into the center of the heaping dish. The steaming chicken juice stings me, but the rice has a warm softness that’s surprisingly soothing, and I linger for a second, wishing that I’d had the chance to wash my hands. I pull my hand back out again holding a handful of moist rice, and I look across at my host, who’s done the same and is now working the rice it into a nice, neat ball. I try to mimic him, and then, when it comes time to plop the golf ball sized clump into my mouth, I fail miserably and make a mess on the floor. We both laugh, and then we head back to the plate in seach of some chicken. This is mansaf, Jordanian cooking at its finest.
I first met my host last weekend in Amman. I was loitering outside a bustling mosque during Friday prayers, waiting to talk to the young men when they emerged to get a better sense of the political currents in the city. Stopping at a fruit stand, I met a man named Suhel selling grapes and tomatoes from his farm. He was about middle aged, he spoke far too fast for me to understand everything, and most importantly, he invited me to his village outside of Irbid to see his house and eat mansaf. Of course, this is an invitation that Jordanians love to give foreigners, but this time, I decided to take him up on it. He was nice, I was getting a bit tired of felafel, and I really wanted to see life in a small Jordanian village.
The village of Burma lies about twenty minutes down a curving road from the ancient city of Jerash, near Irbid. The village is set in the foothills of Northern Jordan, where views of pine groves and expansive forests offer a welcome respite from the sparse landscape nearAmman and Irbid. There’s not much to the place other than a paved road, a few dirt roads, and a few dozen houses. Driving through, it’s hard to tell which of the concrete houses are completed and which are half finished; it’s only on arriving at Suhel’s house that I realize all of them are lived in. Suhel’s house sits where the dirt road abruptly terminates at a solid rock exposure, and there, nestled on a ledge on the steep hillside, is a concrete dwelling that is home to Suhel’s family and that of his brother. Surrounding the house are olive trees, fruit trees, ducks, chickens, goats, and a few young children. Disappointingly, the strange white man with broken Arabic scares the daylights out of them.
Suhel and I sit for two hours in his living room, sparsely furnished like so many others in the region with foam floor cushions and a TV. We sit and talk about everything: our families, our work, our hopes for the future. He’s especially interested in getting a visa to America. Do I know how to get him an American visa? he wants to know. How about taking a second American wife to get citizenship? We discuss immigration, citizenship, cross cultural marriage, polygamy, and a whole host of other topics that they never taught us about in Arabic class, but we make it through okay. We have our laughs, I learn new vocab, and Suhel has a good time too. He talks to at least four people on the phone during my visit; I don’t catch all of what he’s saying, but he happily tells each one that he has an American at his house. I feel honored.
Getting noticed in Beijing
Written by Samantha Wolfe (Kalamazoo College)
CET Chinese Studies & Service-Learning/Kalamazoo College in Beijing, Fall ’11
I’ve been in Beijing for two and a half weeks now and I’ve finally starting to feel more at home. As a group, we’ve packed in a ton of adventures in a short amount of time and I don’t think we’re going to lose stamina any time soon.
Service learning is a component of our program that is supposed to take place every Wednesday, but no one has started yet so we turned it into the official “field trip” day. One of the things I didn’t expect about this program was to be in such a tightly knit group with other CET students. There are 37 of us and we often travel in a group of about ten or twenty. On our last field trip, fourteen of us went to the Temple of Heaven Park – it was incredible. The temple itself was built in from 1406-1420 (at a time when a round Earth wasn’t a certainty) and is probably one of the most detailed pieces of architecture I’ve ever seen, but the park was so expansive and there were so many other things to see, from the Echo Wall – a perfectly round wall where you could stand at the north and south ends and have a conversation despite the buildings and throngs of people in between – to the rose gardens and the Palace of Abstinence.
During the time we spent at the Temple of Heaven Park, I noticed that foreigners like us were few and far between; unlike the Silk Market which is on every American tourist in Beijing’s checklist. Here, there were a lot of older men gathered around ma jiang and playing cards, a man practicing violin on a bench, and a large group of people who were chanting and clapping in a circle. They explained to us that it is a form of exercise to help increase the flow of qi. Everyday life was going on around us. One neat side-venture was a game we played with a local. We found him in an open square near the front of the park with homemade rings looped around his arm and without saying a word, he started throwing them at Matt’s head. We were all a little confused; we didn’t want to buy these rings. But then we realized it was a game, and nothing was communicated verbally between the group of us and this Beijinger as he managed to get all of the rings around Michael’s head while we all cheered them on. A huge group of Chinese people gathered around while the rest of us played paparazzi around Michael. Then the two of them took a picture together and the guy pulled out a little slip of paper with his address and tried to explain that he wanted Michael to send him a copy of the photo. He pulled out a little booklet and started unfolding. And unfolding, and unfolding. He has hundreds of pictures of people he’s played this game with over the years and we’re going to be in his little portfolio, to show people in the future. Though I’m not sure why he has the time to spend his days playing this game, I respect the fact that he wasn’t selling anything and he didn’t want anything in return – just a picture mailed to him to add to his collection.
What makes me realize I’m in China more than anything is how few other non-Chinese are around. Despite there being about 150,000 foreigners in Beijing(we’re pretty easy to spot in a city of nearly 20 million, people’s reactions always catch me off guard. At Tiananmen, two separate guys struck up a conversation then asked to take a picture with me. At the Great Wall we were all posing on the steps while our resident director took our picture and some random guy leaned in and took one too, then went on his way. The Chinese are not subtle with their curiosity at all. Walking into a restaurant, the fuwuyuanr greeted our group with a smile and “Hello, white people!” in Chinese, assuming we couldn’t understand – and then probably not minding when we did. While it can make you feel small, sometimes these differences allow for the most exhilarating feeling.
My roommate took me to a mall where apparently only locals go where I bargained for all my new clothes. I’ve studied Chinese for nearly four years and yet the rapid-fire Beijing dialect (heavy with “r” sounds) is still difficult to decipher, but it was a rush when I understood that the shopkeeper was explaining to Xuejiao that I was a foreigner who didn’t know about prices and brands in China. Xuejiao stopped her and said, “She understands you. She speaks Chinese.” Then the bartering was my responsibility, and I was a champ. I think I’m getting used to this.
CET Academic Programs