晓说 or Char Chats in Chinese: The Travel Edition
Traveling. Is. The Best. Yes, I know I’ve harped on it before. But I’ll say it again anyways: it’s so worthwhile and rejuvenating to get out and around. Going someplace new, I feel as I did when I first got here—excited and thrilled at the very fact that I’m in China. Case in point—our group trip this past weekend. While the Middlebury/CET program is certainly a grueling academic program (as our mountains of daily homework kindly remind us), we are also provided with a number of opportunities to explore China. In fact, CET gives us two weekends off (in addition to spring break) for school-sanctioned/organized trips.
This past weekend felt a little like summer camp, or like those long ago elementary school overnight trips to places like Jamestown and Williamsburg. Or maybe it was more like one of those company bonding retreats we’ll all have to participate in when we finally find jobs five years after graduation. I don’t know… all I know is that the weekend was fun. We went hiking, played in waterfalls, swam in dirty rivers (on second thought, we probably shouldn’t have done that), and stayed up all night playing cards. We all—American students as well as Chinese roommates—became much closer on the trip.
To be honest, before the trip, my fellow students and I had started to get into a groove. Our daily schedules—what we were doing, and who we were seeing—were becoming, in a sense, normal. Our new routines felt comfortable, especially when we didn’t think that life so far from home could ever feel normal. The weekend was a break from that though, and it gave us a much needed reminder as to why it’s important and incredibly awesome to travel and to keep trying new things. Traveling, or just deviating slightly from your standard activities, can be exhilarating. When you come to China, try to make baozi (and discover after six attempts that you’re embarrassingly bad at rolling them). Or teach your fellow students and their Chinese roommates to play Hearts (and then turn that into a ginormous 12 person tournament where losers have to sing, dance and declare undying love to each other). Life here is more than studying in the traditional sense of the word. We’re in China not just to learn Chinese, but to enjoy the experience and to gain a greater cultural understanding as well. It was lovely that we really got a chance to do that this weekend. Plus, since it was so much fun, we’re all now newly inspired to study harder to master the language. Bonus points all around.
Baozi we made
Until next time,
Char
CET Alumni Photo Contest Top Winner!
Congratulations to Margaret Johnson Wardrop (Kenyon College, Fall 2009 CET/C.V. Starr Middlebury in Hangzhou) for winning the Top Prize in the CET 30th Anniversary Alumni Photo Contest!
"Unbounded (...despite the language pledge!)" - My friend and hiking companion Philip Castagnozzi took this photograph during our trek up Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the world's deepest river canyons that is located on the Jinsha River in Yunnan Province.
We received over 130 fantastic photos! A judging committee then selected the top photos from the following four different categories: Academics/CET Program, Culture & Customs, Engagement, and Places. Then the CET Executive Director, Mark Lenhart chose the Top Winner. Margaret will receive travel and hotel accommodations to attend the CET 30th Anniversary Celebration.
To see the other Alumni Photo Contest Prize Winners from the four different categories see the links below:
To see all of the CET 30th Anniversary Alumni Photo Contest entries, please click here to view the CET Facebook album.
Thank you to all of the CET Alumni who participated and visit the CET Alumni Events webpage for more information on upcoming 30th Anniversary events and contests!
When I grow up, I want to be a wedding photographer…
A little bit because I’m snap happy with my new camera, but mostly because taking wedding pictures seems like a popular and necessary job in China. What I mean is I might actually be able to find employment when I graduate if I consider wedding photography. I’m a film major and, considering that’s the second most useless major behind English, employment in anything would be welcome. Plus, it seems like there are perks to being a wedding photographer—you wear a cool leather jacket, shout at happy people, and permanently have cool hair. Well, it at least seems that way in China.
Let me back up—my mom came to visit this week (I know!! Soooo exciting) and we decided to go to Shanghai for the weekend. Shanghai is as international as they say it is. There are tons of foreigners and most people speak English—it’s a lot like New York, actually—people just hold hands more and walk wa-a-ay slower.
Anyway, we decided to do the Lonely Planet’s walking tour of the Bund. We were barely to number 4 on the list—the 1907 Garden Bridge—and we had already passed four couples getting wedding photos taken. It is possible they were just models, not marriage newbies but…let’s pretend they were real. As my father always says, never let the truth get in the way of a good story!
Seeing all those newly married/possibly fake couples made me think—not just about a potential job market, but about Chinese weddings and Chinese society in general. The couples on Garden Bridge seem to reflect the interesting paradox in modern China—the simultaneous existence of both old and new, of both history and modernity. Changes—too many or too few—are all anyone seems to talk about. Sometimes people like the change—an old man at a nearby park told me how much better China is these days than it used to be. He said he thought it would be even better in ten years, so I should come back then. Other people long for the past, and strongly believe that China is changing too quickly. Visitors at Huxueyan’s former residence, for example, told me that they loved the residence for its traditional Chinese architecture and wasn’t it such a pity that there weren’t more places like this.
It was as I was trying to surreptitiously take photos that all this came to mind. The couples posing for their wedding pictures against the historical Garden Bridge seem to perfectly manifest Chinese society today. There was the traditional architecture, the modern clothes, and—if the couples were models—capitalism as well. I couldn’t help but smile. When I grow up, I definitely want to be a wedding photographer.
晓说——or Char Chats in Chinese (say that 10x fast)
Chinese Academy of Art Students
It felt like a bad movie—I was standing in the rain in the middle of Hangzhou, China and I couldn’t see a soul. Well, to be honest, there was one guy chain smoking behind me, but he seemed to be a lot older. If I had to guess, I would say he was somewhere between the ages of 30 and…70? It’s impossible to guess age in China—people either look 15 or 90. And besides, he was on the phone when I turned around. Since I had just spent 45 minutes talking to the museum security lady about the meaning of life, I was running out of time. So, while he chatted away on his phone (in what I can only hope was a local dialect because I did not understand a word), I turned back around and kept searching the rain for China Academy of Art students.
Why was I looking for Chinese Academy of Art Students, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you! (I hope I’m not being too obnoxious. I’m serious. I will tell you.) This year, CET has implemented a new version of the Hangzhou studies course. While it used to be taught as a typical college lecture course, it has now become an “independent research” class. This means that we each pick an aspect of Hangzhou culture that we are particularly interested in and, under the tutelage of a professor, we explore it on our own over the course of the semester. For me, that means that every week I go by myself to look at some token of Chinese art and architecture located in or around Hangzhou. Since I entered the class with an overflow of enthusiasm but absolutely no substantial knowledge about Hangzhou art or architecture, that may be why my teacher decided to have me spend my first afternoon going to the China Academy of Art and talking to students, who all happen to be—you guessed it—art majors.
I am not going to lie. I was nervous as soon as I got on the bus. For one, I had never gone anywhere in China on my own before. I normally visit places with my Chinese roommate, who treats me like a lost duckling, or with friends, who at least treat me like a fellow lost duckling. So while I tried to put up a façade of swagger and confidence, it cracked pretty quickly. By the time I got to the Academy, it was already raining, and I had no idea where to begin. I accidentally wandered into the school’s museum where (as I mentioned) I had a lovely chat with a security woman, but when I left 45 minutes later, I still had no idea how to begin the assignment itself. I was supposed to interview a few students about the school, their majors, and their understanding of Chinese art. But did I need an ID to get in? Would there be any students around? Would they want to talk to me? Would I even understand their responses? Aiya! I was a little worried.
Of course, I needn’t have been. After I got tired of doing a deer in headlights impersonation—well, deer in chain smoke, in my case—I finally stepped out into the rain and into the first building I saw, which turned out to be the Oil Painting Department. I quickly found a figure drawing class, which, in case you were wondering, looks a lot like an American figure drawing class (I’ve attached a picture). I then ran into a few mixed media majors, who were happy to answer my questions. They understood me (yay!) and told how the school worked and about their plans to work in advertising or web art after college. I also found a Chinese painting major who not only talked to me for a solid hour about the different majors at the school and why he loves Chinese art, but also took me along to his Song dynasty painting class.
It turned out to be the most invigorating afternoon I have spent so far in Hangzhou. It was exhilarating not just because the experience itself was great, although it was, but also because I had done the whole thing by myself. I felt like the little kid in the Pampers commercial—you know, I’m a big kid now!—and I could not stop smiling the rest of the day. For the first time, I had explored China totally and completely on my own, and I had succeeded! The experience was incredibly liberating, and I’m excited now to see what is in store for this week. J
Until the next CharChat!
–晓乐 (aka Charlotte)
CET Academic Programs