Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Here are the things I am spending my time on when I really should be reading for classes:

Geography quizzes! Click on the words! Check out the link! I know all the countries in Africa now! There are 54, and no one had told me.

Books about resource productivity and the next industrial revolution which can (and perhaps has begun to) come about through the understanding that business and engineering designs that aim to be 'in line with nature' by minimizing resource use and integrating as far as possible into the natural system (as in, using solar energy directly as it comes from the sun rather than only using the solar energy that has been processed by plants or earth surface processes) isn't just better for 'the environment' separately from humanity, it is the most efficient, rational, and lucrative for humans.
... I may move to Germany just for the run-on sentences. You're in my blog so you'll have to put up with my grammar, I'm afraid...
I also checked out a book with a bunch of recent essays from Chinese scholars on sustainable development, but have not gotten very far with any of them yet.

So
much music.

We have a break starting in two days for China's National Day Holiday. I'll give you more "Things that have happened" updates then.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

So, this 13 hour time difference is confusing me. When I send emails to the US, I'm getting used to the fact that the day there passes while I'm sleeping, so replies seem to magically and almost immediately appear. I came back from dinner this evening thinking a day would have passed for you in the US while I was eating.
No, Dear Self, the US is not part of a time-warp, and neither is China. You're just on different sides on the planet.

Carry on, all!

Saturday, September 26, 2009

School schedules

This year's mid-autumn festival coincides with the National Day holiday in China, so we have an extra long break so that students and staff can go home and be with their families, or travel, or observe this 60th year anniversary of the foundation of the PRC (中华人民共和国)however they see fit.

These two overlapping reasons to celebrate do not, as it happens, mean that our program should have more days off than a normal National Day holiday. So, to make up time, we have classes tomorrow (Sunday the 27th) and the Saturday after break (October 10th).

I'm spending my one precious weekend day in the library (图书馆)staring at an indecipherable text on the development (阶梯 literally: ladder) of law. When I go to class, I understand what my professor wants us to get out of these readings. When I read them, I get very little.
I also have 8 consecutive school-free days beginning Thursday. So there's balance, in the end.

I'm going to move on to International Politics now. The article I'm working on for that is called "Realism, Rationalism, and Revolutionary Thought" (现实主义, 理性主义, 革命主义)。

I'm gonna make it! I'm gonna make it! I'm gonna make it...

In other news: I started a Taijiquan class yesterday, and it feels really good to have something that makes me use my body thoughtfully. I think it's going to help me a lot. A classmate has also started offering yoga classes three times a week, and I'm gonna join in as soon as I buy myself a yoga mat.

I also am going to be hanging out with a local family who has a 5-year-old son with autism, (through a very cool NPO called The Five Project, which was founded by a Center alumnus) for an hour or so every week. More on that after I meet them!

Xiaoxuan (which is actually just her given name. Her full name is Hao Xiaoxuan) met with an American classmate yesterday. They are going to be "language partners" and practice speaking an hour of English and then an hour of Chinese a couple times a week. She inspired her friend Rong Fan and I to make a similar alliance. Hopefully this will help my comprehension of classes as well as my confidence in spoken Chinese.

Goodness, but I have plans for myself. We'll see what works out. It'll be a good year whatever happens, I think.
Life is good.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

It's harder for me to write about places when I'm living in them

It's difficult for me to pick out which parts of my day are important to my life and which simply happen.

There is a constant flow of traffic outside our dorm window. Beijing West Road (北京西路) is not the busiest street in Nanjing, but it’s busy enough. We’re not too far from downtown here. There is a 28 story building (if I counted right) across the street from us, though it, like many buildings including our dorm, has a terrace a couple of floors up to provide more space for growing things and being outside.

The streets are lined with trees. So much so that it’s hard to see what’s going on. As I told my brother yesterday, there is Something that drives by multiple times a day chiming the same four-tone tune over and over again, and it has become the Great White Whale of my dorm experience. It haunts my days and my dreams, and I cannot see the street clearly enough to be sure of what it is. Often, this sound is accompanied by a water-spraying, street-cleaning truck, but whether the sound and truck go together by design or coincidence is yet to be determined.

The Hopkins-Nanjing Center is centered around a courtyard. The cafeteria, some offices, fitness center, and dorm floors are wings of the west building, and administration, classrooms, and the large auditorium are in the east building. There is a goldfish (金鱼 ) pond in the courtyard, surrounded by benches and flanked by a couple of small lawns. My roommate, Xiaoxuan, and I have thus far not been able to find fish food in our supermarket, but I’ve located another market and will be trying again soon. The fish will, one day, know me as their friend.

I am taking four classes: three in Chinese and one in English. They changed a little from what I’d decided on when I first looked at the class list, and I’m very happy with what I’ve ended up with. I’m taking 当代国际政治 (Contemporary International Politics), 人类学与中国研究 (Anthropology and Chinese Studies), 中国民法 (Chinese Civil Law), and Environmental Economics (环境经济)I’ve been struggling through readings (I have yet to truly finish something) and at first hardly understood anything my professors were saying. Mostly, I have been making huge vocabulary lists from each of my Chinese readings, and these have been helping me to read a little more (it is already possible for me to sometime read a sentence or two of an academic essay without having to use a dictionary). My professors’ lectures have also been shifting from frighteningly mysterious, speech-like puzzles in which I was proud to pick out words, to something like cohesive presentations. I definitely cannot yet understand everything they say, and often struggle to keep up, but I have been able to at least follow the overall flow of ideas in all my classes this week. It is possible that I will pass my classes. This is a relief.

My classmates are awesome. We come from a pretty wide range of backgrounds, but everyone here is really dedicated, not just to language, but to building ties between China and the US (or wherever, not all the internationals are American) and finding constructive ways to working in/between countries.

One of our Chinese colleagues informed my roommate and I at the end of Orientation that we were 窄女, or women who stay inside, because neither of us like to party or spend much time in bars. I think we’re just good roommates. I should say, so that you don’t think that he was just very rude, that this same young man also told me that my future was bright and full of possibility. My interests are wide and varied, and the fact that I speak Chinese and have taken engineering classes (be they only four or five in number) impressed him greatly. I’ve since made it clear that I have a boyfriend already, and I think (hope) that I did so tactfully enough that we are still friends.

I have been meaning to take pictures of the cafeteria food. It’s very cheap, and made of very good quality ingredients. It is, however, still cafeteria food, and thus very boring to eat.

There are a lot of excellent little restaurants and food vendors very close to the Center. Two classmates (one from the southern US, the other from France) showed Xiaoxuan and I a cheap little dumpling (饺子)joint about five minutes from our front gate, and yesterday we ourselves discovered a little noodle/hotpot-ish place one more street away. I already have a favorite little bakery where I buy my red bean-filled mooncakes and other snacks.

Last weekend a couple of US classmates had birthdays, so they arranged to go out for KTV (or K歌, or Karaoke). It was the first time I’d gone, and it was a lot of fun. I can’t really sing any Chinese songs yet, but one of Xiaoxuan’s friends knew that I could sing “Hey Jude” because I’d joined in when she was singing it to herself once, so she had me sing that.

I had heard Beijing Welcomes You, which was made for the Olympics last year. If you haven’t seen/heard it yet, I recommend it.

My favorite song was: 我不是黄蓉。 I think y’all will be able to follow this link, but let me know if it doesn’t work (or: if you’re upset that it doesn’t work. Perhaps you are indifferent to my tastes in Chinese pop music. I shouldn’t assume).
Xiaoxuan and I are, of course, constantly teaching each other language. We are also having a long-term competition over whose language is better. So far, Chinese is winning for being able to express a lot of things much more simply than English. For example, NiXing 逆行 has to be translated into “walking against the current,” and what’s worse: the word Tang 烫 single-handedly describes “unbearably hot food or soup.” So if you think of any particularly elegant or useful English phrases that I could use in this battle, please send them along.

ALSO. I just met a dude in my Environmental Economics class who is interested in working in environmental policy/education/who knows. The point is: so am I. There is someone else here who is definitely not going into the business/finance world, and I am super stoked about it (stoked being a rather technical term for “excited.” Sorry if I left you behind on that one).

My favorite fruits are almost exactly Clementine oranges, except their peels are green and mottled instead of orange. They are called juse (橘色)and they are delicious.

Okay. That's what I have for Random Thoughts on My Life for today. Love from China! I hope you are all well and happy!

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Everything is exciting!

My lunch today included both Shepherd's Pie and stir-fried lotus root. It's a good day.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

PSA

We interrupt this normally scheduled evening of study to bring you two important announcements:

ONE: After hours of banging my head over this article in Chinese, I flipped to the end in frustration for about the billionth time (if here you'll accept "billionth" as an approximation for "seventh or eighth, maybe") and realized it had been translated from an English article. I looked it up on Jstor, and began reading it in English. I no longer feel foolish at all for having struggled with the Chinese. I am sad that academic pretension translates so thoroughly.

TWO: www.nciku.com is my savior this semester. It is a chinese-english dictionary where you can input english, pinyin, or copy-and-pasted characters.

That said, I'm going to continue trying to comprehend academia in Chinese. Right now I'm reading an article called 中华民族的多元一体格局,which means something like: "an overview of the many components of Chinese minority culture." I think.

EDIT: DUDES. I just read like three lines of text without having to look up a single word. I am a rock star.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

My Introduction to the HNC

Nanjing Train Station (南京火车站)has exits to the subway, the street, and a dedicated underground driveway for taxis. I was actually very grateful not to have received my luggage when I found myself walking down a few flights of concrete steps into a large crowd waiting to grab a taxi (打车). The crowd was eventually funneled into four lines, which were then combined back into a single line where a traffic-controlling policeman was standing. A wave of taxis would drive in two by two, and he would ask each person how many people were riding with them, and then direct them to a car.

I hopped in and said hello (你好- nihao) which seemed to take the driver slightly by surprise. I told him I was going to Nanjing University, and he asked me which campus. I said I wasn’t sure which part of town (I didn’t know Nanjing) but I had been told to use the entrance off of Shanghai Road. That was enough for him, and off we went. When I studied in Tianjin I had a few very interesting conversations with taxi drivers, but I let this fifteen minute drive pass more or less in silence- I was worn out.

I was worried that he wouldn’t take me to the right place- the HNC is not in the main NJU campus. It’s right next door, but I wasn’t sure how quickly I’d be able to find it. But as the driver slowed the taxi down and asked me if this was the right place, I saw he was pointing to a sign that said, in English, “The Johns Hopkins and Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies.” “Yes yes yes!” I cried, then realized that I should speak Chinese. I cleared my throat. “It is,” I said, “thank you.” I paid him and crossed the street.

There’s decent security here at the center, though that first day the gate guard just let me walk in because I looked foreign and like I thought I belonged there. I was directed to take a mask off of a table (to keep from spreading the H1N1 I may have been exposed to during my travels) and go inside. In the lobby I was told to wash my hands with sanitizer and then asked a lot of questions in Chinese which I had to have repeated to me a few times. Finally, the staff was satisfied with my personal and travel information, I had my key and my packet of information, and I went up to my room.

This is probably the nicest dorm room I’ve ever lived in. There are large closets with hanging space, cupboard space, and drawer space. My roommate and I each have a big desk with five drawers and a bunch of shelves on top, and there is plenty of room under each of our beds to store empty suitcases and shoes. This is China, so one cannot be expected to function without hot water to drink and there is a faucet at the end of each hallway (we’re using five floors of the dormitory this year) which dispenses hotter-than-boiling water. One of my classmates used some of my Neosporin today after spilling some on his toe and burning himself a nice big blister. Most importantly: we have a private bathroom, with a large show, huge sink, and Western toilet.

I hadn't understood clearly from the people in the lobby whether I was supposed to do anything that first day, but I decided that I probably didn't and took a long shower. It was beautiful. I even had one more clean shirt in my backpack to change into. I hung out in my room for a while afterwards, wishing that I had a password to access the Center’s wireless network or my luggage to start unpacking, but overall completely relieved to have actually made it here.

I started meeting people at dinner. Most of my fellow internationals are from the US, but there are also Korean, Japanese, Canadian, Spanish, and French students. More than half of the students here are Chinese who will be studying in English with Johns Hopkins professors, the rest of us will be studying with Chinese professors mostly from Nanjing University.

This first week has been Orientation. We’ve met the Chinese and American co-directors, heard from the staff, joined the local internet network, and had presentations on using the library, on public safety, and fire safety. Most of these were in Chinese, some of these I hardly understood at all. Happily, I’m not the only one, but sadly this does not make me any more prepared for my classes next week. For which I’ll register tomorrow, after I’ve started attending them. The classes I’m hoping to register for are: 中国现代化中的社会问题 (Social Issues of China’s Modernization), 中国民法 (Chinese Civil Law), 人类学与中国研究 (Anthropology and Chinese Studies) in Chinese, and Environmental Economics (环境经济学)in English. More later on how that works out!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

From Macau to Nanjing

Well, dear ones, I have not ever been terribly good about keeping a regular journal. Internet restrictions had me worried for a while that I wouldn’t be able to share much with you, so I was slightly less motivated to write than I should have been.

It has been an eventful week. I left Macau a week ago this morning, heading out from my friends’ apartment at about 10am to catch a taxi to the mainland border at Zhuhai. The 服务员 (Fuwuyuan, or service worker) in Macau customs let my red and sweating countenance pass because I assured them that I had not been anywhere but Macau for the last week, and that my temperature was raised because of the 95°F weather, the 90% humidity, and definitely not H1N1.
I changed money just after crossing the border into Zhuhai (from the Macau Patacas a Baha’i had used to pay me back when I bought her something with my debit card) and then boarded a bus to Guangzhou. I bought the ticket and boarded my bus with the help of a middle-aged bus station worker who was selling magazines and commiserated with me (in Chinese- he was delighted to find I understood him) that I was moving internationally and carrying everything with me.

It took about two hours to get to Guangzhou (the capital of the province we in the West formerly called Canton). It took another half an hour to get to the last stop, which the driver told me was closest to Guangzhou Train Station, whence I took a taxi and proceeded to drag my luggage all over in a sweaty, undignified, and in the end nigh-hopeless manner, before I finally located the ticket counter. After purchasing my ticket for the next morning, and eventually evincing the location of the luggage station from the overworked 服务员 at the counter, I was again unceremoniously dragging my luggage through the afternoon heat when a girl about my age walked by and asked where I was going. I told her, and she helped me carry my luggage over and explain to the 服务员 there what needed to be explained (they spoke Mandarin, but with an accent, and were more comfortable with Cantonese). We chatted for a while with one of the workers while waiting for my final receipt. He went off on a long tangent which started with something about coming to China and actually talking to people and studying the language and traveling and ended a couple of minutes later with me smiling as politely as I know how. My new friend turned to me and asked if I had understood (“你听懂了吗?“) I said that I hadn’t, really (“…没有“) and she said “he thinks you’re very cool” (“他说你很棒“)。 As we were leaving the train station my new friend told me to call her “Wing” in English, gave me her phone number, and told me if I ever came back to Guangzhou I should call her and she would show me around. Then she gave me a hug, pointed me to my subway stop, and got on her bus.

I found the subway with minimal problems- only a few taxi drivers stopped me and insisted I let then drive me for “only” four times what it should have cost to get to my hostel. Once I was in the subway directions were all clearly posted in both English and Chinese and I made it to my hostel about half an hour later.

Let me just say that Hostelling International is fantastic. I stayed in one of their hostels in Shanghai three years ago, and this one was just as great. They have clean, comfortable beds, wireless internet, English-speaking staff, bicycles for rent, and the dorm-style rooms cost less than $10 a night. Moving on.

I found a restaurant around the corner and then wandered up and down the walkway next to the Pearl River for quite a while, thinking about development and trying to decide where I belong in the world. I left the US almost a month ago, and I just realized today that it would be possible for me to be homesick. I’m not. I love it here, despite the noise, the crowds, the pollution, and the language barrier. China is magnetic. During introductions among the internationals here at Hopkins-Nanjing on Monday, so many people talked about how they had studied here and then gone back to the US and just felt wrong. But! I am getting ahead of myself.

I came back to the hostel, talked to my mother and some dude in Korea via Skype, and went to bed quite early. I woke up at 5:45, changed, grabbed my things while trying not to disturb my three roommates, turned in my key, and headed back to the subway and thence the train station (广州火车站)。 I got to my excessively air-conditioned waiting room about two hours before my train boarded. I took my non-drowsy Dramamine and my vitamins, and eventually moved my backpack off the seat next to me so a middle-aged local woman could sit down, and made a friend. She asked me a bit about myself, but her accent was strong enough and my Chinese is pathetic enough that we didn’t get very far before we decided mostly to smile and occasionally remark to each other on how very cold the air conditioning was. She shared her towel/makeshift blanket with me, and watched my bag while I bought water.

We boarded the train about ten minutes before it departed, and I found myself on the top bunk in a “hard sleeper” car, which meant that there were two bunks below me and I did not have room to sit up on my berth. The car was open, with walls separating every other column of beds into six-person compartments. There were a total of 66 people in the car. I was definitely the only foreigner.

I climbed into my bunk thought to myself for about ten minutes about how this was probably the longest train ride I would take this year in China (it was scheduled to take 25 hours) and I should really take advantage of the view out the window from the few seats provided below before I passed out. “Non-drowsy” is a very hopeful label.

I woke up sometime that afternoon to the train’s 服务员 asking me for my social security number. I informed her that I didn’t have one, and she accepted just my name.

I went and sat on a fold down seat next to a small table attached to the wall and looked out the window. A young man came and sat across from me, and asked me in English what my name was, what I was doing in China, etc. He told me he was on his was to college after three years with the People’s Liberation Army, and we chatted a bit about his experiences and plans for school before lapsing to just looking out the window and occasionally asking each other how to say something in each others’ language.

After half an hour or so of that, a couple of women in the compartment behind me starting talking about me in Chinese. “See that foreigner? She’s rather pretty, don’t you think?” “What do you think about her clothes?” Then they asked a man sitting across from them about me. “Do you see that foreigner? Where do you think she is from? Somewhere in Europe? England, maybe?” I turned around and said, in Chinese, “I am from America.” The women said “Ohhhh. She understands.”

What followed was an hour of half a dozen passengers asking me (and another dozen or so listening to me talk) about myself, my family, my studies, my plans, my thoughts about China, my thoughts about the US, until we got to a level of questioning that my language skills simply could not handle and I bid them adieu and passed out in my bunk for another 5 fours or so. I slept most of the rest of the time.

We got into the Nanjing train station (南京火车站) at about noon the next day, and after about three and a half hours I gave up on my luggage appearing that day and headed to the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, which adventure I will discuss in my next post.

… that was a really long post!