Hover, Dancer of life

Summary:
I have done a month of class now and am about to leave for a trip to Qinhuangdao plus hopefully quite a few other places if we manage to crack the Chinese train network.
I'm now 21, thank you to anyone who wished me happy birthday!

October holiday and the Chinese train system
Last week we discovered that the first week of October holiday was suddenly a lot closer than we had realised and that if we weren't careful we would be stuck in Beijing for the entirety of it. We also realised that we need our passports for travelling within China and for sure on planes, which limited our modes of transport to train as Will doesn't have his back from the visa office yet. Big exciting plans were made of travelling to Mongolia or the Tibetan boarder and so on, in the relative comfort of 30hour sleeper trains. These dreams were dashed by the ticket offices in Wudaokou, and almost impossibility of trying to buy tickets anywhere as a westerner on one of the two major holidays in the Chinese calender hit us hard. We queued for hours from 730am outside the ticket office, only to be told at nine that on the day of tickets being released and being one of the first in the queue, that there were no tickets to any of our destinations except the odd hard seater (which is like being in the underground at rush hour but for 30hours and with worse hygiene). After a few attempts, we went up one last time determined to actually come away with a slip of paper and a destination on it regardless of what it was.
Do you have a ticket to here?

The ticket office...

meiyou (no we don't)
how about here?
meiyou.
here?
meiyou.
here??
meiyou.
Do you have any tickets anywhere??!
meiyou. (this is said to us at the front of a queue of Chinese people going down the street as far as the eye can see, and after all the people in front of us have been happily skipping away with little pink tickets in their hands)
I don't believe you. Qinhuangdao, do you have tickets to Qinghuangdao??
you. (yes)
Finally we have found a ticket going to a smaller city by the sea, about three hours away and leaving tomorrow morning. We are planning on getting another train, probably sleeper to some of the bigger places further north after a couple days, but first we'll hopefully hang out and go sailing for a bit as Will has a friend who teaches sailing there. Mission sort of accomplished.
The whole experience felt like everyone else knew something we didn't, and no one was going to tell us how to play the game. As if I was saying 'open up!' instead of 'open sesame', so nothing was happening and I was totally oblivious to why what I was saying was any different. I just really hope that when we get to the ticket office in Qinghuangdao (you can only buy tickets from the place you're in and a certain number of days in advance), we will be better at working the system, whatever it is. Either way, there is a really good group of seven of us going and that alone should be enough to make the week fun.

Chinese Children
I've started teaching English part time to earn some travel money which has been good fun so far. One of my students Alicia who is 10 has 2 hours of small group tutoring plus another hour and a half with me straight afterwards on a Saturday morning which seems loads to me. After class last week her mum came up to me and started talking to me about how it was too much time and wanted to make some changes, which I presumed meant she wanted me to teach her for less time as she wasn't coping with the workload. I was however, totally wrong. What she meant was that the week off English was too much time for Alicia and that she wanted to arrange some extra classes during the holiday to keep up Alicia's work. It's very hard core but it works, her English is great and she's been moved up a class already! This is a classic example of the Chinese Tiger Mum, totally ordinary in Beijing but a lot more rare in the UK! Have a look at the article written last year about the phenomenon: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html
Another aspect of the Tiger Mum stereotype which has impacted my life in its own special way is the music practice. All through the early evening in my block of flats there is a cacophony of various classical instruments (piano is the dominant one) echoing through the buildings and onto the street outside. There is a child in the flat above mine that plays the piano very devotedly, and has been practicing one particular piece repeatedly for a good few hours now. Unfortunately their level has not reached the stage where it is enjoyable for anyone to listen to, but that day will come if she keeps at it like they have been since we moved in!

Breaking out of the expat bubble
Really getting close to local Chinese people is something that even the most enthusiastic foreigner struggles with here. I know some people that live with Chinese people and some who are really incredible at Chinese, and yet it would be almost unheard of for a westerner or even another Asian ethnic group to be closest to only Chinese people. I have made quite a few Chinese friends since I arrived here and I can definitely see myself getting to know them well, but I don't think it will ever become the case that I rely on them equally or more than the other foreigners who I've come across. It feels like in Beijing you have an instant bond with every other nationality except for the Chinese, and the average Chinese person lumps us all together into the same Laowai/foreigner category too. It's hard to say who is enforcing the divide more because it is definitley something that both sides contribute to, and it is a shame that integration doesn't come more naturally. Talking to friends who are doing year abroads in Europe and South America, blending in with natives has come quite naturally but here if you are to manage that you really have to push for it and with that it is still something you are unlikely to succeed at as far as I can tell from what I've seen and the people I've spoken to. However, I am hopeful that I will continue to be close with the Chinese people I've already got to know through various different activities and I am going to keep making an effort to meet more Chinese people naturally. A couple days ago I decided to do some of my language work outside in the little park inside my flat compound. For the first twenty to thirty minutes I was totally ignored or given strange looks, but then a little boy ran up to me and said 'hello my name is Bobby', and all of a sudden there was a deluge of children trying to work out how to play fruit ninja on my Ipad, and a kind woman next to me teaching me how to eat the roasted lizi nuts she had brought with her in the Chinese way. I even got invited to go on a day trip with her when I get back in October! I don't know if I'll be able to repeat that kind of encounter but it's a sign that people aren't as uninterested in you as it seems most of the time.

An inspirational quote printed on my bike seat for you all to ponder:

Hover
Dancer of the life
Just like a travel in life Let soul travel
WiND DANCE

Rick with chicken

Highlights of this week

Double Tiananmen: My friend  Immy left to go back to England on Sunday (this was not a highlight), and as a goodbye for her on Saturday we went on a cycling trip round Beijing, going from Wudaokou to Tiananmen Square at midnight. Seeing the Forbidden City at night and cycling around the city on virtually empty roads was so incredible. Particularly amazing because I went in the morning with the Cambridge and Oxford classes to do it the touristy way and the comparison between the crowds of matching hatted tour groups and silence of the roads at night was really striking. It felt like we’d been allowed in a theme park after closing to do as we pleased!

Visitors:  We’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of visitors from home this week, most of them just finishing off a summer of traveling around China and heading back to university in the next couple days. It’s been really fun feeling like the local showing them around (which everyone was doing to me a couple weeks ago!) and catching up with them before we part ways again. Thank you Chloe, Alice, Josh, Becky and Sam for coming to say hi!

·         The university lakes: I found out this week that Peking University used to be the part of the palace gardens and that there is a huge park within the campus with lots of lakes and forest, sculpture gardens and a pagoda! The area is so beautiful, it has no real academic function it’s just for people to enjoy and it feels like you’re miles away from the crazy traffic of Beijing. In the winter the lake freezes and you can rent ice skates which I’m definitely going to do!

Things I did this week that I’m don’t really want to do again

• ·         The Peking Opera. Last night the Oxford and Cambridge group went to the Peking Opera as part of a university trip, and although I don’t regret going, honestly I do not feel the need to ever repeat the experience! I was warned by some more jaded foreigners about the style, and even told to bring earplugs, but I’m usually quite open to new types of music and able to see some merit in them. The impression which Peking Opera music left me with was that someone decided to give about fifty five year olds massive saucepans lids and told them to bang them together as fast as they could for as long as they could in no particular rhythm, then occasionally stop so that a troupe of babies could scream unintelligibly for about ten minutes at a time, while people in colourful costumes and disturbing face masks performed tricks with swords and jumped around the stage.  To give credit where it’s due, the dances and sword tricks were extremely impressive and clearly very sophisticated,( Jackie Chan actually started learning how to do stunts from working in the Peking Opera to show the kind of level they were performing) however it was difficult to appreciate that fully when my ears were in agony. It is clearly an art form too sophisticated for me to understand, and I will leave it to those more cultured than I to enjoy. sample a taster and see if you're up for it!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN9iXlfxpxI
• ·        Four hours of non-stop ancient Chinese into modern Chinese class. Unfortunately unlike the Opera I’m not really at liberty to decide not to do that again, and will have to return to that on Tuesday.

LANGUAGE PARTNERS

Last week I was given a language partner by the university and I’ve met up with her this week for dinner. We were each given a card with a number on it in a field on campus and all the Oxford and Cambridge students as well as an equivalent number of Chinese students ran around shouting out their numbers until they found each other. There are probably simpler ways of doing it but never mind. Mine is called Evelyn, she’s a marketing major and really sweet. When I first met her we were chatting in Chinese and she said in English ‘I can see that you have studied Chinese for two years as you speak it so well!’ which I felt really proud of until I introduced her to a couple of my classmates and she repeated the same phrase to them without them having actually used any Chinese yet. So that compliment was slightly devalued. We went out for dinner with her friend Liu Li, and he was really good conversation as well. I had felt a bit concerned that I wouldn’t have anything to talk about but it felt really natural and I learnt a lot about China and how their perspectives differ from mine.

While we were discussing Chinese TV and it’s western equivalent, I accidentally said that a lot of my boyfriends watch ‘Game of Thrones’ rather than male friends, which made them laugh as well as somehow managing to say that I had children instead of ‘when I was a child’. Not quite the impression I intended to give but I certainly won’t be making those mistakes again anytime soon, so I’m going to take it as part of my learning curve!

POLLUTION
The days after it rains are always best, the rain clears out the pollution from the air and you can see blue sky, breathe deeply and not have to cough all the time! There are lots of ways to measure the levels of pollution in Beijing at any given time, apps for the Iphone and a nice comparison between the American version and the Chinese one which is usually significantly lower. However my way of assessing has been whether you can see the mountain in the distance down the main road, on a good day it is very prominent and on a bad day you wouldn’t know that there even was a mountain. I didn’t know it existed until about a week into living here because the weather had been bad, but since it rained lately it’s in full view right now. I got quite a shock the first time I saw the mountain appear out of nowhere one day! Bad or good, I don’t really know what I can do to protect myself from the pollution. I have no choice but to smoke the however many cigarettes worth of chemicals whether I like it or not so I almost don’t care what the apps say.

QUICK CHINA QUIRKS AND INCIDENTS 

• ·         Given the events of the past few days, it feels pretty essential that I make some comment on the outburst of anti-Japanese feeling at the moment in Beijing and the protests. In the area where I live the impact hasn't been extreme but there are still tangible marks of agressive nationalism. Yesterday on my way to the underground there was a stall set up on selling t-shirts with 'boycott Japanese products' written on them which was proving very popular. Some estate agents had signs saying that there was a discount for anyone who was against the Japanese on the issue of the islands, and there are anti-Japanese slogans all over the place. My flatmate Anna went for dinner with her tutee's parents and the mother ended up being very heated, saying that the Japanese kill without hesistation and that they only sell China bad products while the Chinese only sell high quality ones, surprisingly irrational comments from a well educated Chinese doctor. I had been told about the strong anti-Japanese feeling but seeing instances like these still comes as a shock. If you're interested in the topic take a look at my flatmate Dani's blog which is a lot more cultured than mine! http://lettersfromalaowai.wordpress.com/
  
  

• ·         Continuing with the TV topic from last entry, Liu Li says that the government has very strict regulations on shows and where they can be shown as well as content matter which makes Chinese TV as terrible as it is. Even things like X-Factor style shows are limited by the government to only having a certain number of them across all the channels because they are afraid of the influence which a winner might hold over the people. It’s really interesting.
• I have an American friend who is going to work for CCTV (the Chinese equivalent of the BBC channels, I love the acronym!) to subtitle the Emmy awards by reading through their scripts and telling them whether the translation is correct and when there are any dirty jokes, references to homosexuality or politics. These jokes are then changed completely or edited out of the Chinese version.
• ·         Talking about the Olympics, a lot of the Chinese people think that their ceremonies were better but actually aren’t very proud of it because of the comparative amount of money which the Chinese spent on them. The people I’ve spoken to feel that the budget should have been less extravagant and the money spent elsewhere, and it is a point of tension with the government. One of my other Chinese friends Jessica didn’t think much of the music but loved Mr Bean, she said that Chinese people had always thought the British didn’t have a sense of humour but after she saw that she realised that they did! So there’s something which has been achieved!
• ·         My language partner Evelyn has a younger brother who her parents kept hidden for three years until the government found out, and they were ‘punished’. I’m not entirely sure what the penalty would be but it costs a fine of £10,000 or more to legally have a second child, and that would be bad enough for her family let alone any penalty they received for trying to conceal him.
• ·         When I said in complete ignorance said the Taiwanese word for Facebook instead of the Chinese one, I apologised and said that it was because my speaking teacher was Taiwanese not Chinese. I was corrected again and told that Taiwan was just a province of China like Yunnan or Guangzhou, so they were still just Chinese. I need to be careful not to let things like that slip off the tongue too often! 

Fun mistranslated menu items for your enjoyment, taken this time from only one restaurant:

Starch la pig face
custard package
Rick with Chicken
Fillet Cucumber
Spicy fried chicken gristle
Honey Burn Potato Son
Fragrant Sheeps excellent bone
Roast lentinus edodes
silkworm chrysalis
Spicy delicious trotter
Starch agaric

Classes begin

In Brief:

·         I’ve finished my first week in Peking University (So pleased about the three day weekend! Unfortunately two days are six hours non-stop starting at 8am. That part is not so great.)

·         I have been given a scooter which Anna and I share and are totally in love with.

·         I’ve joined the church for internationals in Beijing which great, everyone’s been very kind to me!

·         We have got cable TV working in our flat and I challenge you to find anything on it that isn’t indescribably weird or the most terribly acted thing you’ve ever seen. As a way to ‘learn Chinese’ though, it’s fairly enjoyable if not a bit mystifying.

Things I’m trying to get used to:

·         Beijing men’s crop tops. For old men here it is completely acceptable in any context to roll their top up and have their midriff on show to cool down. It is probably one of the least attractive things I’ve ever seen. The people who are most inclined to do it are usually the ones with the best pot bellies.

·         Not being able to flush toilet paper. The sewers here can’t cope apparently so everyone has a bin next to the toilet where you have to put your used toilet roll. It’s less annoying than I anticipated but still strange.

·         I know that I’ve already done a road rage rant but I am still struggling to adapt to the completely crazy road habits. I don’t know if I will ever get to the stage where when I’m cycling to class I don’t inwardly scream at the man in a massive cart who abruptly stops in the middle of the cycle path and start texting, or the people that decide to wheel a disabled old man backwards into the oncoming cycling traffic for me to dodge, or the man who drives up the cycle path the wrong way completely blocking the whole thing for no explicable reason. I can definitely see myself adapting to using my horn a lot though. My patience is wearing thin.

Things I’m really enjoying

• ·         The underground and buses as well as being cheap have little Chinese TVs to watch while you’re riding them. The content is hit and miss, sometimes it’s just pictures of traffic, once it was advertising a restaurant where you sit on toilets and eat from miniature urinals, my personal favourite was the Chinese version of total wipeout while I was on the bus a few days ago. Still, it’s a nice touch. On the central line actually they even have lighted adverts in the underground tunnel itself that you can watch through the windows instead of just the pitch black that I’m used to. I saw a creepy cartoon on it last night, as with many of the Chinese commercials I’m still clueless as to what it was advertising.
•  The Peking University Canteen. You top up your university card and can eat anywhere you like. The food is so cheap it even puts what I’ve had locally to shame. I ate a massive three dish meal with rice today for TEN PENCE. That is ridiculous value for money.

CLASSES

Classes are with my class from Cambridge so in many ways that feels like one of the most familiar things here, in other ways it’s very different. We start at 8am on the dot, if you are more than five minutes late then you lose half a mark off your final grade and if you don’t turn up to one then you lose a full mark. If you miss more than a quarter of the classes then you automatically fail the course. I’m fine with turning up to things, but I tended to slip in late most of the time, admittedly more than five minutes late on many occasions. So I will really have to sort out those habits, otherwise the end grade might not be pretty. The classes are all in Chinese, you cannot make the teachers speak a word of English to you even though they are probably all fluent. Our first 8am lecture was on the history of the types of literature written in different dynasties and what distigushes one form of poetry from another. I think that was the hardest one we’ve had so far, and I came out definitely not knowing most of what she said. It’s a learning curve.  

TELEVISON

 I went to a talk yesterday that said Television is the most tightly controlled media in China. I don’t know what messages they are trying to send out to the people with these programmes but they all seem to be mind-rotting and hyperactive. Think of the most drug induced children’s shows (In my head I am thinking of In the Midnight Garden), on E numbers. Something as strange as that is almost at the level of the average television show here.  Currently Dani is watching a man with horns on his head be lifted into the air suspended by ropes while he screams in feigned agony for some reason and fairly cheesy Chinese pop music plays softly in the background while an audience watches. We are totally lost. He is now miming along to a peaceful song.

‘Beijing youth’ is what we have taken to be the equivalent of ‘Friends’ in the west, however it is truly awful. There are three guys and three girls from what we have figured out, and I think they pair off in the end from an advert we saw where they were all together on a snowy mountain with the women in wedding dresses, but despite seeing several episodes now, we haven’t really figured out much else. The acting is pantomime level at best, every basic emotion is exaggerated and expressed far too clearly, yet the content matter is meant to be serious. We’re planning on getting addicted and if we manage I will let you know what it’s really about. 

Adverts here are exhausting to watch because they are so hyperactive. They jump from one scene to another so fast and everything contains as many flashing lights, animations and sound effects as possible. They also show the same advert up to four times in the same advert break until you are familiar with every frame of the annoying but attractive Chinese girl licks the remnants of a yogurt drink off her lips seductively. By the time the show starts again you are relieved just for the pause in scenario jumps all over the place.

CHURCH

I’ve been going to the nearest Beijing Christian International Fellowship (bcif) church to where I live for the past couple weeks now, and it’s been great. Religion in China is a tricky subject, technically you’re not able to talk to anyone under the age of 18 about religion of any kind, and the Chinese churches have to be in authorized government buildings run mainly by members of the party, all of whom have to officially be atheist so you can infer the implications on the teaching in these. I’ve heard that they are a lot better than they have been in previous decades but that the general focus is on good works for your nation rather than faith in God, and it is used as a tool for keeping the people loyal to the government. This isn’t what I go to but  I do want to go along at some point to a nearby one and find out more about it first hand, it would be good for my Chinese as well. The majority of Christians in China aren’t actually members of this church but meet in what is called the ‘underground church’ which is illegally run in people’s homes. If I tried to go to one of them I’d just draw attention to them and cause them harm, so I won’t be doing that. The one I go to is a foreigners only church, which means it doesn’t have to be run by the government, you have to show a foreign passport to be allowed entry, and Chinese people can’t come. It’s really strange, I’m glad that I can go and worship freely but it doesn’t feel right that I am able to be above the law while the rest of China has to abide by these regulations.

The international community there is so good though, everyone is really welcoming and I’ve met so many great people so far, with lots of interesting backgrounds. Americans are definitely the dominant nationality but there are plenty other countries represented as well and it’s an incredible cultural exchange. That is true not just of church but the Wudaokou area in general, there’s a strange bond you feel with people from anywhere in the world other than China while you’re in Beijing, a kind of ‘us vs. them’ as you try and adapt to the majority and new culture. That affinity allows you to interact with a lot of different occupations, ages and backgrounds in a really unique way which I love. Getting to know other internationals is very easy, and the massive area I’m in already feels like a world village of sorts.

I tried uploading photos but the internet is just so slow, so I’ll do it next time! Sorry for writing so much, and thank you for reading!