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
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