Wednesday, 19 December 2012
Be waterful.
Latest news....
I have a laptop again for the first time in over two months! It's great.
It's averaging between minus fifteen and minus twenty at the moment, walking home with my head exposed briefly I honestly got a brain freeze from the outside in. And I confess, sometimes I wear a face mask, but I will not provide pictures.
I'm in China for the holiday season and really sad not to be doing the normal Christmas traditions.
However, don't feel too sorry for me because we have Holly, Will and Alice from Qingdao staying with us, and my Aunt and Uncle are also here for the holidays too which has been so much fun. Hosting forces you to do fun things :)
Everyone is wearing vibrant coloured puffer jackets, but only the Koreans can actually pull them off. Koreans make everything look cool.
We have decorated the apartment with all the Christmas decorations kind people have sent us, and it feels very festive.
The lake in the university is now frozen enough that we can skate on it which I really want to do soon!
This christmas will probably be one of the strangest I have, being away from home and in China where the influence of Christmas only goes as deep as some tinsel in western hotel lobbies. We talk about the commercialisation of Christmas in the west, but in China christmas isn't moving from a place of meaning and family to become more commercial, it is either nothing, or meaningless tackiness for the sake of it.
Christmas Eve in China is a dating night really and I have heard that eating out is virtually impossible because everywhere is swarmed with couples. One of my Chinese friends said in his province they give apples to people on Christmas Eve because in Chinese chirstmas eve is Pinganye 平安夜 which means night of peace, and apples are called 苹果 pingguo, so they give apples to people because of the wordplay. I was talking to some Japanese people yesterday and they also celebrate Christmas as a dating holiday. A stranger Japanese tradition though is that they always buy KFC for christmas, and you have to order it well in advance for an extortionate amount of money to get it. They couldn't clarify the reason for this unfortunately.
On Tuesday Bethany and I did a christmas party for the Chinese friends we have from Qinghua, and when we asked them what they knew about Christmas, the answer was that they knew about the 'Christmas old man' ( the translation of Santa into Chinese) and one girl knew that it was celebrating when God was born, because she had read a short story from a very famous Chinese horror story writer who used the christmas events as an influence in one of his stories and summarised the original at the beginning. Which I confess I didn't see coming.
We made them some roast chicken and then had christmas cookies on the table ready for decorating after dinner, but one of the guys thought it was part of the main course, and ate it with his knife and fork along with the salad, which was really sweet, and our fault really for putting them out early. He's only ever used a knife and fork twice, and I have been there both times, it is an honour.
I have managed to get to some carol services though, my church did one yesterday and then there is caroling at a Korean cafe nearby tonight which I'm looking forward to. A couple weeks ago I went to a christmas concert at the big Chinese church nearby, it was a combined concert of international congregations as well as the Chinese. Each different culture did their own performance, and it was so interesting hearing traditional songs from so many different places.
My Christmas is going to be spent with my aunt and uncle, classmates and new friends I have made here, so excellent company really. The Christmas dinner has also been dealt with by us going to the Ritz Carlton for lunch, which aside from my family roast is about as good as I can get! It's all come together very nicely, and even though it won't be the same as the traditional one I love, I'm sure it will still be good fun.
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!
Saturday, 8 December 2012
Not according to the rules but according.
Updates: I have a proper winter coat now finally! That should have happened a long time ago but at least it has happened.
The ground is permanently frozen now, and so there are frozen oysters of spit from all the Chinese men all over the place.
Yesterday I had a mince pie, and it was beautiful. I don't expect that it will happen again this holiday season.
University stereotypes:
Beida (Peking university) and Qinghua
Beida and Qinghua are the two most prestigious universities in China, and as I have mentioned have a similar rivalry to the Harvard-Yale or Oxford-Cambridge ones except that they have clearer special fields and they are both on the same street (the one I live on).
Beida is older being founded in 1898, and was the first modern university in China. It's grounds are part of the old emperors gardens and whole swaths of it could easily be mistaken for a beautiful park with lakes and woods ( one time in between lectures I got completely lost in this area and ended up missing most of the next class trying to get back to civilisation...). The economics faculty is actually the building where the decree abolishing the ancient civil service examination system was signed, which if you know a bit about Chinese history is a pretty big deal. Mao was a librarian here in his youth, and in the nineteen twenties it was the home of all the new literary thinkers in who I've been studying lately. As I mentioned before as well, a lot of protests and free thinking movements have had their origin with Beida students.
Today, Beida is known for its prestige in humanities subjects, which isn't much of a surprise given its history. On the cycle ride up to the university there are words of inspiration intended for students such as myself, such as 不学礼无以立 (if you don't study ritual you won't be able to stand in society) and 美丽原美德 （beauty has its origin in beautiful wisdom). The average beida student won't see this very often though as the Chinese students live on campus and rarely actually leave. The campus is a pretty self contained village with very little need to leave it unless you want to, and most of the students just stick to their bubble rather than venture down the road to see all the other universities.
Qinghua is of equal prestige but the emphasis in Qinghua is more on sciences and engineering, and it is a newer university. The style is definitely an imitation of the American Ivy League style architecture, it's has an even bigger campus than Beida and it has lots of beautiful tree lined boulevards. The most famous department is the engineering department, because it is where most of the major politicians of recent times studied, and it is a well known networking centre for the communist party. If you are an engineer in Qinghua you have a bright future ahead of you.
I have become friends with a group of Qinghua guys over the past few months by meeting them for dinner every Tuesday night with some friends at a fast food restaurant on campus. They are former students of my friend who she got along well with and started meeting up outside class with last year. They are a group of five physical engineering majors who are all good friends, because they know us and each other so well, they act normally with us rather than it feeling formal or overly polite, and they are so funny. I have learnt a lot about Chinese student life from them.
A few weeks ago my friend and I went to watch them take part in an annual kind of cultural/ talent show run by their department which was hilarious. We were literally the only two non Chinese people in the entire auditorium and our presence was pretty confusing to a lot of people, we really stuck out. Just before the programme started a girl awkwardly announced in English that there would not be any translation of the programme, and the whole audience started laughing at us, the clear target of this notice. I have never felt so self conscious as a member of what should have been an anonymous crowd, and never shrunk so low in my seat...
The show had different sections each organised and performed by different grades and classes, some were prefilmed videos, some were choirs, dance routines, plays or an eclectic combination of all multiple media. The content of the performances and the jokes spoke volumes about the type of people who studied in the department, which were mostly slightly socially awkward but well meaning guys who would like a girlfriend but mostly just play video games. I will illustrate this with an example: in one story a guy has a girlfriend but doesn't pay her enough attention because he is always playing video games, she leaves him and he realises his mistake. He then chases after her and finds himself in a parallel world where he has to battle through various popular video games to reach her, such as angry birds where people are running around actually being the targets and birds. In the end she still leaves him. In other ones there are a lot of geeky protagonists developing an obsession with a girl that doesn't notice them, and stressing out about how much physics work they have to do.
Something else you really noticed was the gender ratio, which in Qinghua is 3:1 guys to girls, and probably higher than that still in the physics department. There were very few girls on stage at all, and when one did come on the audience audibly gasped. The Qinghua guys I know have found their girlfriends in the nearby universities or from their hometown, a popular girl hunting location for Qinghua guys is the forestry university which has a 4:1 girl to guy ratio I have been told. Beida has an equal ratio apparently (the Qinghua guys clearly made it their business to know these things) and two of them are dating girls from there too, despite the fierce university rivalry. It's all very Romeo and Juliet.
The Forestry University
The forestry university is definitely where all the cool, arty students go. All the most alternative and creative Chinese people I've met so far are all from the forestry university, and there is a strong emphasis here on art, interior design, woodwork, fashion and so on. I've only just started getting to know people at the forestry university but I am intending on spending a lot more time here (in the vain hope that some of their cool will rub off on me).
I'm actually writing this entry in the forestry university, at a cafe which is a perfect example of how cool the people here are.
The cafe is called Nian cafe, and it is run entirely by three final year students of the university who fit in keeping it open for twelve hours a day on top of their degree. The whole interior decor was designed and built by the guys themselves and it looks incredible. One of them specialises in woodwork and built the tables and lights, the sign has the cafe name characters carved out of wood and there are cool objects all over the place, cute ornaments like a mini model piano and a retro radio inside, and a giant wooden pencil taller than me by the gate. They rent the building from a teacher and fund it from the profits they make, they have two white cats that just wander round the shop, one called little nian, and her daughter is called little little nian. They also make great, cheap coffee.
I was introduced to the place by my friend Bethany who had an art show here last weekend which I was helping out with, her paintings are still on display now and they look awesome. There was a massive turnout and on the second day some of the forestry girls came to show her their own art, and ask her about the meanings in hers which was awesome.
Then another student called Warsaw (after the original band name of the joy division) came and played some of his own songs for a while, and engaged us in a discussion on psychology and musicians who became icons through dying young. So edgy.
Bethany's website is bethanyeden.com
and one of the forestry university student's website is:
http://xiaoheiyuben.diandian.com/ , I highly recommend you take a look!
The ground is permanently frozen now, and so there are frozen oysters of spit from all the Chinese men all over the place.
Yesterday I had a mince pie, and it was beautiful. I don't expect that it will happen again this holiday season.
University stereotypes:
Beida (Peking university) and Qinghua
Beida and Qinghua are the two most prestigious universities in China, and as I have mentioned have a similar rivalry to the Harvard-Yale or Oxford-Cambridge ones except that they have clearer special fields and they are both on the same street (the one I live on).
Beida is older being founded in 1898, and was the first modern university in China. It's grounds are part of the old emperors gardens and whole swaths of it could easily be mistaken for a beautiful park with lakes and woods ( one time in between lectures I got completely lost in this area and ended up missing most of the next class trying to get back to civilisation...). The economics faculty is actually the building where the decree abolishing the ancient civil service examination system was signed, which if you know a bit about Chinese history is a pretty big deal. Mao was a librarian here in his youth, and in the nineteen twenties it was the home of all the new literary thinkers in who I've been studying lately. As I mentioned before as well, a lot of protests and free thinking movements have had their origin with Beida students.
Today, Beida is known for its prestige in humanities subjects, which isn't much of a surprise given its history. On the cycle ride up to the university there are words of inspiration intended for students such as myself, such as 不学礼无以立 (if you don't study ritual you won't be able to stand in society) and 美丽原美德 （beauty has its origin in beautiful wisdom). The average beida student won't see this very often though as the Chinese students live on campus and rarely actually leave. The campus is a pretty self contained village with very little need to leave it unless you want to, and most of the students just stick to their bubble rather than venture down the road to see all the other universities.
Qinghua is of equal prestige but the emphasis in Qinghua is more on sciences and engineering, and it is a newer university. The style is definitely an imitation of the American Ivy League style architecture, it's has an even bigger campus than Beida and it has lots of beautiful tree lined boulevards. The most famous department is the engineering department, because it is where most of the major politicians of recent times studied, and it is a well known networking centre for the communist party. If you are an engineer in Qinghua you have a bright future ahead of you.
I have become friends with a group of Qinghua guys over the past few months by meeting them for dinner every Tuesday night with some friends at a fast food restaurant on campus. They are former students of my friend who she got along well with and started meeting up outside class with last year. They are a group of five physical engineering majors who are all good friends, because they know us and each other so well, they act normally with us rather than it feeling formal or overly polite, and they are so funny. I have learnt a lot about Chinese student life from them.
A few weeks ago my friend and I went to watch them take part in an annual kind of cultural/ talent show run by their department which was hilarious. We were literally the only two non Chinese people in the entire auditorium and our presence was pretty confusing to a lot of people, we really stuck out. Just before the programme started a girl awkwardly announced in English that there would not be any translation of the programme, and the whole audience started laughing at us, the clear target of this notice. I have never felt so self conscious as a member of what should have been an anonymous crowd, and never shrunk so low in my seat...
The show had different sections each organised and performed by different grades and classes, some were prefilmed videos, some were choirs, dance routines, plays or an eclectic combination of all multiple media. The content of the performances and the jokes spoke volumes about the type of people who studied in the department, which were mostly slightly socially awkward but well meaning guys who would like a girlfriend but mostly just play video games. I will illustrate this with an example: in one story a guy has a girlfriend but doesn't pay her enough attention because he is always playing video games, she leaves him and he realises his mistake. He then chases after her and finds himself in a parallel world where he has to battle through various popular video games to reach her, such as angry birds where people are running around actually being the targets and birds. In the end she still leaves him. In other ones there are a lot of geeky protagonists developing an obsession with a girl that doesn't notice them, and stressing out about how much physics work they have to do.
Something else you really noticed was the gender ratio, which in Qinghua is 3:1 guys to girls, and probably higher than that still in the physics department. There were very few girls on stage at all, and when one did come on the audience audibly gasped. The Qinghua guys I know have found their girlfriends in the nearby universities or from their hometown, a popular girl hunting location for Qinghua guys is the forestry university which has a 4:1 girl to guy ratio I have been told. Beida has an equal ratio apparently (the Qinghua guys clearly made it their business to know these things) and two of them are dating girls from there too, despite the fierce university rivalry. It's all very Romeo and Juliet.
The Forestry University
The forestry university is definitely where all the cool, arty students go. All the most alternative and creative Chinese people I've met so far are all from the forestry university, and there is a strong emphasis here on art, interior design, woodwork, fashion and so on. I've only just started getting to know people at the forestry university but I am intending on spending a lot more time here (in the vain hope that some of their cool will rub off on me).
I'm actually writing this entry in the forestry university, at a cafe which is a perfect example of how cool the people here are.
The cafe is called Nian cafe, and it is run entirely by three final year students of the university who fit in keeping it open for twelve hours a day on top of their degree. The whole interior decor was designed and built by the guys themselves and it looks incredible. One of them specialises in woodwork and built the tables and lights, the sign has the cafe name characters carved out of wood and there are cool objects all over the place, cute ornaments like a mini model piano and a retro radio inside, and a giant wooden pencil taller than me by the gate. They rent the building from a teacher and fund it from the profits they make, they have two white cats that just wander round the shop, one called little nian, and her daughter is called little little nian. They also make great, cheap coffee.
I was introduced to the place by my friend Bethany who had an art show here last weekend which I was helping out with, her paintings are still on display now and they look awesome. There was a massive turnout and on the second day some of the forestry girls came to show her their own art, and ask her about the meanings in hers which was awesome.
Then another student called Warsaw (after the original band name of the joy division) came and played some of his own songs for a while, and engaged us in a discussion on psychology and musicians who became icons through dying young. So edgy.
Bethany's website is bethanyeden.com
and one of the forestry university student's website is:
http://xiaoheiyuben.diandian.com/ , I highly recommend you take a look!
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
There are no full stops in quality
Since my last entry I have:
-Had more stuff stolen (purse, bike batteries, bank card)
-Had two thanksgiving meals
-Been on a great trip to Qingdao
-Suffered my first food poisoning!
-Paid my next bout of rent
-Forgot to top up our electricity card and left poor Anna cooking rice by candlelight for a few hours....
-Been given a weeks vacation for no real reason
-Had mulled wine in the hutongs
-Made origami advent calendars with Anna and Dani
-Done more extreme christmas decorations than I've ever bothered with in the UK
-Helped run an art show of my friend Bethany's amazing watercolours for the weekend.
-Started doubling clothing when I go out. Two pairs of jeans, two scarves, two jumpers...it is freezing.
-Got my bike brakes completely replaced for £1.20
Universities in Beijing
There are over 70 universities in Beijing, and a large amount of them are in the area of wudaokou where I live, which gives it the student centred feeling and also makes it a hub for internationals. As I meet more people from different universities I'm finding out how the dynamics are different in each, and also learning more about what traits of Chinese universities are pretty consistent throughout.
The first thing you'd find strange is probably their names, most of which are named after very specific fields and many of which you wouldn't really associate with higher education. The Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU) and the Geosciences University which are across the street from each other probably don't sound very catchy but the Forestry University and the Mining University down the road are probably a bit more confusing. They do live up to their titles in many ways as well, BLCU has so many foreign language students, and the forestry university is full of beautiful tree lined avenues, as well as a large number of landscaping majors. It's origin is from the communist era when they really only taught one field, now they all teach a much wider spectrum but with their own specialties.
Another pretty difference which is pretty alien to us is that Chinese students don't get to choose what university they go to, nor do they get to even have complete say over their majors when they get there. The whole Chinese education system is geared towards the infamous GaoKao exam (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6727143.stm) that all tiger mothers are pushing their children from the moment they can talk (my flatmates are being made to teach English to two year olds, it's not an exaggeration), and then their point score decides what university if any they can get into. To get a place is extremely difficult, particularly for the prestigious ones like Peking University and Qinghua, the Oxford and Cambridge or Harvard and Yale of China.
But once you get offered a place, you are quite often told what you are going to study by the university itself. I met a student who's major was English at the Forestry Univerisity last week, and after she had asked me why I chose to study Chinese I asked her why she wanted to do English. She said she didn't, she was told that if she wanted to study at the university, it had to be English. She didn't think she'd ever have the opportunity to go abroad, and she didn't really care about talking to foreigners, but her plan was to do a masters and then teach because that was the path she'd been started down. I know other people at Peking University who applied wanting to do Chemistry and got moved to doing Biology by the university, without having any say in the matter. Even if your preference did get taken into consideration, your choices are very often decided by your parents based on what their future plans. Several I've met are studying business or management even though they hate it because they are expected to take over their parents company.
For a lot of people I've met university degrees here aren't to help you discover yourself but rather for being told who you are, and where you have to go next.
Also, in case my blog titles are confusing people they are all just Chinglish I've seen here that's made me laugh, and I wanted to preserve! In my next entry I will write in more detail about some of the unique traits of the universities I know better, I find this topic really interesting so one entry isn't enough! I'm trying to stop writing reams of random information like I have been doing, it's overwhelming and no doubt pretty tough to follow!
-Had more stuff stolen (purse, bike batteries, bank card)
-Had two thanksgiving meals
-Been on a great trip to Qingdao
-Suffered my first food poisoning!
-Paid my next bout of rent
-Forgot to top up our electricity card and left poor Anna cooking rice by candlelight for a few hours....
-Been given a weeks vacation for no real reason
-Had mulled wine in the hutongs
-Made origami advent calendars with Anna and Dani
-Done more extreme christmas decorations than I've ever bothered with in the UK
-Helped run an art show of my friend Bethany's amazing watercolours for the weekend.
-Started doubling clothing when I go out. Two pairs of jeans, two scarves, two jumpers...it is freezing.
-Got my bike brakes completely replaced for £1.20
Universities in Beijing
There are over 70 universities in Beijing, and a large amount of them are in the area of wudaokou where I live, which gives it the student centred feeling and also makes it a hub for internationals. As I meet more people from different universities I'm finding out how the dynamics are different in each, and also learning more about what traits of Chinese universities are pretty consistent throughout.
The first thing you'd find strange is probably their names, most of which are named after very specific fields and many of which you wouldn't really associate with higher education. The Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU) and the Geosciences University which are across the street from each other probably don't sound very catchy but the Forestry University and the Mining University down the road are probably a bit more confusing. They do live up to their titles in many ways as well, BLCU has so many foreign language students, and the forestry university is full of beautiful tree lined avenues, as well as a large number of landscaping majors. It's origin is from the communist era when they really only taught one field, now they all teach a much wider spectrum but with their own specialties.
Another pretty difference which is pretty alien to us is that Chinese students don't get to choose what university they go to, nor do they get to even have complete say over their majors when they get there. The whole Chinese education system is geared towards the infamous GaoKao exam (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6727143.stm) that all tiger mothers are pushing their children from the moment they can talk (my flatmates are being made to teach English to two year olds, it's not an exaggeration), and then their point score decides what university if any they can get into. To get a place is extremely difficult, particularly for the prestigious ones like Peking University and Qinghua, the Oxford and Cambridge or Harvard and Yale of China.
But once you get offered a place, you are quite often told what you are going to study by the university itself. I met a student who's major was English at the Forestry Univerisity last week, and after she had asked me why I chose to study Chinese I asked her why she wanted to do English. She said she didn't, she was told that if she wanted to study at the university, it had to be English. She didn't think she'd ever have the opportunity to go abroad, and she didn't really care about talking to foreigners, but her plan was to do a masters and then teach because that was the path she'd been started down. I know other people at Peking University who applied wanting to do Chemistry and got moved to doing Biology by the university, without having any say in the matter. Even if your preference did get taken into consideration, your choices are very often decided by your parents based on what their future plans. Several I've met are studying business or management even though they hate it because they are expected to take over their parents company.
For a lot of people I've met university degrees here aren't to help you discover yourself but rather for being told who you are, and where you have to go next.
Also, in case my blog titles are confusing people they are all just Chinglish I've seen here that's made me laugh, and I wanted to preserve! In my next entry I will write in more detail about some of the unique traits of the universities I know better, I find this topic really interesting so one entry isn't enough! I'm trying to stop writing reams of random information like I have been doing, it's overwhelming and no doubt pretty tough to follow!
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