没有

没有. Meiyou. Don't have it. These are probably the two most infuriating syllables I know of the Chinese language. 

I had a bit of a rough day today. I did not sleep well, did not feel well, and to top it all off, it was raining, I ran out of deodorant, and our toilet broke. Lots of little things just piling up and it made me upset. And they're the type of little things that are easy to deal with in the US, but because of language barriers and the absence of a store like CVS, things are much more difficult in China.

I went to seven different on-campus stores in search of deodorant. I even looked up the word, wrote out the pinyin and characters, double checked it with my teacher, and asked the salespeople if they had it. Each store said 没有. Finally, after the field trip and after reporting the broken toilet, I walked down the street our dorm complex is off of because I saw a cosmetics store there when we were driving home. I showed them what I was looking for and they said 没有. I left to try to find another store, but on my way back I decided to look around there to see for myself. Plus, I needed a small body wash to get through the rest of the trip. Lo and behold, they had five varieties of men's and women's roll on and spray deodorant. So much for 没有. The on campus places definitely didn't have it, but it was so frustrating to find what I was looking for in a place where I was explicitly told they didn't have it.

Classes were fine today. We had an ordinary Chinese class and a lecture at the hospital on acupuncture and moxibustion for TCM. It was most of the same information as yesterday, but with a new person, so there were fresh nuggets of knowledge to be gained. Plus he did some cupping demonstrations and let a fellow student try applying the cup to another student, so that was pretty cool. On the way back from the hospital, Gu Laoshi distributed the lab coats we are to wear when we do our acupuncture lesson in the clinic. Tomorrow and Thursday we are split into two groups. One group goes to the acupuncture clinic, and the other group has a classroom activity. The syllabus says we watch a movie. I'm in the movie group for tomorrow and the acupuncture group for Thursday.

In my free time, I read from my coursepack, studied my vocab, handled e-mail, and then went to sleep early. I had a simple on-campus dinner with some friends, and I ate my chicken, vegetables, and rice with the spork I was given.

Today is awesome because all the issues were resolved by the end of the day and tomorrow will be better.

A Day of Experiential Learning

Today, we had a shortened Chinese class so we could learn Chinese Calligraphy (中国书法). We had a calligraphy master come in who was in his eighties, and he spoke about the 5000 year history of calligraphy. He said that writing regular Chinese characters is like walking and calligraphy is like dancing. He kept emphasizing the beauty of this style of writing. We learned how to paint lines, dots, and the character for people (ren 人). He went around and helped us execute the writing, mostly by putting his hand over ours to guide its motion. At the end, we got to take him our Chinese names for him to write, and he did mine in cursive calligraphy. My Chinese name is Bai He 百合, and when he wrote it in the different font, it became epically beautiful. After I told him my name, he said he needed to prepare before he could write such a beautiful name, which was pretty neat. I really enjoyed the lesson, and I think the art is so beautiful. 

In the afternoon's TCM class, we learned about acupuncture, moxibustion, and Qigong. Acu-moxibustion is the category of non-drug therapies in TCM. Acupuncture is also called needling and involves placing a needle in a specific point on the body to achieve a certain effect. Moxibustion is placing moxa wool that has been set on fire atop one of these points (moxa wool is made from dried and aged mugwort leaves). The theory behind it is that the key organs each have a meridian with acupoints along it that when stimulated will restore proper health. For instance, a treatment to the big toe is connected to the liver, which regulates reproduction, so an acupuncture needle to the big toe can help with a reproductive problem. Moxibustion can be either direct or indirect depending on the problem, and indirect moxibustion involves placing the burning herb on top of ginger or another barrier that is on the skin. Other treatments in this non-drug category include cupping and tuina (massage). 

When the professor showed a slide of acupuncture needles with burning moxa on top, one of the students asked about it, and we had about half an hour of the class as demonstration. Four students had acupuncture in various places for various things. There is a point near the elbow that is connected to the shoulder, and two students had that one, one of whom had the moxa burning on the needle which heated her entire arm. One girl had a needle in her hand to help with a cold, and another had one in her wrist and one in her forehead to help with sleep. It was really cool to watch, and I videoed the whole thing. It was so much better to observe the treatments and have them explained live than to simply go through the slides. 

After the demo, we did go through the slides, but he moved pretty fast and kept only to relevant information. After we finished talking about acu-moxibustion, we moved onto Qigong. Qigong is an exercise and meditation regimen to aid flow of Qi through the body and be generally preventative. We got to get out of our seats and learn Ba Duan Jin 八段锦 which are eight forms that directly relate to TCM. The first one is breathing, the second one is a motion like shooting a bow and arrow, the third one is pressing one hand up and one hand down and is related to the spleen, for the fourth one you arch your back by pushing your ribcage forward and twist to the back for a good stretch, the fifth one is in a deep horse stance and you sweep your head in a circular motion toward the ground and up again, the sixth one is a forward stretch for the kidneys and back, the seventh one is for the liver and you punch out and then pull your hand back with force, and finally the eight one is seven repetitions of rising to releve and then falling back onto your heels. It was really cool and fun to do the forms, and I think I'm going to try to take up a soft martial art because it was really relaxing. We then learned some history and theory of Qigong before our class ended. 

Today was by far the best lecture we have had in the entire Public Health sequence. The slides were to the point, and we had a strong experiential component. Between that and calligraphy, today was fantastic. However, when I was walking back from lunch, a bird pooped on me, so that kind of marred my outlook when coupled with feeling tired and a little sniffly. Gotta take the bad with the good, but I'm going to focus on the awesome things that happened today instead of the bird poop. 

After class, I finished my Chinese homework, studied my characters for tomorrow's tingxie, and worked with my photos for a while. I have my combined total of photographs and videos from this trip is 1425, so I think I'm doing a good job of documenting everything both visually and verbally. I didn't really do anything special for dinner or afterward because I was tired, so I stayed home and had an early night. 

Today is awesome because I witnessed expert calligraphy and learned Qigong. Today is notsome because of bird poop.

Jingshan, Beihai, and Peking Duck

This is the two week mark for how much time I have left in Beijing. It's insane, but I'm almost done with my sightseeing, so I can leave satisfied. It's a strange sort of countdown because I'm so happy and privileged to be here, but when the end is nigh, I can't help but look forward to seeing my family again.

Today I got to check three major things off my tourist list: Jingshan Park, Beihai Park, and Peking Duck. I left campus with my friend Caleb around 11:15 to head over to the parks. We took the subway and then walked, and it was kind of a long walk from the subway, but it was well worth it. We started with Jingshan Park, which is the hill that is the highest point in all of Beijing. When we got to the north gate, which was closed, I asked a police officer where the entrance was in Chinese (景山公园人口在哪儿). I'd give my success a 7/10, with my Xiangshan inquiry as a 10/10. They have an exhibit of dinosaurs at the lowest level near the gates, so that was kind of funny, but the views from the hill were amazing. We got to look out over the lake at Beihai and the Forbidden City from the most beautiful perspective. I should also mention that today's weather was amazing. The sky was blue and visible and the sun was shining bright and hot. It was very hot. If last Sunday's weather was a 10/10 for Beijing, today was an 8.7.

After Jingshan, we backtracked to Beihai. At that point we were starting to fade a bit, so we did not rent a boat to go out on the lake, which is the thing to do there. Instead, we sat on a bench in the shade facing the lake and ate our dried fruit while talking about Dance Marathon. We then walked around the park, took some pictures of the pretty things, and then headed back to the subway after an exhausting day of walking around in the hot sun. We were both pretty affected by the heat, and I was certainly dehydrated.

On the subway ride home, there was a baby sitting on his mom's lap next to me. I would estimate his age at 8-10 months, and I don't think he'd seen any white foreigners before. He smiled and pointed with an amazed look in his eyes and kept reaching out to touch me. I did let him, and he was just the most adorable baby. It's interesting to be such a spectacle here when I look very ordinary at home. It's not a bad thing, but I just look different and it's really obvious. I try to smile and wave when people stare both to seem friendly and to call them out for it.

After a relaxing break in the dorm, I headed back to the subway to go to dinner at Da Dong for Peking Duck as two friends' birthday dinner. While I rode line 4, I was standing next to a Spanish couple. I was reading their tour book over their shoulder, and I said to them "me gusta tu libro," and struck up a conversation with the woman. She asked where I was from and what I was doing in Beijing, and I asked her the same. It was their first day, and they tried to see the Summer Palace but it was closed. I recommended that they check out the parks at night because the lighting there is supposed to be gorgeous (and I had just been there, so I knew they were cool, and it would be much nicer in the evening without such extreme heat). They were really nice, and it was kind of fun to speak a little Spanish in China, even though we ended up speaking mostly English.

The restaurant was frustratingly difficult to find. It turns out that I walked past the building about four times without realizing it because it was marked as "Business Tower" instead of "International Tower." I walked up and down the street for 20 minutes before calling my friend who was already there, and when I found it I was very happy. It was decorated with gauzy tulle curtains and table cloths. The key color was pink and there was also a lot of white. I was really surprised to see pixel pars on the ground casting magenta light onto the curtains, which was a really interesting design choice because they could change their color palette whenever they want just by changing the color of the light.

The food itself was quite good. We had tofu and scallions, broccoli, and eggplant in addition to the duck. The duck was carved tableside, and we had a condiment plate with sugar for the skin and garlic, cantaloupe, cucumber, mushroom, onion, and hoisin sauce for the duck pancake. I had never eaten duck before, and I really enjoyed it. I liked putting all the flavors together but also trying them separately. In addition to the things we ordered, included with the duck were soup, grapes over dry ice (the prettiest plating ever), and a persimmon slush-goop thing (eloquent, I know). I didn't really like the soup or persimmon, but the grapes were fun to eat simply because there was a cloud in the plate. We all freaked out a little at the plating. It was a fun night.


Today is awesome because I got to go to beautiful parks and eat delicious food with friends.

Ping Pong, Temple of Heaven, Peking Opera, and Collected Thoughts

I totally forgot to write yesterday; therefore, this post comes to you in 10 parts.

Part 1: Ping Pong

Friday consisted of my oral exam in Chinese, then we watched Disney's Mulan in Chinese with Chinese subtitles. After lunch and a short break to relax in the afternoon, I met with the group at 4:00 to play ping pong. The ping pong group ended up being me, Matt, Victoria, Jess, and Gu Laoshi. Jess' brother is a serious ping pong player, and Gu Laoshi (unexpectedly yet unsurprisingly) is a really awesome ping pong player. The volleys between Jess and Dr. Gu were competition grade and really amazing to watch.

I was terrible at ping pong, but after yesterday's session, I can no longer identify that way. I got into a really great rhythm and Gu Laoshi gave me some really great pointers. I played against Matt, Jess, and Dr. Gu, and I'd say that final volley with Dr. Gu was the best I have ever played in my life.

The gym at Bei Da is where the 2008 Olympic ping pong matches were played, and we were playing on the Olympic tables, which was amazing in and of itself. The tables are set up in a basement room with posters of the Chinese ping pong players on the walls. The floor is red marley, just like all competition ping pong floors. It was very hot in that room, and I don't think I have ever sweated so much playing a table game. It was really fun, though.

After playing, I freshened up, got dinner with friends, went for ice cream, and went to bed.

Part 2: Beijing Weather

The weather in Beijing has been strange lately. Last Saturday was the worst rain in six decades. The final count was that over 70 people died as a result of the rain. Beijing has bad drainage, so flooding is frequent and rapid. Last night, coming home from ice cream, I got caught in some serious rain and my shoes are still wet because I had no choice but to step in puddles because of the flooding.

The heat in Beijing is very different from where I've lived in the US. At home, summer heat is very burning from the blazing sun beating down on you constantly. Here, you can't really see the sun, but it's very hot and humid. The heat wraps around you like a blanket, so at first you feel fine, but then all of a sudden you realize you've been sweating. People get slick and sticky here very easily.

As I was walking outside in the aftermath of yesterday's rain, I noticed that the snails had come out onto the sidewalk. There were a lot of snails, living and dead, and I didn't realize that they were here until I saw them this morning.

Part 3: Subways

I know Beijing underground better than I know the city itself. The subway system is fantastic, and I know it really well because I use it so much. To buy a ticket, you go to a machine, press 1, pay 2 yuan, and then swipe the card and get on the train. It's very easy, especially for a non-Chinese speaker. I like knowing the stops and what's near them because it gives me some sense of direction and a certain command of my surroundings. I think it surprises my fellow travelers when I just know where things are, though. It surprises me, too, but I like it.

Part 4: Vocabulary

I'm reallizing that when I come home there are certain things I will continue to say in Chinese. "Xie xie," "duibuqi," and "tai____le" are definitely coming home with me. I'll probably use some of the adjectives I've learned, and use Chinese as code with friends. It's kind of cool to realize how much I've learned and I hope that I retain more than the basics.

Part 5: Nature

Despite being in one of the world's biggest cities, I have found that the majority of my 1200 pictures are of nature. A characteristic feature of Beijing is that in the middle of a bustling urban setting, there will be a park or some sort of place to enjoy nature that makes you feel entirely separate from that busy man-made world. Besides being pretty, the things I have photographed have been a little surprising and out of place, and I really like that about this city.

Part 6: History

Today it really hit me that everything here is just way older than the United States itself. Like, I leaned against a 500 year old pillar at the Temple of Heaven; things just aren't that old at home, and it's really amazing to experience them here.

Part 7: The Temple of Heaven (Tiantan Gongyuan 天坛公园)

Today's excursion took us to the Temple of Heaven. It was where the emperors would go for 20 days of fasting, abstinence, and prayer for a good harvest. The complex is enormous, it is directly off the main road in the south-center of the city in the Xuanwumen District, and is more park than temple. The main building, the famous round one, is where the emperor would pray for a good harvest. The building is beautiful and we took a group photo there.

There is a lot of symbolism at Tiantan. Round and blue represent heaven, and square and green represent earth. The fusion of the two and the characters for "respect heaven" really demonstrate the way the Chinese think about nature, that man and nature, earth and heaven, need to live in balance with one another because taking advantage leads to destruction.

In the park, there were tons of people doing various recreational activities: music, dance, cards, mahjjong. Seeing them made me feel like I was doing something very genuine because those people go to the park just to hang out in their regular lives. They weren't tourists (though there were plenty of those as well), and I really love seeing real people do normal things.

Also in the park, we saw the fasting hall where I learned that the hobbit holes are called moon gates, the music department, the echo wall, and the place where the emperors would talk to heaven. The music part was really interesting. The exhibits had instruments we could touch and information about the philosophy and formation of the Chinese music style. I really liked it, and I know that my mom would have loved that part, too.

The echo wall was pretty neat, but I didn't try the echo. There were a lot of tourists there at that time, and I was quite tired, so I didn't have the energy to compete with them. I saw what I wanted to see, and it was really cool. There were people doing rhythmic gymnastics with ribbon dancers nearby, and there was one young girl who was really good. We all watched for a while because it was awesome.

The place where the emperors would talk to heaven was at the third level of a dais that had nine steps between each of three levels. We all got to stand on the spot and have our picture taken. It was the only orderly line I have seen in China, and even Gu Laoshi made a comment about that.

I got to talk to Gu Laoshi a lot today, and that was pretty neat. He's really into history, so he knows the stories of each place very well, and he doesn't tire of seeing them. He took us to a spot in Tiantan where the Japanese tested bio-weapons when the occupied Beijing during the Second World War.  In that place, he told us about what happened there, but he also mentioned that he grew up in that area of the city and his high school class had to clean up Tiantan. He is such an interesting person, and I'm glad to get to talk to him.

Part 8: Pearl Market

After the Temple of Heaven, we went across the street to the Pearl Market. I went into shopping with a list of my ideas for souvenirs that I wanted to buy for friends and family. I completed my list very successfully!! I am actually pretty excited about the things I'm bringing back, and I did a good job of bargaining. For myself, I got two scarves, a silk printed wall scroll with pandas on it, and a head lamp for when I work in the theater.

I don't have any particularly entertaining bargaining stories, but I did get the prices I was aiming for. I think the funniest thing that happened was when one of the salesladies called Professor Carmichael my "Chinese friend" (zhongguo pengyou 中国朋友). She is very much not Chinese, and she couldn't stop laughing after she said that. I carried out most of my transactions in Chinese, and a lot of the time I just made my contemplating a price face when I didn't understand the rapid-fire sentences being thrown my way.

I had a lot of fun today and I really enjoy speaking in Mandarin when I am forced to because it makes me realize how much I actually do know and I can be successful in using it. 

Part 9: Peking Opera

After the Pearl Market, I got into a taxi with Andrea, Caleb, and Gu Laoshi to go to the Hugang Huigan Theater for dinner and Peking Opera. We were the first group to leave, so we waited for everyone else in the Opera House's restaurant. Gu Laoshi took care of dinner for us, and we had a number of tasty dishes. I loved the eggplant dish, the shrimp, green beans, both tofus, and the mala tomato, egg, and noodle soup. It was very good, especially because my lunch was rather lacking and I was hungry after a long day.

The opera itself was really awesome!! We saw a singing story and an acrobatic story, which are the two categories of Peking Opera. The theater space was really interesting. It was a procenium set up with musicians stage left. The stage was bare and the lighting instruments were all white light for visibility (really big Fresnels). The first story was about a girl and a boy who want to get married. The boy drops a jade bracelet outside her door so she will find it, and then the girl talks to the matchmaker and they are able to get married. The second story was a battle between air and water faeries.

The most striking thing about Peking Opera is the stylized movement. Steps, hand gestures, head tilts, and posture are all very unnatural in a performative way. I really liked how visual it was, because although I understood some of the lines, the physicality told the story much better. The acrobatics portion was spectacular. The lead woman did amazing tricks with these spears that the armies battled with, twirling, tossing, and juggling them with both her hands and her feet. I would love to see that again.

The music behind Peking Opera is rather dissonant. There is a lot of drumming leading up to a big beat when the actor snaps his/her head to look at the audience. The instruments are traditional Chinese instruments, and some sound good while others are irritating. The actors' voices are affected and the language is hard to understand, even for native speakers. The subtitles were inconsistant.

I really loved the performance and it inspired me to want to do more research on this performance style.

Part 10: Why Today is Awesome

Today is awesome because it didn't rain, and thus we got to have an amazing excursion!!

(My theory is that it didn't rain beacuse (a) it rained hard last night and (b) I carried both my umbrella and a spare pair of shoes all day, so if I hadn't it would have rained because I would have been caught unprepared.)

An Odd Day

Today was a very chill day. I had my test in Chinese first thing this morning, and I think it went well. We spent the rest of class watching video clips about famous places in China while learning vocabulary and fun facts about them. In the middle of Chinese class, we found out that tomorrow's field trip is cancelled, so we made a plan for tomorrow that we would start with our oral test and then watch Mulan in Chinese. I'm pretty pumped for this, but really disappointed about the field trip.

We are currently experiencing some rain in Beijing. Last Saturday was the worst rain Beijing has had in 61 years. There has been immense flooding in the northeast of China, and highways are still closed around the city. Over 60 people died from the rain this past Saturday in Beijing alone. Since rain is predicted with over 50% probability for the next five days, we are playing it safe with our touring.

Tomorrow we were supposed to leave quite early to go to the Great Wall for TCM. The plan was to go with an herbalist to pick herbs and learn what they do at a section of the Great Wall that is closed to tourists. It is a key feature of the TCM portion of this trip, and an overall highlight. I was very excited to be going, and I'm really sad that we are not going tomorrow, but since I'd rather not be there in rain and mudslides, it's a better choice. I just really hope that we can reschedule and that the weather lets up for our final excursions. It had better rain tomorrow just so I don't feel like the trip was cancelled for nothing.

Saturday we have an elaborate plan for the excursion. The ideal plan is that we meet at 8AM to take the subway to the Temple of Heaven, followed by shopping at the Pearl Market, then a trip to the Peking Opera. If the weather is bad, traffic will not allow us to do any of this, and a decision could be made as early as tomorrow at noon or as late as Saturday near 8AM. I really hope the weather forecasts are wrong because I need this excursion to happen. If we have to cancel, I will need to find time to go to the Temple on my own and make a trip back to the Pearl Market so I can finish up my souvenir shopping. I also really want to see Peking Opera, but since I got a taste of it at the Teahouse on Tuesday, I won't be as heartbroken if we miss it.

Basically, I'm kind of depressed about the weather and its effects on our plans. I have been counting on and looking forward to these events and I do not want to be sitting indoors at Bei Da watching it rain instead of having nice weather (or tolerable weather) and doing things. I only have sixteen days left in Beijing, so I want to make sure I see everything I want to see.

That said, I had a very relaxing day after class. I got to work with my photos a bit (I have over 1200), which was deleting blurry duplicates and rotating images for about two hours. I watched some videos online and I did laundry. I think this will be my last time doing laundry here, but I can never say that with certainty. I even cleaned my room, which feels really nice.

I want to take a moment to remark on the fact that I had a successful interaction in Chinese today using the vocabulary I've been learning. I went out in search of Bei Da t-shirts for myself and my mother, and after stopping at four different places, I decided to get the ones I found at a particular stall. The difficulty in the endeavor is that Chinese sizes are significantly smaller than American sizes, so my options were limited by the fact that I was looking for larges. I could only find a suitable design in white, but I wanted the purple one. I asked in Chinese if they had the purple in a large (你又没有紫色？) and I asked for the size (大号) and I asked for two of them (两). Using colors, sizes, and the you meiyou construction, I navigated the interaction. I think I am best at using my Chinese when I am alone and forced to figure out how to say what I need to say. This time it was as if I flipped a switch and just knew what to say. It was really cool, and I left the store with two t-shirts in the proper size having successfully spoken a language that I knew two words of only six weeks ago.

Speaking of six weeks, my friends from the Green Tech program have been in Hangzhou for the past two weeks and are leaving on Saturday. It was sad to separate from them in the first place, but now that they're leaving the country and I won't see them until September, I'm getting a bit nostalgic. Since they're leaving this week, it means I'm leaving soon. And, yes, while I have counted out my contact lenses for the remainder of the trip, I am sad about leaving. I'm also kind of getting ready to see my family again, but it won't be the same kind of cool as China. But, as John Green once wrote, imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia, and I'm really trying not to wallow while I'm here.

This has been a really disjointed post, but that's the kind of day I'm having. Just recording my thoughts and the goings on here in Beijing.

It is currently not raining.

Today is awesome because I bought t-shirts by speaking Chinese!

Panjiayuan Antique Market and Exploring

This morning when I got to Chinese class, we were informed that our TCM field trip had been cancelled, so we had the afternoon off. After an ordinary Chinese class where we went over what to expect on tomorrow's double exam (written then oral), I had a decent lunch at a cafeteria (green beans, cabbage, and rice with Philina and Gu Laoshi). It was pretty cool to get to talk to Gu Laoshi, especially because he's so busy with running the program that I could never tell if he knew who I was beyond a name on his list. For the record, he does, and we talked a bit about the program and what to expect, and he approved of the way I ordered my food without using English.

For the afternoon and evening, I went on an excursion with Maitreyi, Pooja, and Marissa. We started by going to the Panjiayuan Antique Market expecting to shop but actually just looking at the stalls. It was a flea market in the most classic sense of the term, and after a while of walking around, each stall seemed to be selling the exact same collection of stuff that none of us felt the need to buy. I'm definitely glad I saw it because it was very China, but I didn't really see anything I would consider buying except for shadow puppets, which I abstained from purchasing today.

When we were done, around 4:30, we walked back to the subway stop just as it started to rain. We took the subway to the stop with the China World Trade Center in the global business district because there was an Indian restaurant that Pooja had heard of as being the best in Beijing. We got off the subway and explored the World Trade Center for a little while, and then walked over to the building with the restaurant.

The China World Trade Center and surrounding area was basically a high class foreign (European and American) designer shopping mall. The one we walked through was fairly deserted, which was kind of depressing, particularly because of all the employees who looked so bored. We did a lot of poking around in that building, just walking around and looking at things. We ultimately found a bookstore that had books in both English and Chinese, so it was fun to look at the selection there, and I ended up buying a paperback because I have been without a book for two weeks and I really wanted a new one.

Getting to the restaurant was much more difficult than expected. We had to walk straight back from the subway stop, but there was eventually a building in the way, so we walked around it, except we took the long way around, so it was kind of a torturous walk. The restaurant was called The Taj Pavilion, and it was in the China Overseas Plaza which was another shopping mall. Walking around the district, though, let me look at the really cool modern architecture of Beijing's skyscrapers, so that was a plus. There were some really interesting buildings that I took pictures of.

The food at this restaurant was really good. Pooja and Maitreyi took care of the ordering since they were the experts on Indian food, and we ate naan, rice, daal, kofta, and two types of cooked cheese. It was all really delicious, and the restaurant had a nice atmosphere as well. The only strange thing was that it was entirely empty; we were literally the only customers the entire time we were there. The manager was Indian and spoke English, we ate with forks, and the food was wonderful, so we were all very happy.

We read magazines on the subway ride home, I stopped at the C-store, then I went to my dorm for some serious studying for tomorrow's Chinese test. I'm not too worried about it, I just need to go over the words a bunch so I can be functionally literate when he passes out the papers. I honestly believe that our daily vocab quizzes are not helping me learn the vocab because the characters I could write this morning I don't think I could write now. Lots of short term storage, but maybe the reinforcement is helping me move it to long term. I don't know; it's just frustrating to have to memorize so much each night.

Today is awesome because I had a really cool excursion this afternoon.

Lao She Teahouse (for real this time)

Today was a pretty good day (bucuo 不错). I had an ordinary Chinese class in the morning, but lunch was a little different today. Instead of bringing in food for us, the program directors put money on our ID cards and we were sent off to the cafeterias to find our own food that we would enjoy. It was a really nice change of pace, and I had an eggplant and green bean dish with rice. After the midday break, we had a pretty good lecture on herbal medicine in TCM class. Our professor today was a researcher in western medicine who is testing vanadium compounds to reduce insulin resistance in people with diabetes. He will also be giving our lecture on the integration of TCM and Western Medicine. I enjoyed his lecture, his English was very good, and he had a particularly deep voice.

At 6PM, I met with four others to go to the Lao She Teahouse. We took the subway there, and it was the most crowded I have ever seen the subway. I felt pretty claustrophobic by the time we transferred lines. We got to the teahouse with plenty of time, got our tickets, and were seated at our table. There were five of us, and the tables seat eight, so a group of three including an adorable little girl in a pink outfit were also seated with us, but they came late.

Upon sitting down, we were promptly served jasmine tea, sunflower seeds, a pea flour cake, and a sticky rice and red bean paste confection. The show began with a tea ceremony, which was rather short, and then the emcee introduced the next act. We saw singing, acrobatic plate twirling, oral mimicry, Peking Opera, long spout teapot performance, Peking Repartee, face-changing Sichuan opera, and Chinese Kung Fu (zhongwen gong fu 中文功夫). My favorites were the Sichuan opera, kung fu, and long spout teapot performance. The others were a little obscure for me, and since I didn't understand 98% of the Chinese they spoke, the repartee wasn't funny for me.

The Sichuan opera was a routine of stylized movement that emphasized the changing of the design of a mask worn by the performers. It was a quick change trick, and those are always entertaining. The kung fu routine was far more performative than martial, and just as strange an art with its hard-soft fusion as it ever has been to a Tae Kwon Do practitioner, but it was really fun to watch the flipping and wrist flicking and tricks with fans and flags. The long spout teapot performance consisted of a woman and two men doing a tea ceremony, only the hip hop remix. The long spout teapots were twirled and flipped and each segment ended with some fancy way of pouring the tea. It was really cool, especially with the juxtaposition of ancient and modern in the routine.

I really enjoyed watching the audience for parts of the show. I got the sense that being a groundling at the Globe would be somewhat like this experience. The audience does not get quiet, there is constant conversation, much response to the performance including yelling back to the performers, and the constant movement of people struck me as being very zhong guo. I definitely do not want all audience experiences to be full of so much extra noise, but it was fun to be more relaxed than in the US.

After the show, I got a dragon shadow puppet. This one has rods and I got to try it out before I bought it, but this is really the last one. I am kicking the addiction before it forms. They're just so pretty!! The man at the table had a shadow screen and light set up to demonstrate his puppets, and I really like the dragon.

As we were walking home from the subway, I realized a change in my perceptions. I said to my friend, "you know you've been in China too long when you can tell that you're breathing different kinds of secondhand smoke." Indeed, I have reached that point. With the amount of air pollution here, I don't think things will phase me as much when I return. That's not to say that secondhand smoke doesn't bother me anymore; it does, and a lot, too, but I've been exposed to so much that I can tell when people are smoking different things.

Today is awesome because I actually got to see the performance at the Lao She Teahouse.

It's Only Monday?

Today was the most ordinary of days. I went to Chinese class, had lunch, did my homework, went to TCM class (the lecture was on diagnostic and therapeutic strategies), and then came home. I made a trip to the store to buy more paper for flashcards, and I had some interesting conversations with classmates. I think that's about it; I really needed to take the evening off, so I did. It felt like a Wednesday all day, particularly because we had so many announcements at lunch. There were 7: the rain on Saturday was the heaviest in 61 years, there was enormous flooding and 31 people died; TCM field trip leaves at 1:00 on Wednesday; wear pants to the TCM field trip on Friday; schedule for Saturday's excursion; changing the lunch format, so bring ID cards to get lunch money tomorrow; two others that were more minor and I can't remember off the top of my head. There's nothing really to post about, but I needed to record the day for continuity's sake.

Today is awesome because I got a perfect score on my tingxie (Chinese quiz).

798 Art District

I FOUND MY SHADOW PUPPETS!!!!! IT'S SO EXCITING!!!!

So, I went to the 798 Art District in Beijing today with eight friends. My roommate organized the trip, and since it rained so much yesterday we weren't planning on going because it was supposed to rain again today, but it didn't so she woke me up and we went.

First of all, yesterday's rain was unbelievably cleansing. When I went outside this morning, the sky was visible and blue, the sun was out and strong, and everything was beautiful. It made me realize that the air had been particularly bad the last few days. I always get so excited when I can see the sky here because quite often it is cloudy or smoggy or some combination of the two. It was a great day to be outside. Oh, and it wasn't terribly hot either, which was even better.

After arriving via two subway lines and a taxi, we started walking around the area. We went into a bunch of galleries and shops, and from what other people have been talking about after they went, I don't think we even saw the same things, which speaks to how extensive the district is. The first gallery we went to was art about contemporary Asia, and I really liked a lot of the paintings. The next gallery had paintings and sculptures reminiscent of an artist whose name eludes me, but he was European and went to the Caribbean and had a very fusion style.

The shops we saw included an ocarina store when the salesperson was playing along with recorded music, a hipster record store, lots of clothing and jewelry stores, and some craft stores with journals, sketchbooks, and other art supplies. I found some painted bookmarks in a shop that I thought were really beautiful. I'm either going to keep them or give them to friends as souvenirs, but either way, they are really pretty. I also found a keychain that replicates the sign for the subway stop near campus, and I got it for myself because it has sentimental value.

I found my first shadow puppet in a shop that also sold things like t-shirts and kaleidoscopes. They had a stack of them sitting on the table and I looked through all of them before choosing. It is a woman with a very detailed headdress and delicate hands. We continued onto a few more places, then walked into a store that had a wall full of shadow puppets. Some were colored and others not, but because the colors of the Chinese puppets are so distinct, that was the kind I wanted to get. I bought a similar package, but this one had a pair of puppets, a man and a woman, equally ornate. I almost got a dragon, but I liked these better. If I see a dragon I might get it, but now I have three shadow puppets, so I probably don't need it. None of them came with rods, so if I do want to use them, I'd have to attach them myself, but all the joints are there. The shadow puppet was a souvenir I really wanted to get for myself because I find the Chinese tradition to be particularly wonderful. I will be going to a puppet show in the next three weeks, and I'm really excited about it. Ok, nerd-out over.

The art we saw was really cool. There were different types of things in different areas. For instance, there was a red-painted sculpture of caged dinosaurs outside one gallery. One space had really cool paintings of images distorted by rain. Another had a truck made out of bone-shaped medium. There were photographs and prints of all kinds. Outside, there were sculptures of soldiers, faces, ordinary people, a fist. I really liked walking around here! 

When it got to be dinner time, we went for Korean barbeque. I had never eaten Korean food before, but since three of are party were Korean, I was really excited to try. We ordered a bunch of different meats, and my favorite was the marinated chicken, but I also liked the marinated beef a lot. We had a fermented bean soup and a pumpkin soup that were both extremely delicious. My favorite side dish was a noodle salad, and we also grilled some vegetables that were awesome. The format of Korean barbeque makes for a very social experience. We were at the restaurant for probably two hours, and we were just eating and enjoying being together.

We got home from our day around 9PM, I did my homework, and then went to bed.

Today is awesome because I found meaningful souvenirs for myself while spending time with a really great group of friends!

West Qing Tombs in the Rain

Today was a Saturday excursion to the West Qing Tombs. However, this was no ordinary excursion due to the miserably rainy weather. It was pouring on and off all day and the sky darkened to look like late evening and night when it was the peak of midday. That said, the tombs were a piece of history that was really amazing to explore.

We started with a two and a half hour bus ride southwest of the city. The first tomb we visited was for the fourth Qing Emperor. This was a complex similar to the Forbidden City, but smaller and more austere. There were about three layers to this place rather than the infinite ones from the first excursion. We saw the kitchen, the well, some outer buildings, and we walked on the building that is above the burial chamber, but since the technology to prevent the oxidation of hermetically sealed relics has yet to be developed, the underground portion is not open.

At this tomb, I talked to our Bei Da representative a little bit. Lee is a grad student who works with the administrators who coordinate our program, so he has been on all our excursions. He said he had never been to the Qing tombs before, but he liked them better than the Forbidden City because none of it has been refurbished, so it's the original materials. That's very characteristic of how Chinese people like to explore and experience history: the realer the better. I think that I enjoyed the Forbidden City for it's freshness and accessibility, but hearing from Lee as well as other natives that the originality was what made the place special changed my perspective on our activity and made me find it a lot more interesting.

We took a lunch break at a nearby restaurant that was surprisingly good for all the circumstances. My table ordered scallion pancakes, corn cakes, white rice, fried rice, two eggplant dishes, green beans and chicken, kung pao chicken, potatoes and soybeans, tomato and egg, and mushroom and egg. I liked each of the dishes, and I think my favorite was the first of the two eggplant dishes we tried.

I really love Chinese eggplant dishes. In the US, eggplant tends to be parmesean, but here it is made in sauces with garlic, ginger, and soy such that there is a wonderfully savory-sweet flavor to the hearty vegetable. I also love the cabbage dishes and the cold cucumber dishes, but the eggplant is by far the best AND I know the Chinese word for eggplant, so that gives me a great advantage.

In the early afternoon, we visited the ninth Qing Eperor's tomb which does have the underground component open to the public since it was initially raided by thieves. That was a really cool place to visit and had an Indiana Jones type feel to being there. It was a tunnel with a series of carved doors leading to two coffins, that of the emperor and his wife. The concubines had their own tomb.

I walked out of that area with Gu Laoshi, and he told me that he had been reading about these emperors, so it was completing his experience of their history to be there in person. I am really happy to have had that conversation because it was a moment to easily share expertise and excitement at doing our activity.

While we were visiting the ninth emperor's visiting hall, the rain picked up enormously. To get back to the bus, however, we were forced to walk through an ankle-deep moat that ran along the entire width of the exit. At that point I spoke up about needing to go back to the dorms before the planned Peking Opera because I was soaked and there was no way that I could make it with wet feet, and I knew that I wasn't the only one. We did end up heading back, but not until after I was entirely soaked (like jumped in a swimming pool soaked) on the way to the bus.

Due to traffic and weather conditions, we have postponed our trip to the Peking Opera, and, honestly, I am glad for it because it was too miserable to be in that rain. It was beyond the help of rain gear, and to try to do one more activity today would have been too much. I am glad that it's a reschedule, though, because my theater nerdy self does not want to miss such a stylized form of performance.

When we got back, I went to my dorm room and did not leave because I was tired and cold and not willing to brave the rain any more. I had a nice skype with my parents and played around with a photo-sharing website for a while, so it was definitely time well spent, particularly because my life here has been lacking in time to simply relax.

Today is awesome because

Off the Beaten Path

Today was an afternoon off from class, so after an ordinary Chinese class (we learned some phone call dialogue) and a brief lunch meeting about tomorrow's excursion, I went with Carmichael Laoshi (aka Professor Carmichael, aka the fellow from my residential college who is also on this trip) in search of some tourism at the Niujie Mosque and the Temple of the Origin of Dharma.

Well, we took a quick subway ride on Line 4, and easily found the mosque, only we couldn't go in because of reasons, and so I snapped some photos from the outside. This is the oldest mosque in China and dates from the Song Dynasty. It is still in use and is home to the largest concentration of Chinese Muslims. The building from the outside had classic Chinese architecture reminiscent of any building of the era, but was in a very modern area that had a lot of Hallal restaurants. I was satisfied with taking pictures from the outside.

We proceeded to try to find the Temple, but it was a lot more difficult than we expected. It was supposed to be around the block from the Mosque, and I think we found the compound, but there was no easily accessible entrance, so we ended up wandering through the surrounding Hutongs trying to find it but really having quite a nice time exploring. We did find the Hunan Guild Hall, which is where Mao Zedong lived in Beijing, and the Lianhua Temple, where scholars have lived and worked and dates from the Ming era.

After wandering the Hutongs for about two hours, we pulled out all our maps and tried to find some other things nearby. We decided to head to a park which was literally in the middle of the city, right by Xuanwu Hospital. The park was a little oasis in the middle of the city. There were gorgeous trees, shrubs, roses, and other flowers in a secluded, quiet environment with the bustling city just one step away. It is a very interesting juxtaposition, especially with the way sound gets muffled in the park itself.

After the park, we started to make our way toward a shopping tourist Hutong that was mentioned in my map book. On the way, we found a grocery store which we stopped in to get some cold beverages, look at the packages, and I got some hand sanitizer wipes because I really like those. It is really a lot of fun to look around these everyday type places! As we continued on our way, we got lost in a gated community and got some funny looks from the residents until we realized our mistake and then proceeded through the back streets back to the main road.

It was then that Professor Carmichael mentioned that we were in a particularly affluent area. She pointed out the presence of gated communities, the quality of the architecture, the types of cars, the proximity to the city center, and the lack of street vendors. We really did not see any street vendors all day, and I usually get targeted by them, so that was interesting and refreshing. We wandered a lot more, and walked through a legitimate, unrenovated Hutong, but could not find the area we were looking for, so then headed back toward the Mosque to find a restaurant for dinner.

We ate a place called Youth Restaurant. It had a very nice, clean, modern atmosphere, and it was filled with locals. It was then that we realized that we had not seen any other foreigners all day, and it was really cool to be so far off the beaten path. For dinner we had three cold dishes (cucumbers with garlic, shredded tofu, and tofu wrapped vegetables) and two hot dishes (kung pao chicken and sauteed cauliflower). I really liked everything we ordered. The cucmbers were very light and the garlic was delicous. The shredded tofu had a very clean taste with some earthy bitterness from the greens mixed in. The wrapped vegetables were fresh with a wonderful dipping sauce. The chicken had a stickier, sweeter sauce than usual which I enjoyed as a counterpoint to the spiciness, and the cauliflower had the flavorful spicy taste that I like.

After dinner, we subwayed back to campus. My favorite thing about the day is that we never actually made it to any of the spots we thought about hitting, but we had a great time anyway and conversation never lagged. We talked about Beijing, Bei Da, Northwestern, the residential college, how our classes are going, experiences with food, trouble with the internet, things we study and are interested in, and if/how we would get back to China. It was really nice to just talk.

There were a lot of things that she asked me about what I'm studying and how I see it playing into my future, also incorporating other interests she knows I have, and I had never thought about the particular questions or their answers before, but I was able to answer them. In doing so, I realized that I actually do know a lot about myself, where I want to be, and what my opinions on these topics are, and that I can voice them in an intelligible fashion. I didn't realize it in the moment, but I'm really proud that I've thought about a topic that's important to me enough to have an opinion without having to rehearse it. I guess it's my take on things, so now I just have to develop it further.

Today is awesome because I got to explore a new district of Beijing.

TCM Philosophy Sharing Time

Today was literally Chinese class, lunch, break for homework, TCM class, back to the dorm. Nothing particularly unique or exciting happened today, but I will elaborate on TCM class because that's the unique and exciting thing about this session.

We continued talking about Yin-Yang Theory and talked about the 5 Phases/Elements. The conclusion to the Yin-Yang discussion was classifying ailments and behaviors as excesses or deficiencies of Yin and Yang. The five we discussed were staying up very late, indulgence in sex, addiction to hot foods, sitting doing nothing and eating too much, and drinking too many cold beverages. Basically, the inactive and cold things were related to Yin Excess/Yang Deficiency and the active and hot things were Yang Excess/Yin Deficiency. There are slight differences between the primary cause of illness, but since the two aspects wax and wane together, they are both the correct answer.

The five phases are related to the five directions (north, south, east, west, center) and five seasons (winter, spring, summer, late summer, autumn). The elements are wood, earth, water, metal, and fire. They are all interrelated with each other as well as Yin and Yang. The elements both promote and check each other to keep things in balance.

We also talked about the five major organs: heart, lungs, spleen, liver, and kidneys. Their functions in TCM are partly the same as in biomedicine, but there is a strong philosophical/experiential component to how they are classified. The entire body is connected through qi and jing, energy and fuel, and the flow of these essential components of the universe distinguishes each organ.

I really like this class. It is very interesting because a lot of the time this type of approach to the body and health is regarded as far out mumbo jumbo, but it is a very productive philosophy to think about how things are interrelated and see the body as a whole rather than organ by organ. I love the philosophical aspect to it because there is the constant reminder of humanity and that behavior is as important as putting a chemical into your system to alleviate symptoms. I'm really excited for class next week: we have two lectures and two field trips, one of which is to learn about herbs at the Great Wall.

It was overall a really relaxed day, which I needed because I'm still recovering from being tired during the intersession trip. We had normal bedtimes but consistently woke up at least three hours earlier than normal, so I've been pretty wiped. It's good to have relaxed today because I am afraid that if I take a whole day to stay in the dorm, I will miss out on getting to see something truly spectacular about this city.

Today is awesome because of our hilarious moment in TCM today. Our professor was trying to demonstrate how the heart and mind are connected, so he suddenly slammed his hand onto the desk, which startled all of us and raised our heart rates, demonstrating his point very clearly. It was really funny, particularly because we all jumped at the same time.

The Start of Something New

I had class with my new Chinese teacher this morning. Yao Laoshi is teaching this class of now seven people by himself. He uses powerpoint to present the vocab and grammar, and writes on the board to show us stroke order instead of using the computer. I like that he presents the grammar in a clear way and has a syllabus that moves thematically. I really miss the smiles, laughter, and warmth we had in class with Zhang Laoshi and the TAs. For the next few weeks, we have daily dictations, lots of new vocab, weekly oral quizzes, and weekly written quizzes. I just have to keep learning my characters, and it will be fine. I don't think we will be doing any singing in this class. At lunch, my TA from last session walked by and called me over using my Chinese name, which I actually responded to. It was really nice to see her, particularly because I didn't see her in class for the first time in five weeks.

Traditional Chinese Medicine class is going to be so cool!!! We got a 290-page coursepack first thing that had a syllabus and day-by-day breakdown of what we will be covering in the class. Today's lecture was on Qi (Chi) and the Theory of Yin-Yang. Basically, Qi is the invisible particulate essence of what makes things thingy. The Theory of Yin-Yang is the dialectic in all things physical, and this extends to be applicable to health. I'm really excited about what we're learning in the class, particularly because it is more philosophical. We have the same lecturer for the first three classes, 1-2 field trips per week (pharmacy, health center, acupuncture, herb picking at the Great Wall, just to name a few), and a drop day each week. I'm very impressed by the organization of the class.

Knowing which afternoons we have off, we have already started planning excursions. I love that I know in advance when I'll have some extra free time to get around Beijing; it means that I can finish my tourist list!! I was starting to pare it down because I didn't think I'd have time to get everywhere, but it's actually going to happen because I'll be able to leave campus at 1 instead of 4. The things that are left on my list are visiting the Temple of the Origin of Dharma, the Niujie Mosque, Beihai Park, Jihngshan Park, the Lao She Teahouse, the Nanluoguxiang Hutong, and the puppet show. I'm planning on hitting the first two this Friday, the following three on another day, and then the last two will fit in on one of the other free days.

Being back at Bei Da has felt so good. I was walking to class, and I had room to spread my arms and not be pushed by other people. I am so comfortable in my room, and though I'm still catching up on sleep, it's really great to have my routine locations once more. It's so interesting how quickly this place has become my place, just a little bit. The constants of being a student help me adjust wherever I am.

Today is awesome because everything is falling into place for this second academic session to be amazingly awesome!

Intersession of Awesome!

Hello, friends!

It's been a while since I've posted because I've been away from internet for the last week! I had my first round of finals for Chinese and Public Health classes last Tuesday and Wednesday, and they both went well, but on Thursday I left Beijing for a 5-day trip to the South.

On Thursday, a group of 20 of us took a 20-hour sleeper train from Beijing to Huangshan (Yellow Mountain). Friday, we climbed up the mountain, which was a huge physical test. I climbed stairs for thirty minutes, then I had to go down all the stairs I had just climbed to take a cable car to the meeting point because that half hour was only a quarter of the way there. After lunch, we all hiked to the top of the mountain, where we stayed in a hotel/hostel/camp cabin type setup where we were ten to a room in bunk beds. The mountain was so cool. I have never really experienced mountains before, and this one was amazing. There were such interesting trees that I wished I had brought a Chinese tree identification book with me to figure out what they were. The rocks were beautiful, the fog made everything mysterious, and looking down on how far we had come up was a really great feeling.

Saturday, we woke up at 4:20AM planning on seeing the sun rise, but it was cloudy/foggy and raining, so we went back to sleep for another two hours and then did some more hiking after breakfast. Chinese breakfast is really interesting; there is rice porridge to which you add vegetables, fried rice, hard boiled tea eggs, pumpkin, noodles, and all sorts of sweet and savory pastries. It is very different from the yogurt I have been eating, but delicious in its own way. After climbing down the mountain, we took a bus to Huangshan City where we visited Tunxi Ancient Street for tea and shopping. We went back there after dinner to walk around as well. It was a really cool area that had the old Chinese look you go to China to see. The shops on the street sold tea, inkstones, and a lot of the same souvenirs and jewelry.

Our hotels for the other nights were pretty nice. We were two to a room and we each had our own beds, and the bathrooms were pretty clean. Bathrooms were always questionable on this trip. I haven't really talked about them much, but in China, public toilets are squat toilets. They are always messy and smell really bad and there are never soap or paper towels/hand dryers. You have to bring your own toilet paper and hand sanitizer. It tooke me a week to get up enough courage to even try to use one. This trip had a surprising abundance of western toilets, and I always celebrate when I find them here. Having that in the hotels was really amazing and if we had only had that, it would have been comfortable for me.

On Sunday, we left Huangshan City and drove to Qiandao Lake (Thousand Island Lake). The drive there was beautiful; I was sitting next to my friend, Andrea, and we kept pointing out pretty things to each other out the window. We went for a boat ride on the lake, and stopped at three of the islands. This excursion was a very Chinese experience because it exposed us to their internal tourist culture. It is cutthroat; there is a lot of pushing and horn honking. The first island is what our tour guide, Jaky (like Jackie Chan), called the best island. It was a hill that we climbed up and had an amazing view of the lake and other islands. To get down, we took the slide. They made tracks with fake grass and gave you a little wooden boat to sit in and slide down. That was a lot of fun. The second island was Snake Island which was a rather upsetting experience because we all went in with American expectations of animal kindness, but in China the animals are there to be entertainment for the humans, and we all rushed through that island because we couldn't handle the way people were treating the snakes. The third island had a temple on it, and I ran up the stairs to the top of this area that had an arch, and the view from up there was really pretty. After the lake, we drove to Hangzhou, where we spent the night.

Our last day away was spent at the West Lake on Hangzhou and the Ancient Street there. The Ancient Street, again, consisted of old architecture with shop after shop of the same souvenirs. The West Lake, however, was gorgeous. It is the location of many love stories and considered the most beautiful and romantic place in China. We took a boat ride on the lake, saw the fish pond, and then went to Ancient Street. From Ancient Street, we went to the train station, where we took the bullet train from Hangzhou to Beijing. That was a seven hour voyage in a car that was like an airplane if airplanes gave each person three times the legroom and one-third more chair space. For dinner on the train, it was funny because my Asian friend ordered the same food I did and was handed her box with chopsticks and I was given mine with a spork. I haven't used western utensils since my arrival, so we just laughed at that because it was so ridiculous.

I set a few goals for myself on this trip, and I met all of them. The first was to take a picture with each person I was traveling with. The second was to take at least 200 photos (I took 225). The third was to fill my journal with my memories, and I wrote all 40 pages. Each time I reached those milestones, which I hadn't shared with anyone, I felt really great and accomplished. They were goals that were important to me so I could document, remember, and enjoy the trip, and I did just that. 

 Tuesday was a free recovery day in Beijing. I slept in, did my laundry, and had an afternoon excursion to the Temple of Confucius and the Silk Market. The temple was pretty cool, it was the first one I've seen that has not been Buddhist, and it was a very nice place to walk around. We got a little lost on our way back to the subway and found this really cool hutong that had restaurants, cafes, and indie shops that we definitely want to go back to. The Silk Market was the same stuff as last time, and I didn't really need or want anything else, but I had a lot of fun watching my friend Haley bargain for the things she wanted. She speaks fantastic Chinese, but looks very blond and American, so the vendors are always very confused by her. She is also fierce with the haggling and generally gets her price, so we had a pretty good time. We found a restaurant nearby for dinner, and it was Shanghai style food that was absolutely delicious. We had cold cucumbers in a soy/garlic/peanut dressing, green beans, eggplant, a tofu dish, kung pao chicken, beef and mushrooms, noodles with scallions, a pork dish I didn't eat but the others enjoyed, and "squirrel fish" which is fish that looks like a squirrel the way they plate it. I loved the food, particularly the chicken and vegetable dishes.

I think the group I traveled with really bonded, and I feel a lot closer to the friends I made in the first four weeks of this program. We did a lot in a short amount of time, had a whole bunch of physical exertion, and came home with shared experiences and inside jokes. The intersession vacation was a truly wonderful experience.

We start our next set of classes tomorrow, so for me that means a new Chinese teacher and the beginning of the Traditional Chinese Medicine class. I am so excited to intensively learn about TCM! There are just a few things left on my tourism list, and I am thrilled about that because I think I can make them happen even on weeknights. This long weekend was really great, and I am so happy to have travelled to another part of this amazing country. I can't believe that this is week five of eight already.


Today is awesome because I got to explore some cool places and eat good food with great friends.

I am the Coconut Steward

Today was the last day of first session classes!! We learned some practical Chinese and a song in class today, and our bargaining phrases got us candy and seaweed. Our TA gave a presentation based on her trip to Hongzhou from last June, and it was a generally fun yet bittersweet class. I am seriously going to miss this teaching team. The public health exam was answering four of six questions in essay format. They each addressed some topic covered in the course, the Lancet articles, or both, and then asked for a description of the issue and proposed solutions. It was straightforward, which I appreciated. As an afterthought, though, I realized that my Chinese professors may not be able to read my cursive handwriting, but that's how I hand write essays. If they can't read it, we'll figure it out.

This afternoon, I ran errands with Maddy and then realized how much organizing I needed to do so I could pack for my week-long vacation. However, I had little time to deal with it because I was meeting Maddy, Helen, and Julia for dinner at 6:15. We were going to meet Helen's cousin in Wangfujing, and I quickly realized that on the last night of the entire group being together, we were having dinner in the same group as the first night we had to figure out our own dinner plans (Helen's cousin included).

Wangfujing is such a cool area. It is described as the Times Square of Beijing. The subway station is under a shopping mall that has western-style stores, and there are a lot of American stores like Gap, Zara (well, this one may not be exactly American, but they have it in America and it's not Chinese), and Forever 21 on the main road. We walked past the Dong Hua Men Night Market on the way to dinner, which was on my tourism list but I didn't think I'd get to it.

We ate dinner at a pretty great restaurant. I don't know what it's called, but we ate delicious food. The table was set with single use place settings that were wrapped in plastic and the walls had a shimmery silver circle patterned wallpaper. We ate cold peanut salad, the most delicious cabbage salad I have ever had and I want to eat it all the time, a cold sampler plate that I didn't eat much of, a tofu dish, peas and beef, Sichuan spicy beef, and fish head Beijing style with pancake. The sauce from the fish was extremely delicious, and the pancake is for dipping in the sauce. Maddy got to complete her goal of eating a face by eating the cheeks, eye, and tongue of the fish. I like fish, but here there are always a lot of bones, whereas in the US the fish tends not to have bones. The cabbage was my favorite, but the pancakes dipped in sauce were a close second tied with the peas.

Before and after dinner we walked through the Dong Hua Men Night Market. This is a row of food stalls that sell the things you think of when expecting exotic food in China: silk worm chrysalis, sheep testicles, starfish, scorpion, every type of tentacle. We didn't get that adventurous because we ate a safe dinner in a restaurant, but Maddy got a coconut to drink and disappointing fried banana that trickily didn't have any banana, and Helen drank a plum juice that had dry ice in it. The dry ice thing was really cool; the cloud of steam from it hitting the liquid poured out of the opening of the lid of the cup and the cup was clear so you could see it billowing from the liquid. When Maddy didn't have enough hands to eat her banana and carry her coconut, I held the coconut for her, and she called me the "Coconut Steward." I really liked the title, so it became the title of tonight's post.

After walking around Wangfujing some more, passing a church with a group of dancers who looked like they were having zero fun whatsoever doing a dance that looked wonderfully fun and a group of people singing about how much they love Beijing, I hopped on the subway home to get ready for my week-long voyage to the South.

Tomorrow, I'm getting on a train that will go overnight to Huangshan (the Yellow Mountain), then it will be a few days of hiking and nature toursim before coming back to Beijing on the train for another four-week session of classes.

Since this next week is vacation, I will not have internet access, and therefore will not be posting until I return from the trip. I will post about vacation when I get back.

Today is awesome because of finishing classes, being the Coconut Steward, and accidental tourism accomplishments.

CHOLO

This was the second to last day of the first academic session! It has gone so quickly, and I have learned so much. We had our Chinese test today, and it went very well. We had to learn about 200 words, most of which have two characters made up of 1-4 radicals, so there was a lot to know, and while I did forget a few, I feel really good about the progress I have made in learning the language.

Before lunch, we had a lecture from the former mayor of a city one hour away from Beijing. The city is much less developed than Beijing, but it is ahead in its use of green technology because of this mayor's initiatives in office. He was a very interesting speaker, and he talked about why he thinks environmental protection is important and what he did in office as mayor to bring green technology to his city. He now works for the Ministry of Culture, so he has a new perspective on the problems China faces and how to solve them.

He thinks green technology and environmental protection are important because we have moved from an age of living in harmony with nature to an age of consumption, so now we are in a new age of preservation. He brought a solar panel manufacturing factory to his city, which brought many jobs, and the city uses primarily solar power to run things electrically and reduce carbon emissions. He repeatedly offered to take us on a tour of the factory, and overall it was a pretty great talk.

We had our last Public Health lecture today on Infectious Diseases in China, and the lecturer was really good; however, I found her presentation to be in the pattern of this is the disease, here are some numbers, this is what we are striving to do, this is what makes it hard. While the pattern was not the most creative presentation format, it was very organized and I knew what she was going to tell me about in each slide.

We have our test tomorrow, and we have no idea what will be on it. It is open note, so I will have my transcripts of the lectures with me as well as my laptop which has a series of articles from The Lancet that we can cite. It shouldn't be too hard, but I really wish we had been given a syllabus on the first day that outlined what the lectures were going to be about, when we had field trips, where the field trips were, and what/how we will be assessed.

I had an early dinner on campus with some friends, then spent the rest of the evening reading for tomorrow's test, doing laundry in preparation for this weekend's trip, and relaxing before bed.

I just want to throw in some reflection at the end of this event summary since I'm nearing the halfway point of my program. I really love Beijing. This has been an amazing opportunity to live and learn in a completely new environment. I have had such an amazing time being a student and a tourist, and I'm trying my best (and I think succeeding for the most part) not to let things pass me by.

The saying "you only live once" has been abbreviated by my generation to YOLO, and my fellow students have come up with our own version: CHOLO, which means "China only once" (though the initials don't work out as well. I think we each have our own version of CHOLO, and for me, I try to get sleep, keep up with all the things that Gu Laoshi programmed for us (because his programming is very purposeful), and make things happen so I don't feel like I missed out on something big after I return to the States. My CHOLO is staying in on Saturday night so I can revel in Sunday's tourism. My CHOLO is buying foods when I don't know what they are because the labels are in Chinese, but trying them anyway. My CHOLO is noting and appreciating for better or worse the everyday things that are different about China, like the grocery store, the signage, the disparities between urban and rural areas, the food, the traffic, the air, etc.

The air and traffic have been bothering me a bit lately, so it's good that I'm getting out of the city for a few days. There can be a whole free lane, but for some reason, the bikes and cars are steered toward me as I'm walking despite the free space. I had some trouble breathing as we walked to dinner tonight, and I'm thinking more and more seriously about finding myself a mask to wear for a few days.

On a different note, I find the grocery store to be really fun. In China, superstores that sell everything are very common, so after going underground on a rampscalator (exactly what it sounds like), you walk through a mall to get to the first level of Carre-Four. That floor sells household supplies like dishes and linens, bicycles and mopeds, and clothing. It's where I got my water bottle and Swiffer-like broom. The you take your cart up another rampscalator to get to the food level. The first thing you see are all the breads, then you turn toward packaged foods on the right and produce on the left. You weigh your produce and get a sticker before going to the checkout, unlike in America where the scanner is also a scale. I really like looking at all the packages because there are a mix of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (lots of Korean) snack foods that all have flashy packaging. The grocery store is also one of the few places that accepts a credit card.

China functions in a cash economy, which is very different from other parts of the world where cash is not generally carried and everyone pays with a card. From what I've observed of Chinese culture, it makes perfect sense that it is this way. The concept of debt and credit as they function in this system would not fly here, and cash is very straightforward. The bills come in denominations of 100, 50, 20, 10, 5, 1, 0.50, and 0.10. The coins are 1, 0.50, and 0.10. The bills vary by size, with 100 as the largest physically and the "cent" bills the smallest.

Shifting gears again, I have been bothered by some sanitary practices in China. For instance, spitting is very common and about 60% of men smoke. People don't cover their coughs, and children are taken to the side of the path to urinate in public places. I'm not sure if I simply have high standards of clean behavior, but what I don't get is why they don't go to the nearby toilets. Yes, they smell, but it's not where people walk. I often think of all the saliva and other fluids that have dried on the pavement that end up on the soles of my shoes, and it grosses me out. A lot. And I wonder if people who come from a place with squat toilets are as confused by western toilets as westerners are by the squat toilets. I did figure out that handicapped bathrooms here are western style, though, so that's a comfort. And McDonalds has western bathrooms; more points for them.

I think I want to take more pictures of the cafeterias, cafeteria food, and campus in general. I once made a vlog of walking through a theater I was working in, so I might make something similar for Bei Da's campus. I'm starting to worry that there are things I'm taking for granted without properly documenting them when they are novel. Another part of CHOLO, I suppose.

I also finished the book I started on the airplane. It's called Anna and the French Kiss and it was about a high school senior whose father decided she should spend her last year of high school at School of America in Paris. There, she has many misunderstandings with pretty much all of her friends and ends up falling in love with her best friend. I really liked the book because it was fun, though Anna often frustrated me to no end. It started with her being in Paris and not knowing any French, which I read at the time I ended up in Beijing without knowing Chinese, so her adjustment to a new country was very familiar to me and I was reading her story parallel to my own.

Today is awesome because I had a really fun conversation with my Chinese TAs. It was a lot of giggling and "In America...?" and talking about books, movies, and celebrities.

Surprise Field Trip and Spontaneous TCM

Today I had Chinese class and a surprise field trip for public health. In Chinese, we went over the vocab for the final chapter of the textbook that we will be covering and wrapped up before tomorrow's "quiz" wihc is actually our midterm. I had 160 characters to learn for thi stest (that's the vocab from just three weeks of class), and I knew half of it before I started studying in earnest, so that was good. It was just more than a tad overwhelming to have to learn another 80 in time for tomorrow's test, but it's going to be just fine.

At lunch, Gu Laoshi informed us that we were leaving at 1:30 for our last site visit. We went to a district CDC that reminded me of a US public high school like the ones that hosted my speech tournaments, then a gorgeous township community health center that was essentially a smaller, less crowded, more calm version of the big public hospital we saw, then a very small community primary care clinic that was the opposite of the township hospital. We were given VIP treatment when we arrived at the centers, being taken straight to the conference room, served tea and fruit, and spoken to by the heads of the centers. Being placed in such a privileged status made me self-conscious because of where we were; the lack of privilege in the area was very noticeable, and I did not want to call attention to myself in that way.

The spontaneous TCM was at the township center. We passed through the clinic, and everyone was so interested that they offered to let us try one of the treatments. They heat glass jars and place them on the skin and the heat gradient causes a suction to happen, which coupled with a massage relieves tension. It was really cool to see and the people who tried it say it was good and worked. I was curous if it would help with the scar tissue from when I broke my hand last October, so I tried one on my wrist, and while I'm not sure it helped, it certainly did not hurt. It was really cool to experience that, and I'm more excited than ever for the TCM class next week!

After a quick dinner of baozi, I hit the books to finish learning my characters for the test tomorrow. I will finally successfully go to bed early! Or at least earlier than I have been :)

Today is awesome because by Chinese teacher said I'm good at learning the language.

Four Tourist Spots in One Day

I hit four tourist spots in one day today. I and three of my friends, Caleb, Jeremy, and Marissa, left our dorm complex at 10:30 and arrived at the Fragrant Hills Park by bus around 11:30. We walked from the bus stop near McDonald's to the East Gate of the park, and I asked for directions in Chinese when we weren't sure if we were going the right way. I was so excited to say "xiangshan dong men zai nar?" and my friends congratulated me; Jeremy and Caleb are also in Chinese 1 with me, so they know where we started this trip language-wise. I'm always so happy and proud when I get it right.

We entered the parking lot that led to the gate, and there were a few casual chicken coops around. It was unexpected and made me smile. We bought our tickets to the park and took the Northern Path that brought us past some gardens, a waterfall, and took us to the Azure Clouds Temple, which was the second sight we wanted to see.

The park was absolutely beautiful. There were tall, tree-covered hills, temples, pagodas, flowers, and lagoons everywhere. It is in the northwest corner of Beijing, the absolute limit of the city, and it felt like an entirely different place. No, the air wasn't clearer or anything, but it was not urbanized at all. It was nice to be in a less bustling place for the day. The park was not a huge tourist attraction, so we were the only Americans we saw. There was a Chinese family who even asked to pose in a picture with us, which was really funny and they were very nice.

I really liked the waterfall in the park, and after spending some time there, we moved onto the temple. This was a Buddhist temple that was built going up a hill. The special thing here was the memorial to Dr. Sun Yat Sen, and I was very happy to be able to visit that. The final building of the temple is a pagoda, and you have to climb a lot of stairs to get to the top. The view from up there was the most beautiful thing all day, and it was certainly my favorite part of the entire excursion.

After the Temple, we went back into the park and headed to one last spot before going to lunch. We went to the Tranquil Heart Studio, where there was just a large pond with carp surrounded by a gazebo-like structure. It was a very peaceful place to sit and regroup after an energy-consuming climb.

We walked back toward the bus stop and had McDonald's for lunch because it is a place that is friendly to a friend with food allergies, then we bought more bottled water and got on the bus to the Botanical Garden and Wofo Si Temple. The Temple was a 1300 meter walk from the gate of the Garden, and we went there via the rose garden, music fountain (where we played with some children at the sprayground), and other lagoons and gardens along the way. The Temple was the smallest I've been to so far, and it was very nice. There were a few buildings with Buddhas, and the final, featured one was the Reclining Buddha, for which the temple was named. It was lying on its side with its hand propping up its head, and it was wearing a red velvet robe (but it also might have been a blanket; two views gave two different impressions).

I really like seeing temples, mostly for the scenery. The striking thing about the Lama Temple was that people went to pray there, but these were more remote, so while there were people observing rituals, it was more about taking in the scenery. Both Temples today had ponds with fish and turtles in them, and I got to observe the 9 sons of the dragon king as described to me by yesterday's tour guide.

We got back to campus by bus around 6:00, and I proceeded straight to dinner, then taking a well-earned shower (it was so hot today!!), and finishing my homework for tomorrow. 

All in all, it was a really fantastic day. I covered a lot of amazing ground with some spectacular friends, and we had wonderful weather in which to do it. All four of us took tons of photos, and I can't wait to upload them and see everyone else's. 

Oh! And I just want to note something I forgot to write about yesterday. I had two extreme moments of how small the world actually is. (1) On the Lugou Bridge, there was a young boy wearing a jersey from my home basketball team. (2) There was a Sarpino's Pizza in the Silk Market. These two things were just shockingly American, but more than that, American in my America. You can never really be too far from home.

Today is awesome because I saw Fragrant Hills Park, the Azure Clouds Temple, the Beijing Botanical Garden, and the Wofo Si Temple.

Marco Polo Bridge and Silk Market

First of all, THE HIGGS BOSON IS REAL!!! THEY FOUND IT AND PARTICLE PHYSICS AS WE KNOW IT EXISTS!!!!!!!!!!! This is really exciting. I'm kind of obsessed with the Higgs Boson Particle. It proves that the Higgs Field exists, and the way particles interact with this field is what makes things have mass.

And now back to China.

Today was the third of our excursions. We left at 8AM for the Marco Polor (or Lugou) Bridge which was built in the 12th Century and has lions too numerous to count. It is where the Japanese invaded to begin the second Sino-Japanese War on July 7, 1937, so we went on the 75th Anniversary of this event. After exploring the bridge, we walked through the old city of Wanping, and went to the museum to commemorate this war. The museum was very well organized, and had an extensive chronology of the Chinese perspective on the war.

The excursion ended early, so after a quick lunch in the cafeteria on Bei Da's campus, ten of us took the subway to the Silk Market. I had a great time there, and it is so much more fun to bargain for things when you can actually speak some Chinese. I pulled out my tai gui le, my numbers, I even tried to help my friend lower a price by telling a vendor who I bought something from that she was my friend (wo de pengyou). It felt really good to be a little more self-sufficient this time around. I bought two drawing/painting/some sort of artistic medium that I can hang on a wall, a silk scarf that has purple butterflies and flowers on it, a raincoat with a hood (it's "North Face," "Gore Tex," and two-tone green), and a "LeSportsac" backpack that has a pattern with elephants, lions, and giraffes on it. I'm really happy with my purchases, and I'm especially happy that I used Chinese to get the prices I was willing to pay.

I had noodles with eggplant from the cafeteria for dinner, took a well-earned shower (it was extremely hot today, though very cloudy), and relaxed for the remainder of the evening. I get so tired here!!

Today is awesome because I successfully used Chinese language away from Bei Da's campus.

Lama Temple

This morning, I had my first oral quiz in Chinese class. I went first, and I was alone in the classroom with my teacher who asked me some questions in Chinese and I answered them in Chinese. It was not as bad as I was expecting, I felt prepared, and I know enough Chinese to be able to understand and speak for those few minutes, which is really cool.

The lunch meeting was jam-packed with information today. We have an excursion tomorrow and the bus leaves at 8AM sharp. There was no Public Health class today. Most importantly, the travel agent came to collect our money for the trip to Hongzhou, and there was some information about that. Be prepared for an extremely long blog post after that trip because I will not have internet access during that long weekend. I will be keeping a handwritten journal that I can transfer here, but since it will cover five days, it will be a very long and hopefully interesting post.

Since we had the afternoon off, I went with Marissa, Caleb, Maitreyi, and Pooja to the Lama Temple. Lama as in Dalai. It was kind of like the Forbidden City in architecture and layout, but the content was entirely Tibetan Buddhist. There were a lot of people going to worship there because the Maitreyia Buddha at the Lama Temple is the largest Buddha carved out of a single piece of wood. It is 18 meters above ground and 8 meters below, which boils down to it being simply enormous. All of the courtyards, buildings, and statues were absolutely beautiful, and it was a really great way to spend the afternoon.

The subway stop we got off from literally runs underneath the temple, so we had to walk the perimeter to get to the entrance. On our way, we noticed the hutongs (old neighborhoods of small, interconnected buildings) and shops selling Buddha statues, sandalwood, incense, and other such trinkets. It was really fun to browse on our way back, and some people bought statues and incense. We ended the excursion with ice cream, and it made for a truly wonderful afternoon.

I had dinner in a cafeteria I had never been to before, and I enjoyed my chicken, eggplant, green beans, and rice very much. I ended my evening with some nice relaxing before going to bed on the early side. I've been failing to do that all week because I've been so busy, but it's going to happen tonight!!

Today is awesome because I went to the Lama Temple, had a great time, and got to check it off my tourist list!

Hospital Visit #2 and July 4th Celebration

This morning in Chinese class we learned the song "Beijing Huanying Ni" (Beijing Welcomes You), which was the promotional video for the 100 day countdown to the 2008 Olympics. It is so catchy, and we realized that we had learned the majority (da bufen 大部分) of the characters in the song. It also has an epic moment of Jackie Chan, and I highly recommend watching it. I've actually downloaded it for my iTunes library; it's that awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxgaH3bZwuE&list=FLNrXv5UceKnZWvmRXWxv7tQ&index=1&feature=plpp_video

Instead of a Public Health lecture, as you can tell from the title of this post, we had a field trip today to a community health clinic. It is a smaller facility, one of two hundred in Beijing alone, that does only primary care. We started in the public health area of the building which had a consultation center for nutrition, exercise, screenings for chronic illness, and general health and behavioral advising. The initiatives there were good, but there were few people in the space. They attribute that to the lateness of the day, and I hope they are correct and that many more people had been served by the facility. 

In the main outpatient center, the most utilized clinic was for traditional Chinese medicine. There were many people mid-therapy as we walked through, including a man who was casually sitting in the room with acupuncture needles in his face. We were all extremely interested in these therapies and how patients choose those over the biomedical therapies, so the next academic session when we have our TCM class is much anticipated by all. 

We finished the site visit with a bit of a conference/Q&A session with the director of the center, a doctor from PKU, two representatives from the Beijing CDC, and one from the Haidian District CDC. We live in Haidian District. It was interesting, but there was a large language barrier today, so that made communicating more difficult. I've found that because we are talking about such a specialized topic, these professionals who have fantastic everyday English do not know all the words that we use to describe various bits of anatomy or the name of a disease or therapy. It's the specificity of the field that makes English/Chinese challenging for people to communicate, but it's all part of the experience. 

Compared to the hospital we visited last week, this clinic was small, less crowded, and less modern. We have been discussing disparities in China pertaining to health and socioeconomic status, but this visit really reminded me that China is still a developing country. To have facilities at such different levels within one city is extremely demonstrative of the struggles this nation faces in striving for equity. It was as if we had jumped into a photo from Africa or Haiti and then suddenly we were back in a big modern city, and it made me sad that there are such gaps within miles of one another. 

In the evening, we had our 4th of July Celebration with our language partners. We were supposed to be celebrating in real time with the US, but the holiday ended 6 hours earlier in eastern time, which is 3 hours pacific time, so it was just ironic. Gu Laoshi ordered food for us, and we began the evening with a singing of the American and Chinese national anthems. It was fun to sing with Helen because both of us like to sing and we taught each other our respective country's songs. 

There were a lot of dishes at dinner. There was cold tofu in a heart-shaped mold that had a very light, clean flavor that I very much enjoyed. Also with the cold dishes that I did not like as much but still tasted good were mushrooms, Sichuan spicy beef, cucumbers in soy sauce, and cooked lettuce. Our hot dishes were tomato, egg, and spinach; sweet and sour shrimp (very American/mei guo, but so tasty because it was familiar); a scallop served in its shell with rice noodles on top; a vegetable dish of sliced mushrooms, celery, and red pepper; a whole fish that I was too full to try; steamed buns with duck that was stir-fried with peanuts and peppers in a kung pao reminiscent way; a fried meat dish that I think was chicken; fried rice; taro eggroll-so delicious! the filling was creamy and purple, so of course I liked it; a meat soup; the most delicious corn soup I have ever had-the corn flavor was very intense, the broth was light, and there were egg drops in it; and sliced watermelon and cantaloupe for dessert.

While the food was good, I really enjoyed talking with Helen. We compared notes on how our lessons were going and I tried a Chinese sentence of my own with her today. She said it was very good, and I always feel so triumphant when I can communicate in this language that is so new to me. She has been preparing for her TOFL which is a week from Saturday, and I think she's going to be fine because her spoken English is so good. I love spending time with my Chinese friend!

We left dinner at 8, I stopped to buy a lu cha 绿茶 green tea, then I tackled the dorm issue of getting hot water. Andrea has done it the last few times, so I took a turn getting our hot water recharged. Our room has a card, and I took it, my phrasebook/dictionary, and my small vocabulary that includes the words re shui 热水 hot water and the ability to tell them my room number (er ling liu ling jiu 二零六零九 20609). My attempt was successful!!! It was truly a triumph to come back with the card ready to recharge our water supply so I could take a nice shower. 

I am now preparing for tomorrow's oral exam in Chinese class. We have 14 questions and will be asked 6. One of the six is to give an introduction, and I've got that down, so I just have to finish prepping the remaining questions. They're pretty basic: introduce your roommate, do you have a Chinese friend, introduce your teacher, things like that. We only have a few verbs, so there's only so much we can say. I feel good about it though because I'm preparing by writing, which means I have to process what the question means so I can answer it. It'll be okay, it's just the first time, and our teacher's philosophy is that we test to learn rather than learn for the test. I really like her and I'm going to miss her during the second session when we have a new teacher!

Today is awesome because I successfully spoke Chinese.