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.