Turning the Tables

Near our hotel in Xi'an was an outdoor marketplace that my classmates and I visited almost everyday to buy souvenirs and have dinner. At night, the main street by the market place became three or four times as crowded as dozens of vendors of snacks and knick-knacks set up shop and tourists came out to answer their call. I saw things for sale on this street that I hadn't seen anywhere else in China, like fried quail eggs on a skewer and the extremely long kites that I mentioned in my last post.



One night after dinner, my friends and I were walking along the street when we came across a couple of teenage girls selling wooden frogs of various sizes that, when stroked with an accompanying stick, let out a loud, realistic croak. I had seen the frogs at other stands and didn't think very much of them, but these particular vendors were selling an especially huge frog, so I approached one of the girls and asked if she could let us hear what the big one sounded like. She joked that I couldn't hear it unless I bought it, but actually they didn't even have a big enough stick. Feeling gutsy, I picked up one of the frogs on her table and asked, "Do you mind if I help you sell these?" She said it was okay, and soon enough my classmates joined me behind the table, playing frogs of varying pitches like we were a symphony orchestra.

(Mostly Chinese) tourists flocked to our table as soon as they saw a stand manned almost completely by foreigners, and in turn we shouted out things like, "Give it a try!", "These things are so fun!", "Get one for your kids!" and "The bigger they are, the better sounding they are!" and people thought it was a hoot. As expected, dozens of people took our pictures, and thankfully we even sold a bunch of frogs. Our boss told us that our addressing customers as "handsome" and "pretty girl," while acceptable in Beijing, was impolite in Xi'an, and said that if we appeared too eager to sell our wares than people would become suspicious. Apparently mellow salesmen make the best salesmen in Xi'an.


It was especially fun to call out in Chinese to tourists who obviously spoke English. We spent about two hours at that stand, laughing the whole time and interacting with our customers who were amazed that we foreigners could not only speak Chinese, but had "jobs" at the marketplace. A few customers even tried to haggle with us, to which we said things like "No, no, friend, I'm giving you a great price here, trust me," and other things we had heard a thousand times. We didn't earn wages for our time working, but at the end of the night our boss offered us a discount on the little toys. I and a few of my friends bought some as reminders of what was one of my fondest experiences in China so far.

The City of Western Peace

A few days ago if you had asked me to predict what Xi'an would be like, I'd have guessed my time there would be pretty mild. Xi'an's Terracotta Warriors were kind of cool, and so were some of the other landmarks we went to, but to quote my friend Dan, they were basically "go see and say that's amazing take some pictures and then leave" kind of places, which, unlike the Great Wall, the Catacombs of Paris, the Batays of the Dominican Republic, or some of the other amazing places I am fortunate enough to have visited, were exactly as I expected. But our stay in Xi'an definitely was not mild, unless that's the word you would use to describe my and my friends' being encircled by thousands of rampant Chinese nationalists waving "Death to Japan" signs before attacking a police car and setting fire to a nearby store.


That's right, I was lucky enough to witness a Chinese protest first-hand. Let me explain. One of the coolest souvenirs I saw in Xi'an were these really, really long kites (just wait till you see pictures... these kites are so long), so yesterday morning I decided I wanted to buy one before we left for Beijing later that afternoon. In the hotel lobby I ran into my friend Xiao Mao, who said, "Let me guess, you're going to go watch the protests." I had no idea what he was talking about, so he took me outside. The enormous crowd of people I saw when I stepped outside was nothing at all like what I imagined. The crowd of people stretched farther than I could even see.



Outside, my roommate and I ran into some other ACC students who had come across the marches after doing some sightseeing. We don't know exactly what caused the uproar, but it certainly wasn't random--vendors nearby were selling flags and stickers, and the police were watching closely but not interfering. My friend guessed that the protest might have been caused by disputes over ownership of the Senkaku islands near Taiwan.

Obviously we decided to get closer. I was nervous that the crowd might not be very welcoming, given that the United States is supportive of Japan (this fear was not baseless... some nearby people even shouted out that my friend's camera was a Sony), but two of the girls with us bought some small China flags to show our "support," and we were fine. In fact, we were more than fine. People absolutely loved us. We must have had hundreds of pictures and videos taken of us. At one point were completely surrounded by Chinese youth taking our pictures and asking for our contact information. But the weirdest part of it all was when one Chinese guy asked my roommate, Taylor, to help him hold up an anti-Japanese banner (one that read, "Take Out Your Knives"). Taylor didn't think it was a very good idea to refuse, so he took hold of the banner and the crowd went absolutely wild. The people erupted in applause and shouts of gratitude. What appeared to be TV cameras ran towards us to film the scene. I very halfheartedly chanted "Zhongguo, jiayou" along with them, but I was definitely uncomfortable.

Afterward, the crowd noticed a Japanese athletics store nearby and people stampeded forward, banging the glass and throwing things at it. That was our cue. We ran away, but not before seeing smoke coming from the store.







The crowd surrounding us.



At the very end of this clip you can see the people begin to clap for my roommate.


The protests made driving in the streets impossible, so when we got back to the hotel all 60 ACC students had to walk two miles, all of our baggage in hand, to the train station, in the middle of traffic. Talk about a 地地道道 experience. I have another fun story about Xi'an but I'll save it for my next post.

Competition and Controversy

Every week here at ACC, we're required to deliver a "kou tou bao gao," or oral report, to our classmates on an assigned topic. Last week, the topic was the severity of Beijing's traffic problem and how we suggest solving it. Of course, there isn't really an easy solution. But because the teachers liked my report, and about five of my classmates', the best, our speeches were chosen to be videotaped and uploaded on some Chinese-learning website. People then vote for their favorites, and the winners get cash and other prizes.

I make a mistake right in the first sentence (I say 自从 (zicong), instead of 自来 (zilai)), and I didn't have my speech memorized since we had only learned about the contest the day before. In any case, here's the link to my video.

Don't worry about actually voting for me... registering to vote seems kind of complicated, and I won't (and don't deserve to) win anyway, given that some videos already have thousands of votes. I just thought I'd share the video though.

In other news, or non-news rather, the Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize win this week has been given no press at all here in Beijing. Most people do not know anything about it, or even know who he is. My friend Gerald actually told me a text message that his coworker tried to send was blocked because it contained Liu Xiaobao's name. I had no idea that was possible. Censorship (or "harmonization," in Chinese, since it ensures China's stability) here is such an interesting thing. One of our homework assignments was to read a passage about American media. At one point, the article said something along the lines of "If an American news crew were to report about Tiananmen Square..." and my heart skipped a beat because for a second I actually thought the author was going to mention the June Fourth massacre. Instead, the sentence, criticizing the negativity of American media, continued, "the news crew would broadcast all of the Square's litter and ignore the Square's beautiful flowers and smiling faces." In my response to the article, I took a risk and wrote "American media might focus on the negative side of things, but the China media wouldn't broadcast the Square's litter at all, given that they've ignored worse things," but the teacher didn't say anything about it. I was kind of scared though... actually, I wrote that part of my answer in pinyin instead of characters, and censored myself with asterisks (Tian*nm*n Sq*are) because I was afraid the Internet police would find my e-mail. Oh, the things China does to your brain.

Going to Xi'an tomorrow! I'll be back on Sunday.

P.S. I forgot the English word for "broadcast" just now and had to look it up in Chinese first.

Wo dui ACC de Pingjia

I've been putting off writing this post for way too long! Sorry about slacking so much. Today in class we filled out evaluations of our teachers and program. I was the last one to finish writing my evaluation because I actually took it very seriously and I had a lot of suggestions to make. So I thought I'd share some of those with you now.

• "Conversation Class" homework always asks us to include in our answers certain grammar points that we haven't yet been taught. Sometimes it's easy to figure how a certain structure should be used, and other times there's a lot of overlap between the ACC lessons and what I already learned over the summer, which makes for good review. But it isn't until after lecture the next day that I can truly understand some of the things we were asked to write on the homework.
• Da ban ke ("big" class, or lecture) is definitely my least favorite class. Sometimes a teacher will ask the class to say a sentence along with her, and because she speaks so quickly the result is mumbled and totally wrong. But the teacher will just say "Hao" and move on.

ACC definitely has its strengths though. Each student has to do an independent research project on the topic of his or her choice. Mine is about the growing popularity and influence of American television on young people in China. It allows (forces) me to interview Chinese people in the cafeteria or on the street and do research online. We write the report in increments with the help of our advisers every step of the way. I'm really excited about it and look forward to the one-on-one sessions every week. Another of ACC's strengths are the daily quizzes, which are harder and include more information than the ones at my summer program.

I also think ACC is every more time-consuming than HBA was... how is that possible? Maybe having a roommate pressures me into putting off work. I stay up very late almost every night, feel exhausted in class the next day, and have to take a nap in the afternoon which just makes me delay my work even more. Procrastination is a disease.

Some students find the time to go to bars and clubs on week nights. I really don't understand how they do it! I wish I could go with them, because I don't feel very close to my classmates here at all. I like my roommate a lot and we usually go out and have meals together, but besides him I don't have "friends" at ACC yet. I am friendly with a lot of people, and get along great with everyone when we go out in groups on the weekend, but no one I'm close to. Then again most of the people who go out during the week speak exclusively in English whenever they're not in a classroom. I guess I'm guilty of breaking the pledge too. At least I my roommate and I still speak Chinese in the room.

I've grown accustomed to life here. It's become routine. I don't want it to be routine. This weekend I am determined to do something new and exciting. At least one Chinese experience instead of instead of just going to the bar districts that are full of foreigners. Maybe I'll try one of the field trips our teachers offer us on weekend mornings. I still talk to my friends from back home often, and I still submit articles and drawings to the Yale humor magazine. I want to make the most of my time here. Next week we have a field trip to the city Xi'an, famous for its terracotta warriors. That'll be fun.

Also:

My host family this semester is super nice, and boy are they rich. They live in a brand new beautiful house within a gated community, and took us to see Inception and gave us gifts on the first day. They're in Paris right now on vacation.

I'm also taking a painting class as my extracurricular. It's very mellow. Maybe I should have signed up for a language partner. The language partner I had over the summer wasn't of much use, and seemed like she was in it for the money. I met some Minzu students here, all minorities, and they treated my roommate and me to dinner. I'd like to develop that friendship more.

Lastly, we went to the Great Wall again! We went to a different section this time. The temperature was nice and cool, and I had no problem climbing it. It was a totally different experience.

Until next timeee