The Swing of Things

Talk about building me up just to let me down. Classes started last Monday. Since I placed into 5th Year, I thought that I would probably be one of the best students in 4th Year. That was unfortunately not the case... I was the worst. It took me the entire weekend to do my homework, which was the first indication that I might be in a little over my head. Then, in class, I was able to understand the teacher but I had to focus absolutely the entire time. When I was asked a question, I would stutter and ask the teacher to repeat herself whereas the other students could answer easily. It was the longest class I've ever taken, and I was constantly thinking "Don't call on me, don't call on me!"

Later, during our discussion class, I had an easier time because I could speak freely instead of incorporating grammar points from the lesson... but we were debating the pros and cons of neo-colonialism. Here are some fun vocab words that I found while flipping through the 4th Year compilation of articles and editorials:

村支书： The General Secretary of the Communist Party in a village
特务窝： spy nest
整洁: crux
冥冥之中: inexorably
肠胃炎: enterogastritis
武士道: Bushido
次硫酸氢钠： inferior sodium hydrogen sulfate
渎职： malfeasance

I don't even know what some of those words mean in English. I changed into 3rd Year right after that, which was much, much more suited to my level. I also heard that Ethan, a Yale student who also did HBA and who placed into 5th Year, dropped down to 4th. That means there's only one kid in 5th Year. He takes all his classes by himself... isn't that the saddest thing you've ever heard?

Anyway, the 3rd Year lessons are just challenging enough and actually build upon things that I know. There's a lot of variation among the 3rd Year students, though. Some of them speak painfully slowly (the way I did in the 4th Year class) and as a result, Large Class can be very frustrating. I'm used to the teaching style at HBA, where teachers fired questions at students without warning, everyone was on a similar level, and we would all joke around and tell stories while still using the grammar and vocab from that day. The ACC teachers just aren't as fun.

We had a "debate" in Discussion Class last week, only this time the topic was not as difficult. We were the board of directors at Starbucks, and had to decide whether we wanted to open our next branch in France or in a Chinese village. My partner's spoken Chinese wasn't very fluent, so I had to carry the "team" on my shoulders, and I got 2.5 points on my homework for being the best debater. Thankfully plenty of 3rd Year students also speak as well as I do. It's a shame there isn't a Level 3.5.

In other news I've been getting along great with my roommate and I've met some cool people.

Oh! One more thing. students here don't keep the language pledge nearly as well as at HBA. At HBA, people were great about the pledge for the first two weeks, then started speaking Chinglish (which inevitably became English) when going to bars and clubs on the weekends. At ACC, people started speaking English on the very day we signed the pledge. I'm really thankful that I was paired with the roommate that I have. I think he and I might be the only ones who actually speak Chinese to each other when we're alone in our room.

At HBA, when someone didn't know what a certain word meant, we'd use to Chinese to explain it to them. At ACC, people (including teachers) just spell out the word in English. I don't see how this is any better than just saying the word in English (which in my opinion is sometimes necessary and not harmful to your learning.) Once, when I was talking to some other 3rd year students, someone said the word 博物馆. A girl didn't know what that meant, so I started explaining (in Chinese) "It's a place where you can go and look at art..." before someone else cut me off and just said "M-U-S-E-U-M." Oh well.

Some pictures of my sweet room:

Hangzhou and a Really Weird Start to the New Year

I started my fall program (Associated Colleges in China) this week, so before I get into the swing of things I want to wrap up summarizing the travels I made after HBA ended.

Initially, I wasn't sure where in China I wanted to go besides Shanghai. I considered going to Xi'an, but decided somewhere closer to Shanghai would work better. A fuwuyuan at one of my hostels recommended I check out Hangzhou, and I'm very glad I listened to her advice. The people in Hangzhou were very friendly, and the lifestyle there is very slow and relaxed, which was just what I needed before starting another semester of intensive language study.


Hangzhou is best known for the West Lake. Actually, that's the only thing it's known for. I asked people what else there was to do in the city other than visit the lake and no one had any suggestions. But I'm not complaining; it was very beautiful and I made some nice friends at my hostel, including a clerk at my hostel, a graduate student from Albany, and a film student from Denmark.

I came back to Beijing with a week to kill before ACC started. With that much time on my hands, I did some heavy-duty reviewing for my placement exam. Then I moved into my absolutely beautiful, brand new room, which was actually going to be a four-star hotel before the Chinese government altered the University's building permit or something along those lines. So I'm living in a great dorm, complete with free wireless internet and free laundry (24/7! plus there are machines on every floor!). My roommate is a junior at Bowdoin, really cool, and he and I have hit it off pretty well. I'm super excited for this semester.

We took our placement exams yesterday, and I naturally expected to place into Third Year Chinese, given that I just completed Level Two this summer. Since HBA is such a strong language program, students that enroll at ACC after doing HBA in the summer sometimes skip a year. So I thought maybe, just maybe, I might be placed into Fourth Year.

So when we looked up the results of our exams today, I first checked to see if I had made it into Fourth Year. I looked and looked but couldn't find my name. Okay, I thought, I guess it's Third Year for me. That's even better, I thought, Fourth Year would have probably been too hard anyway. But when I looked at the list for third years, I wasn't there either. Oh no.... was my Chinese so bad that they were making me repeat Second Year? The shame! Again, I looked but couldn't find my name.

Then I saw my name... the very last name on the list. Fifth Year.

Fifth Year.

There were only three students in Fifth Year. That means my exam results were in the top three out of everyone at ACC.... what the heck?! Another Fifth Year student was nearby, so I asked him how long he had been studying Chinese. He said five years.

I've only been studying Chinese for one year. One year ago, I did not even speak one single word of Chinese. And now I placed into the highest level at ACC?!

I should say that I think my results were very skewed because I had reviewed so much before the test. I was able to jam-pack my essay with idioms and advanced grammar points that I knew at the time, but could not easily recall in conversation. Actually, there are some heritage speakers here at ACC, with beautiful accents, and not even they placed into Fifth Year. I met one girl who spoke so well that I thought she was a teacher, and not even she is in Fifth Year. My Chinese might be good, but it isn't good enough to skip two years of crucial vocabulary and grammer. At HBA, the Fifth Year students were all Chinese-American and had been speaking Chinese since they were born. I wasn't even the best Second Year student at HBA - I never won a single one of the reading or translation contests that we had every week, I wasn't chosen as one of the HBA representatives at the speech competition at the end of the summer, I wasn't chosen to give the Second Year speech at our closing ceremony.

So I talked to the head teacher and switched into Fourth Year. Classes begin on Monday.

But, since there were only three students who placed into Fifth Year, all the teachers knew who we were. So when I introduced myself to some teachers at our meet-and-greet this afternoon, they all said, "Oh! You're the Fifth Year!" I explained that I didn't belong in that high of a level, but they insisted my Chinese was very good in any case, and even asked me if I was part Chinese. I asked them, Do I look part Chinese? And they said I could pass for part Chinese. I asked them to guess what I am, and they said French, Italian, or INDIAN. My Chinese family and two people at my last hostel also guessed that my family was from India. I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone.

Indian?

Shanghai Part 2: The World Expo

I've been fascinated by World Fairs ever since third grade when I read about the invention of the ice cream cone. There's just something about the world's nations gathering to showcase their food and art alongside their technological and industrial innovations.... In fact, it's this very variety of colors and mascots and styles that makes me love the World Cup (even though I care very little about sports), and that, in a way that is too complicated to explain on this blog, contributed to my childhood obsessions with Pokémon, Street Fighter, and the board game Clue. The World Fair even made multiple cameos in the Formation of American Culture class I took last semester, when the class examined how the Fair served to boost America's growing image as an industrial power during the Gilded Age.

Anyway, I had in my head a very romantic idea of the World Fair the night before I visited it. I planned to wake up at 6:00 the next morning to avoid the long lines, but I accidentally slept until 7:20. I left my hostel as soon as I could, and the romantic expectations I had of the Expo were shattered as soon as I stepped foot on the metro to Nanpu Bridge. Hundreds of people (even young children and the elderly) were pushing and shoving to get on the metro, rushing to grab seats, running for the door to be the first one out of the metro station. This is definitely the number one pet peeve I have of this country. Chinese people don't seem to have any patience. It was the same story in the train station from Beijing to Shanghai. I mean, I guess I understand the rush to grab a seat on the metro train, but why are people in such a hurry to be the first one on a sleeper train? After all, everyone has an assigned bed. Whether you get there as soon as the opening whistle blows or a minute before the train sets off, your situation won't be any different. The foreigners I've met in my hostels feel the same way. It gets me angry.

Anyway, as soon as I saw this frenzy I knew that if I didn't act the same way, I'd be waiting forever and a half on lines that day. So I ran, too. I also pushed and shaved and glared at people trying to get past. I may or may not have even tripped a kid. It wasn't a proud day for Paul Robalino.

But once I got to the Expo, things got better. It was awesome! It blew Disney's Epcot Center out of the water. The lines were pretty long, but they moved quickly. Still, I had to be selective about what pavilions I visited. I ended up entering the pavilions of the USA, the Philippines, France, Luxembourg, Nigeria, Colombia, Peru, Hong Kong, and the United Nations, as well as the joint pavilion of Central and South America and a development-themed pavilion called Urban Planet. Most of them were just so-so and had pictures of the country and various cultural artifacts and information. The Urban Planet Pavilion had impressive technology; a lot of thought and money were invested in it.




I thought I would be treated like a VIP at the Ecuador "Pavilion" since I figured not many other Ecuadorians had come to Shanghai to see the World Expo. When I got to the pavilion (it wasn't even a pavilion; it was a large-ish room in the Central and South American Pavilion), I told one of the girls working that I was Ecuadorian and she got very excited and hugged me. Her name was Veronica and we chatted in Spanish for a while before she gave me some presents: a small paper flag, a pin of the Ecuador flag crossed with the China flag, and a sticker. I asked her if they had any latin food but they didn't. So lame! They did have a folkloric (is that a word in English?) band of "cholitos," though. Vero even offered me a job at the Expo. For a brief moment I considered extending my stay in Shanghai for a few weeks and working at the Ecuador Pavilion, but then I changed my mind once I realized that my job would just be to pass out paper flags and stickers to Chinese tourists. She also invited me to go out dancing with all the Ecuadorians that night, but I politely declined.

Although they didn't have any food, I have to say the Ecuador room was definitely the best of the nations represented in the Central and South America Pavilion. I think Panama was the worst. They had a small model of the canal and two pictures on the wall.... that's it. They didn't even have any real Panamanians working there.

I didn't get VIP status at the USA Pavilion, but one of the workers there did let me cut the line. I have to say, it was kind of disappointing. We watched three short films in a row about American values like diversity, teamwork, and optimism, and then we were led into a room where we could learn about the pavilion's corporate sponsors.

I had a delicious lunch in Peru and kept walking around. The China Pavilion, which was supposed to be the most impressive of all, had a sign outside saying reservations were required, so I didn't try to get in (although I heard afterwards that I still would have been able to get in). The longest I had to wait was an hour and 45 minutes for Hong Kong which was also kind of bland. After ten hours of walking around the Expo, I headed back to my hostel - overall, an awesome day.

Last Day of HBA

Before I write about the rest of my travels around China, I want to include some pictures of the last day of HBA, mostly for my mom and the rest of you reading this that haven't seen my pictures on Facebook.

One of the reasons I loved HBA so much was that the teachers were around our age and were extremely friendly, commited, and fun. I'm going to miss them a lot! I actually just went back to the BLCU campus today to get some paperwork and I ran into Zhang Laoshi, one of my teachers. I'm sure I'll go back sometime this semester to grab a meal with some of them.

Here are pictures of me and some teachers at our delicious farewell banquet:


Here's a picture of karaoke later that night haha:


And finally, a sneak peek at just some of the new vocab words I learned this summer:

Shanghai Part 1

The Light Fellowship provided me with enough money to stay in a hostel here in Beijing for a few weeks until my fall semester starts. However, I knew since before HBA even ended that I wanted to leave Beijing and see other parts of China. So, a few days after my summer program wrapped up, I took a ten hour long train to China's economic capital, Shanghai!


My first impression of Shanghai was that it looked just like New York. The buildings and the lights were beautiful and the streets were clean. The taxi was also more expensive.

My hostel, however, wasn't in the center of the city, so I got to see some parts of Shanghai that weren't so cosmopolitan and modern. The streets here were smelly and dirty and there were brothels nearby. Not to worry, though - I hardly spent any time here at all. While I was in Shanghai I would head to the metro station first thing in the morning (I wasn't able to take the metros to "random stops" like I planned to, since you had to select your destination beforehand and pay according to how far you were going... sheesh) and I was able to see a lot of the city.

This is the Shanghai World Financial Center, which houses the highest observation deck in the world. The building was very modern, and I was even able to get a discount on admission by claiming I was 17. On the top level, I even met a French couple, and I offered to take a picture of the two of them "to be nice," although really I just wanted to practice my French and to have them offer to take one of me. These past few weeks alone have transformed me into a cunning selfish animal, I swear. I cut in line and push and shove just like the Chinese people now! I even spit on the sidewalk sometimes just because everyone else does it! I'm a beast!

It was a stunning view. And I was impressed with how futuristic the building was. Even the toilets were electronic:

What an interesting (but not unpleasant) experience that was.

Anyway I mentioned before that not all of Shanghai was modern, and that's definitely true. One day I was walking around trying to find Yuyuan Garden but instead stumbled upon an outdoor market with no other tourists. The people on this street sold frogs and snakes and pigeons alongside "normal" meats and vegetables. I even got to see a big fish hacked to death by a woman wearing Crocs.



This is me on "The Bund" on the last day! The Bund is basically the area line the Huangpu River. The eastern bank has futuristic modern architecture while the western bank has colonial European style architecture.

I'll write about my trip to the Shanghai 2010 World Expo in my next post.

Romeo and Juliet

Good Bye Beijing! Shanghai, Have You Eaten Yet?

"Have you eaten yet?" is how you say hello in Shanghai, apparently.

My train took 10 hours. It's very frustrating and inconvenient to have two enormous heavy suitcases. Especially because every single other passenger only had a tiny carry-on bag. What a pain it was to carry them around! Some taxi drivers even turned me down because my bags wouldn't fit in their trunk.

I'm finally in my hostel. My original plan was to go to a neighboring small town after my five days here, but I'm considering just going to Beijing afterwards because taking those suitcases onto a bus would be way too inconvenient.

Anyway I'm going to bed now so I can wake up tomorrow nice and early and take advantage of my little time here in Shanghai.

It's weird to think that I booked this hostel and took the train all the way here to Shanghai on my own. I've never been this independent. I've traveled a lot, but always in a group with an organized program. I've never gone all the way across a country by myself before. It's all up to me now for the next few weeks.

Make sure to read the post before this one!

Zaijian.