The travels of Justin

On Tuesday we toured the new campus as planned, but was surprised only by how desolate it was. The school population, as I’ve been told, is about 80,000 students plus faculty and support staff, but many parts of the school are still under construction. Maybe the capacity is 80,000 students. Regardless, the ‘tour’ wasn’t as exciting as everyone expected, but it was still far from disappointing. At one point we were led into the unnecessarily large entrance hall to a drab administrative building. We gawked at the chandelier while we waited to see what interesting secrets this building would hold, but were quickly ushered back to the bus.

Chandelier in an administrative building

Walking around part of the campus while waiting for lunch gave everyone some time to meet each other. As I had seen the campus already, meeting my classmates was the real fun. We ate some food at the school cafeteria before returning to the school.

Wednesday dropped a little bit of rain, so when I met our leader for another outing, the group was decidedly smaller as most would rather stay in their hotel. Only 4 of us, plus our guide, ventured out to explore the shopping along 中山路 (ZhongShan Road). I had been to this area before, but I managed to discover a few new spots including an interesting indoor market of clothing, toys and knick-knacks, and even bolts of fabric. This is a place I’ll have to return to and explore futher.

Local market

When Thursday rolled around, we met for our first pre-class. Our very capable and knowledgable teacher wanted to introduce and review our pinyin knowledge and pronounciation. I found it a bit boring, only because pinyin is the only part of Chinese language I’ve been able to practice this past year, but the practice is always good. Every day I sit in my apartment and read out-loud all the combinations of initials and finals that make the sounds of Mandarin Chinese and I will probably find a tutor to drill me and correct my pronounciation mistakes — an easy job because I make so many. Outside our 7^th floor classroom window we could see all the freshmen going through an annual ritual of manditory military training. The USB on this 网吧 computer isn’t working, so maybe later I’ll upload a photo or two of the kids learning to march.

Tomorrow is Monday and will bring us our first week of real classes. The 20 foreigners here have been divided into two groups: a beginner (Group A) and advanced group (Group B). I was placed in Group A because my vocabulary is so limited, but I want to be at a higher level. I don’t want to lose the next few weeks reviewing basic pronounciation when I’m ready to study vocabulary. Honestly though, when you consider that some the Group B students have 3-years of study in their home countries, I think Group B is going to be out of my league. I wish there was a middle group. Part of this frustration just comes from the simple fact that one year later my language skills are painfully limited. In Tianjin I had to pay extra — beyond my tuition — to have some serious Chinese language classes. That was 8-months ago, and in the time since then I’ve had to devote my energy to being successful in my business classes (taught in English) for the sake of my GPA and academic career. It’s just exciting to be studying at all, now that my living and school situation has finally become stable. Maybe next year I’ll be able to return to Tianjin and shock my friends by speaking in their native tongue. That would be so great!

There’s nothing strange about starting a bit slow and then being overwhelmed quickly. My other friends studying in China say that learning Chinese has that effect. They say you start to learn 5 characters a day. It’s nothing really. But after the second week, you are trying to remember characters you learned in week one and what started out simple is actually quite a challenging exercise. At least I can say that my ambitious desire to reach Group B is extra fire to motivates me to study hard. 好好学习中文！

Extra motivation isn’t really required though. Once you are here, motivation is everywhere. The more you can speak, the more you enjoy just being in a really great and interesting place. One of the big fears for people coming here is how to find food. There is plenty of food that can be ordered by pointing, so ordering from a menu is an extra pleasure. This past week I’ve been planning to cook two meals. I want to try making Korean Kimbab now that I have a labratory in Nanchang. China’s Mid-Autumn Festival falls on October 6^th this year and the traditional food to make at home with friends and family is dumpling, called jiaozi (饺子). A friend from Tianjin has given me her recipe for jiaozi and I plan to host a big lunch at my place to celebrate this festival and welcome them to China. For both of these recipies I have a small list of ingredients which have given me something specific to study.

Translating the English names of vegetables — particularly special ones, like pickled yellow radish for Kimbab — can take me hours. The payoff for adding these new words to my vocabulary makes the learning fun. Yesterday I went to a restaurant with some classmates and for the first time I felt like some of the menu made sense to me. It’s a slow process, but it’s extremely rewarding. There was a time when it was fun to order a dish from the menu and not know what to expect. I was never disappointed by the food that arrived. By reading a menu I can now avoid dishes I’m familiar with and try new things.

China is full of surprises. Yesterday, one of my classmates learned of a football match (soccer to you North American readers) at a nearby stadium. For RMB$5 we watched the local team try in vain to break the zero-zero stalemate. I was most impressed by the well mannered local hooligan whose shirtless torso was covered in team slogans. Donning giant red horns and a giant 八一 flag, he led the energetic crowd to chant in support of the home team. I never saw anything like it in Tianjin.

Later in the night, after exploring other parts of the city, we spotted dancing at the park outside the stadium. When we approached, we were soon surrounded by local people wanting to say hello and be friendly. It was quite an overwhelming experience to watch everyone waltzing while being overloaded by questions from curious local people. I did learn about an English corner that usually draws about 100 people (or so I’m told) at 9am every Saturday and Sunday at 8-1 Square (八一广场).

Sometimes I’ve been having a strange cultural experience. In Tianjin, all the foreigners came to China with very little understanding of customs and we modified our behaviour accordingly. After a few nights of having dinner with some of my new classmates I’m very aware of small things I would have never noticed before. I spoke today with a foreigner I knew in Tianjin and he asked if I noticed people doing ‘rude’ things. I don’t think of them as rude, per se, because they are being very polite for their own culture; however, they are unknowingly rude in small, yet noticable ways, when you are immersed of Chinese culture. We had a good laugh. It’s just one of the strange experiences you get to have when you’ve been living abroad for a while.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 17th, 2006 at 8:31 am and is filed under Life and living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.