Frozen Lanterns
I write today from the frozen reaches of the communist Orient, by which of course I mean I'm in Harbin, China, where it is a balmy 50 degrees F and rainy. I'm just wrapping up my first week of classes, and with it, the language pledge, where I am forbidden to speak anything but Chinese for the duration of the program. I'm still allowed to read and write in English, though, so this blog isn't a covert subversion of my studies. Which would probably be more exciting to read, as I'd be writing in English secretly under my bedsheets or something, scribbling a word here and a sentence there while looking out for Big Brother. Alas, no such cheap thrills will be found here...yet.
I guess the first thing I'll talk about is the language pledge. It still seems bizarre to me that I haven't really spoken English in a week, and that in another 11 I'll be able to speak Chinese with what could be considered a reasonable fluency. What is starting to happen is that I'm no longer striving to translate every word from Chinese to English, then my English thoughts to Chinese. Rather, the goal is to more or less "think" in Chinese. That's the idea anyway.
One of the other things that helps is having a Chinese roommate...when mine is around, that is. My roommate is a slightly aloof graduate student who's wrapping up his research and patent application on something called "cold spraying". I don't know what that is in English, so Chinese is definitely out of the question. But even hanging out with the other Chinese roommates helps my language skills almost more than any single class would. Not that I mind terribly having a quasi-single, I just feel like I might be missing out. But its only the first week anyway. Edit: Check that. I just got back from dinner with my roommate and some of his friends. It was pretty great. Chinese dinners are long and involved (we were at the resteraunt for maybe 2 and a half hours), but it was a good time. Good to know my roommate exists as well.
Speaking of classes, mine are for the most part pretty quality. All of the classes are in the same building, the International Student Center, which CET uses along with programs from Russia and Korea, among other places. My one-on-one, self-designed class is focusing on Chinese technological development, specifically in the area of energy. The professor is this miniature Chinese lady who's been teaching at HIT (Harbin Institute of Technology) for about 20 years or so. Which is a while. My other required class is my one-on-two, which is pretty much a drill session emphasizing practice on tones. We'll prepare for the class by reading/quasi-memorizing fairly simple, but useful dialogues, and the teacher will then take note of and drill us on each set of vocabulary we pronounce wrong. Having only two people in the class really puts the focus on your performance, especially because they match you up with another student of similar Chinese proficiency. More than likely this will be my most useful class. My other two classes are "electives," in that we've got about six choices, of which we pick two. For me, those two are Conversation and Composition, which are exactly what they sound like. Mostly unremarkable things come out of those classes, my skills at each included. My conversation class has 6 people, and my composition class has 3. Which, you know, is pretty good.
A quick word on the other CET students. I'm really, really, really glad that they turned out to be functional human beings instead of obsessive Chinese nerds, which was my big fear coming into this program. I'm not really on either extreme in the group in terms of proficiency, which is good. And...that's all I'm going to say on that subject.
And now, a deft transition to the city of Harbin. Harbin is a strange combination of Chinese and European tastes. Some parts of the city center could be from any city in Old World Europe, save for all the Chinese people. There is a heavy Russian influence on the city, which might be why it looks pretty bland, but it also gives me reason to score one of those sweet russian fur hats. Besides the crippling cold, that is. Most of the Harbin that I've seen, however, is distinctly Chinese. Like most Chinese cities, the city of Harbin has a total infatuation with neon, an obsession which is rivaled only by ADD children and the 1970s. Walking on Harbin's streets at night is nothing short of a siege on the eyes. A bright, colorful, glowing siege.
So it is now approximately 1:30 in the morning, in China-hours. I started this post approximately 13 hours ago, but have since been pulled away for multiple different activities, not the least of which included playing mahjonng for about three hours. This is the first time that I've really felt that there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do.
Which of course signals that I'm going to depart. I haven't uploaded my pictures to flickr yet, but once I do I'll post the link here. My goal is to make these blog posts more or less every weekend. We'll see how it goes. I'll leave with a story:
The other day I went to dinner with a friend (who is also American). For dinner I suggest that we go to this dumpling place that I had gone to before with some other people. The Chinese word for dumpling is Zhao zi (pronounced like j-AO z-ih). So we're making our order, and order one plate of dumplings with this vegetable inside called bai cai (literally "white vegetable". Think cooked lettuce). The other order we decide we want meat in the dumplings, so we make an order of pork dumplings. My friend is doing the ordering, and I bring up to her that this might be too much food. A plate of dumplings has about 50, which is a lot. The waitress knocks it down to 30, and cuts the price from 6 yuan to 4 (8 yuan = $1 US). However, we were in for quite a shock when they brought the food out. Before bringing out the dumplings, they brought us two other plates. The first plate was the pork we ordered. The first problem was, it wasn't in a dumpling. The second problem was, it was on a foot. The word for foot is jiao ji (pronounced j-ee-AO j-ee), which sounds suspiciously similar to the word for dumpling. So we got an order of pig's feet. Next, we got an order of bai cai, also on a plate (not on a foot though). After all of that, we got two more plates of dumplings, totaling about 60. Even without eating the pig's feet, we still couldn't finish it all. So we ended up leaving with about 40 dumplings in a bag, as well as half a dozen pig's feet in the other. I think the feet are still sitting in the CET fridge downstairs. Delicious. Still, the total for dinner only came to about $3 US, so I can't really complain.
For those of you keeping score at home, reason #6 to go to China is really really cheap food. Like pig's feet.
I could go on with lots of other mini-impressions on Harbin, but I'll save those for another day. Until next time...
*cue dramatic music*
I guess the first thing I'll talk about is the language pledge. It still seems bizarre to me that I haven't really spoken English in a week, and that in another 11 I'll be able to speak Chinese with what could be considered a reasonable fluency. What is starting to happen is that I'm no longer striving to translate every word from Chinese to English, then my English thoughts to Chinese. Rather, the goal is to more or less "think" in Chinese. That's the idea anyway.
One of the other things that helps is having a Chinese roommate...when mine is around, that is. My roommate is a slightly aloof graduate student who's wrapping up his research and patent application on something called "cold spraying". I don't know what that is in English, so Chinese is definitely out of the question. But even hanging out with the other Chinese roommates helps my language skills almost more than any single class would. Not that I mind terribly having a quasi-single, I just feel like I might be missing out. But its only the first week anyway. Edit: Check that. I just got back from dinner with my roommate and some of his friends. It was pretty great. Chinese dinners are long and involved (we were at the resteraunt for maybe 2 and a half hours), but it was a good time. Good to know my roommate exists as well.
Speaking of classes, mine are for the most part pretty quality. All of the classes are in the same building, the International Student Center, which CET uses along with programs from Russia and Korea, among other places. My one-on-one, self-designed class is focusing on Chinese technological development, specifically in the area of energy. The professor is this miniature Chinese lady who's been teaching at HIT (Harbin Institute of Technology) for about 20 years or so. Which is a while. My other required class is my one-on-two, which is pretty much a drill session emphasizing practice on tones. We'll prepare for the class by reading/quasi-memorizing fairly simple, but useful dialogues, and the teacher will then take note of and drill us on each set of vocabulary we pronounce wrong. Having only two people in the class really puts the focus on your performance, especially because they match you up with another student of similar Chinese proficiency. More than likely this will be my most useful class. My other two classes are "electives," in that we've got about six choices, of which we pick two. For me, those two are Conversation and Composition, which are exactly what they sound like. Mostly unremarkable things come out of those classes, my skills at each included. My conversation class has 6 people, and my composition class has 3. Which, you know, is pretty good.
A quick word on the other CET students. I'm really, really, really glad that they turned out to be functional human beings instead of obsessive Chinese nerds, which was my big fear coming into this program. I'm not really on either extreme in the group in terms of proficiency, which is good. And...that's all I'm going to say on that subject.
And now, a deft transition to the city of Harbin. Harbin is a strange combination of Chinese and European tastes. Some parts of the city center could be from any city in Old World Europe, save for all the Chinese people. There is a heavy Russian influence on the city, which might be why it looks pretty bland, but it also gives me reason to score one of those sweet russian fur hats. Besides the crippling cold, that is. Most of the Harbin that I've seen, however, is distinctly Chinese. Like most Chinese cities, the city of Harbin has a total infatuation with neon, an obsession which is rivaled only by ADD children and the 1970s. Walking on Harbin's streets at night is nothing short of a siege on the eyes. A bright, colorful, glowing siege.
So it is now approximately 1:30 in the morning, in China-hours. I started this post approximately 13 hours ago, but have since been pulled away for multiple different activities, not the least of which included playing mahjonng for about three hours. This is the first time that I've really felt that there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do.
Which of course signals that I'm going to depart. I haven't uploaded my pictures to flickr yet, but once I do I'll post the link here. My goal is to make these blog posts more or less every weekend. We'll see how it goes. I'll leave with a story:
The other day I went to dinner with a friend (who is also American). For dinner I suggest that we go to this dumpling place that I had gone to before with some other people. The Chinese word for dumpling is Zhao zi (pronounced like j-AO z-ih). So we're making our order, and order one plate of dumplings with this vegetable inside called bai cai (literally "white vegetable". Think cooked lettuce). The other order we decide we want meat in the dumplings, so we make an order of pork dumplings. My friend is doing the ordering, and I bring up to her that this might be too much food. A plate of dumplings has about 50, which is a lot. The waitress knocks it down to 30, and cuts the price from 6 yuan to 4 (8 yuan = $1 US). However, we were in for quite a shock when they brought the food out. Before bringing out the dumplings, they brought us two other plates. The first plate was the pork we ordered. The first problem was, it wasn't in a dumpling. The second problem was, it was on a foot. The word for foot is jiao ji (pronounced j-ee-AO j-ee), which sounds suspiciously similar to the word for dumpling. So we got an order of pig's feet. Next, we got an order of bai cai, also on a plate (not on a foot though). After all of that, we got two more plates of dumplings, totaling about 60. Even without eating the pig's feet, we still couldn't finish it all. So we ended up leaving with about 40 dumplings in a bag, as well as half a dozen pig's feet in the other. I think the feet are still sitting in the CET fridge downstairs. Delicious. Still, the total for dinner only came to about $3 US, so I can't really complain.
For those of you keeping score at home, reason #6 to go to China is really really cheap food. Like pig's feet.
I could go on with lots of other mini-impressions on Harbin, but I'll save those for another day. Until next time...
*cue dramatic music*
posted by Keith at 12:35:00 AM
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