Post the Sixth: Totally Looks Like...

First things first: today is Monday. Monday is apparently drain the sewage from the pipes day at Harbin Institute of Technology. All day there have been huge tank-bearing trucks parked alongside the roads. As soon as one of these trucks pulls up to a manhole, all conversation in the vicinity ceases and people literally book it out of there. The workers waited until about 8PM to handle the drain in the parking lot outside our dorm. I can tell you that the stench is DELIGHTFUL and makes an excellent study aid.

Anyways...

I've been thinking a lot about Chinese characters lately. A LOT. Probably because I have a million of them to learn every night. In order to expedite memorization, I've begun employing one of my favorite study strategies: character pictionary.

Chinese characters are a form of phono-semantic compound; they symbolize physical objects and abstract ideas through the addition of a determinative radical (which supplies meaning) to a rebus building-block character (which supplies sound). Traditional Chinese characters, with their deliberate strokes and overall structure, look quite similar to the things they represent. Unfortunately, the simplification of the Chinese writing system, while making my job here in Harbin easier (as well as increasing literacy in a country of over 1.4 billion people), has stripped some of the characters of that quality. I've still managed, however, to find other characters that adhere to their phono-semantic origins. I wanted to share some examples with readers back home (aka my parents) who don't necessarily speak Chinese:

• 宿舍 (sùshè) – dormitory; the first character is composed of 百 (băi, hundred) and 人 (rén, person), which makes sense: a hundred people living together under one roof.

• 怀孕 (huáiyùn) – to be pregnant; the second character 孕 (yùn, pregnancy) has a little 子 zĭ-child being born from the B-shaped-mother-thing (it actually means "to be" and the first character means "bosom" so I guess "the child of the bosom"?)

• 好 (hăo) – good; the character is composed of 女 (nǚ, female) and 子 (zĭ, child), which should be obvious since a woman plus her child is good. Credit to my high school Chinese teacher for this one.

• 串 (chuàn) – 1) to string together, 2) a cluster, 3) meat kebab; this character is composed of two things speared on a stick. Any questions?

• 门 (mén) – door; no explanation needed, just walk through it and try not to get hit by the falling brick on the top left corner.

• 楼 (lóu) – building/floor; this is one of those characters that you just sort of have to come up with your own way to remember it. 木 (mù), 米 (mĭ), and 女 (nǚ) combined translates to wood-rice-woman and obviously refers to a building, right?
•  率 (lǜ) – rate or ratio; When I first encountered this character, I didn’t think I would ever be able to master it. Then I realized the little dot things look like the falling numbers from the Matrix movies. The Matrix is all about a computer code generating an alternate reality. Computer codes use numbers to encode information. Numbers are used to measure things and make comparisons. These measurements and comparisons translate to rates and ratios. Phew.
• 腐败 (fŭbài) – corruption; this is one of my favorites. I like to think that it’s derived from the character 政府 (zhèngfŭ, government). You’ll notice that the bottom part of the first character features a 肉 (ròu, meat). Translation: if your government would rather sit on a bunch of meat than eat it or give it to the needy, it’s probably corrupt.
  
  

I should really write my own textbook. In the mean time, back to the books!

魏德

Post the Fifth: The Fast and the Famished

Memorial to the people who built the southern bank of Songhua River in 1957 to stop flooding once and for all.

Time is flying here in Harbin. I've been a bit busier than I expected due to Chinese homework, restaurant exploring, and attempts at choreographing, though none of these can compare to yesterday's triumph in convincing the laundry machine that it likes me and should cooperate and wash my clothes and not instead try to eat all of my coins. Anyways, more thoughts!

• On Saturday the 25th, CET organized a scavenger hunt for the students so we could explore around campus and in the heart of Harbin. We were asked to find/purchase/take pictures with people/items including (but not limited to) St. Sofia Church, a Chinese Walmart employee, a non-Harbin Chinese friend, and a shrink-wrapped chicken foot (bonus points for each group member that took a bite). The hunt took three and a half hours and we were super tired after all of it but it was a great introduction to the heart of Harbin. The German chocolate prize also helped.

Our victorious group outside of St. Sofia Cathedral, downtown Harbin. One should note that there are many duplicates of this photo circulating in China as at least three Chinese people stopped to take pictures of the foreigners in their midst.

Two teammates striking a tango pose with 羊肉串, otherwise known as roasted-lamb-on-a-stick.

Shrink-wrapped chicken foot! You know you want it!!

• The food here is amazing. The cafeterias on campus are known throughout China for serving some of the best college food. The restaurants in the area all specialize in different cooking styles and have had years of experience to perfect their dishes. In addition to being delicious, food here is also SO CHEAP. Meals cost around $5 a day (yeah, be jealous). My only issue with food in China is that I don't know what anything is called so lunch and dinner often consists of me pointing at various food items and hoping they blend well together and/or asking random and bewildered strangers to tell me their favorite foods.

I eat lunch at the Special Flavored Food Gallery (Chinese name: 黑店, black market) everyday. I promise I haven't caught salmonella.

• In addition to meals, fruit here is spectacular. Everyday after dinner a couple of friends and I visit the fruit man to buy yutao (or YOO TOWRRRR according to the fruit man that sells peaches, watermelons, and other unidentifiables out of his blue pick-up truck). Unclear how these yutao peaches will affect my health. On one hand, the peaches are undoubtedly covered in pesticides to keep them from being eaten by the monster bugs that exist in this province. Those probably aren't good for me - the peaches should be washed. On the other hand, does cleansing them in Chinese water make them better...or worse
• Every summer from early June to late August Harbin features a beer festival where people gather outside (every day) to meet their friends (every day) and drink beer (every day) and eat roasted things on a stick (every day). These 啤酒园, or beer gardens, are social hubs at night where people can relax after a hard day's work. They are also great places to eat different types of once-alive-but-are-now-dead-and-tasty animals. I'll just go ahead and venture that eating a whole quail (head to foot) is quite delicious, if a bit crunchy.

More photos!

Just some European-style buildings in downtown Harbin.

Boats on the Songhua River. People swim here sometimes too.

I will take these blue skies over Beijing's toxic fumes any day.

Anyway, I must get ready for class. I've not one but two 听写's (tingxie, literally listen-write) quizzes tomorrow! 哎呀!受不了!!

魏德

Post the Fourth: Tingbudong

"我发誓为了在CET哈尔滨项目中提高我的中文水平从现在开始到这学期结束我只讲汉语，同时我也会帮助我的同学遵守这个誓言."
~ CET Harbin Language Pledge

So it begins. The language pledge. What were once lively conversations have since become crippled exchanges between groups of CET students looking at each other over their mountains of homework. Slowly, a conversation (in Chinese!) will begin, developing promisingly as those involved gradually become more invested and more confident in their language abilities, people excited now that they are able to amply express themselves and their opinions, the conversation increasingly fluent as words begin to flow quickly and without bounds...until someone utters the lethal "tīngbudǒng" (听不懂, I auditorily don't understand you) and suddenly silence descends.

From now on I am only allowed to speak English to my American family. Outside of that, this blog will be my only English outlet for the summer. FDJGKDFGOSFFFJDKGS.

Some things:

• I met my Chinese roommate! His name is Zhang Chiye and he is a second year electrical engineering (see AWESOME) student at the university. At first I was afraid that conversation might be awkward (given my language ineptitude), but things are actually great. His background story is a little sad since he, like so many Chinese people, was forced into his major due to the 高考 (massive life-determining college entrance exam that makes the SATs look like a game of go-fish) but he's somehow managed to not be bitter about it. In fact, he's hilarious.

The pillow doesn't really do him justice but it is a good representation of his sense of humor.

• Who do I need to talk to about the weather? Harbin is essentially in Russia, yet it is still very hot here (though nights are cool). Unclear how anything gets done during the day in Chinese universities when there isn't any air conditioning and one has just had a large bowl of 榨菜肉丝炒饭, otherwise known as hot-pickled-mustard-tuber (don't laugh) meat fried rice.

Doesn't that look delicious?

• Yesterday we had lunch with our 1-on-1 professors who will help us with our 8-week long research project. Mine is Sui laoshi, a 50-something preventive medicine (预防医学) researcher-type person who focuses on "top priority easily transmittable diseases" like TB, H1N1, and AIDS (艾滋病 in case you were curious). She is another victim of the 高考, as well as conservative parents who apparently didn't think civil engineering/architecture, which are very desirable majors, was very becoming for a young Chinese woman. So now she tries to protect unsuspecting villagers from contracting AIDS. The amount of knowledge inside her head is almost frightening; this woman can tell you something about almost any aspect of the Chinese health-care system from preventive medicine to medical distribution to health insurance policy differences between regions of China. Tomorrow is our first legitimate class so I'm planning on reading (thanks, Wikipedia/Google) about the health situation in China for preparation.
• Outside of the 1-on-1 topic, I have three other classes: 1-on-2 drill class, composition, and business Chinese. The 1-on-2 consists of two students and one teacher; the students recite dialogues and discuss topics while the teacher leads the discussion and mercilessly corrects pronunciation and tone mistakes (huáshèngdùn...huáshèngdùn...huáshèngdùn...). Composition class is focused on written Chinese, which differs from spoken Mandarin in both grammar and vocabulary; students study a variety of styles and imitate them to learn how the Chinese put down thoughts and feelings on paper. Business Chinese is exactly what is sounds like. I'm not sure why I'm taking this last class as I studied economics for three semesters at Yale and have hated them all, both individually and together as a whole, though the chapters on medical insurance and environment look pretty good. Vocabulary words like "welfare and remuneration" (福利待遇) and "focused strategic management" (专营主业战略管理) aren't helping. Whatever, no pain, no gain.

Hopefully classes will become less hectic and we students will be able to do something other than homework. For now, thunderstorm! Update to hopefully come later this week!

魏德

Post the Third: Harbin!!!

"Harbin (simplified Chinese: 哈尔滨) is the capital and largest city in Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China, lying on the southern bank of the Songhua River...Harbin is originally a Manchu word meaning 'a place for drying fishing nets.'"
~ Wikipedia, keyword: Harbin

After arriving in Harbin via soft-sleeper train (see LUXURIOUS), I immediately noticed three things:

• BLUE SKIES: Harbin, unlike other major Chinese cities, hasn't yet managed to choke itself in layers of smog. As a result, the sky is still visible. Success. 

City roundabout, downtown Harbin

• Kendeji/肯德基: Upon exiting the train station, there are two KFC's approximately 200 yards from each other. We are far from Beijing, but not that far. I do want to know what's on the menu.

KFC, downtown Harbin. Notice it resides in a government-protected traditional style Russian building (it's the building, not the KFC, that's protected). I am unsure how I feel about this.

• Russian style buildings and "Russian style buildings": As the city was originally built by Russians, Harbin to this day boasts Russian-inspired architecture as well as other European styles that followed European settlers into the city. Some of the buildings date back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries and are masterpieces of classical Russian building styles with brightly colored walls and domes. Other buildings date back about three or four years and are masterpieces of the Chinese ability to include tradition on even the most characterless modern buildings. In large cities like Beijing and Shanghai, it's not uncommon to see huge skyscrapers made entirely out of glass and steel with a traditional Chinese roof on top - it's almost as though these monoliths are wearing Chinese "hats." In Harbin, though, the original European influences still seem to dominate.

Most yellow buildings like the one pictured above have are traditional Russian/European style. The building in the background is wearing a hat!

The CET program has kept us busy for the past couple days since classes start on Monday. So far we've poked around the campus and surrounding area, toured the more central downtown area, taken placement exams (oral and written), and struggled with varying degrees of success to triumph over jet-lag. Tonight we officially meet our Chinese roommates (SO EXCITED!!!) and enjoy one last night of being able to converse freely amongst ourselves before the language pledge starts tomorrow afternoon and nobody is able to say anything to anyone. 哎呀.

Thoughts so far:

• The feeling here in this city is unique. It's a super-huge metropolis but there are local alleyways and restaurants that people go to time after time. Hoards of modern skyscrapers form an impressive skyline while small parks still draw hundreds of Chinese people for taijiquan in the morning and dancing late at night. Development is well underway (new subway lines, new businesses, etc), yet the city still isn't international. It's authentically Chinese. It's slightly uncomfortable and weird and I like it. Frankly, it's an adventure.
• Adventures aside, Harbin NEEDS to get some traffic lights ASAP. I used to think Beijing traffic was bad. There are literally NO rules here. If there is a flat surface, a car will drive on it. If it has people on it, those people can be made flat.
• Dongbei food is goooood. Dongbei coffee is not.
• Harbin people appear rather unfriendly. They actually love to talk to foreigners. They really want to know why I've come all the way from my 美国 (USA) to a city like Harbin. They don't even care that I keep butchering their mother tongue.

All in all, Harbin has come pretty far from its fishing net past.

Oh, you know, just some pro-subway propaganda.

Signing off,
魏德

Post the Second: Beijing & Bieber

Salutations from Beijing! I am currently stationed in my host family’s 13^th story apartment, which normally (when not obscured by heat, smog, sand, and whatever else is making my cold/allergies worse) overlooks Houhai Lake, Beihai and Jingshan Parks all the way to the Forbidden City and the Beijing National Performance Hall…Thing. Today’s temperature: HOT. Good thing I’ve got this 奶茶 (Milk Tea) to keep me cool.

Beijing hasn’t changed much. I mean, there are loads of new buildings and almost all of the Olympics slogans have been taken down (apparently 北京 doesn’t 欢迎你 anymore). The cab drivers aren’t nearly as chatty as they used to be. My host family’s cat ran away. Aside from those things, the city could be the same city I left three years ago. Traffic here is still horrendous. The third elevator in my host family’s apartment building still doesn’t work. There is still a man who sells fruit by the front gate, though he is not the same man. Twice I have been told, and not asked, where I am from (Pakistan and Brazil, respectively). The Olympics came and went and the pace of life in Beijing still slows down at night when everyone meets in the park to dance, smoke, and gossip with neighbors. All in all, 差不多.

(Lovely smog, isn't?)

(YES, PLEASE.)

I am back home.

Today I decided to go out on my own for a bit to run some errands. I needed luggage locks to for my bags since the train company won’t ship them otherwise and I forgot to get them in the US. I decided to go to 物美超市, otherwise known as Wumei Hypermarket. For those of you who have never experienced one of these establishments before, Wumei is a massive Walmart-esque store that sells literally everything in no particular order. Discounted clothes are placed next to air conditioning units, which are across from cellphone counters staffed by young Chinese 20-somethings all on their cutting-edge phones. The second floor features meat, produce, snacks, and other unidentifiable but edible things along with checkout counters with lines of 30 people each.

After nearly getting run over by a train of 100+ carts, I head downstairs to the first level in search of locks and tissues. I go to the luggage aisle and look for luggage locks. Not there. I try hardware, which has three separate areas. Also not there. I ask an employee for help, who leads me back to the luggage area. After searching for a while she turns to me and says, “Sorry, I have no idea where anything is. This is my first day.” Sigh. I ask three more people. Each one of them points me in a vague direction before they are bombarded with questions from fellow shoppers. I begin strolling down aisles at random, hoping desperately to locate the locks. Twenty minutes later, I finally find them in the toys department behind a pole. Obviously.

At 12PM, I meet my host mother at a nearby restaurant. My host father, who I had not seen until today due to his work schedule, joins us for lunch, which is fun if somewhat incomprehensible. To this day I do not understand the man when he speaks since he a) has a thick Tianjin accent and b) almost always has food in his mouth. Anyways, he, my host mother, and I are enjoying our lunches of rice, baicai, potatoes and beef (still attached to the bone of course) when none other than Justin Bieber starts playing. 

Choking slightly, I look around at the other restaurant patrons. Nobody has acknowledged the Canadian pop star. The surrounding Chinese businessmen and women continue their lunches, frequently checking phones and joking amongst themselves. No explanation whatsoever.

The last notes of “Never Say Never” play out. My host mother, who has observed me not eating for the past three minutes, asks me “吃饱了吗?” “Are you full?” I shake my head and return to my food, pondering the experience.

In retrospect, this should not have surprised me. Western music, just like a lot of Western cultural things, is super cool here, despite the fact that few people understand the songs and even fewer know the lyrics. Didn’t they used to play the Black Eyed Peas? Isn’t that why Pizza Hut is a sit-down restaurant with table clothes?

Tomorrow I leave muggy Beijing in a luxurious hard-sleeper train car. 哎呀!!! Next stop: Harbin!

**The author would like to dedicate this post to the survival of the jianbing man, the rechristening of Good Time Cofe café, and the passing of Taiping Jiaozi Guanr. Taiping, you will be missed.**

Post the First: Introduction

Until I figure out how to otherwise introduce myself on this newfangled blog business, this will be my  introduction. Hi!! My name is Tony (Chinese name: 魏德). I am a third year university student. I am also going to China.

Some general notes before we begin: I am not Chinese. Nobody in my family is Chinese. Nobody in my family speaks Chinese. Nobody in my family has ever lived in China. Despite all of this, I am about to go on my fourth trip to China. Whaaat?

Explanation: I love China. I love the way the Chinese do things. I love the sounds of Chinese cities. I love getting squished into a subway car that is filled to 500% capacity. I love buying those juicy Asian pear things from the fruit lady for less than a dollar. I love how Chinese people are always amazed to see someone who looks like me speak their language (bonus points if you use tones regardless of whether or not they are correct). I also love China for the experiences I had. I grew up in China. Or rather, while I grew up in the US, I came of age while living in Beijing. In a sense, China helped me understand myself while helping me to learn about its history, culture, and society. I am me today because of my life in Beijing. I might have been born in the US, but China feels like home.

I've been to China three times and each of my travels amazed me in ways I didn't think possible. In 8th grade, I (along with 24 other students) went on a week-long trip to Beijing to learn about Chinese language and culture. Having never seen anything Chinese except Chinese take-out, the experience was a blast. Everything was completely new and completely different and I loved every minute of Beijing. I returned to Beijing in the summer of 2006 for a six-week immersion program and again in 2007 to spend my junior year of high school in Beijing.

Fast forward several years: Tony is a sophomore in college. Tony is sad because he hasn't taken Chinese for nearly 9 months due to pre-med classes and feels as though his language skills have been reduced to that of a four year old Chinese child. Tony elects to return to China to reclaim what little Chinese language ability remains.

So here I am, preparing to go back. Yet again. Mission four.

To be quite honest, I have no idea what to expect. I have no real concept of post-Olympics China since I left two months before the opening ceremony. Will the city still feel the same? Will my Chinese teachers from my year abroad still be teaching at 北师大二附中 high school? Does the "too-flat" dumpling restaurant on 新街口外大街 still exist? (I REALLY REALLY HOPE SO GAHHHH) I also have no idea what Harbin will be like. The city was built by Russians in the early 20th century and was influenced by Russian and Manchu cultures. The product of all of this is a super diverse city that manages to boast standard Mandarin (普通话), awesome food, and cool architecture. Also, sub-zero temperatures in the winter. And Russian mafia types, or so I've heard.

It's adventure time again and I'm pretty excited. Nervous too. But mostly excited.