2 weeks down

So I've been in language classes for two weeks. Its going well and I really have learned to appreciate the weekends. All week is spent doing homework and in classes, so Fridays really have a good feeling to them. This weekend I spent Friday night visiting my friend Afton and his friends who are studying Chinese in a different language program in Harbin. Afton is my classmate at Colorado, and also does research in China. It was a good coincidence that we ended up in the same city doing language classes. So right after classes on Friday, my friend Dave (from my language program) and I headed over to the university where Afton is. Another coincidence is that Dave has a friend, Beth, in the same program as Afton. So we met up with them and shared stories and compared programs, and a large group of us got together to go eat hot pot. Surely hot pot is one of the best group outings in China. I won't even try to compare Harbin hotpot to Sichuan hot pot (its famous in Sichuan), but the taste is less important than the atmosphere, really. So when 14 American students get together after 2 weeks of studying, we are ready to have fun! We had a large table and ordered a bunch of everything to throw into the big boiling pots. Of course its a must that beer accompany hot pot. Needless to say, it was fun to meet new people and catch up with Afton.

I call Afton my di di (little brother)

The spicy side and the non-spicy side. I go for the spice!

Saturday was a busy day as well. I went with a group of my classmates to the museum of the Jewish people in Harbin. It was quite interesting to see this side of Harbin's history, and the way that the museum welcomed the Jewish people to China, celebrating the advances they brought to Harbin at the time (other museums in China do not present such a welcoming attitude towards foreigners). After the museum, we went to the friend's home of the program director to make jiaozi (dumplings) and eat them. I have wrapped jiaozi many times and I can never get it as good as my Chinese hosts. But its always fun and they always taste good. I must confess that have been on such a jiaozi kick since I got to China two and a half weeks ago that I have not even eaten that much rice. I better get on that soon, as that is the purpose of this blog and of my whole reason for coming to Harbin. The rice here is good, after all.

Finally, one strange thing that I did this week that has absolutely nothing to do with rice or China was discovering a relative in Boulder. He's a Zader and there are not that many Zaders in this world. My grandfather and his sisters shortened Zajdinski to Zader to 'Americanize' it so the only Zaders I know are my dad's brothers and sisters. At first I thought it was a pure coincidence that there was a Zader in Boulder (we have a mutual friend which is how I heard of him), but my dad said it was possible he was related because he knew of another strain of Zaders, cousins of his father. So it turns out that our grandfathers were cousins which make us third cousins. Its so weird that it makes me wonder how many other people I could be related to but never know it because we don't share last names. On the flip side, does it matter at all that I am related to this guy in Boulder because we share the same great great grandfather? In any case, it was fun to figure out, from the internet in Harbin no less.

Laughing and Smiling

I think I get through China based on my ability to laugh and smile. I've been doing a lot of both lately, and having an absolute blast doing so. Here are some examples:

Four days of the week I have a 50 minute class called a one on two class. The idea (the way it was explained to me) is that there is one teacher and two students and we are supposed to go through basic material and the teacher helps the students identify basic problems. After two days I realized that those basic problems are pronunciation and tones. Chinese has 4 tones; I learn the tones when I learn the word but as I use it more I forget what tone its supposed to be. After years of being able to communicate just fine in China, I came to the lazy conclusion that tones do not matter. After the first day of this one on two class, I thought that the class was going to lead to my downfall. I didn't really care about tones, nor did I care for the strict relentless way the teacher was teaching the class. Well, after the first two classes I think they were able to judge what levels students are at and they switched us around. I still have the same teacher but a new classmate. Si Mabing is my new classmate and there is something about the way he can take the teacher less seriously while still respecting her that just completely lightens the tone (no pun intended) of the class. When one of us says a word incorrectly, the teacher corrects (its not like this, its like this) us and I just can't look at Si Mabing because I know I will laugh. The tones sound the same to both of us. Sometimes I just slip and end up laughing while I am supposed to be pronunciating a word. In any case, the class is much more bearable now and I am enjoying working on my tone pronunciation.

After the language pledge began on Sunday, we cannot speak any English, not even a word to get a point across. All of us have good Chinese to get around, but there are certain words some people know and others don't. In the dorms we communicate fairly well, but are on less strict behavior guidelines than in the classroom (in theory). So sometimes I walk out of my room and find people in the hall playing a form of charades in Chinese. And I just have to laugh. The thing that's great about being here with a group of people who are all committed to improving our Chinese is our ability to have fun while doing so.

Every place I go in China, I manage to make friends with local restaurant owners. I still have fond memories of my noodle lady back in Luzhou (Sichuan) who would began making me special fat noodles as soon as she saw me on the street heading to her stall. So one of the first days I got to Harbin I went to a jiaozi (dumpling) restaurant with a group for lunch. The owner was nice to us and the food was good and cheap so we went back. I still didn't say much to her but I smiled at her and was polite. I went by myself one night and she sat down and talked with me and offered to take me to her hometown in the countryside where they grow rice. I didn't have to do much, just smile and come back to her place and I've made a friend who can take me to her hometown.

Today all of the students and our roomates in this program went to play (direct translation) at a local tourist spot in Harbin, Sushine Island (appropriate I suppose for the summer solstice). It was a nice park to walk around in for a few hours and get to know our roomates better. Toward the end of the afternoon, we entered an area of the park where there are squirrels that come up to people. Having seen the massive squirrels in Colorado that are not too afraid of people, I wasn't that impressed by the idea but my roomate was excited so we went. Well, there was a sign outside with instructions on how to behave. I know its a pretty general thing that people who go to China take pictures of signs with poorly translated English. I've never really been one to do that, but I had to do it for this one because as I read of it, I kept laughing. Perhaps part of the fun of it was that I was with two other Americans and our three Chinese roomates and we had been speaking in Chinese all day. There was something about seeing this sign and reading it with other Americans that allowed us to laugh and share a moment of understanding. After a week of communicating in another language there was something that reading this sign together could do that made me laugh and smile for the rest of the day. I hope you can read it in that context and laugh with me.


[I hope its readable-I tried to make it as big as I could and had to cut the Chinese out].

Finally able to post

So I've already broken my once-a-week posting rule. But I have a lot of reasons, mostly they can be summed up as connecting to the internet in China=Tai Mafan (too much trouble). But I am posting this from my dorm room where I finally got my new little macbook connected. Hopefully I can continue to do this throughout the summer. So the post written below is from earlier this week. More to come soon.....

After meeting up with my language study group for the summer in Beijing, we took an overnight train to Harbin last Thursday evening. There are 20 American students participating in this program. Most are undergraduates, but there are a few graduate students as well. We are living and studying at Harbin Institute of Technology, staying in dorm rooms with Chinese roomates. We each had to take a language pledge, indicating that while we are in the dorms, interacting with one another, we must speak in Chinese. No English allowed to be spoken in the dorms and with our peers throughout the summer.

One of the reasons I chose this language program is because the program caters to our individual interests through a one-on-one language tutorial. When I applied for the program, I outlined my interests in northeast rice. Throughout the summer, I hope to gather, read, and analyze factual data in the form of news stories, statistics, policies, and other forms of written material about japonica rice. Well only once I got here did I discover that my request to do an independent study on rice was taken seriously. I have been assigned to a rice expert at the provincial agricultural academy to guide my one-on-one study. This means that I will be learning the vocabulary, accessing up-to-date information, and making connections in the field through him. He has been very responsive to my project so far, and has promised to connect me to people in the provincial agricultural university. This would be a big plus to my research.

Another great thing about Harbin is that it is so far north that the summers are cool. Unfortunately it appears I arrived at the hottest time of the year. Its been hot, but then it rained and cooled things off a bit. Also, all of China is on one time zone. I’ve known this and been familiar with it before, but I am just realizing now that Harbin is east and it gets light here in the morning and it gets dark at night early. Being close to the summer solstice, it is dark here by 8 pm and light by 3:30 am. This has not made getting over jet lag easy.

But after classes began, I feel better about the time change and am settling into a routine. Classes are tough; they are mentally exhausting. Most classes are two hours and the teachers are intense. Classes are 2-5 students with one teacher and we have to pay attention to everything that is said, of course. And, after classes are done, we can’t even sit back and decompress in English. So I’ve been coming back to my dorm room, resting and running while listening to my i-pod (which-gulp-is filled with English songs). And after a run, a shower and dinner at my new favorite dumpling restaurant sitting outside watching the street life appear around food, I can go back to my dorm and continue studying.

Since I’ve been here, I’ve been comparing Harbin to Sichuan (where I lived for two years and got to know fairly well). I don’t think I was prepared to do this. I’ve been back to China several times since living in Sichuan and have traveled all around the country. However, I think because I know I am about to live in this city for a year, I am prepared to know it and the local customs in the same way I think about Sichuan. I don’t think the thought that I was living-actually living-in a place crossed my mind in the same way until I got here. Its pretty exciting to have a whole new city to get to explore. I already know where some of the local markets are and have talked to people about northeast rice (which they are all proud of). But I am holding off on any responses until a later date when I have a better sense of what is happening here…