Zee END!

A bunch of our teachers, all except the left most teacher were my teachers for third year. There are only three male teachers in the whole program (over 30 teachers total). Second year has one and third year has two, but they didn't go out to eat with us.



Well, it is officially over. We graduated yesterday and then all went out to dinner together, for the first 英文桌子/English Table (we have Chinese Table every week, but this was the first time we got to speak English!) of the semester. It was very strange and a little anticlimactic to be allowed to speak English. Most of the teachers can't speak English really well, so we continued to speak Chinese with them. A bunch of them were too shy, but when the few that did try spoke, it was like they were very different people. They didn't seem like themselves and were struggling a lot to get their meaning across. Then I wondered, is that what we sound like to them? One teacher, who in Chinese is especially confident and articulate tried speaking English and it made her seem so much less herself- also she has a Russian accent, because she was taught English by a Russian program, which was a little amusing. After three months of English being so forbidden, it was very different to just have it be completely fine, no threats of being sent home. It almost feels more natural to speak Chinese. Also, since we've all met and gotten to know each other in Chinese, I don't know lots of people's English names or what their "real" personality is; it's really hard to understand people's sense of humor in Chinese. It's almost like we're re-meeting people after spending three months going to school with them. And I must admit though, I am a little sad to have the semester be finished, even though it was painfully hard at times, parts of it we're really great and lots of the teachers and students I will definitely miss.
My parents are flying in tomorrow and then we are spending until Friday in Beijing, then taking the train to Xi'an and staying there for a few days and then flying to Yunnan and eventually flying back to Beijing and home on the 14th of May. I am of course really excited to see them and be able to travel and see the Tomb of the First Emperor in Xi'an and Tiger Leaping Gorge (the deepest gorge in the world!) in Yunnan, among other things. It's a little frightening to be the sole translator for this adventure, because in the past I have always traveled with others who can speak Chinese, but now the task of understanding everything is on me. I think it'll be fine though.
I'm looking forward to seeing all of you back at home!

On the left is 焦老师 (Jiao laoshi), my independent project teacher, then 赵老师 (Zhao laoshi), who is one of my favorite teachers, then me, the on the right is my roommate 谢若菲 (her English name is Theora).





Only three days of class left! One more day of review, then a day of spoken test and a day of written test. Then Friday afternoon, we have some sort of graduation ceremony, then ENGLISH! We can speak as much English as our little hearts desire! And then they take us out to eat roast duck.
Last weekend we had 中文之夜 or Chinese Night. It's kind of like a talent show/play/lets all sing cheesy Chinese songs together kind of thing. They say it's "optional," but then force everyone to participate and made us practice all last Friday (no class because of the preparation) and Saturday morning. Most people's Chinese host families came and all the teachers watched, although some did participate too. I was a doctor in a confusing skit about a Chinese girl that only loves 外国人 (foreigners). It was fairly fun and amusing in the end.

Also, this is completely inconsequential, but it's been bothering me: All day today, starting before 7:45, when I ate breakfast, until about 5:30 there have been three Chinese guys outside, on the basketball court below my balcony, washing the ground. They have a large hose and two brooms and have been non-stop spraying water and sweeping the water in seemingly random directions. At first I thought maybe they were washing dirt off the court, but there isn't any dirt to wash away. So, my current conclusion is there are too many people and too few jobs, so useless jobs are created.
By the entrance to our school, there is a guard who stands and when a car want to enter, he picks up a cone and lets the car in then replaces the cone and resumes his standing. There is another such guard outside the supermarket, but he wears a much more official uniform, and gets to stand on a pedestal.

Aha! Greenery has emerged from the dusty dirty city that is Beijing! It is hard to believe that this same day's morning was possible one of the worst pollution days since I've been here, then it quickly turned into a very blue sky. Then a few hours later, got really windy and I think was a minor sandstorm. (Apparently common in the spring time because there are no trees left dividing the Gobi desert from Beijing, so the wind just continues blowing and picks up more and more dust and sand.) The leaves coming out on the trees and flowers blooming has definitely improved my mood and made it a little easier to study.




View from a very tiny park on the campus. The building on the right behind the trees is the library and I'm not sure what the red building is.






























Houzi Dawang! (Monkey King), the villain of the opera.










Wife of the general in the opera. She offered to kill herself to allow her husband to not have to worry about her while he is at war.










Alas, the right to speak English freely is so close and yet so far...only two weeks of classes left, but too much to do in those two weeks. However, contrary to my joy after finishing our semester long project presentation, we've just been assigned another 20 minute presentation on our favorite movie and why it's our favorite and such and such. Last Wednesday all the third year students had to present their duli baogao (independent project). It was set up like a research symposium, with three classroms simeltaneously having students present. We could choose which presentations to attend, and it was really interesting to see the topics people had chosen (the role of modern art in Beijing, recent trends in Chinese adoption, Americans' views toward the "Chinese Threat", Hutong's current role in Chiense tourism, etc.). My presentation went pretty well, aside from being nervous about speaking Chinese straight for 20 minutes and tryng to speak smoothly.
As one of my friends, who is also abroad said, it feels like I've just arrived in Beijing, but when I think back to last semester at Colby it seems like ages ago. I think my Chinese speaking abilities have improved a lot, but I can't really remember what my vocabulary and grammar level was when the semester started. Strange.
On Friday, we all went to the Peking Opera. I think this particular opera was directed at tourists because it contained very little dialogue and lots of kung fu action. And, not surprisingly, almost the entire audience was composed of waiguoren from various countries. It was probably the largest concentration of non-Chinese people I have seen in one place at one time since coming to China.
I also (a while ago) found half papayas for about 50 cents each. Mmmm.

Also, I think one reason Chinese people are so healthy in this almost toxic environment is because they non-stop drink green tea- always have a tea jar at hand.

Guizhou Trip

We a had a five day break from classes (last Tuesday until Sunday) so I went with two other girls to Guizhou province in southern China. We took the train there for about 30ish hours and flew back. We visited three different province in southern China. Guizhou is partly famous for having many non-Han Chinese ethnic groups and that attracts a fir amount of tourists. The first place we went to was a small town called Zhenyuan. When we arrived, we didn't know where to stay or what to do there so we asked a girl who worked at the train station. She helped us find a place to stay then invited us out to dinner and showed us the town. It's on the edge of a (very green) river and you can pay 3 mao (about 4 cents) to be paddled across the river. We stayed there for one night and visited a Buddhist temple that is built in the side of a mountain.
Then we took a bus to Xijiang, which was very clearly a tourist attraction and the largest Miao vilage in China. It is pretty isolated and before raods were built, it took one day of walking to bring salt to the people. We went to a tea shop and drank tea for a while and talked with the owner, who was a little outrageous. We also met two ridiculous (and very grubby) British students on the bus to Xijiang. They did not speak a word of Chinese and said they had just spent two months in Vietnam and were going to trak around China. The next day we went to a traditional Miao dance show and then climbed the smallish mountain that the village is built on. As we climbed the village became less tourist-y and more like the houses people live in. People were leading donkeys up the steps with bricks and other building materials to develop and build further up the hill. The village has been developed extremely quickly for tourist visiting purposes and all around people were building houses, etc. Also, since everything is made of wood, there are signs everywhere telling people to protect the homeland against fire. All the hills around the village are terraced for rice paddies and the occasional cabbage field. The views from the top were amazing and flowers were beginning to bloom too. We spent two nights there then took a few buses to another village called Qingyan. The village has a walled in portion (the ancient city) and the real city outside. One of their specialties is lots of different kinds of tofu, which sounded good, but actually was not. They have lots of chou dofu (smelly tofu) which you can smell from a great distance, as well as blow-torched (black) tofu, smoked tofu and some sort of cheesy weird tofu.
So, we spend a long time outside of the city walls and I think since it was Sunday they had a massive market with endless stuff. For example: clothing, shoes, lighters, baskets, hats, jars, animal parts of all sorts (bowls of pig blood, pig feet, eggs), baby ducks...
Guizhou is one of China's poorest provinces and it is clearly evident. Everything is pretty dirty (muddy, because the climate is wetter and with more trash on the ground because there are not armies of people sweeping it up everywhere). Also, there are pretty much no foreigners. We were a massive spectacle and people would just stop walking and look us or look really confused when we could speak Chinese. At the Xijiang dance show, we spend probably half an hour having out picture taken by Chinese people. blahhh. Once one person asks to have their picture taken everyone else stsrts and it never stops. Having only seen the developed cities of Beijing and Chengdu, it was very different to see how the other half of the population lives. Also, compared to Beijing, Guizhou is very inexpensive; I spent approximately $14 on four nights of lodging and about 30 cents on breakfast, for example. Returning to Beijing, everything looked really clean and modern.
(Sorry about the weird format-I'm not sure how to make it prettier.)
More photos: http://s591.photobucket.com/albums/ss353/klebling/