Hello China

So, the last few days have been a whirlwind, pretty much. The flight from China was interesting, but I ended up with a major case of jetlag. I thought that if I slept as little as possible, I would be able to have a good night’s sleep when we arrived… My plans were foiled when I went to bed at 3:00 AM and promptly woke back up at 6:30 AM.

The visit to Tiananmen was also interesting. Although I was born in China, I’d never been to Beijing before. Incidentally, our visit also coincided with the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival – meaning that many people had a 4 day weekend, meaning that there were not many people at Tiananmen at all. (Later on, I sent my dad some pictures of our visit and he asked me if I was SURE that I didn’t just visit a wax museum-type replica of Tiananmen, because there was only ONE PERSON in the background. Haha.)

Now, each day sort of falls into the general outline of language in the morning, followed by a vegetarian (although unintentionally so) lunch, followed by exploring in the afternoon and a large dinner (also consisting of mainly vegetables). The sheer amount of vegetables (and lack of meat) that I have consumed on this trip has made it clear to me why America has such an obesity pandemic and Chinese L t-shirts are about a smallish medium in the US. Haha.

What’s pretty interesting is that I didn’t really get the huge culture shock (in the traditional sense of the word) that I had anticipated, in the sense that sometimes I actually forgot I was in China – Beijing is very similar to what a large American city would be like, with the exception of Chinese signs everywhere and everyone having the same color hair and eyes. Haha. That is, I feel pretty much the same here as I do in Ann Arbor, except it’s hot as hell here. However, I came to the conclusion that it was really the subtle things in China that really made it so much different from the U.S. Such as: when going to the supermarket, it sort of dawned on me that Chinese people rarely shift their glance from straight in front of them in public – I asked LV Hong about this, and she says that it may partly stem from the old Chinese belief that looking straight in front of you is supposed to be representative of a straightforward and honest character. Which I thought was very interesting. (Later on, I also laughed out loud at something LV Hong had said – managing to attract some looks in doing so – and she told me that Chinese women would never laugh that loudly in public. She followed this up by a small giggle, hidden by her hand.) That, and just many other little ways that people do things here are really what, to me, makes Beijing so much different from Ann Arbor.

On a somewhat related note, I have come to the conclusion that my Chinese speaking ability is not so great. Also complicating things, people have told me that I have an accent from southern China, which tends to come out when I feel nervous speaking – a.k.a. pretty much all the time. Haha. To me, it seems like many of the non-Asian people on the trip don’t have much of a problem when going out – Chinese people know that they are foreigners and are often very interested in them, making them very willing to help out. However, I feel as though my poor language skills are probably just interpreted as awkward and weird. Haha. Therefore, I have made a resolution to improve my Chinese speaking/ writing skills as a whole on this trip.

I also had the opportunity of meeting some people from Bei Da and Tsinghua, who are going to the U.S. for the other part of the exchange program starting next month. I think very highly of them – as Bei Da and Tsinghua are the two best universities in China, accepting literally only the top of millions and millions of people, meaning that those students must be the best of the best. It makes me eager, but also slightly nervous, to begin research in about a week – I hope that my performance will be up to par!