I Wish I Could Think of a Clever Title

Well it's been a while since I posted. Sorry to my hoards of fans out there who have eagerly checked my blog day after day only to be continually dissappointed by the fact that there have been no new posts.

I feel overwhelmed by how different everything here is and how much I'm doing. The thought of recording everything in a blog has been so daunting to me that I have kind of avoided it.

I know most of you care way more about how I am and what I'm doing than about what Beijing itself is like, so I think I'll focus on me.

I've been really busy. Chinese is a very difficult language for me to learn, and I am not naturally gifted at learning languages. Plus we are moving through the textbook at a very fast rate: 6 weeks per semester of the language. Overall, however, I really think this is the best way to learn a language. Moving really fast while in the country. I'm very excited about how good I will be at Chinese by the end of my time at UF. I can already tell I've made a lot of improvements.

Tomorrow I'm going to go to a People's Liberation Army surplus store to see if I can get some boots or a jacket or a bag.

Yesterday I went to an art gallery called Factory 978. It's really cool -- modern art by Chinese artists. It really is a factory. Basically, this factory closed down during the cultural revolution and a bunch of Beijing artists started hanging out in the abandoned factory complex. The began showing their artwork there and eventually the place became so popular that the city or government or whatever decided to allow them to keep it. I felt very much like an outsider: so much of the art I think depended on an understanding of Chinese culture that I simply don't have yet. It was a wonderful experience though.

I also got to see a cool punk music show a couple days ago. It was at a place called D-22, which is apparently a pretty important venue in the Beijing underground rock scene, and also happens to be a 10-15 minute bike ride from my dorm. The best band there was a band called 有没有 (You Mei You, pronounced "yo may yo." "Yo" like in "yo-yo" and "may" like the month. In Chinese, it is a question phrase that means "do you have?" Literally "have not have"). They consisted of a caucasian guy in his mid-fifties playing guitar and singing, a caucasian bassist that looked like he belonged in a fraternity playing bass, and a chinese woman playing drums and singing. They did cool original songs and also some covers, such as "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" by the Kinks, "Sonic Reducer" by the Dead Boys, and some really cool motown song that I forget the name of.

Anyway, I've been up to a lot more, but those are the highlights. Again, sorry about being unfaithful with this blog; I will try to be better about it.

Things I've Learned About Myself that Surprise Me

Things I've learned about myself that have surprised me.

- I have usually considered myself to be a bit of a homebody. Even on family vacations, I would often rather stay in the hotel instead of going out and doing something. However, right now I am really really excited about going out and seeing things in Beijing. The last thing I want to do right now is lay around in my dorm.

- I love shopping, I realized. Back in the Atates, I thought shopping (particularly for clothes) was really silly and materialistic and I had no desire to do it. Here, however, I have found myself totally pumped about shopping for clothes. The difference is that I can afford designer clothes here that are a tenth of the price they would be in America. I am truly eager to buy clothes here whose brands I had never even heard of a week ago. No more will I be able to sit smugly and listen to people talk about shopping and think to myself, "I'm glad I'm not like those people." I'm just as "materialistic" as everybody else -- particularly (it would seem) when I can actually afford nice clothes. And I guess a lot of that isn't even bad.

- I'm quiet in large groups of people. I've known that I lean towards introversion, but it has been startling to me how quiet I am around big groups of people on this trip.

- I'm much bolder in speaking Chinese to Chinese speakers than I had thought I was going to be, and have less reluctance to try my hand at talking to native Beijingers than I had anticipated.

Some More Scattered Thoughts (I Don't Have Any Other Kind of Thought Right Now)

I am tired of hanging out with white people. I could be wrong, but I think that most of the students on my trip want to go out in large groups and do tourist-type things, drink, shop, and go to clubs.

This seems totally unattractive to me. I'm not sure exactly what I want to do, but I definitely want to get to know this city and talk with Chinese people. I don't really know how to do this, either, but I have a feeling that it will involve going out with just one or two like-minded people instead of a dozen random folks.

I don't think I have ever felt more strongly the desire to be by myself or with two or three close friends. Maybe I'm just culture shocking.

Anyway, China is freaking sweet. Everything is insanely polluted, there are virtually no road rules, stuff (particularly food) is cheap, the food is incredibly good, and it's just really different from America. I just walk around with this dull but ubiquitous sense that I don't know what's going on or what will happen next.

I wish I could summarize what China is like, but I don't think I can do so. In fact, I don't think I have a clue what China is like. I have lived here for a week and have seen very little of this place. So for now, I'm just going to talk about my thoughts, what is going on with me, and what I'm doing and will hope that some vague sense of "what China is like" will be imparted.

I saw the Great Wall and the Silk Street market today -- more on that later.

Some Impressions

Here are some quotes from a paper I just wrote entitled "My First Impressions of Beijing"

I am still getting used to the exchange rate here. Everything is so much cheaper in Beijing than in America. I don’t understand all the reasons for that – I was good at economics in high school, but I do not remember what makes currency values different for different nations. I have been quite surprised though as I wander around in the supermarket or Wudaokou and see all the items that are 1/7th the price they would be in the United States. I truly cannot fathom why this is the case – why even such necessities as food and water cost so much more in the US than they do here. It is surprising and even a little disturbing.
The food here has been quite enjoyable for me. It is very different from “Chinese food” in America. Here, there is much more variety – I walk into the dining hall and see a vast array of food, most of which I cannot even recognize. I still do not know what I ate for lunch two days ago. Most people, it seems, do not drink a liquid with their meal. I wonder why that is. Maybe it is an unnecessary expense, or maybe the food already contains enough liquid. Or maybe it’s just a cultural difference and there is no other reason.
I have noticed that there are a lot fewer obese people here in Beijing than there are in America. Obesity is a huge problem in America, with 1/3 of the population unhealthily overweight. However, I don’t think I’ve seen anybody here that looked significantly overweight. I am curious about what the reasons are for this fact. Perhaps it has to do with the Chinese diet being healthier. Or perhaps it has to do with transportation here requiring more energy to be expended than is required in America. I even notice that there are way more sports facilities on the campus of Tsinghua than there are on the campus of the University of Florida, and that these sports facilities receive very heavy use. Students are constantly playing sports, it seems. Even at 1:30 in the morning when I got back from karaoke the other night, there were people playing on the basketball courts across from our dorms.
I have struggled with making generalizations so far this trip. Basically, I have seen a few parts of Beijing, and nothing of the rest of China. However, I already want to generalize my experiences – both to Beijing and to the rest of China. I know that this is wrong, though. I know that just because something is true in the Wudaokou area does not mean it is true in the rest of Beijing or in the rest of China. I am trying to be careful not to generalize too much here and assume I know what life is like outside of my personal experiences here. I know a certain amount of this will probably happen, and is not necessarily bad, but I definitely want to wait a while until I have been able to experience more before making all sorts of generalizations about things I have not yet experienced.

Language

I have found it much easier to think of things to talk about with Chinese people than with Americans. It's strange, but it would seem that the less I am physically able to say to someone, the more comfortable I am in striking up a conversation with her or him. I wonder what the deal is with that.

Ni Hao

Well, I'm going to Beijing in a couple of weeks, so I will use this previously abandoned blog as a means to keep people posted on what's going on. Please feel free to make lots of comments and stuff. That will be a cool way for me to feel like i'm actually talking to people, you know? And if you know about this blog, then that means I care a lot about you and want your input, thoughts, encouragement, etc.