Hi, everyone! This post should be my recap of the week I spent in Shanghai, but I took regrettably poor notes during my trip, so I’ve been dragging my feet, trying to piece together memories and pictures. That hang-up was stopping me from posting this past week’s recap, but it suddenly occurred to me that I can do whatever I want with my blog. I don’t have to post linearly, so I’m not going to! Hopefully I will eventually get to posting that Shanghai recap, but for now, here’s a few stories from the last week in my life, back in Beijing. Enjoy!
Monday
Monday meant it was time to get back to work! I got up early to work on a presentation for my “Hot Topics” class. I was free to pick any current issue I wanted, so I chose the phenomenon of celebrity political endorsements. When I gave that presentation in my first class, we had a lively discussion about how celebrity endorsements aren’t really helpful (except for Oprah’s endorsement of Obama impacting the 2008 Democratic primaries, according to the literature), but how if we were celebrities, we would still feel obligated to publicly endorse a candidate for presidential elections. After my presentation, our class discussed the intersection of the existential questions of young people and economic trends.
I went to lunch with two of my friends, and we squeezed into a table with only two spots. The poor guy in the middle kept looking around for empty tables for the duration of lunch, to no avail. Together, we all reviewed for a small written exam coming up during our next class.
After that exam in “Experiencing Beijing”, we started discussing the Lama Temple, which is a functioning Buddhist temple in the heart of Beijing. Apparently, if Buddhist religious leaders visit Beijing, they can elect to stay in this temple instead of in a hotel! We spent most of the class following a tangent involving karma and reincarnation, but most of the learning will happen when we visit the Temple on Wednesday.
For some reason, this first day back really took me out. I was exhausted, so after classes, I watched a few episodes of Law and Order before starting on homework. One of my texts for Tuesday ended up being ten pages long, so I dove into hours of translating as well as preparations for two more presentations on Tuesday.
Tuesday
For some reason, I find it so much easier to get up in the morning and start working when I know I have a big day ahead of me and a lot to accomplish, so I bounded out of bed this Tuesday to put the finishing touches on my presentations and review hand-written characters for a mini exam. I also spent a bit of time researching vocab words related to the Lama Temple, which was homework from Monday night that I completely spaced.
In my first class, “Modern Chinese Politics”, I took that mini exam, then moved on to presentations. Mine was about the Northern Korean army entering Russia, and my classmate’s presentation was on the previous week’s Brics Summit (all in Chinese, of course). After presentations and Q&A sessions, we also finished discussing a political movie and were assigned a new TV show to watch.
In my second class, “Experiencing Beijing”, we continued talking about the Lama Temple and shared the vocab words we had researched. The original assignment was to interview our roommates about the Lama Temple and ask them to share related vocab words, but my roommate didn’t know anything about the Temple, so I had to conduct my own research. It turned out that everyone in the class had the same experience, which was funny because our text was all about how young people are flocking to Buddhist temples and experiencing spiritual revival in post-pandemic China. Our roommates must not be good examples of this phenomenon!
In my third and final class of the day, I discussed a new reading with my professor, this time about the February 28th Incident in Taiwan (1947). At that time, an argument between a government official and a peddler escalated to an island-wide riot, which escalated even further when the KMT brought in an army to quell protests. This incident, though only days long, created prejudice and distrust of government that still exist today. Also, I have some promising news to report! My professor gave me a suggestion as to where to find the water wheel from my Middlebury Passport! I’m going to visit on Saturday – fingers crossed.
When I got back to my room after classes, I finally had a chance to catch up with my roommate about my time in Shanghai. When we talked about the “date corner” I visited (I promise I will upload that post eventually!), our conversation turned to her love life and whether she wants to get married. I was fascinated by her perspective – she does not want to get married for a variety of cultural reasons. Most importantly, her family doesn’t approve of her boyfriend, who is from a poor family and whose mother has passed away. When I asked what bearing a mother-in-law’s death had on marriage, she replied that traditionally, the wife will move to her husband’s hometown after marriage and the in-laws help raise the couple’s children, so without a mother in-law, her parents think she’ll have to raise children on her own. Although they don’t approve of her boyfriend, they do want her to get married – and every year after graduating college, that pressure will increase. She also remarked that Chinese weddings are far too extravagant and emphasize traditional gender roles that do not account for the freedom and independence she would want in a marriage. I gobbled this conversation up, which made me laugh because one of my classmates called me nosy this Tuesday morning. He wasn’t wrong. I can’t help it!
To round out the day, I had a fun evening meeting with all of my classmates and their roommates where we shared pictures and stories from fall break while eating donuts. One of our professors flew to a family wedding in Canada and showed us pictures from that, too. By the end, I was falling asleep, but it was still lots of fun to get together for an informal hang-out.
Wednesday
If you had to guess how my Wednesday started, what would you say? Anyone who answered “hand-writing characters for an exam”, please give yourself a pat on the back. After about an hour of character writing, I headed to class, where we talked more about Buddhism and the Lama Temple. Unrelated to religion, the most interesting part of class was learning that China doesn’t have drive-thrus! The first McDonald’s drive-thru in China opened in 2022, and the first KFC drive-thru opened in April of this year. Can you imagine?! They don’t even have a word for drive-thrus.
With no access to a drive-thru, I sadly had no choice but to head to the cafeteria for lunch. After that, I finished up a few homework questions, then headed to the subway station with all of my classmates. Once we got to the Lama Temple, we had 20 minutes of free time to explore the surrounding neighborhood before entering the sacred area. It’s an area I’ve visited solo before, but I had fun walking through with my friends.
Once inside the sacred area, I quickly learned that most of the visitors to the Lama Temple are there for religious reasons. Based on our class texts, it sounded like the Lama Temple was more of a tourist spot, but in reality it was a somber, quiet environment. I was supposed to interview visitors for a class assignment, but it seemed so inappropriate that I couldn’t do it. Only one person in our group of eight ended up conducting any interviews because we all felt uncomfortable interrupting people who were praying. No interviewing meant I had more time to take pictures, including one of the 59-ft Buddha statue whose 27-foot midsection is an entire white sandalwood tree.
The Lama Temple trip took up most of the afternoon, so by the time I got back to campus, I went straight to dinner, then to pick up an article one of my professors printed for me. I walked around campus aimlessly for 20 minutes before I finally found the print shop, but hey, I got there in the end. Then I went back to my room and spent the rest of the evening doing homework and chatting with a friend from back home.
Thursday
My first class didn’t go so well – our professor was disappointed in our performance on the reading quiz and as punishment forced us write characters on the board while he read out various political vocabulary words. I survived, but left the class feeling pretty downcast. I don’t like letting my teachers down!
Immediately after that class, my cohort had a meeting with our program director about the requirements for our one-on-one classes for the rest of the semester. Those requirements include two essays, a thesis, and two presentations (one in front of all staff and classmates). Whereas I left my first class feeling downcast, I left this meeting feeling panicked. How am I going to accomplish all that with any level of academic excellence in a mere six weeks?
In addition to that meeting, I also had to attend my one-on-one class. On Sunday night, I wrote a few Bible verses about strength and courage in my class notebook because I knew the rest of the semester would get hairy and I might need to flip back to those pages for encouragement (not realizing I would already need it four days later, haha). By this point on Thursday, I was seeking that encouragement and prayed somewhat frantically before my class, while also reading over those verses from my notebook. It really lifted my spirits! The class actually went better than usual – we played a new “game” where I had to guess the meaning of article titles with only traditional characters (I study exclusively simplified characters), and I didn’t feel discouraged by how difficult it was. In the end, I had fun with it.
After class, Thursday just kept getting better. My whole cohort, minus one student, went out to an Indian restaurant to celebrate Diwali, and we had an amazing time. This was the most fun I’ve had with our group of students – usually our professors are around when we hang out, which changes the mood just a bit. However, this night left me feeling very happy and content.
Friday
On Friday morning, I got up early to prep for a casual presentation, then gave that presentation in my only class of the day. I talked about my experience being a religious foreigner in China and what I learned while at the Lama Temple.
After class, everyone headed to Chinese Table, and I ate Xinjiang food for the first time. Oh my goodness – I cannot overstate how wonderful this food was. I developed an obsession with this crispy eggplant dish, and also a vinegar-and-onion lettuce dish. You’ll have to take my word for it that this was some of the best food I’ve ever had. I’ve decided that I’m on the hunt for a Xinjiang cookbook because everything was so scrumptious, and online searches didn’t yield any results for cookbooks in English. My best bet is probably to find one while I’m in China.
After language tables, I headed to Haidian Park, per my one-on-one teacher’s recommendation. Unfortunately, the water wheel at the park was not the water wheel from my Middlebury Passport, but it almost (almost) didn’t matter to me because the park was so beautiful. At one point, I was standing under a tree with yellow leaves cascading down around me, feeling like the main character in a movie – I stayed in that spot for probably ten minutes. After about two hours at the park, I headed back to campus, but I have to mention: as I was exiting the park, I noticed a group of seniors huddled together and pointing at the sky and laughing gleefully. When I turned to look at what they were pointing at, I realized that they were flying kites together. Is that not the cutest thing ever?
I wish I could have stayed at the park longer, but I had to take the bus back to school for an ambiguously titled “Halloween activity” organized by my Modern Chinese Politics professor. I was slightly late because the car in front of my bus got into an accident (and Chinese highways are notoriously backed-up anyway), but when I finally made it back to school, I was in for a surprise theater activity. We ended up creating a Halloween story together by each adding one sentence, which is definitely more interesting when some participants are native speakers and some are second-language learners, then spontaneously acting out each sentence while our professor read the story aloud. For the second half of the event, we each gave ourselves fake identities and problems to solve, then formed groups to solve one person’s aforementioned problem. For example, my group decided to solve Devin’s problem of not having any gas money by robbing a bank. To share our solution with the group, we had to create and present four tableaux after just 5 minutes of discussion and prep time. The professor in charge of the activity wanted everyone to take it seriously, but the solutions were all so absurd that we couldn’t contain our laughter.
We all had a ton of fun, and even though it was a day late, it was still the perfect way to celebrate Halloween from Beijing.
Saturday
In contrast to Friday’s many activities, Saturday was a pretty boring work day for me. Aside from an hour-long break walking around Beijing, I spent most of the day in the library, but it paid off because I ended up finishing all of my homework for the weekend around midnight. I love waking up in the morning knowing that I worked hard enough yesterday to spend today however I want, so I pushed myself to finish and actually had some fun with my homework. For example, I learned that there’s a Chinese phrase for braiding hair that colloquially means “to solve all of one’s problems”, and as someone who has been a hair guru since fifth grade, I really appreciated that.
Week Ten Recap:
Highlight: Friday-fun-day, from Xinjiang food to Haidian Park to the Halloween theater activity.
Lowlight: Tuesday’s (thankfully fleeting) anxiety.
That’s all for now! See you next week. 🙂
很想你们，
婉婷
