liuxuesheng-liya - Tumblr blog

[liuxuesheng-liya]

New blog!

Dajia hao! It's been over a year since I left Hangzhou, but in just six days, I'll be embarking on a new NSLI-Y China adventure! I'll live in Beijing for the next nine months on an academic year scholarship program. Here's the link to my new blog: lu-liya.tumblr.com

Thanks, and hope you're all well!

Francesca/Lu Liya

[liuxuesheng-liya]

An apology and a poem.

Dajia hao! So I've tried for almost two months to fit my last week in China (and everything that's changed since) into a summary, and it hasn't gone smoothly. There were many things that happened in my last few days (the oral presentation on Chinese concepts of romance that went really well and even won a "Best Presentation" award), a visit to the Tea Museum and a last walk by the West Lake with my host family, a graduation ceremony that made me cry, sneaking out of our post-ceremony reception to buy my family flowers, riding the bus once and feeling ridiculous just for the sake of taking public transportation, bidding pescatarianism goodbye, eating all of my favorite foods and managing to avoid tears on my last evening, noticing everything and saying goodbye to my neighborhood's washerwoman and finally breaking down as the bus pulled away. I can't list all of them, or all of my reactions, here; nor can I hope to encompass all of the changes China wrought in me. I've changed my dream school (Palo Alto, I'm looking at you) and my career plans and my appreciation for Chinese and my outlook on animals and journalism and education policy. I write to my family less frequently than I'd like, but receive every letter with happiness and heartache. I've managed to keep in touch with some of my American friends, and I'm currently working on my second NSLI-Y application (this time, for an academic gap year program in Beijing, Shanghai, or Taiwan). China is immense on a political and personal scale. I won't say that this experience changed my life, but I know that it's changed me. 

On one of my last nights in China, I laid on my stomach on my bamboo sleeping mat, cranked up the Theo Katzman, and wrote a poem. I write best sleep-deprived and desperate to get a message out, and as I reread the poem in preparation for a poetry contest I hope to enter, I realized that it does a better job of summing up my Hangzhou experience than any rushed summary I could attempt here. Its working title is "Outside the Eastern Mountain" (a rough translation of Waidongshan, the name of my family's street).

Well, I suppose this makes me a thought-felon,

Assigning marks, plastic and rude, adding stones to the brick-baked walk,

Pushing plane leaves and the bean-fed grunts of women hanging outdated lingerie down past knots of wire and soap.

Because the bright bodegas may display little girls in twin braids, six stars in each eye and cap proudly ironic, declaring the kind of old slogans that make the old one hundred straighten their spines and the new millions smirk. But even they must say that everything has a price.

The words are there, but years bred into me on driveways and in forested bedrooms force me to accept the value they give me, let my wide eyes and exhausted speech bring formality to this passage, force a wildly squirming chicken into a grocery bag (like so many razors) and let it sicken by your feet.

This place taught me to be cruel. I find an artificial battery of paint and dictionary entries whenever there’s a chance I might run over reality.

I keep writing the same lecture, perfecting the tones. A bus ticket is worth two yuan and your independence.

The symptoms don’t match up and I am eating something not completely eyeless. How many selves can fit in a suitcase?

There is such brilliant suicidal lust in viewing the sellers of lotus seeds, losing a little surety and contracting the haze of a high-heeled cyclist and a zither player with plums in his lush skull.

The small things rot in the shade and block the view, flowering in native black. You will miss the notebook moments that once formed sentences and today you will tear the bamboo from the riverbed and scatter swimmers and sharp unseen hairpins. You will decide that empty hands leave room for more checking, worry your hemlines and modulate your words, try to Pasteurize your thoughts to propaganda.

And this is how I’ve matured, why I would be a superb addition

(which, incidentally, you can’t do in either language)

The connections are helpful for the moment before they confine you to more certainty that you aren’t cut out for this. But it’s what has taught you to compose, and damn if you won’t miss having eyebrows here, a broken and dramatic gift, the arrangement of features and beads and desks that crushed you into a person who knows she will never think similarly about bigots or fish.

There are so many ways to say “common” and for once you feel shared, partaken in and cherished, the mediocrity stored away with half-chewed bitter melon and mincing steps, with a girl singing Motown and trying so hard to strike a tough bargain. Practice first on your own. The characters will come in time.

[liuxuesheng-liya]

Some final reflections (at last!)

Almost a month after returning home from Hangzhou, I've finally found a moment to wrap up the wonderful, sad, incredibly fast-passing last week of my experience (and the ways in which I've changed since then)! I wish I'd written earlier, as not everything is as fresh in my memory as I'd like it to be, but I'll lay out what I can.

My last full weekend with my host family was perhaps the most enjoyable few days I spent in China. We drove for two hours through narrow mountain passes, almost getting pushed into bamboo-filled gorges by overloaded trucks carrying piles of wood and old men on mopeds, and arrived in the mountain town of Anji around lunchtime. My family's friends (Yunying and Taotao's families) arrived around the same time, and we spent a while moving ourselves into our home for the weekend: a nongjia le, or "country inn" of a type ubiquitous in rural China. The hotel, which was abuzz with vacationing young families and elderly couples, had a somewhat overstuffed lobby that reminded me of a hunting lodge and simple three-person rooms with narrow bamboo cots and spectacular views. Anji is set up in a rough horseshoe shape, with a main road and scattered public buildings, market stalls, and memorials curving around the wide valley that splits the town. My hotel was set into a recess in a swooping hill that met with many others like it to form a seemingly infinite valley; after I moved into my room with Qiuyi and Yunying, I spent a good hour just walking around the periphery of the hotel and trying to develop a clear, lasting image of the high hills and small, square buildings in my mind.

We ate a huge lunch, featuring deliciously prepared eggplant and shrimp that I didn't actually mind (despite my inherent apprehension at eating seafood), in a small out-building to the side of the hotel. This meal, I think, was my most memorable, because I spent much of it (and much of the following week) in a pensive, worried state about my impending departure. I worried that I hadn't done enough or taken enough risks or made enough of a connection with my family, and I grew anxious about doing something to offend my family in our remaining week together. As a result, I became a little withdrawn despite my family's enthusiastic attempts to ask me about American colleges and gun control (a topic of particular interest to them for the entire experience). 

But then my host mom, the most gracious, forgiving, and quietly warmhearted person I met in China (and maybe in any nation), referred to me in the most casual manner as her "waiguo nv'er", or her "foreign daughter," and my attention was drawn sharply to the love that was so overwhelmingly present in the small open-air dining room. My family and their friends were a group of people that loved each other fiercely, that appreciated and loved their lives, and that had shown great love to me during my time as their guest. For the rest of the meal, I spoke occasionally but mostly sat as a quiet observer, trying to catalog the ways in which Yunying's mother smacked her lightly on the shoulder to make her laugh and the gentle tone of Ayi's corrections when I made a grammar faux pas. After lunch, as I sang karaoke with Qiuyi and Yunying and watched impossibly inane Chinese soap operas with my adopted sisters as it poured rain outside, I remained in good spirits with a touch of satisfying but legitimate heartbreak about my imminent departure.

Later at night, Yunying took me for a walk around the town, showing me the night market and the memorial to an ancient general about which I'd inquired earlier. We chatted a bit about her previous trips to America, took some blurry but beautiful pictures, and eventually convinced the rest of our group to follow us into the darkened city. Anji after dusk, for some reason, reminded me of some image from a Hayao Miyazaki film: soft geometric lights from inn windows against mostly-blackened mountains, projecting a surreal picture of peace and respite. We came eventually to a two-story building, possibly some sort of community center, with neon lights strung up around the wraparound windows of the second floor. Curious, we scaled the stairs to realize that several older couples had set up an impromptu karaoke bar in the vacant room, complete with a television playing bad '80s pop. A slow song and a ridiculous music video drifted onto the TV screen, and my parents began to slow-dance in the middle of the room. I had only a few minutes to be suffused with appreciation and affection for them before my sister impatiently changed the song to something faster and more modern, grabbed my hands, and twirled me around the room. Soon, our whole party was dancing-even Taotao, who, as a fourteen-year-old boy, put up quite an impressive amount of resistance before consenting to a quick waltz with Yunying. Taotao's mother herded us to one corner of the studio and tried to tell us a story, her voice vying with the loud music, but no words really stuck with anyone. We were together, blissfully happy and dancing ridiculous dances to awful music, and that experience was enough to carry me back to the hotel and to sleep as if on the pad of a lotus blossom.

(Sorry to contradict the beginning of this post, but this is not the end of my final reflection! I end this part of the post here because it's getting late and I have a calculus test tomorrow… oh, the joys of senior year. I'll post a part two, and possibly a part three, as soon as I can! Until then, thanks for your patience and zaijian!)

[liuxuesheng-liya]

Hello, lovely followers!

I apologize for not posting pictures and a final post this week, as I said I would. It turns out that this little thing called senior year got in the way of my plans and made me an insanely busy person! I will do my best to post them this weekend. Thanks for your patience!

[liuxuesheng-liya]

Hi again!

Hello, lovely followers! It's been two and a half weeks since I left Hangzhou, and I just wanted to let you all know that I haven't abandoned the blog-I've been working on a final post, but have been insanely busy since I got back. Expect a final reflection and some pictures within the next week!

Thank you, and sorry for the delay,

Francesca

[liuxuesheng-liya]

Just left HZ。

I just cried for the first time on this trip. My host mom hugged me goodbye and I was doing a pretty good job of keeping it together but then she said "I love you, American daughter" in Chinese and we both lost it. We're talking Three Gorges-caliber waterworks. Too emotional to write much right now- more to come when I'm in the states. Just want to say 中国，我爱你-杭州永远是我家乡(China，I love you-Hangzhou will always be my home).

[liuxuesheng-liya]

Enjoying some Longjing tea！ （More pics to come when I get back to the States！）

[liuxuesheng-liya]

Week 5: Memories and Metamorphosis

Dajia hao! Sorry that it's been a while since I've written: the time has just been flashing past, and every day I'm noticing more things that I've gotten accustomed to but will miss (and likely forget) when I leave: the smells here, diverse and ranging from delicious (bitter melon and fresh steamed buns) to less than pleasant (public squat toilets and the wet market); the old men and women carrying portable radios and blasting traditional Beijing Opera tunes on early-morning walks through our neighborhood; the random construction sites that seem to spring up everywhere and complete their tasks overnight; the tiny fruit-and-flower kiosks at every street corner (I stopped at one today and bought two pink tiger lilies for my family, which they really liked), the way that the heat (while always oppressive) can be dusty but somehow lush at the same time. I'll probably forget the ubiquitousness of "zi dong che" (electric bikes), many carrying two adults, a child, and a bag of groceries, humming recklessly over the streets and sidewalks; the young street vendor, who looks more Arab than Chinese and is always perusing the latest magazine, selling sesame bread on my walk to school every day; the sheer crush of people in pidgin-English shirts and ludicrously fancy shoes, going about their daily life. Every night here, I've been writing a brief summary of that day's events, but I'm regretting now not writing down everything new that I've seen here. I'm going to forget things like the way that my host family seems to carry out half their phone conversations in onomatopoeic hums and grunts rather than actual Mandarin, the proper way to hold a rice bowl at breakfast and the completely separate arrangement of the fingers at dinner, the difference between West Lake's serene promise in the morning and its glittering grandeur at night, the juxtaposition of half-cultivated garden and countless powder-blue five-stories, open windows hung with laundry and releasing bursts of conversation and glimpses of old yeyes (grandpas) cooling their bellies (most Chinese men roll up their shirts to do this during the summer-it's considered perfectly normal) with huge flat bamboo fans. Even small things, like the plane trees outside my classroom and the taste of xifan (rice porridge), are going to fade soon no matter how many pictures I take, and the thought of leaving makes me immensely sad. It's been an absolutely indescribable month and one day-even in this language, which doesn't have the limitations Chinese places on me as a developing language student, I can't find the words to capture how China has changed me. It's gotten me excited about life in dimensions and ways that I've never felt before. It's given me direction and focus (and okay, maybe I'm just a little happy about the fact that I've definitely lost some weight and gotten a little muscle tone here-eating mostly vegetables and rice and climbing mountains pretty much every week will do that for you-but that's definitely not the most important way in which I've changed); it's made me really want to learn and immerse myself in every second that I have left here. I've spent an hour a night for the last few days just reading the Hangzhou daily news, and with the exception of a few characters that I have to look up in most articles, I can actually read articles now. I've also been watching TV with my family (mostly news shows, but also one popular reality dating show that I'm planning to include in my final project), and I find that not only am I usually able to understand at least the general gist of the reporters' spoken language, but that I'm usually able to read and comprehend the captions (which are only on screen for a few seconds at a time. I also feel much more confident, and much more inspired, in spoken conversation: I'm able to talk about things that actually interest me now, so I'm more excited about using my knowledge in dialogue. Over the last few days, I've told Qiuyi and her friends about topics from literature (she was curious about my City Lights Bookstore T-shirt, so we embarked on a long discussion about the Beat Generation, which then expanded into a discussion of American literature and Chinese traditional poetry-probably the most challenging but interesting conversation we've had to date!) to movies and TV (okay, this wasn't as in-depth, but I was able to pretty thoroughly recap the plot of The Breakfast Club and discuss BBC Sherlock (which Qiuyi also likes) and the myriad wonders of Benedict Cumberbatch's physical beauty/mad acting skills) to politics (I can barely explain the electoral college in English-doing it in Chinese was pretty tough, but I think I managed okay-and learned some useful political vocab in the process). My listening, predictably (after all, I have been being bombarded by Chinese from all directions for four and a half weeks now) , has also improved enough to let me interview people (transcribing their answers in English, of course-my Chinese handwriting isn't great under normal sentences and should be utterly unintelligible in crappy journalist shorthand) in Chinese! This Saturday, which was mostly spent at a traditional "chaguan" (literally tea house, though they're more like large coffeeshops/indoor picnic areas, in which extended families can spend an entire day eating snacks, drinking tea, and sharing spirited conversation over a card game), I interviewed six different people about their views on traditional concepts of romance, modern attitudes toward dating and sexuality, and the effects of economic development and gender roles on modern romance (the main component of my project, which I'll present next week). Tomorrow afternoon, during our visit to Leifeng Ta (a lovely lakeside pagoda that is the site of a famous love story and a popular destination for couples), I plan to interview a few fellow tourists about their opinions on these matters. Together with an examination of a few traditional Chinese romances and a short description of modern dating shows and love songs, I'll present these interviews in a roughly 5-minute-long Chinese speech, probably accompanied by a PowerPoint or Prezi. I still wish that we'd had more time to complete these projects, but I'm feeling pretty good about my progress so far. Regarding class and cultural activities: this week's classes have gone really quickly and have seemed relatively easy so far. We'll probably have one or two more tests before our final exam next Friday, but I'm not too worried about their difficulty. Our culture classes this week have concerned Chinese martial arts (three-quarters of the time was spent watching clips from Bruce Lee movies) and famous Chinese tourist destinations, and have been mostly in lecture format (excluding a few pretty cool demonstrations during the martial arts class). I definitely enjoy learning about the diverse topics covered during culture lectures, and trying to pick up all the fast-paced and relatively specialized Chinese that the lecturers use is a fun challenge, but since we have these classes right after lunch, I'm usually pretty drowsy and distracted. Talking to my family in the evening (and traveling with them-last Sunday, we met up with Qiuyi's old school friend and went to an archaeology museum in nearby Liangzhu, which was a fascinating and really enjoyable experience; this weekend we'll spend two days in the city of Anji, known for its bamboo groves and the pandas and monkeys that inhabit them) has been far more interesting! They continue to be forgiving, helpful, and generally lovely (even if they do have some... shall we say, unusual habits-I won't go into detail, but there are definitely cultural differences), and I'll be really sad to say goodbye to them. The same goes for my afternoon outings with my American friends, which have become a more or less daily occurrence. Our classes usually end at about 2 in the afternoon (unless, like tomorrow, we have a cultural activity scheduled), and at that time I'm not quite ready to spend a few hours sitting and sweating in silence (my host family really doesn't talk while they're doing work or homework) at home. There's a group of about four of us, give or take a few people who occasionally join us, who usually spend a few hours getting massages (we've gone three times) just walking around, or visiting interesting sites (yesterday we visited a tea field, a natural mineral spring, a cave, and the city library in the span of an hour and a half), leaving us plenty of time to get home and interact with our families in the late afternoon and evening. At first, I was a little nervous about not returning straight home and spending time with my Chinese family, but as we wouldn't really talk until evening if I went straight home anyway (due to the aforementioned silence while doing work or homework), I'm so happy that I've found this awesome group of people with whom to explore this crazy, beautiful, fascinating city. I'll miss them as well- in fact, other than (possibly) the heat and some of the less pleasant smells, there's nothing here that I won't miss. But then, I suppose that's the definition of a "life-changing experience:" I'll miss these things because they've helped shape my transformation here; they've become a part of my life and the person I consider myself to be.

[liuxuesheng-liya]

Week 5: Memories and Metamorphosis

Dajia hao! Sorry that it's been a while since I've written: the time has just been flashing past, and every day I'm noticing more things that I've gotten accustomed to but will miss (and likely forget) when I leave: the smells here, diverse and ranging from delicious (bitter melon and fresh steamed buns) to less than pleasant (public squat toilets and the wet market); the old men and women carrying portable radios and blasting traditional Beijing Opera tunes on early-morning walks through our neighborhood; the random construction sites that seem to spring up everywhere and complete their tasks overnight; the tiny fruit-and-flower kiosks at every street corner (I stopped at one today and bought two pink tiger lilies for my family, which they really liked), the way that the heat (while always oppressive) can be dusty but somehow lush at the same time. I'll probably forget the ubiquitousness of "zi dong che" (electric bikes), many carrying two adults, a child, and a bag of groceries, humming recklessly over the streets and sidewalks; the young street vendor, who looks more Arab than Chinese and is always perusing the latest magazine, selling sesame bread on my walk to school every day; the sheer crush of people in pidgin-English shirts and ludicrously fancy shoes, going about their daily life. Every night here, I've been writing a brief summary of that day's events, but I'm regretting now not writing down everything new that I've seen here. I'm going to forget things like the way that my host family seems to carry out half their phone conversations in onomatopoeic hums and grunts rather than actual Mandarin, the proper way to hold a rice bowl at breakfast and the completely separate arrangement of the fingers at dinner, the difference between West Lake's serene promise in the morning and its glittering grandeur at night, the juxtaposition of half-cultivated garden and countless powder-blue five-stories, open windows hung with laundry and releasing bursts of conversation and glimpses of old yeyes (grandpas) cooling their bellies (most Chinese men roll up their shirts to do this during the summer-it's considered perfectly normal) with huge flat bamboo fans. Even small things, like the plane trees outside my classroom and the taste of xifan (rice porridge), are going to fade soon no matter how many pictures I take, and the thought of leaving makes me immensely sad. It's been an absolutely indescribable month and one day-even in this language, which doesn't have the limitations Chinese places on me as a developing language student, I can't find the words to capture how China has changed me. It's gotten me excited about life in dimensions and ways that I've never felt before. It's given me direction and focus (and okay, maybe I'm just a little happy about the fact that I've definitely lost some weight and gotten a little muscle tone here-eating mostly vegetables and rice and climbing mountains pretty much every week will do that for you-but that's definitely not the most important way in which I've changed); it's made me really want to learn and immerse myself in every second that I have left here. I've spent an hour a night for the last few days just reading the Hangzhou daily news, and with the exception of a few characters that I have to look up in most articles, I can actually read articles now. I've also been watching TV with my family (mostly news shows, but also one popular reality dating show that I'm planning to include in my final project), and I find that not only am I usually able to understand at least the general gist of the reporters' spoken language, but that I'm usually able to read and comprehend the captions (which are only on screen for a few seconds at a time. I also feel much more confident, and much more inspired, in spoken conversation: I'm able to talk about things that actually interest me now, so I'm more excited about using my knowledge in dialogue. Over the last few days, I've told Qiuyi and her friends about topics from literature (she was curious about my City Lights Bookstore T-shirt, so we embarked on a long discussion about the Beat Generation, which then expanded into a discussion of American literature and Chinese traditional poetry-probably the most challenging but interesting conversation we've had to date!) to movies and TV (okay, this wasn't as in-depth, but I was able to pretty thoroughly recap the plot of The Breakfast Club and discuss BBC Sherlock (which Qiuyi also likes) and the myriad wonders of Benedict Cumberbatch's physical beauty/mad acting skills) to politics (I can barely explain the electoral college in English-doing it in Chinese was pretty tough, but I think I managed okay-and learned some useful political vocab in the process). My listening, predictably (after all, I have been being bombarded by Chinese from all directions for four and a half weeks now) , has also improved enough to let me interview people (transcribing their answers in English, of course-my Chinese handwriting isn't great under normal sentences and should be utterly unintelligible in crappy journalist shorthand) in Chinese! This Saturday, which was mostly spent at a traditional "chaguan" (literally tea house, though they're more like large coffeeshops/indoor picnic areas, in which extended families can spend an entire day eating snacks, drinking tea, and sharing spirited conversation over a card game), I interviewed six different people about their views on traditional concepts of romance, modern attitudes toward dating and sexuality, and the effects of economic development and gender roles on modern romance (the main component of my project, which I'll present next week). Tomorrow afternoon, during our visit to Leifeng Ta (a lovely lakeside pagoda that is the site of a famous love story and a popular destination for couples), I plan to interview a few fellow tourists about their opinions on these matters. Together with an examination of a few traditional Chinese romances and a short description of modern dating shows and love songs, I'll present these interviews in a roughly 5-minute-long Chinese speech, probably accompanied by a PowerPoint or Prezi. I still wish that we'd had more time to complete these projects, but I'm feeling pretty good about my progress so far. Regarding class and cultural activities: this week's classes have gone really quickly and have seemed relatively easy so far. We'll probably have one or two more tests before our final exam next Friday, but I'm not too worried about their difficulty. Our culture classes this week have concerned Chinese martial arts (three-quarters of the time was spent watching clips from Bruce Lee movies) and famous Chinese tourist destinations, and have been mostly in lecture format (excluding a few pretty cool demonstrations during the martial arts class). I definitely enjoy learning about the diverse topics covered during culture lectures, and trying to pick up all the fast-paced and relatively specialized Chinese that the lecturers use is a fun challenge, but since we have these classes right after lunch, I'm usually pretty drowsy and distracted. Talking to my family in the evening (and traveling with them-last Sunday, we met up with Qiuyi's old school friend and went to an archaeology museum in nearby Liangzhu, which was a fascinating and really enjoyable experience; this weekend we'll spend two days in the city of Anji, known for its bamboo groves and the pandas and monkeys that inhabit them) has been far more interesting! They continue to be forgiving, helpful, and generally lovely (even if they do have some... shall we say, unusual habits-I won't go into detail, but there are definitely cultural differences), and I'll be really sad to say goodbye to them. The same goes for my afternoon outings with my American friends, which have become a more or less daily occurrence. Our classes usually end at about 2 in the afternoon (unless, like tomorrow, we have a cultural activity scheduled), and at that time I'm not quite ready to spend a few hours sitting and sweating in silence (my host family really doesn't talk while they're doing work or homework) at home. There's a group of about four of us, give or take a few people who occasionally join us, who usually spend a few hours getting massages (we've gone three times) just walking around, or visiting interesting sites (yesterday we visited a tea field, a natural mineral spring, a cave, and the city library in the span of an hour and a half), leaving us plenty of time to get home and interact with our families in the late afternoon and evening. At first, I was a little nervous about not returning straight home and spending time with my Chinese family, but as we wouldn't really talk until evening if I went straight home anyway (due to the aforementioned silence while doing work or homework), I'm so happy that I've found this awesome group of people with whom to explore this crazy, beautiful, fascinating city. I'll miss them as well- in fact, other than (possibly) the heat and some of the less pleasant smells, there's nothing here that I won't miss. But then, I suppose that's the definition of a "life-changing experience:" I'll miss these things because they've helped shape my transformation here; they've become a part of my life and the person I consider myself to be.

[liuxuesheng-liya]

Week 4: Motivation and Massage

One month after saying zaijian to Ann Arbor, I can say that the way I think about myself and my future has changed immensely. I've done things here that I would have thought terrifying or crazy a few weeks ago: wading in a (probably polluted) Chinese river, growing to be okay with occasionally eating fish, getting used to squat toilets... Actually, probably the weirdest thing that I've done so far has left my back looking like a monochrome Twister board, and has left me feeling a little like I've slept on a harder-than-usual bamboo bed for the last few days. But I'll get to that later. Anyway, after a month away from home, I can not only say more in Chinese, but I also have more I want to say. I've gotten to know the details involved in interacting with people here, particularly my host family, and have had some really nice conversations about everything from college to cooking to Catholicism (the latter was somewhat limited, as I don't really know that many words involving religion, but it was interesting nonetheless) with my host sister and parents. I know the basic layout of Hangzhou and can take buses and walk to various locations without having to ask for help (but if I need to ask someone for directions, I'm comfortable doing that as well!). I've grown acclimated to Chinese food and have learned to present myself with more confidence and surety here, to avoid being a hyper-conspicuous foreigner (or at least, I feel like I have). Although I'm exhausted a lot of the time, I'm more excited about my future (particularly as it involves studying China's language and culture) than I've been in a while. The idea of coming back to China, learning more and exerting myself to the extent that I've been keeping up for the past few weeks, is exhilarating to me, and although I still sometimes feel that I'm not communicating well with my family, or that I'm picking up too slowly on new classroom material, my overall attitude is one of anticipation. I know that this won't be my last trip to China-on the contrary, I've decided pretty much certainly that China is going to be a central part of my future. I'm interested in so much here-I try to read my sister's textbooks and even succeeded today in reading two chapters of a novel she's interested in; I try to talk to a new person each day on my way to school. It's been crazy and fast-paced, and the time has gone far too quickly, but this week, like its predecessors, has pushed me deeper and deeper into fascination with China. Class this week seemed to fly by-we're studying slightly more complicated lessons in our textbooks now, but the material's pretty comparable to that of previous weeks. I've really enjoyed doing practice questions from the HSK (basically the TOEFL for non-native Chinese speakers) in class, as I think they provide a really good gauge of how much I've progressed since arriving here! More memorable, though, has been my experience outside of school. This week, I've gone on three really wonderful afternoon excursions with a group of four of my classmates (all really nice, interesting, funny people that make the program experience even better). We've gone for walks in bamboo forests and botanical gardens, gotten milkshakes at a cool internet cafe on the campus of Zhejiang University, and even gotten a Chinese medicine treatment called "baguan" (the aforementioned weirdest thing I've done), in which a flame is used to extract oxygen from wooden cups, which are then placed on the recipient's back. The suction created by the vacuums inside the cups breaks the blood vessels in the covered area (don't worry, it's perfectly safe and didn't hurt), which has left my back covered in sixteen cup-shaped bruises. I'm not sure I believe in the purported medical benefits of baguan, but it was definitely a unique experience-and what's more, it was part of a great afternoon spent with some of my program friends! My time in China is almost two-thirds gone, and I'm finding it hard to picture my departure. The time has really gone so quickly, and although I'll be happy to see friends and family, I can't say that I'll be happy to get home (or at least, to leave China). It's been incredible, to say the least, and unfortunately, I don't have much time to say more! Until next time, be well and zaijian!

[liuxuesheng-liya]

Week 4: Motivation and Massage

One month after saying zaijian to Ann Arbor, I can say that the way I think about myself and my future has changed immensely. I've done things here that I would have thought terrifying or crazy a few weeks ago: wading in a (probably polluted) Chinese river, growing to be okay with occasionally eating fish, getting used to squat toilets... Actually, probably the weirdest thing that I've done so far has left my back looking like a monochrome Twister board, and has left me feeling a little like I've slept on a harder-than-usual bamboo bed for the last few days. But I'll get to that later. Anyway, after a month away from home, I can not only say more in Chinese, but I also have more I want to say. I've gotten to know the details involved in interacting with people here, particularly my host family, and have had some really nice conversations about everything from college to cooking to Catholicism (the latter was somewhat limited, as I don't really know that many words involving religion, but it was interesting nonetheless) with my host sister and parents. I know the basic layout of Hangzhou and can take buses and walk to various locations without having to ask for help (but if I need to ask someone for directions, I'm comfortable doing that as well!). I've grown acclimated to Chinese food and have learned to present myself with more confidence and surety here, to avoid being a hyper-conspicuous foreigner (or at least, I feel like I have). Although I'm exhausted a lot of the time, I'm more excited about my future (particularly as it involves studying China's language and culture) than I've been in a while. The idea of coming back to China, learning more and exerting myself to the extent that I've been keeping up for the past few weeks, is exhilarating to me, and although I still sometimes feel that I'm not communicating well with my family, or that I'm picking up too slowly on new classroom material, my overall attitude is one of anticipation. I know that this won't be my last trip to China-on the contrary, I've decided pretty much certainly that China is going to be a central part of my future. I'm interested in so much here-I try to read my sister's textbooks and even succeeded today in reading two chapters of a novel she's interested in; I try to talk to a new person each day on my way to school. It's been crazy and fast-paced, and the time has gone far too quickly, but this week, like its predecessors, has pushed me deeper and deeper into fascination with China. Class this week seemed to fly by-we're studying slightly more complicated lessons in our textbooks now, but the material's pretty comparable to that of previous weeks. I've really enjoyed doing practice questions from the HSK (basically the TOEFL for non-native Chinese speakers) in class, as I think they provide a really good gauge of how much I've progressed since arriving here! More memorable, though, has been my experience outside of school. This week, I've gone on three really wonderful afternoon excursions with a group of four of my classmates (all really nice, interesting, funny people that make the program experience even better). We've gone for walks in bamboo forests and botanical gardens, gotten milkshakes at a cool internet cafe on the campus of Zhejiang University, and even gotten a Chinese medicine treatment called "baguan" (the aforementioned weirdest thing I've done), in which a flame is used to extract oxygen from wooden cups, which are then placed on the recipient's back. The suction created by the vacuums inside the cups breaks the blood vessels in the covered area (don't worry, it's perfectly safe and didn't hurt), which has left my back covered in sixteen cup-shaped bruises. I'm not sure I believe in the purported medical benefits of baguan, but it was definitely a unique experience-and what's more, it was part of a great afternoon spent with some of my program friends! My time in China is almost two-thirds gone, and I'm finding it hard to picture my departure. The time has really gone so quickly, and although I'll be happy to see friends and family, I can't say that I'll be happy to get home (or at least, to leave China). It's been incredible, to say the least, and unfortunately, I don't have much time to say more! Until next time, be well and zaijian!

[liuxuesheng-liya]

The Halfway Point (sorry for the delay! Meant to be posted on July 22.)

The time, as they say, has flown: today officially marks the halfway point of my time in Hangzhou. It's also, incidentally, my seventeenth birthday (I enjoyed a really wonderful little celebration-which included a lot of card-playing, a cake with cherry tomatoes on it (apparently a popular choice for birthdays in China-not particularly appetizing, but interesting nonetheless), and introducing my host sister to Beyonce-with my host family and some of their friends last night). It seems like my jet lag has only just worn off, and it's so strange to think that I'll be back in the States in just three weeks. But when I think of all of my individual activities, interactions, and lessons learned here (not to mention the 1,700 photos I've taken so far), it's obvious that even a short time in a foreign country can be astoundingly rich and useful. Just over the course of the last few days, I've travelled to two Chinese cities (Huzhou and Yuhang), seen the Chinese countryside in which my host grandparents and mother used to raise silkworms and pick tea leaves, visited a tea factory and emerged coated in a fine dusting of Longjing tea leaf powder, visited a Chinese amusement park with my family, learned how to change money and give directions to a cab driver on my own, met my host grandma (an adorable little old woman who doesn't speak much Mandarin but has a lovely and frequent smile that helped a lot in bridging our language gap) and a few insanely cute little host cousins, climbed the North Peak (Hangzhou's highest mountain) with my American friends, and eaten delicious vegetarian food at a restaurant near a famous Buddhist temple. I've also begun work on my final project, a 5-7 minute presentation to be delivered in Chinese on an aspect of Chinese culture or society, and I'm pretty excited about my topic: concepts of romance and dating in Chinese culture. I plan to look at both traditional romantic tales (fiction and drama), which embrace the concept of romance as a virtuous ideal, and the somewhat repressive modern culture that places a heavy taboo on shows of affection and on romantic relationships among the young. We have less time than I'd like to execute the project (only two weeks), but I'm really excited for this chance to explore both ancient and modern Chinese culture (and to conduct some interviews in Chinese-awesome practice for a possible future life as a journalist here!) Sorry for the really short post-I'm exhausted and my host family needs to use this computer for work. But at the halfway point (and the beginning of my eighteenth year), I'm confident that my language skills and my perception of China have grown incredibly-and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure they continue to do so. I've gotten used to squat toilets (!!!!), eaten foods whose names I can't pronounce, and learned how to be an individual-not just a tourist- in a foreign country. Simply put, it's been extremely busy ("busy to death," as a Chinese idiom so aptly puts it), but indescribably and uniquely interesting. My learning experience hasn't been constantly smooth, of course: recently, I have been experiencing more language fatigue than usual, and it's frustrating to blunder through material or questions that I know I should understand when I'm experiencing this kind of lull. In addition, I have a few "quiet nights" each week-evenings on which none of my family members are really in a talkative mood, which makes me a bit lonely and (obviously) doesn't give me much chance to practice my conversational skills. But I suppose that I wouldn't be here if my Chinese was already perfect, and no matter how awkward or unusual scattered moments may feel (and there have been plenty), I wouldn't give up the other moments (the conversations with my family, the excursions with my friends, and the quiet realizations of my own growth here in Hangzhou) for anything, Thank you, good night, and zaijian!

[liuxuesheng-liya]

The Halfway Point (sorry for the delay! Meant to be posted on July 22.)

The time, as they say, has flown: today officially marks the halfway point of my time in Hangzhou. It's also, incidentally, my seventeenth birthday (I enjoyed a really wonderful little celebration-which included a lot of card-playing, a cake with cherry tomatoes on it (apparently a popular choice for birthdays in China-not particularly appetizing, but interesting nonetheless), and introducing my host sister to Beyonce-with my host family and some of their friends last night). It seems like my jet lag has only just worn off, and it's so strange to think that I'll be back in the States in just three weeks. But when I think of all of my individual activities, interactions, and lessons learned here (not to mention the 1,700 photos I've taken so far), it's obvious that even a short time in a foreign country can be astoundingly rich and useful. Just over the course of the last few days, I've travelled to two Chinese cities (Huzhou and Yuhang), seen the Chinese countryside in which my host grandparents and mother used to raise silkworms and pick tea leaves, visited a tea factory and emerged coated in a fine dusting of Longjing tea leaf powder, visited a Chinese amusement park with my family, learned how to change money and give directions to a cab driver on my own, met my host grandma (an adorable little old woman who doesn't speak much Mandarin but has a lovely and frequent smile that helped a lot in bridging our language gap) and a few insanely cute little host cousins, climbed the North Peak (Hangzhou's highest mountain) with my American friends, and eaten delicious vegetarian food at a restaurant near a famous Buddhist temple. I've also begun work on my final project, a 5-7 minute presentation to be delivered in Chinese on an aspect of Chinese culture or society, and I'm pretty excited about my topic: concepts of romance and dating in Chinese culture. I plan to look at both traditional romantic tales (fiction and drama), which embrace the concept of romance as a virtuous ideal, and the somewhat repressive modern culture that places a heavy taboo on shows of affection and on romantic relationships among the young. We have less time than I'd like to execute the project (only two weeks), but I'm really excited for this chance to explore both ancient and modern Chinese culture (and to conduct some interviews in Chinese-awesome practice for a possible future life as a journalist here!) Sorry for the really short post-I'm exhausted and my host family needs to use this computer for work. But at the halfway point (and the beginning of my eighteenth year), I'm confident that my language skills and my perception of China have grown incredibly-and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure they continue to do so. I've gotten used to squat toilets (!!!!), eaten foods whose names I can't pronounce, and learned how to be an individual-not just a tourist- in a foreign country. Simply put, it's been extremely busy ("busy to death," as a Chinese idiom so aptly puts it), but indescribably and uniquely interesting. My learning experience hasn't been constantly smooth, of course: recently, I have been experiencing more language fatigue than usual, and it's frustrating to blunder through material or questions that I know I should understand when I'm experiencing this kind of lull. In addition, I have a few "quiet nights" each week-evenings on which none of my family members are really in a talkative mood, which makes me a bit lonely and (obviously) doesn't give me much chance to practice my conversational skills. But I suppose that I wouldn't be here if my Chinese was already perfect, and no matter how awkward or unusual scattered moments may feel (and there have been plenty), I wouldn't give up the other moments (the conversations with my family, the excursions with my friends, and the quiet realizations of my own growth here in Hangzhou) for anything, Thank you, good night, and zaijian!

[liuxuesheng-liya]

Week 3: Independence (sorry for the crazy-long delay!)

Dajia hao, and duibuqi (sorry) for the long gap between posts! My access to Tumblr has been very spotty over the last week or so, and I don't know how often I'll be able to post in the future. That said, it's been a very nice week (though perhaps not the most exciting-I've settled into a bit of a routine and we haven't had many major departures from said routine in the last few days)! Good news first: I took my second written test yesterday and improved by nine percentage points from my last test to a score of 94 percent! I feel that my Chinese speaking ability is continuing to make a lot of progress, though maybe not at the explosive pace that I was startled and elated to experience last weekend, but my reading ability's improvement is what has really encouraged me over the last few days. I'm finding that, with the exception of the odd character that I don't recognize, I can pretty easily read signs, menus, captions on TV shows and advertisements, and articles-something I definitely couldn't do three weeks ago. In fact, upon arrival in China, I was a little worried about how an immersion setting would benefit my reading skills. Obviously, using Chinese pretty much all the time is extremely helpful to developing one's oral proficiency, but I wasn't sure if my reading level would improve as well. As it turns out, our curriculum has already covered a lot of extremely useful topics (history, current social and economic issues, everyday situations like reserving a hotel room and checking out books from a library) that have allowed me to become much more literate in Chinese, a discovery that's helped pick me up whenever I feel language fatigue (which, I'll admit, has not been an infrequent occurrence over the past week or so). In particular, I'm excited about my newly improved ability to read Chinese fiction and poetry! My host sister has been helping me read the Tale of the Three Kingdoms, one of China's four most famous classical novels, and we've spent a bit of time in class studying Tang Dynasty poetry (considered the "Golden Age" of classical poetry in China). I'm working my way through a book of famous Tang poems (each quite short but very difficult to read and understand even for native speakers) at the moment, and in Monday's calligraphy class (which was an unexpected delight-laborious, but actually really relaxing and interesting) I chose to write a really beautiful Tang poem (Feng Qiao Ye Bo, or "Mooring at Night by the Sweetgum Bridge," by the poet Zhang Ji) in calligraphic style. We've started to plan a little for our final projects (5- to 7-minute-long presentations, entirely in Chinese, to be given in the last week of the program on a topic of our choice), and I think that I might focus my project on a similar form of Chinese art: poetry, traditional idioms, or something else related to the literary tradition. Outside the classroom, quite a lot has happened in the last week-far too much to recount in the half hour or so I have left before my host dad wants his computer back! Over the weekend, I went on a lovely walk by the West Lake with my host dad and sister, teaching them new English vocabulary words as we explored, and then enjoyed a delicious meal at a traditional restaurant in downtown Hangzhou with my sister's good friend's family. The friend, a boy in my sister's grade who's very polite and apparently a whiz at physics, then came to our apartment with his family and played Chinese card games with us for a while until everyone realized that I'm terrible at pretty much every card game there is. The afternoon was ultimately really interesting, though, because we were able to engage in the kind of independent language study activity that's come to be my favorite part of the NSLI-Y experience. First, Juntao (the friend) and Qiuyi read me a traditional Chinese story, which we then discussed in English. I reciprocated by reading them a few short stories in English and discussing the contents in Chinese. During my stay here, I've obviously spent a lot of time learning Chinese in the conventional methods: classroom study, using my spoken language skills in practical settings, memorizing a lot of characters. But "language exchanges" like our impromptu book club, or like helping my sister with her English summer homework (explaining English grammar is, by the way, a LOT harder than it seems like it should be - native English speakers, definitely be grateful that you don't have to take up the task of re-learning the nonsensical hodgepodge of irregulars and weird tenses and non-phonetic spelling that is our mother tongue!), are really where I take the most joy in learning Chinese. I feel that rephrasing familiar ideas into an unfamiliar language on my own terms, creating opportunities and connections outside the classroom, is so much more of an organic and mutually helpful way to grow as a Chinese speaker and as someone who understands China. Sure, part of my eagerness to create these kinds of activities might just be due to the fact that I get bored when I don't have much homework (which is true most days) and need to invent ways to practice Chinese to keep myself occupied. But little side projects, from translating the names of Hangzhou's bus stations to making lists of topics to discuss with my family to learning 20 new vocab words from my Chinese-English dictionary (basically my lifeline) each day, have helped me feel more independent, more successful in improving my Chinese, and more committed to, and in love with, this language and this region. A bit more independence has also pervaded my perception of the city as a whole. This week, for the first time, I've started to go out and explore the city without my host family (though, of course, I do let them know where I am-after a small misunderstanding with my host mom about my expected return time the first time I ventured out alone, which was quickly and completely resolved, I'm really careful to text my family if I think I'll be even a few minutes later than expected). On Monday, we got out of class at 2 pm, significantly earlier than we had in the past. Instead of going straight home, sipping some green-bean soup, taking a shower, and collapsing into a chair to relax and do homework (my usual post-school routine), I joined a classmate of mine on a beautiful (though sweltering) walk through a historic neighborhood of Hangzhou, filled with tea houses and koi ponds. We eventually found ourselves at the Hangzhou Botanical Garden (which is really more of a park-full of forest trails and scenic views but mostly devoid of formal floral exhibits) and enjoyed a really lovely hike through some foothills of the mountains bordering West Lake for only 5 kuai (less than a dollar) apiece. On Tuesday, I joined a few of my classmates from gaojiban on a bus to downtown Hangzhou, where we paid the equivalent of six dollars for half-hour-long, full-body, AMAZING massages (purportedly by "blind" masseurs, although we did catch a few of them watching TV as we left). This weekend, there are tentative plans among a few members of our group to go climbing in some nearby hills, and as I've loved feeling that I know my way around the city, exploring Hangzhou on my own terms and using my own knowledge to get by, I'd love to go! However, my family's also mentioned their desire to visit the nearby town of Huzhou (my host mom's hometown) this weekend, which would also be fascinating, so I'm not sure if this particular adventure will come to pass. So where am I, halfway through the program and less than a month away from my return to the United States? Well, it hasn't been perfect: a lot of the time, I'm exhausted; I still have yet to get accustomed to squat toilets; I miss uncensored Internet access and sometimes feel like my Chinese isn't improving as fast as it should. But the moments of fatigue, frequent as they are, are surpassed by far by those buoyant, thrilling moments of realization that I've learned so much, that I'm becoming independent and individualistic in a place that's becoming less foreign by the day, and that I still have three more potential-packed weeks to build more connections and knowledge in this incredible country. Until next time (which could be in a while, depending on the mood of the Chinese internet gods!), zaijian and best wishes!

[liuxuesheng-liya]

Week 3: Independence (sorry for the crazy-long delay!)

Dajia hao, and duibuqi (sorry) for the long gap between posts! My access to Tumblr has been very spotty over the last week or so, and I don't know how often I'll be able to post in the future. That said, it's been a very nice week (though perhaps not the most exciting-I've settled into a bit of a routine and we haven't had many major departures from said routine in the last few days)! Good news first: I took my second written test yesterday and improved by nine percentage points from my last test to a score of 94 percent! I feel that my Chinese speaking ability is continuing to make a lot of progress, though maybe not at the explosive pace that I was startled and elated to experience last weekend, but my reading ability's improvement is what has really encouraged me over the last few days. I'm finding that, with the exception of the odd character that I don't recognize, I can pretty easily read signs, menus, captions on TV shows and advertisements, and articles-something I definitely couldn't do three weeks ago. In fact, upon arrival in China, I was a little worried about how an immersion setting would benefit my reading skills. Obviously, using Chinese pretty much all the time is extremely helpful to developing one's oral proficiency, but I wasn't sure if my reading level would improve as well. As it turns out, our curriculum has already covered a lot of extremely useful topics (history, current social and economic issues, everyday situations like reserving a hotel room and checking out books from a library) that have allowed me to become much more literate in Chinese, a discovery that's helped pick me up whenever I feel language fatigue (which, I'll admit, has not been an infrequent occurrence over the past week or so). In particular, I'm excited about my newly improved ability to read Chinese fiction and poetry! My host sister has been helping me read the Tale of the Three Kingdoms, one of China's four most famous classical novels, and we've spent a bit of time in class studying Tang Dynasty poetry (considered the "Golden Age" of classical poetry in China). I'm working my way through a book of famous Tang poems (each quite short but very difficult to read and understand even for native speakers) at the moment, and in Monday's calligraphy class (which was an unexpected delight-laborious, but actually really relaxing and interesting) I chose to write a really beautiful Tang poem (Feng Qiao Ye Bo, or "Mooring at Night by the Sweetgum Bridge," by the poet Zhang Ji) in calligraphic style. We've started to plan a little for our final projects (5- to 7-minute-long presentations, entirely in Chinese, to be given in the last week of the program on a topic of our choice), and I think that I might focus my project on a similar form of Chinese art: poetry, traditional idioms, or something else related to the literary tradition. Outside the classroom, quite a lot has happened in the last week-far too much to recount in the half hour or so I have left before my host dad wants his computer back! Over the weekend, I went on a lovely walk by the West Lake with my host dad and sister, teaching them new English vocabulary words as we explored, and then enjoyed a delicious meal at a traditional restaurant in downtown Hangzhou with my sister's good friend's family. The friend, a boy in my sister's grade who's very polite and apparently a whiz at physics, then came to our apartment with his family and played Chinese card games with us for a while until everyone realized that I'm terrible at pretty much every card game there is. The afternoon was ultimately really interesting, though, because we were able to engage in the kind of independent language study activity that's come to be my favorite part of the NSLI-Y experience. First, Juntao (the friend) and Qiuyi read me a traditional Chinese story, which we then discussed in English. I reciprocated by reading them a few short stories in English and discussing the contents in Chinese. During my stay here, I've obviously spent a lot of time learning Chinese in the conventional methods: classroom study, using my spoken language skills in practical settings, memorizing a lot of characters. But "language exchanges" like our impromptu book club, or like helping my sister with her English summer homework (explaining English grammar is, by the way, a LOT harder than it seems like it should be - native English speakers, definitely be grateful that you don't have to take up the task of re-learning the nonsensical hodgepodge of irregulars and weird tenses and non-phonetic spelling that is our mother tongue!), are really where I take the most joy in learning Chinese. I feel that rephrasing familiar ideas into an unfamiliar language on my own terms, creating opportunities and connections outside the classroom, is so much more of an organic and mutually helpful way to grow as a Chinese speaker and as someone who understands China. Sure, part of my eagerness to create these kinds of activities might just be due to the fact that I get bored when I don't have much homework (which is true most days) and need to invent ways to practice Chinese to keep myself occupied. But little side projects, from translating the names of Hangzhou's bus stations to making lists of topics to discuss with my family to learning 20 new vocab words from my Chinese-English dictionary (basically my lifeline) each day, have helped me feel more independent, more successful in improving my Chinese, and more committed to, and in love with, this language and this region. A bit more independence has also pervaded my perception of the city as a whole. This week, for the first time, I've started to go out and explore the city without my host family (though, of course, I do let them know where I am-after a small misunderstanding with my host mom about my expected return time the first time I ventured out alone, which was quickly and completely resolved, I'm really careful to text my family if I think I'll be even a few minutes later than expected). On Monday, we got out of class at 2 pm, significantly earlier than we had in the past. Instead of going straight home, sipping some green-bean soup, taking a shower, and collapsing into a chair to relax and do homework (my usual post-school routine), I joined a classmate of mine on a beautiful (though sweltering) walk through a historic neighborhood of Hangzhou, filled with tea houses and koi ponds. We eventually found ourselves at the Hangzhou Botanical Garden (which is really more of a park-full of forest trails and scenic views but mostly devoid of formal floral exhibits) and enjoyed a really lovely hike through some foothills of the mountains bordering West Lake for only 5 kuai (less than a dollar) apiece. On Tuesday, I joined a few of my classmates from gaojiban on a bus to downtown Hangzhou, where we paid the equivalent of six dollars for half-hour-long, full-body, AMAZING massages (purportedly by "blind" masseurs, although we did catch a few of them watching TV as we left). This weekend, there are tentative plans among a few members of our group to go climbing in some nearby hills, and as I've loved feeling that I know my way around the city, exploring Hangzhou on my own terms and using my own knowledge to get by, I'd love to go! However, my family's also mentioned their desire to visit the nearby town of Huzhou (my host mom's hometown) this weekend, which would also be fascinating, so I'm not sure if this particular adventure will come to pass. So where am I, halfway through the program and less than a month away from my return to the United States? Well, it hasn't been perfect: a lot of the time, I'm exhausted; I still have yet to get accustomed to squat toilets; I miss uncensored Internet access and sometimes feel like my Chinese isn't improving as fast as it should. But the moments of fatigue, frequent as they are, are surpassed by far by those buoyant, thrilling moments of realization that I've learned so much, that I'm becoming independent and individualistic in a place that's becoming less foreign by the day, and that I still have three more potential-packed weeks to build more connections and knowledge in this incredible country. Until next time (which could be in a while, depending on the mood of the Chinese internet gods!), zaijian and best wishes!

[liuxuesheng-liya]

Sorry!

Hi, everyone! Sorry that it's been so long since I last posted-Tumblr's now being censored in China and I can only post by email. I've taken lots of photos and written journal entries for the last three weeks, and I'll try to post them by email ASAP. In the worst-case scenario, I'll post them all when I get home in just 9 days. Sorry, and thanks for sticking with me through the radio silence!

[liuxuesheng-liya]

Week 2: Typhoons, TV, and the Tang Dynasty

Dajia hao! Sorry for the long break between journal entries; the last four days have been quite the whirlwind. And speaking of winds, some of you might be aware that Typhoon Soulik is sweeping through Taiwan today and tomorrow... 太可怕 (too scary)! The storm is supposed to have some effect on Fujian and Zhejiang Provinces (the latter of which is home to Hangzhou), and we're supposed to get a lot of rain over the next few days. However, since Hangzhou is in northern Zhejiang and is pretty far inland, there shouldn't be any significant storm damage where I'm staying, and I'm actually enjoying the significantly cooler weather that's come with the storm. During Chinese summers, though, "cool" is relative, and I'm always grateful, on the walk home from school, that my family lives close to school and always has delicious cold green-bean soup (a dish that I'm definitely going to try to replicate upon my return to the States) waiting at home. Another awesome heat-beating tactic (and something I really like about China) is the abundance of fruit in people's diets here. My family pretty much doesn't let me leave the dinner table unless I've eaten three or more pieces of watermelon (a very popular snack in China), and having melons or peaches constantly on hand more than makes up for the relative lack of very cold beverages (the Chinese believe that consuming too many cold beverages causes digestive problems). Overall, I definitely feel like my diet here is a lot healthier than it is in the United States, although I was surprised to find out how much meat is consumed in China. I'd been under the (false) impression that meat was something of a delicacy, even in relatively affluent cities like Hangzhou; instead, my family has at least one meat dish at pretty much every meal. It took them a while to accept that I wasn't even going to sample their meat dishes (as my host mom explained to me on my third or fourth night here, they avoided eating meat for the first few days because to consume meat without serving it to a guest is considered very rude; now that I've explained that I have a genuine dietary restriction and am not just a picky eater, though, they've resumed their usual meat-heavy diet). Another conception I held about China before my arrival has also proven false; this discovery, though, was more of a relief. Although I've liked both of my Chinese teachers immensely since the beginning of the program, China's extremely test-oriented education system led me to suspect that once our class started to take regular examinations, our teachers would become much more strict and performance-focused. Wednesday's test was quite difficult, and involved a lot of character recognition (unlike my Chinese tests at home, for which we're always provided a character sheet to refresh our memories in case we forget how to write a certain character). Throughout class, I was distracted and anxious that I had scored poorly on the exam, and that Tu Laoshi would have a low opinion of me as a result. On Thursday, we received our scored tests, and I was relieved to discover that I'd done much better than I'd feared (although not as well as I'd like to do in the future). I received an 86, which, Tu Laoshi told me, was a good score in China (which definitely lacks the grade inflation of the United States) and among the highest in the class. Since I've done well on our written homework assignments and dictation tests, I'm pretty sure that I have a good class average. Even so, I was a little disappointed to receive what I'd consider to be a somewhat mediocre score in my Chinese class at home. Once I reminded myself, though, that this test showed me a definite gap in my language learning process (i.e. character recognition) and is going to be really helpful in my future Chinese studies, I stopped stressing about one score and focused on the class and Tu Laoshi's instruction, which was, as always, excellent and interesting. Zhang Laoshi and Tu Laoshi's instruction hasn't been the only opportunity I've had to formally practice my speaking skills; in fact, three times in the last four days, I've found myself in front of a news camera, answering questions in Chinese! On Wednesday and Thursday, reporters from the city and provincial news stations respectively came to Zheda Fuzhong to interview NSLI-Y students and teachers about our impressions of China, and (although my family hasn't had a TV and I've had to rely on my classmates' accounts and iPhone videos of the actual programs) my interviews have appeared twice on local TV! Both times, I've felt like I was reasonably able to understand the interviewers' questions (which mostly dealt with differences between Chinese and American high schools, my favorite spots around Hangzhou, my motivations for studying Chinese, etc.) and construct fairly fluent-sounding answers. As someone who aspires to work as a journalist in China in the future, it was fascinating (and really useful) to get this kind of experience with the Chinese news media (and to be featured on a province-wide TV station)! After my first interview, my teacher actually came up to me and told me that my spoken Chinese has improved a lot even in the last few weeks. His words have been lifting me up whenever I feel "language fatigue," stress, or self-consciousness; although I sometimes feel like hiding in my room and taking a break from the constant Chinese conversation around me, the feeling (which is becoming more and more frequent) that I'm actually conversant, and improving every day, is enough to keep me going. Later that day, I was still floating in a bit of a "holy-crap-I-can-actually-speak-Chinese" haze when my family and I, on the way to our local supermarket, happened to pass in front of another news camera! We were passing through the Dongshan (our neighborhood) District's central square, which was playing host to some kind of small community gathering, when a smiling cameraman immediately locked eyes on my obviously foreign face and shouted (in Chinese), "Look, we have a 美女 (pretty girl) here tonight! Miss, do you speak Chinese?" Eager to practice Chinese again (and, yeah, okay, somewhat flattered by the compliment), I went along and answered a few questions about my impressions of Hangzhou. Perhaps being on camera hasn't been the most instructional part of my stay here-that woudl definitely be conversation with my host family, which I try to engage in for at least an hour or two every day and has definitely been instrumental in my spoken Mandarin's progress. But getting the chance to act a little, having to come up with intelligent-sounding answers on the spot, and being forced to listen really closely to what I'm being asked have been both useful and fun. And it's nice, if a little weird, to know that we NSLI-Yers have become local celebrities of a sort; Hangzhou doesn't often get such a large group of exchange students, much less one that has significant prior experience in Chinese. Outside of these "brushes with fame," my group has definitely kept busy in our off-camera hours! On Wednesday afternoon, I got the chance to do something that I've had a lot of experience with in the U.S.: a college tour! This tour was probably a bit more interesting than your standard admissions spiel and walking tour, though, because our tour of Zhejiang University's main campus was conducted completely in Chinese! Zheda, as it's known here, is the third best university in China (after Beijing and Qinghua, or, as they were commonly known in the West until recently, Peking and Tsinghua Universities), and my host sister dreams of attending Zheda if her gaokao (admissions test) scores make the cut. Zheda is known to be pretty accommodating of international students, and as I discovered on my visit, two schools I'm considering pretty seriously (Brown and Rice) have study-abroad programs there! If the college admissions gods are on my side this fall, there's a chance that I might return to Hangzhou as a college student in a few years! Another piece of good news: my group won our city-wide scavenger hunt competition! Our team of four girls managed to visit the most destinations, which included historic sites, places to use practical Chinese, and areas of natural beauty throughout the city. The prize consisted of Hershey's chocolate and Oreos, and although I initially planned on saving them for the trip to Suzhou, I guess I underestimated the effect that two weeks without chocolate (which apparently isn't big in China) can have on a serious chocoholic like me. I ended up eating the entire Hershey's Special Dark bar on the ten-minute walk home from school! In the ensuing sugar/caffeine high, I managed to do a little bit of research on Tang Dynasty poetry, the most beautiful poetry of classical China, in preparation for our Suzhou trip. Before departure, we received a four-line verse by the Tang poet Zhang Ji, entitled "枫桥夜泊/Feng Qiao Ye Bo," or "Mooring by the Sweetgum Bridge at Night." The poem, which is one of China's most famous, concerns a famous bridge and temple in old Suzhou, and I managed to translate it and do some research on the magnificent gardens and canals of Suzhou before we left. The first place we visited, after driving three hours from Hangzhou, was indeed spectacular: the Liu, or Lingering, Garden, a classic example of Tang architecture. I'll upload pictures in the near future (something I plan to do a lot more of starting tomorrow, as I've finally figured out how to save pictures onto my host dad's somewhat complicated computer but can't do today because he needs to use the computer in a few minutes). Basically, it was what particularly romantic-minded Americans think about when they think about China: circular doorways, sloping tiled roofs, willow trees and bamboo, rock formations, a serene pond hosting a pair of opera-singing Chinese women rowing a small canoe in traditional garb. Outside the garden walls, however, the city was a bit less impressive; similar to Hangzhou in size, it seemed a bit less developed and not, on the whole, a particularly fascinating place. The two restaurants we visited while in Suzhou didn't have a lot of vegetarian fare, and our trip to a karaoke club last night was fun enough but not as interesting as the planned excursion to a major shopping avenue, which, for some reason, didn't pan out. This morning, however, we did manage to visit another very scenic part of the city: the Sweetgum Bridge and Cold Mountain Temple immortalized in Zhang Ji's poem. The entire "scenic area" surrounding the bridge has been reconstructed to resemble Tang Dynasty Suzhou (or Gusu, as it was known then), and walking around the grounds was relaxing and refreshing. The temple is still a functioning Buddhist place of worship, and the scent of incense mixed with the sound of prayers and the temple bell painted an almost overly surreal (and thus, a little unbelievable) picture of old China. A few parts of the park were a bit more touristy-for instance, an archery station on which I wasted ten yuan trying to get a suitably fierce-looking Katniss Everdeen photo (I failed miserably, by the way). Afterward, we went to a pretty rustic side street filled with vendors peddling food and souvenirs, which offered some pretty views and good opportunities to interact with locals, but a definitely-less-than-pleasant aroma. The smells of China are diverse and interesting, and some are very good; in some places, though, like this one, one must definitely master the art of breath control (by which I mean holding your breath until you're really, really far away). The bus ride home was pretty uneventful, but I did manage to get in a really good conversation with D. (our RD) about college, Chinese, life in Michigan, and pretty much anything and everything that was on either of our minds. He's really empathetic and easy-going, and his Chinese is awesome (he lived in Hangzhou for six years and led the NSLI-Y Beijing year program last year). I really like and respect both of our RDs, and it was great to have someone with so much experience in China to talk to! We focused in particular on my impressions of my own language development so far, and my thoughts about studying in China in the future, and in talking to D., I realized that the old worn-out phrase "life-changing experience" does actually hold some truth. This trip, even though I'm only a third of the way through it, has shown me definitively that the Chinese language and nation are two of the things I find most interesting in the entire world; that feeling my own understanding of Chinese language and culture improve is one of the most rewarding things I've ever experienced; that I need to spend a lot of my life studying and living in this massive, contradictory, daunting, beautiful country. One of my friends on the program mentioned to me last night that her friend (a recent high school graduate) is spending the summer with a host family in Taiwan, teaching English to Taiwanese primary schoolers, and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to look into that program for next summer (and possibly a NSLI-Y gap year as well). The prospect of spending more time living in China, and in particular, of giving back by teaching English (China doesn't have nearly enough proficient or fluent English teachers) while simultaneously learning from a host family excites me greatly. Actually, any notion of my own future that involves China is exciting to me at the moment. It hasn't been easy, and I'm sure it will continue to be a challenge, but living here has taught me more in a shorter period of time than I could have ever expected, and I'm determined to make the next month even more productive and fascinating. Thanks for sticking with me! I'll be back tomorrow with (hopefully) a LOT of pictures (sorry for the shortage so far)! Until then, zaijian and best wishes!