So, almost 6 months and to the day later, I am packing my bags and saying Zaijian to my temporary home.
I've successfully completed 2-years worth of Chinese lessons, and in doing so, have pushed my limits and comfort zone to extremes that I never knew were in me. I can now communicate with an often misrepresented and misunderstood people. I now know that I can live comfortably in a country so completely foreign from my own.
This experience has drastically shaped me and who I am and will stay with me for forever, that I know. I think that some people got the impression that I disliked my experience out here because I so yearned for the US, but that is a completely false notion. I had a fantastic experience that caused me to grow up more, and with growing comes growing pains and frustrations, but overall the experience was well worth it and valuable.
I feel like I visited China during one of the best times, that is, a time of growth. China is attempting to reconcile the modern with the old, and I've been able to experience both. I fear that the old will eventually succumb to the pressures of the need to develop fully. I think once the Olympics are completed, the world will become more accepting of this country and its huge developments and improvements. I really look forward to seeing China in 10-- or even 5-- years. I doubt I'll even be able to recognize it.
So, I leave China with hope and open eyes. I'm not sad, not happy to leave. I'm just ready to get back to a normal class schedule, food not drowning in oil, and people who care about hygiene. I'll miss trading in beer bottles for ice cream, feeling "special" because I'm a foreigner, and being able to live like a queen because prices have yet to catch up with the western world's.
In about 12 hours I'll be catching a plane to Thailand. I fly into Bangkok then take a little plane to Phuket where I'll meet my friend from GW, Kirsten. We're in Phuket one night then to the little beach town of Krabi for a few days, then back to Bangkok for a day before I fly out on Saturday to return back home!
Thanks to everyone who read my blog, sent me letters or cards, and were so supportive over these last 6 months. It really made me realize how wonderful my friends and family are.
Much love,
Ashley
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
11 More things you did not know about China/Chinese
So, I only have 12 days left in China, and I've been keeping track of some things I find interesting about China/Chinese. Here goes:
1.) There is no such thing as a happy ending to a movie. The Chinese LOVE to cry. (PS- have you seen Lust, Caution yet? GO SEE IT! It's great, even though I saw the version that is missing 30 minutes (thanks, Chinese government!)
2.) Chinese do not believe in standing in lines. It is one man for his own, and is also really really annoying.
3.) All parked cars in the street are parked in neutral. So the parking attendant can roll them out of the way easily. (PS- there are no parking lots)
4.) Speaking of cars, I can count the number of times I've seen a gas station on one hand.
5.) Pork is the meat of choice.
6.) In the supermarket, all seafood is alive. Yes, this includes turtles.
7.) Smoking is a real problem out here, but only for men. Men use cigarettes as an olive branch or as a way to meet each other. For instance, I saw a bicycle run into a car. It wasn't serious, but the bicyclist pulled out a pack of cigarettes and shoved one in the drivers mouth to say he was sorry.
8.) Their are 5 Olympic mascots: Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini (Beijing Haunying Ni= Beijing welcomes you), how cute.
9.) Just like the one-house, one-child policy, the government also has a one-house, one-dog policy. All dogs are tiny and arent often on leashes, but are very well-behaved.
10.) Cars/buses/automobiles do not give the pedestrian the right-of-way. In fact, its the exact opposite.
11.) When answering the telephone, Chinese say "Wei?", when getting off the phone they ALL say "Bye bye."
1.) There is no such thing as a happy ending to a movie. The Chinese LOVE to cry. (PS- have you seen Lust, Caution yet? GO SEE IT! It's great, even though I saw the version that is missing 30 minutes (thanks, Chinese government!)
2.) Chinese do not believe in standing in lines. It is one man for his own, and is also really really annoying.
3.) All parked cars in the street are parked in neutral. So the parking attendant can roll them out of the way easily. (PS- there are no parking lots)
4.) Speaking of cars, I can count the number of times I've seen a gas station on one hand.
5.) Pork is the meat of choice.
6.) In the supermarket, all seafood is alive. Yes, this includes turtles.
7.) Smoking is a real problem out here, but only for men. Men use cigarettes as an olive branch or as a way to meet each other. For instance, I saw a bicycle run into a car. It wasn't serious, but the bicyclist pulled out a pack of cigarettes and shoved one in the drivers mouth to say he was sorry.
8.) Their are 5 Olympic mascots: Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini (Beijing Haunying Ni= Beijing welcomes you), how cute.
9.) Just like the one-house, one-child policy, the government also has a one-house, one-dog policy. All dogs are tiny and arent often on leashes, but are very well-behaved.
10.) Cars/buses/automobiles do not give the pedestrian the right-of-way. In fact, its the exact opposite.
11.) When answering the telephone, Chinese say "Wei?", when getting off the phone they ALL say "Bye bye."
New Pants & 农村
New Pants, the best band in China. Check them out on YouTube. You may laugh, go ahead, but they are soooooooooooooooooooo worth it. Gotta love the dancing. Here is my friend, Laura, and the keyboardist of New Pants after the show. He is amazing.
Ok, so we went to the 农村(countryside) this weekend. Our program put us up in a swanky hotel equipped full with a waterfall, a giant pond, basketball court, tennis courts (all indoors, btw), bowling alley (which I took advantage of), squash court, pingpong stadium, shuffleboard, and so so much more. Turns out, this is a place where all of the rich cityfolk go to get away from the Beijing smog and do a little sporting activity.
We spent most of the first day preparing for that night, the annual "China Night" where each class preforms a skit and our roommates sing songs and stuff. Well, I've done China Night before and it can be dreadfully long and I hate doing skits more than anything, afterall, I am 21 now (wow, that felt great). So, instead, I spent all week re-writing Britney Spear's "Oops, I did it again" into "Oops, 我又说英文" (Oops, I spoke English again {funny, because we have a language pledge that no one follows}). So, we preformed our song and turns out it was the best of the bunch, so basically, I'm just waiting for my recording contract.
Ok, so after a very long night, we had an early wake-up call because we had to visit a countryside middle school and present presenatations about American life (in Chinese) to the middle schoolers, while they presented presentations (in English) about their lives. It was adorable! After I finished my report, a girl got up and said "You are my favorite, you are beautiful." As soon as they allowed us to have free time, all of the girls in my class ran to me to talk. There were maybe 6 kids around me and 6 kids around the other 5 of my classmates.
Anyways, so here are some of my girls:
Ooo, and the writing on the blackboard behind us, I could read almost all of it... yay!
Ok, and here is the whole class including my classmates and teachers:
None of us wanted to go, but in the long run, it was a great experience! My new friends asked me to come back and visit them. I promised I would.
Ok, so we went to the 农村(countryside) this weekend. Our program put us up in a swanky hotel equipped full with a waterfall, a giant pond, basketball court, tennis courts (all indoors, btw), bowling alley (which I took advantage of), squash court, pingpong stadium, shuffleboard, and so so much more. Turns out, this is a place where all of the rich cityfolk go to get away from the Beijing smog and do a little sporting activity.
We spent most of the first day preparing for that night, the annual "China Night" where each class preforms a skit and our roommates sing songs and stuff. Well, I've done China Night before and it can be dreadfully long and I hate doing skits more than anything, afterall, I am 21 now (wow, that felt great). So, instead, I spent all week re-writing Britney Spear's "Oops, I did it again" into "Oops, 我又说英文" (Oops, I spoke English again {funny, because we have a language pledge that no one follows}). So, we preformed our song and turns out it was the best of the bunch, so basically, I'm just waiting for my recording contract.
Ok, so after a very long night, we had an early wake-up call because we had to visit a countryside middle school and present presenatations about American life (in Chinese) to the middle schoolers, while they presented presentations (in English) about their lives. It was adorable! After I finished my report, a girl got up and said "You are my favorite, you are beautiful." As soon as they allowed us to have free time, all of the girls in my class ran to me to talk. There were maybe 6 kids around me and 6 kids around the other 5 of my classmates.
Anyways, so here are some of my girls:
Ooo, and the writing on the blackboard behind us, I could read almost all of it... yay!
Ok, and here is the whole class including my classmates and teachers:
None of us wanted to go, but in the long run, it was a great experience! My new friends asked me to come back and visit them. I promised I would.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Thanksgiving Miracle
Our teachers cancelled our Friday test!
Soooo... since we had to wait till Friday night to have a "real" Thanksgiving meal, we went and ate the next best American-thing... pizza!
Here is our beloved pizza place, the Kro's Nest, with the biggest and most satisfying pizzas I have ever had. Pictured below is the "kiss of death" (lots of garlic!).
A handful of students spent all week preparing our traditional thanksgiving meal. I had my doubts, especially since they had to feed 100+ students, roommates, and teachers, but they blew me away. The food was soooooo delicious and so right on. It was great!
My plate, which i finished, thank you! Spicy pumpkin soup, smashed potatoes, yams, salad, corn, deviled eggs, turkey, stuffing, mac'n'cheese, green beans, carrots, cookies, brownies, and a most delicious pumpkin pie. Notice the chopsticks on the right. That was the only thing un-American about this meal.
My roommate's first Thanksgiving! I actually found it quite surprising that this was the majority of the teachers and roommates first time EVER to eat turkey!
Ok, so she didnt like the soup, but she loooooooooooved the gravy. Kept going back for seconds so she could put it on everything on her plate.
Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!
Soooo... since we had to wait till Friday night to have a "real" Thanksgiving meal, we went and ate the next best American-thing... pizza!
Here is our beloved pizza place, the Kro's Nest, with the biggest and most satisfying pizzas I have ever had. Pictured below is the "kiss of death" (lots of garlic!).
A handful of students spent all week preparing our traditional thanksgiving meal. I had my doubts, especially since they had to feed 100+ students, roommates, and teachers, but they blew me away. The food was soooooo delicious and so right on. It was great!
My plate, which i finished, thank you! Spicy pumpkin soup, smashed potatoes, yams, salad, corn, deviled eggs, turkey, stuffing, mac'n'cheese, green beans, carrots, cookies, brownies, and a most delicious pumpkin pie. Notice the chopsticks on the right. That was the only thing un-American about this meal.
My roommate's first Thanksgiving! I actually found it quite surprising that this was the majority of the teachers and roommates first time EVER to eat turkey!
Ok, so she didnt like the soup, but she loooooooooooved the gravy. Kept going back for seconds so she could put it on everything on her plate.
Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
独生子女政策- One Child Policy
Fact: In order to combat overpopulation issues, the Chinese government has a law that limits the number of children each couple can have: 1.
Fiction: This is such a horrible human rights issue that China needs to change
Reality: I originally thought that this was just that, a horrible human rights violation. How dare a government tell its people that they can only have one child, right? Wrong. The complete provisions of the law are as follows:
- You may only have one child (with exception of twins, etc...)
- If you "choose" to have more than one child, you must pay a nominal tax for every additional child.
- If you live in the country, you can have as many children as you like. This is to counteract the practice of aborting girl fetuses because a boy is much more valuable to a country family. In the city, this type of sexism is no longer a problem, thus, cityfolk are subjected to the one-house-one-child policy. If you do not want to pay the tax, you move to the country.
Ok, I hope I don't sound too liberal, but...
I no longer am against this policy, actually, I think I support it now. Americans are in a huge pickle. We lambast China for their human rights abuses (such as One Child Policy), yet we fear the rise of China, and we should. 1 in 4 people in the world are Chinese. The world's resources are depleating at rapid rates and the world simply cannot support human life for a whole lot longer. God forbid if an epidemic disease comes around and knocks off part of the population, but if we keep populating the way that we are, drastic measures will need to be taken in the future, one of which could quite possibly be a world-wide support of limiting the number of kids people have. Yes, there are obvious blocks, such as democracy and religion (damn them! (just kidding)), so why would we criticize a country that is seemingly willing to curb this problem? The Chinese, culturally and religiously, have no problem with limiting and planning their families, so I say go ahead and let them do it. Yes, I understand this law doesn't leave a whole lot up to individual couple's choice, but I think it is engrained the in culture and why should we mess with it?!?
Just some food for thought...
Fiction: This is such a horrible human rights issue that China needs to change
Reality: I originally thought that this was just that, a horrible human rights violation. How dare a government tell its people that they can only have one child, right? Wrong. The complete provisions of the law are as follows:
- You may only have one child (with exception of twins, etc...)
- If you "choose" to have more than one child, you must pay a nominal tax for every additional child.
- If you live in the country, you can have as many children as you like. This is to counteract the practice of aborting girl fetuses because a boy is much more valuable to a country family. In the city, this type of sexism is no longer a problem, thus, cityfolk are subjected to the one-house-one-child policy. If you do not want to pay the tax, you move to the country.
Ok, I hope I don't sound too liberal, but...
I no longer am against this policy, actually, I think I support it now. Americans are in a huge pickle. We lambast China for their human rights abuses (such as One Child Policy), yet we fear the rise of China, and we should. 1 in 4 people in the world are Chinese. The world's resources are depleating at rapid rates and the world simply cannot support human life for a whole lot longer. God forbid if an epidemic disease comes around and knocks off part of the population, but if we keep populating the way that we are, drastic measures will need to be taken in the future, one of which could quite possibly be a world-wide support of limiting the number of kids people have. Yes, there are obvious blocks, such as democracy and religion (damn them! (just kidding)), so why would we criticize a country that is seemingly willing to curb this problem? The Chinese, culturally and religiously, have no problem with limiting and planning their families, so I say go ahead and let them do it. Yes, I understand this law doesn't leave a whole lot up to individual couple's choice, but I think it is engrained the in culture and why should we mess with it?!?
Just some food for thought...
Monday, November 12, 2007
Xi'an 第二次
CET took us to Xi'an again, home of the Teracotta Soldiers. Well, I bet you can guess what we did:
No, but for real, we had a great time this time. The weather wasn't as cold as Beijing's (have a 30% chance of snow this week) and it didn't rain, so life is good. We participated in a little compeition that had us race around Xi'an completing tasks. The first one was to ride a tandem bicycle on top of the city wall.
As you may see, he is much taller than me and I couldn't see anything when we were pedalling like all get out.
After riding the bikes we got a little hungry so we ate a Xi'an speciality. I really don't know what exactly it is, but it is good. It's like rice, but not, more of a paste of some kind that is steamed. The colors are sugar. Yummm. Served piping hot and fresh.
Another task required us to meet with a local folk painter. Here we are inside his shop. I returned the next day and bought a few little paintings that you see on the table.
That night we went back to the fountains in front of the Big Goose Pagoda. These fountains are synchronized with lights and music. If you're relatively new to my blog, then you wouldn't know that I had quite an embarrassing experience at these fountains in July. Go back and take a read.
The next day we made it back to the Terracotta Warriors, only to find out one of the 3 pits housing the warriors closed only a week earlier for further excavations.
I took this picture so you can see how detailed the soldiers are. This soldier has hair and a braid. I believe that no two soldiers are alike in clothes, posture, stature, etc... That's quite amazing considering that this one pit houses 6,000 warriors.
A Snickers break on the train on the way home. Actually, I ate my very first Snickers bar on the train during fall break, and since then, I've had a little "tradition" to eat a Snickers every time I'm on a train.
Only 2 KFC pics total. I think that tells you something about Xi'an.
No, but for real, we had a great time this time. The weather wasn't as cold as Beijing's (have a 30% chance of snow this week) and it didn't rain, so life is good. We participated in a little compeition that had us race around Xi'an completing tasks. The first one was to ride a tandem bicycle on top of the city wall.
As you may see, he is much taller than me and I couldn't see anything when we were pedalling like all get out.
After riding the bikes we got a little hungry so we ate a Xi'an speciality. I really don't know what exactly it is, but it is good. It's like rice, but not, more of a paste of some kind that is steamed. The colors are sugar. Yummm. Served piping hot and fresh.
Another task required us to meet with a local folk painter. Here we are inside his shop. I returned the next day and bought a few little paintings that you see on the table.
That night we went back to the fountains in front of the Big Goose Pagoda. These fountains are synchronized with lights and music. If you're relatively new to my blog, then you wouldn't know that I had quite an embarrassing experience at these fountains in July. Go back and take a read.
The next day we made it back to the Terracotta Warriors, only to find out one of the 3 pits housing the warriors closed only a week earlier for further excavations.
I took this picture so you can see how detailed the soldiers are. This soldier has hair and a braid. I believe that no two soldiers are alike in clothes, posture, stature, etc... That's quite amazing considering that this one pit houses 6,000 warriors.
A Snickers break on the train on the way home. Actually, I ate my very first Snickers bar on the train during fall break, and since then, I've had a little "tradition" to eat a Snickers every time I'm on a train.
Only 2 KFC pics total. I think that tells you something about Xi'an.
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