I’m lucky enough to have a good friend from Beijing whose family still lives there, so I arrived with someone to pick me up from the train station and a comfortable place to stay all lined up for me. I spent 11 days living with my friend’s parents on the 26th floor of an apartment compound for military retirees. I’d planned to visit a few of Beijing’s famous historical sites, but I knew it would be the everyday, mundane experiences – not the traditional dishes eaten or must-see tourist attractions visited – that would really make the trip.
I couldn’t have found a better place to stay. My friend’s parents spoiled me like I was their own granddaughter. I woke up every morning to a hot mug of tea and a full breakfast, which they would heap onto my plate until I couldn’t eat any more. Then, while I prepared for the day’s adventures, they’d help me figure out an itinerary and tell me which buses to take. They’d even walk me to the bus stop if they weren’t sure I could find it. They kept the house well-stocked with snacks, which they’d shove into my bag before I set out. And when I stumbled back at the end of the day, exhausted, footsore and frostbitten, they’d have a huge vegetarian dinner cooking. We’d chat over dinner, discuss the places I went to see, and then I’d stubbornly try to help with the dishes. After dinner, they’d try to get me to eat more snacks. I’m starting to get the impression that in China, “young” is synonymous with “underfed.” Older people are constantly urging you to eat more, more, more, even when you’re full to bursting.
As they didn’t speak any English at all, staying with the couple really put my Chinese to the test. It was my first time being completely immersed in the language, in a situation where there were no bilingual friends to act as translator and my English was truly useless. It went really well, actually – I was delighted by how well my mere one-and-a-half years of Chinese studies served me. For the first two days I even surprised myself with my fluency. I was able to talk around the gaps in my vocabulary without getting flustered and forgetting how to construct a sentence. But then it got difficult again, and the hesitation and mental blocks came back. I think that, being immersed like that, I learned so much so quickly that my brain was forced to go into assimilation mode for a while to make sense of all the new information, making on-the-spot recall difficult. I wonder if everyone goes through cycles like that in the second-language acquisition process.
One of the best things about going to Beijing (aside from the sheer fabulousness of the city itself) is that the standardized form of Mandarin we learn in school is based on the Beijing dialect, so communication with the locals was easy. It was such a relief to be able to converse smoothly with strangers and understand directions without having to decipher a heavy local accent. Even though everyone in the country understands standard Mandarin, they can’t all speak it, so I often encounter a one-way communication barrier where people can understand my Chinese but I can’t understand theirs. It can be very stressful. Coming from Chongqing, where this is a constant problem for me, this new clarity was a huge thrill. I’ve never enjoyed talking to strangers so much in my life as I did in Beijing. The sudden ease of communicating in a mutually intelligible dialect, and the compliments I got from Beijingers who were impressed to hear a foreigner speaking their dialect, gave me a huge confidence boost that had me chatting with everyone who gave me an opportunity. It really came in handy with all the aggressive hawkers, who’d lose interest in trying to hustle me as soon as they realized they could have a real conversation with me. My favourites were the young guys slinging dumplings and stinky tofu and bugs on skewers at Wangfujing snack street. Perusing all the crazy snacks, I was greeted with the usual catcalls of “HELLOOOO! Look-a-look! Delicious Beijing special treat!” But as soon as I walked up for a closer look and started asking questions in Chinese, they’d immediately drop the act and show a genuine interest in me, asking me where I was from, telling me my Chinese was awesome (很棒, hěn bàng!), flirting a bit and finding common ground with me.
Chinese word of the day:
双语
shuāng yǔ
Bilingual (adj) (lit., double language)
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Going off the rails on a Chinese train, cont'd
A few hours into the trip, one of the attendants came around to collect our tickets. The 12- or 13-year-old girl in the bunk below mine had apparently lost hers sometime after boarding the train, and, from what I understood, the staff suspected a scam and wanted to kick her off. The woman in the bunk opposite hers, a feisty Chongqing local, butted heads ferociously with the staff and the situation escalated into an ongoing saga that had the woman fielding phone calls every few minutes while various attendants and managers visited our bunk repeatedly to engage in yet another heated discussion with her. I gathered she wasn’t related to the girl, and possibly didn’t know her at all, but they were going to the same place and she decided to take charge of the situation. Between the Chinese-speaking foreigner, the silent, ticketless mystery girl, the fierce Chongqing lady and the loud drunk, ours was definitely the most interesting bunk in the car. As we neared Beijing and the situation with the ticketless girl was still not resolved, the staff became more agitated and began taking other passengers aside to press them for information that might help them decide whether or not the girl was scamming them for a free ride across the country. Eventually, they came for me.
After nearly a whole day listening to my bunkmates discuss every angle of the matter (and overhearing everyone else on the car gossiping about it), I’d pretty much tuned out the drama unfolding around me and was just keeping to myself, listening to the Cocteau Twins, and watching the poor farming villages go by. Then one of the attendants, a young girl with a mean, catty look behind her polite smile, came and told me they’d like to ask me some questions. Not knowing what else to do, I agreed, and she grabbed me by the arm and marched me through seven or eight cars to the dinner car, where several more attendants were waiting at a table. The ticketless girl was sitting alone at a table behind ours, looking blankly out the window. They obviously weren’t letting her leave.
They asked me to sit down and introduced me to the boss, a woman who appeared to be in her 30’s. They started asking me questions about the ticketless girl and the woman who’d taken on the role of her advocate, but I couldn’t make out the meaning of anything they said through my nervousness and their heavy Sichuan accents. They seemed intent on getting certain information. When it became clear to them that I had no idea what that information was and I could tell them nothing helpful, they thanked me with exasperated smiles and the mean-looking one grabbed me by the arm again and escorted me back to my car.
In the end, they never resolved the issue with the ticketless girl. She and the woman stayed on the train till we got to Beijing, where everyone wordlessly went on their way and the temporary relationships formed on the train dissolved as quickly as they’d formed. I arrived feeling like I’d just reached my second destination on the trip instead of my first. The train ride was a trip in itself.
Chinese lesson of the day:
奇怪
qí guài
Strange (adj)
After nearly a whole day listening to my bunkmates discuss every angle of the matter (and overhearing everyone else on the car gossiping about it), I’d pretty much tuned out the drama unfolding around me and was just keeping to myself, listening to the Cocteau Twins, and watching the poor farming villages go by. Then one of the attendants, a young girl with a mean, catty look behind her polite smile, came and told me they’d like to ask me some questions. Not knowing what else to do, I agreed, and she grabbed me by the arm and marched me through seven or eight cars to the dinner car, where several more attendants were waiting at a table. The ticketless girl was sitting alone at a table behind ours, looking blankly out the window. They obviously weren’t letting her leave.
They asked me to sit down and introduced me to the boss, a woman who appeared to be in her 30’s. They started asking me questions about the ticketless girl and the woman who’d taken on the role of her advocate, but I couldn’t make out the meaning of anything they said through my nervousness and their heavy Sichuan accents. They seemed intent on getting certain information. When it became clear to them that I had no idea what that information was and I could tell them nothing helpful, they thanked me with exasperated smiles and the mean-looking one grabbed me by the arm again and escorted me back to my car.
In the end, they never resolved the issue with the ticketless girl. She and the woman stayed on the train till we got to Beijing, where everyone wordlessly went on their way and the temporary relationships formed on the train dissolved as quickly as they’d formed. I arrived feeling like I’d just reached my second destination on the trip instead of my first. The train ride was a trip in itself.
Chinese lesson of the day:
奇怪
qí guài
Strange (adj)
Monday, January 24, 2011
Going off the rails on a Chinese train
Once again, I’ve been slacking on my blog. Sorry about that. I wrote my exams about 2 weeks ago after a week of intense cramming, and I think I managed to pass, but I won’t know until next semester, if they ever tell me at all. During this time, I was also trying to salvage my travel plans for the Spring Festival, which were rapidly unravelling. Taking advantage of my six-week vacation to travel in China seemed like a good idea; I mean, I’m in China with nothing to do, so naturally I should travel, right? Well, Spring Festival is also the largest annual human migration in the world – the time when the millions of migrant workers who’ve left their hometowns for a better income in the cities go home to spend Chinese New Year with their families. It’s nearly impossible to get a train anywhere; plane tickets double or triple in price.
I’d originally planned to spend a few days in Beijing, then fly to Japan and spend a week or two there, and then fly back to my friend’s hometown in Xuzhou to spend Chinese New Year with his family. Afterward I’d hoped to hop a train to nearby Suzhou or Hangzhou to spend a day or two soaking in the famous scenery (Suzhou is famous for its gardens and Hangzhou is known as the “Venice of China”), and then continue south to Shenzhen or Hong Kong before flying back to Chongqing. Japan ended up being impossibly expensive, eating up almost my entire travel budget and paralyzing my plans until I could cancel everything – a very expensive, time-consuming and depressing task. By the time I got that worked out, I’d decided to just spend some time in Beijing and then take a train to Xuzhou at the end of January, and I thought I’d break up the long, long train ride to Beijing with a stopover in Xi’an. Poor train scheduling to Xi’an ended up making things more complicated when it was supposed to make them simpler, so I dropped that idea and decided to fly to Beijing; I’d found a cheap ticket that would get me there in two hours for just 100 RMB (15 CAD) more than the cost of a train ticket. The website was confusing and the prices were climbing by the second (I could watch the numbers go up as I sat and looked at the page), so by the time I had a friend come over to help me the ticket was more than double the price of a train. So, after another split second change of plans, I ran out and bought a train ticket straight to Beijing; 31 hours. I was actually really lucky to get it only five days in advance – tickets generally sell out the day sales open, which is ten days in advance. I found myself a cheap plane ticket to Chongqing from Shenzhen and my holiday began to take shape again. Meanwhile, Beibei had become unnaturally subdued as all the shops and street stalls I’ve come to know and love pulled down their heavy steel shutters or just packed up and disappeared completely for the holidays. The campus turned into a creepy, deserted ghost town. I was anxious to leave.
The train station was overflowing, but I managed to get onto the train without any trouble or confusion. I must be getting better at this whole “not being a clueless foreigner” thing. I’d booked a “hard sleeper,” which, so I’m told, is exactly the same as a “soft sleeper” except there are three beds to a bunk instead of two, so it’s a little more crowded. But, clocking in at 440 RMB (about 66 CAD), half the price of the soft sleeper, I decided it was money well saved. Of course, my bunk was in the middle of the car, and to get to it I had to walk past about 30 pairs of stunned eyes. Everyone watched, riveted, as I fumbled conspicuously with my overstuffed suitcase. Then a girl about my age approached me in the corridor and struck up a conversation. Of course, everyone listened in, and word spread quickly through the car that there was a “waiguoren” who could speak Chinese on the train. I could hear everyone talking about me, but they all seemed to be saying good things, so I relaxed a bit. People kept dropping by to participate in the conversation and exchange a few words with the foreigner. They were all quite friendly, although I couldn’t understand what they were saying half the time as they were all Sichuan/Chongqing locals and spoke with a heavy accent.
Eventually I went back to the little table next to my bunk to have some dinner and was followed by the crazy drunk guy who’d been blundering around making a scene ever since he arrived. He made lively conversation with me while I tried to review some vocabulary and eat my dinner, spraying me with flecks of chewed-up betel nut as he spoke. He told me repeatedly that I was beautiful and then he called his wife and told her he was talking to a “foreign beauty,” gleefully reporting afterward how jealous she was. My other bunkmates joined in and we all talked for a while – I’m always amazed at the social ease of the people over here. I guess in a country this crowded, where maintaining personal space is impossible, you don’t really have the option of being hesitant to talk to people. Chatting with strangers is both a way of life and an art form over here. It’s funny – when I see fellow foreigners now, my first instinct is to run over and strike up a conversation, ask where they’re from, what their story is, and then I realize that that’s a very Chinese response. It’d be the last thing I’d be likely to do back home. Being in China has fundamentally changed the way I view social interaction. Not only do I have no choice but to talk to strangers here, it’s basically my entire purpose for being here. And the social interactions I have here, in my horribly inadequate Chinese or in someone else’s faltering English, are completely different from the culturally nuanced, socially molded conversations I have in my native language. Every conversation I have here is useful to me in some way – it’s never worth it to avoid them (unless you’re talking to a crazy drunk who’ll just end up following you around all night). And it’s changed the way I view awkwardness in social interaction, too. No social interaction in the world can be as awkward or intimidating as being interrogated in a heavily-accented version of your second language.
…to be continued.
Chinese word of the day:
尴尬
gān gà
Awkward (adj.)
I’d originally planned to spend a few days in Beijing, then fly to Japan and spend a week or two there, and then fly back to my friend’s hometown in Xuzhou to spend Chinese New Year with his family. Afterward I’d hoped to hop a train to nearby Suzhou or Hangzhou to spend a day or two soaking in the famous scenery (Suzhou is famous for its gardens and Hangzhou is known as the “Venice of China”), and then continue south to Shenzhen or Hong Kong before flying back to Chongqing. Japan ended up being impossibly expensive, eating up almost my entire travel budget and paralyzing my plans until I could cancel everything – a very expensive, time-consuming and depressing task. By the time I got that worked out, I’d decided to just spend some time in Beijing and then take a train to Xuzhou at the end of January, and I thought I’d break up the long, long train ride to Beijing with a stopover in Xi’an. Poor train scheduling to Xi’an ended up making things more complicated when it was supposed to make them simpler, so I dropped that idea and decided to fly to Beijing; I’d found a cheap ticket that would get me there in two hours for just 100 RMB (15 CAD) more than the cost of a train ticket. The website was confusing and the prices were climbing by the second (I could watch the numbers go up as I sat and looked at the page), so by the time I had a friend come over to help me the ticket was more than double the price of a train. So, after another split second change of plans, I ran out and bought a train ticket straight to Beijing; 31 hours. I was actually really lucky to get it only five days in advance – tickets generally sell out the day sales open, which is ten days in advance. I found myself a cheap plane ticket to Chongqing from Shenzhen and my holiday began to take shape again. Meanwhile, Beibei had become unnaturally subdued as all the shops and street stalls I’ve come to know and love pulled down their heavy steel shutters or just packed up and disappeared completely for the holidays. The campus turned into a creepy, deserted ghost town. I was anxious to leave.
The train station was overflowing, but I managed to get onto the train without any trouble or confusion. I must be getting better at this whole “not being a clueless foreigner” thing. I’d booked a “hard sleeper,” which, so I’m told, is exactly the same as a “soft sleeper” except there are three beds to a bunk instead of two, so it’s a little more crowded. But, clocking in at 440 RMB (about 66 CAD), half the price of the soft sleeper, I decided it was money well saved. Of course, my bunk was in the middle of the car, and to get to it I had to walk past about 30 pairs of stunned eyes. Everyone watched, riveted, as I fumbled conspicuously with my overstuffed suitcase. Then a girl about my age approached me in the corridor and struck up a conversation. Of course, everyone listened in, and word spread quickly through the car that there was a “waiguoren” who could speak Chinese on the train. I could hear everyone talking about me, but they all seemed to be saying good things, so I relaxed a bit. People kept dropping by to participate in the conversation and exchange a few words with the foreigner. They were all quite friendly, although I couldn’t understand what they were saying half the time as they were all Sichuan/Chongqing locals and spoke with a heavy accent.
Eventually I went back to the little table next to my bunk to have some dinner and was followed by the crazy drunk guy who’d been blundering around making a scene ever since he arrived. He made lively conversation with me while I tried to review some vocabulary and eat my dinner, spraying me with flecks of chewed-up betel nut as he spoke. He told me repeatedly that I was beautiful and then he called his wife and told her he was talking to a “foreign beauty,” gleefully reporting afterward how jealous she was. My other bunkmates joined in and we all talked for a while – I’m always amazed at the social ease of the people over here. I guess in a country this crowded, where maintaining personal space is impossible, you don’t really have the option of being hesitant to talk to people. Chatting with strangers is both a way of life and an art form over here. It’s funny – when I see fellow foreigners now, my first instinct is to run over and strike up a conversation, ask where they’re from, what their story is, and then I realize that that’s a very Chinese response. It’d be the last thing I’d be likely to do back home. Being in China has fundamentally changed the way I view social interaction. Not only do I have no choice but to talk to strangers here, it’s basically my entire purpose for being here. And the social interactions I have here, in my horribly inadequate Chinese or in someone else’s faltering English, are completely different from the culturally nuanced, socially molded conversations I have in my native language. Every conversation I have here is useful to me in some way – it’s never worth it to avoid them (unless you’re talking to a crazy drunk who’ll just end up following you around all night). And it’s changed the way I view awkwardness in social interaction, too. No social interaction in the world can be as awkward or intimidating as being interrogated in a heavily-accented version of your second language.
…to be continued.
Chinese word of the day:
尴尬
gān gà
Awkward (adj.)
Happy Spring Festival!
Please excuse the lack of new posts as of late - life's been hectic! I finished my first semester at SWU a couple weeks ago and wrote my exams a week after that. Now I'm taking advantage of the month-long vacation to do some travelling through China and only have sporadic internet access. I'll try to keep writing when I have time and just dump my posts on here when I find a place with good wifi. I'm currently in Beijing at a Starbucks on Qianmen street, just south of Tiananmen Square. Stay tuned for updates on my adventures on the road!
Chinese word of the day:
放假
fàng jià
To have a holiday or vacation
Chinese word of the day:
放假
fàng jià
To have a holiday or vacation
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