Beijing

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)