It's Time-Warp Time

     Today's the day--I go to the airport in a few short hours, and after many long hours will be arriving in Beijing! I'm going by way of LA and South Korea, so layovers coupled with flight time means that I'll be traveling for an entire day...as in 24 hours. It's definitely a commute that's hard to get excited about. I am mystified, though, that I leave early morning and arrive the next day in the late evening (I'm flying back in time, yet still end up a day ahead of when I left). I even made a spreadsheet to try to figure out how the timezones lined up during my flights, but still couldn't pinpoint where all the time went...foiled by the International Date Line, I guess.


     Anyways, with any luck the Beijing Blog will finally have posts from Beijing--so stay posted!


Audrey

The In-Between, and Foreign Snake-Heads

     The changes that have come in just one week have been incremental, yet life-changing. For one, I now have most of the essentials I still needed: comfy shoes for schlepping, a camera for photo-documentation, a visa and Pepto-Bismol (for obvious reasons...) The most important and least tangible, though, is a place to stay! For July and August, my family friends are so generously hosting me in their spare apartment. Having a room for those two months, though, meant that I needed to find somewhere to live in June. I have spent the last month contacting homestay agencies, responding to online ads, researching hostels and apartments, all in the pursuit of housing that was convenient, affordable, safe. The most important criterion in my mind, though, was food. Primal, I know, but when considering that I've never lived on my own and have predominantly relied on others to feed me, figuring out how I'm going to eat for two and a half months has been constantly on my mind. What's more, while I know I can rise to the challenge, the prospect of going to a Chinese market, finding ingredients I recognize and can use, potentially bartering for products in Chinese, finding utensils to cook with, etc. on my own sounds overwhelming. That said, Chinese restaurants are extremely affordable and abundant by Western standards, so many of my Chinese friends have advised against even attempting to cook for myself. 

     In short, the horror of starving alone drove my search to find a host family who will feed me, love me, correct my Chinese, let me play violin, and be close to my internship site. Call it fear of commitment, but the idea of signing up to live in someone's home based on such superficial knowledge of him or her (location, occupation, number of rooms in the home, the assurance that "you will be safe anytime in his house") is a huge leap of faith. So over the course of a month, I emailed back and forth with agencies and my own contacts, trying to find a situation that didn't require me to a) work as a maid, b) spend a certain number of hours per week volunteering, c) commute for over an hour. 

     After changing my mind at least four times, I rejected all of my options and wrote to a woman whose homestay offer I originally decided against because it was outside my budget. She wrote back that she had already agreed to host another student, but could contact her friend. Seeing as at that moment I had no leads and ten days to figure out where I would be moving to, there seemed to be no downside to asking. As it were, her friend's home is quite close to where I'll be working, she is happy for me to practice violin, her rate is much lower--and it includes meals. Here's what sealed the deal for me, though: the friend is a nutritionist and reportedly makes "very authentic" and "delicious" Beijing cuisine. To quote Elsa Schiaparelli, "Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale." I would argue that having authentic and delicious Chinese food is imperative if I am to succeed this summer. 

     It's no guarantee that this homestay is going to be completely smooth sailing, and I'm optimistic I'll learn a lot from my host family members as well as my own mistakes. From their messages, they seem very kind, and even if the homestay goes terribly, I have a back-up couch to crash (and as always I'm sure it will make for some interesting stories). Nevertheless, I can't fully explain what what an incredible relief it is to know that I at least have a place to go when I arrive in Beijing.

    On a slightly different note, recent incidents involving foreigners in China (a British tourist's sexual harassment of a Chinese woman, and Russian cellist's mockery of a Chinese woman on a train, both captured on video) has sparked Chinese national outcry, and perhaps xenophobia. After the former incident, many Chinese micro-bloggers voiced angry opposition to foreigners in their country, most notably CCTV host Yang Rui, who wrote that those who can't find work in the US or EU come to China to "grab our money, engage in human trafficking" and called for his country-fellows to "cut off the foreign snake heads." Now, the Chinese government has launched a 100 day campaign to drive out foreigners who have entered and work in the country illegally. 

     Disturbing as all of this is, from what I have heard, the anti-foreigner sentiment hasn't manifested itself in the form of violence; if anything, the police are just profiling passerby (what else is new?) and randomly demanding to see passports. It's unfortunate that the stories about conflict between Chinese and foreigners are the ones that are being highlighted in China (for there are many positive stories that are under the radar) but it makes sense that the Chinese government encourages it as a way to set the country apart (and over) the West. Personally, I'm just hoping that xenophobia doesn't further escalate in the pursuit of a unified China. My new goal is to show at least one person in China that foreigners aren't all that bad.

     (Six days until departure!)

Audrey

In the News:

Before China's Transition, A Wave of Nationalism

Because every blog needs a first post.

I should have realized it was only a matter of time before I created another blog.

     My consciousness of a world greater than Austin, Texas, came with my ten-month immersion in an all-girl's high school in Japan. Selected by my high school faculty to represent the school abroad at our Japanese sister school, I learned enough Japanese to ask the time and took off for Japan in September 2007 with newly-purchased knee socks, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and little idea of what to expect. From the moment I arrived, I was plunged into Japan, living with two host families over the course of the exchange and taking all of my classes in Japanese. Through battling rogue robotic toilets and learning the hard way the custom of eating everything on my plate, I became fluent in Japanese, discovered the differences (and samenesses) of Japanese and American culture, and began to realize the magnitude of opportunities awaiting those willing to take a chance. 

     I recorded my time in Japan through The Tokyo Blog. The Tokyo Blog was originally intended to inform my family and friends; as my posts and pictures became more extensive, though, my readership expanded to friends of friends, peers, my school, my community, and beyond. At the time, I thought I was simply chronicling the experience to entertain and update my readers. Now, I realize that writing about my successes and mishaps was just as much for my own benefit--to process, debrief, and remember. Rather than dreading my next language- or custom-related shortcoming, I began to eagerly try new things, knowing that the worst mistakes make for the best stories.

     After I returned to the States for my junior year of high school, I abandoned my years of studying Spanish for Chinese. Japanese characters come from the Chinese writing system, and after learning about 400 or 500 characters in Japan (and recalling the labors of conjugating the subjunctive tense in Spanish) it seemed like an obvious choice. Whether it was it was the recent experience of picking up language quickly, the writing system overlap with Japanese, or the lack of verb conjugation in Chinese, I found Chinese coming naturally to me. 

     I got a taste of China in the summer of 2009 when I spent a month going from city to city taking language classes and seeing the sights. While I remember vividly sweating buckets on Great Wall, bartering furiously at the Silk Market, and dressing up in Beijing opera costume and makeup, just as striking was the pollution that reduced the line of vision to about half a mile and my host sister's complaints about the cruelty of her peers in their pursuit to attend a good university. That summer, ethnic riots in Xinjiang (a northeastern region of China) incited the Chinese government's nation-wide shutdown of Facebook. That smog, cut-throat competition, and censorship are realities for millions is distressing; however, understanding the historical, political, social, and cultural elements that have made China what it is today is also incredibly fascinating to me. 

     Now, I am a rising junior at Wellesley College double-majoring in East Asian Linguistics and Music. (East Asian Linguistics is an individual major, i.e. one I am creating myself that combines Japanese and Chinese languages and cultures with pure linguistics, as well as classes that address the two.) This summer I will be spending 10 weeks as an intern at the Beijing Bureau of ABC News and living with a host family. My hope is that this blog will be informative, meaningful, and entertaining for the reader--and at the very least, that it will document what is certain to be a unique experience for me.

     (13 days until departure!)


Audrey


In the News:
Beijing Pledges to Clean Out Illegal Foreigners