China Update 5

Dear all,

I’m a little late in posting my fifth China update, but I hope that won’t detract from the quality of my tale.  As I look at the date, I’m astounded to find that I’ve been in China for TWO MONTHS already!  I can hardly believe it–which I suppose means I’m enjoying all that China has to offer rather than counting down the days until my departure.  The weather is actually warming up this week in Beijing, which is a miracle, and no rain forecasted for this week! (a miracle times a miracle plus a miracle and a half).  I hope all is well back in the states; though I’m thoroughly enjoying China, I miss you all too!

The week of Oct 18-22 was rather a busy one for me, as our midterm exams concluded the week.  Not only did I have two midterm exams (one for Newspaper class on Thursday Oct. 21, and one for my main class on Oct. 22), but they also gave us extra homework due during the week, a total of 3 speeches (each 8 minutes long and memorized–which, by the way, is hard enough in English as it is), and a 800-character essay due on the day of our Friday exam.  Needless to say, I was too busy to do much other than study (including work and exercise, unfortunately).  Nevertheless, some good came of it, as one of my report topics required me to “interview” 3 Chinese people about their names–meaning, origin, etc.–and thereby I got the chance to have a good conversation with Liu Shifu (“shifu” is a respectful term of address for older men, but Liu Shifu is basically a doorman for our building).  In answering my questions, he explained how his surname Liu was an ancient Chinese clan, and his name Jiwu, emerged out a Mao-Zedong-era way of thinking, as it means “to press on” or “strive to continue,” in the spirit of the Cultural Revolution.  But he went far and beyond the scope of my questions and explained to me his whole philosophy of life, said how excited he was to see us foreigners studiously studying Chinese, and how he loved getting to know the students.  He’s very much a father figure, and a much nicer man than I expected he would be (don’t judge a book by its cover, right?).  He seems very quiet when sitting in his office with nothing to do, but very passionate when talking with students.  Hopefully I’ll get to know him better throughout the semester.

On Thursday (Oct. 21), after my Newspaper midterm, I gave a speech in my one-on-one class (which I was supposed to do the Tuesday before, but I didn’t know that–that was a fun surprise).  But, unlike my previous speeches, this one went rather well, and after giving my speech, Professor Gao said my Chinese had already reached the 400-level (yay!!!), and that by the end of the semester I might already be at the 500-level, which would mean that, if I came back to CET for another semester (not planning on that), that I would skip the 400-level.  That was exciting news to hear and gave me the extra confidence I needed going into my final midterm exam the next day.  Though this week was extremely tiring, I learned today that both my midterms went very well–I actually got a 100 on my Newspaper exam, which was very surprising!

Then the fun began.  Yes, oh yes, after a week of more tests and speeches than any human should be required to suffer, I had reached the halfway point–and fall break began, a whole week of not studying Chinese! (except for the fact that I’m in China and have to speak Chinese all the time anyway–oh irony of ironies).  For fall break I flew to Chongqing, which is in south-central China near Sichuan province, and in terms of area the world’s largest city (31,800 sq mi, around the size of Indiana or Kentucky).  My friend Matt from Franklin (he went to FCS for a few years) is living in Chongqing going to college at Sichuan International Studies University (SISU).  It’s actually kind of a funny story… I hadn’t heard from him in ages, but this summer I was in Starbucks in Charlotte working (online), and I posted this fact in Chinese as my Facebook status; then he saw it, and we both realized we were both studying Chinese.  Come to find out, he wants to learn every language in the world (just like me), wants to get a doctorate in linguistics or Chinese after college (just like me), is a Chinese major (just like me), is considering being a translator or an m* after school (just like me), and has two sisters, one of which is pursuing a career in horses and one of which wants to study archaeology when she’s older (just like me).  So for all those out there who don’t believe in the providence and absolute awesomeness of God–take that!  So we reconnected, and I got to spend the week with him in Chongqing.  I was surprised to find that Chongqing is actually very commercialized and felt much more open than Beijing (maybe that was just the area where Matt lives).  Plus, there were a lot of trees, which Beijing doesn’t have much of.

He has his own place in Chongqing (I’ll put pictures online), which is actually pretty nice: a living room, a kitchen, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, an office, and a porch with a beautiful 14th-floor view of Chongqing.  On Saturday (Oct. 23) we went to Ciqikou, which is an ancient town that now is an outdoor market with hundreds of small shops selling Chinese (and other) items.  All the architecture is wood and rather pretty, which gave the experience a fun atmosphere.  We shopped around for a while, then walked around in a “neighborhood” behind the market: these were very poor homes, and rather like the depictions you see of third-world-countries on TV, which people practically living on top of one another (though not as bad as some places I’ve seen).  Despite the fact that they were obviously rather poor, their homes were of the same wood architecture and actually not bad looking, just needed a little cleaning up (I find this ironic about China, that the homes in the old/historic districts are the poorest and of the worst quality, when it seems that in the West this situation is actually reversed).  We walked through small alleys going every which way, up and down hills, getting lost and eventually finding our way back.  It was a lot of fun.  Then we went to see where Matt goes to school (SISU) after eating some jiaozi (dumplings) at a nearby place (where the boss knows Matt and loves to come and talk to him, ignoring all other customers).  That night at dinner, a middle-school-aged Chinese girl came up to me and tried to speak English with me (because her mom made her), but she didn’t speak especially well, so we talked in Chinese.  She said studying English is hard because there are so many different dialects/pronunciations (e.g. U.S., British, etc.), and that it could be very frustrating.  I tried to encourage her, but I’m not sure I did a very good job.  That night, Matt tried to teach me some Chinese calligraphy, but I’m pretty helpless when it comes to art, and this fact quickly surfaced–I guess shufa (Chinese calligraphy) isn’t part of my calling.

The next morning we went to Matt’s friends’ house for church.  It was nice to fellowship with some Americans (some of them were actually from Murfreesboro, TN, just outside of Nashville–what a small world!).  Afterwards we went out to lunch at Papa John’s (which, in case you didn’t know, in China is a fancy sit-down restaurant and actually rather expensive).  Matt and I then walked around the area for a little bit, and ran into another one of Matt’s American friends, Blaine Robinson, who’s from Lookout Mountain and went to Covenant College, and apparently took one of “Dr. Waldecker”‘s classes.  Three Tennesseans in Chongqing, two of which know the GWaldeckers… what are the odds.  That evening we went to another of Matt’s friends houses, the Chinese family (a husband a wife) with whom he lived when he first moved to Chongqing a year ago.  When we arrived only the wife’s 82-year-old mother was there.  She was very polite, giving us lots of snacks, and rather humorous, with a lot of vitality for one her age .  Her helper/caretaker (I guess that’s who it was) gave me slippers to wear while in the house, but they were several sizes too small and were both left feet.  So as I sat there eating nuts and apples, with my too-small, left-footed slippers, we learned from Waipo (that’s the polite term for a lady of her age) that her daughter and son-in-law were treating us somewhere else.  When they arrived, they took us to their place (very small) for dinner (hotpot–very spicy).  Then Zhou Bin (the husband) basically chauffeured us around the city, to see downtown Chongqing, Nanshan (where you can see the really nice view of downtown), and the Foreign Street (Yangrenjie 洋人街).  It was a lot of fun (though it was really rainy and foggy), and Zhou Bin was really polite to take us around town like that.  Chinese people are hard to read, because they rarely smile and often look grouchy, and yet they’re willing to go out of their way to help others.  An interesting dynamic.

Matt still had school this week, but only until 12:00.  So the following Monday (Oct. 25), I accompanied him to school, then had Korean food for lunch.  We both slept a little during the afternoon, then walked around a bit in Shapingba (the district where Matt lives).  We went to Xinhua Bookstore (where we met a Chinese man who’d been studying English for 10 years, was an English teacher, but whose English was TERRIBLE!  I feel bad for his students).  Then we saw a movie, called  狄仁杰之通天帝国 (Detective Dee).  The movie was a mystery/kung-fu epic set in the Tang Dynasty (AD 600s), of the style of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with an interesting though poorly developed plot and not-so-good acting.  It was still fun to see a movie in Chinese, though, and it was at least entertaining.

Tuesday (Oct. 26) we ate lunch with some of Matt’s Korean classmates after school.  Later, we went to Jiefangbei (downtown Chongqing) and walked around, despite the incessant rain.  That night we met up with one of Matt’s friends, a French girl, for hotpot–once again, very spicy, especially since it was Chongqing hotpot (Chongqing is known for it’s spicy dishes).  Then we went back to Jiefangbei and took a cable car over the Jialing River (part of the Yangtze River, or Chang Jiang), and got to see the lights of downtown from the other side of the river.  Chongqing definitely puts on its best face at night, for the lights were beautiful! a metropolitan wonder.  Then we went to a Singapore restaurant in Shapingba, where every Tuesday night they have trivia night for Chongqing expatriates.  All in all, a fun day.

After school on Wednesday (Oct. 27) we ate at a local Xinjiang restaurant–very tasty!  Then we went to a tea shop in Jiangbei, where some of the workers recognized Matt, because he had been a couple of times before.  Although they were preparing to close up for the night when we got there, they were really polite and let us look around, and even taught us the traditional Chinese practice of preparing/pouring/serving tea.  It was a lot of fun, especially since one of the workers had a gregarious and pleasant personality, always smiling and joking (unlike the majority of Chinese people).

The rainy weather continued all week, but that didn’t stop us.  On Thursday (Oct. 28) (I didn’t go to school with Matt, I worked online instead) in the afternoon/evening we went to Yanrenjie, which houses the world’s largest bathroom!  Yes, you read that correctly… although “bathroom” probably isn’t the most suitable term, since it’s more of a complex with toilets everywhere.  Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and take your pick: Western-style toilet or squatter, inside or outside, on this side of the hill or that, you can pee in a dragon’s mouth, in an outhouse with a wooden fence… the possibilities are endless.  Foreigner street was actually rather humorous, displaying Chinese people’s rather misguided view of foreigners.  We ate at an Indian restaurant in Yanrenjie (also very good), and then walked for forever to find a bus to take us back.  But along the way I got some good pictures of the river and a long bridge running across it.

Friday (Oct. 29) was rather uneventful.  We had planned to go to another ancient city in Chongqing that Matt had just learned about, but we couldn’t figure out where it was, and once we did it was too late and we wouldn’t have had time.  We ended up seeing another movie, this time an American one (Wall Street, with Shia LaBeouf).  But besides the everyday stuff, I also got to see a monkey (whose owner makes it do tricks so he can earn some money); a poodle whose fur was dyed orange, blue, pink, magenta, yellow and white; and a woman who was carrying an entire store’s-worth of item on her person, so much that you could only see her feet.  Ah, the wonders of that magical and ancient land called China.

Saturday (Oct. 30), after buying some maps of China/Beijing/Chongqing in the Xinhua bookstore, I rather reluctantly prepared to take my leave from Chongqing.  I got in a taxi and headed to the airport.  But I was not prepared for what that evening had in store for me…  The traffic was really bad, and I didn’t get to the airport until 8:25 or 8:30, and my flight was leaving at 8:50.  I handed the workers my baggage to be checked, but they said it was too late and I couldn’t board my plane.  “I can’t get on?” said I, aghast.  “But it’s just now boarding, I still have time!” “No, you can’t go on,” was the simple reply.  Extremely frustrated, I called Matt and he helped me figure out how to change my plane ticket… but I was informed that, as a rule, there is only one flight from Chongqing to Beijing a day (which simply cannot be true).  So after talking with this man from elong.com (where I bought my plane ticket), I learned that the next flight would be tomorrow night (Sunday) at the same time (8:50 PM).  He also said that in order to change to ticket, I would have to pay the difference in the tickets–in order to do this, I had to find someone in Beijing to go to Nanyuan Airport (which is rather far from my dorm) to pay China United the extra money (which he first said was ¥76, then later ¥340, then ¥190).  So I proceeded to call one of my American friends here in Beijing and explained my situation to him in English.  He responded, “Honestly, I think I the most capable of handling this right now.  Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.  But you should know, I’m drunk right now” (here’s where I slap my forehead with the palm of my hand), “and I’ll probably forget all of this, so send me a text message.”  Awesome.  So I decided to call my roommate instead, and while I was explaining my situation to him, my Chinese phone ran out of money.  I tried a prepaid card I had with me, but I had already used it and it had no money.  I looked around in the airport for a place to buy prepaid phone cards to add money to my phone so I could tell my friends how to help me so I wouldn’t be stuck in Chongqing forever… Pause: in case you didn’t know, China has a grand total of two phone companies in the entire nation, China Mobile and China United.  And of course, the airport had China Mobile prepaid cards, but no China United cards.  I had to borrow someone’s phone to tell my roommate what to do and how much money to pay (I felt so bad making him do this) and got another (expensive) cab back to Matt’s house.  It turned out that Bao Xin and my previously drunk American friend both went to Nanyuan Airport to pay for my ticket, and I flew out Sunday night, just in time for classes the next morning.  Although everything that possibly could have gone wrong went wrong, I nevertheless got the chance to go to church again with Matt’s American friends and spend some more time with them.  But needless to say, I’m very tired, and was delayed in writing my post until tonight.  I’m so grateful God gave me patience through this test, and that he provided friends that were willing to take a big chunk out of their day to help me get back to dear old Beijing.

Not much else new.  I was incredibly grateful for the chance to spend some time with someone who shares my same worldview as well as my same interests (almost down to the last detail!).  He taught me a lot about China (since he’s been living here for a year) as well as how to enjoy China more, a goal I plan to implement from this week on.

In a few days I sign up for classes for next semester at Wake, and of course, all the courses I need to take aren’t being offered, and all the courses I wanted to take have already been filled up.  So with that change in schedule, it looks like I’ll be taking (at least) Chinese, Arabic, and French.  Am I crazy? Probably.  But when the fun classes like Old English Language & Literature and International Security get taken, what’s a guy to do?  Just learn all the languages of the world, I guess.  Which is one of my life goals, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.  But right now I’m very tired and must now bid you my adieu.  I hope your interest in large bathrooms and frustrating airports has been satisfactorily stimulated… but until next time, God bless.

James Churchill

P.S. Pictures to come soon (this always takes a while).
P.P.S I’m too tired right now to proofread, so sorry for any errors.