musings

[Aug. 12th, 2006|05:14 am]
While the last post might have been about going to an internet bar, this post is being written from one. As the last night in Harbin, we decided to make it a long one, starting with a dinner and hanging out at a restaraunt. This was with my roommate, his two good friends from here, another roommate, chunwen (a malaysian girl who lives on our floor and speaks bubbly chinese) and Posie (brown college). We ate food and drank beer in modest amounts for a good hour before slacking off and then playing games. These games all consist of something simple like guessing a number of toothpicks and then the looser has to do what ever embarassing thing the rest decides. Its quite a test of social senses because the suggestions have to be embarassing but not too bad. We ended up playing that for a good three hours.
As we were leaving, my roommate's friend Cheng Haoyi gave me a present - some tea leaves wrapped in bamboo from his home in yunnan province. I was a little embarassed because this was the 4th or 5th present like this i've gotten from roommates and friends here and I only have so many American postcards and US Ski Team stickers to give out as feeble return presents.
Afterwards it was off to Yes Bar which features a moving dance floor, sort of like a large trampoline. While this summer I've been going to a lot less dance clubs this summer than previous trips to China (the third time tonight), everyone went and it was good energy. And of course very sweaty. We left the disco to come to this internet bar where we've been playing games and now just doing our own things for a while. At 5:20 am is already fairly light out, but the clever design of the internet bar keeps the sunlight from coming in too much and the gamers are still going at it.
This last week in China has felt a little anti-climactic. Because of finals, class work slacked off a bit, but I'm not one to study, especially when the tests aren't hard and the grades don't count, so I havn't been worknig as hard as the other 7 weeks. In addition I've been thinking a lot about what it means to really learn Chinese. I'm at a point where I can say just about anything I want to say and listen to someone tell me something they want to, but that often involves a bit of explaining vocabulary that I simply havn't encountered yet. So is that fluent? Sure, call it that if you want, but the reality is Chinese still has a long way to go but the only way that's going to happen is by living in China, with Chinese and working, taking classes, etc. But I feel I have a hard time committing to something like that without a larger goal or reason for learnin this language. And so I don't have any regrets about returning to America, (instead of deciding to stay here like some of my friends, and I admire them for it)
One other interesting bit I'd like to share is my final oral exam for my 1-on-1 class. I wrote a 2000 word paper, but the test consisted of about 8 minutes of delivering the paper and the class and then 8 minutes of answering questions by a panel of teachers. I was a little nervous, and I really think I was maybe not as courteous and not nearly as culturally sensitive as I should have been. My paper was on how consumer habits have changed in the last 20 years due to the influence of westernization, specifically english characters on clothing. I wanted to talk about the growing divide between rich and poor which is accentuated by a wastern, english savvy rich and a less than up with it poor which could possibly lead to culture wide questions of what it means to be 'Chinese' as opposed to westernized, and if that's a problem. What I think I ended coming accross as was criticizing Chinese consumers as a group as blatantly chasing the most expensive name brands they could find. I even went so far as to say Chinese consumers might not be as mature as American consumers because they might be more likely to succumb to namebrands, conspicous status symbols, etc. First of all, the American consumers I know are not at all representative, in my opinion, of 'america'. second, while I still think my view point has some weight, 8 minutes of answering questions isn't nearly long enough to clarify the finer points and back arguments of where I was coming from. Needless to say, I tried, and I think I came accross less than brilliant. Well see what they say at graduation in 5 hours. Enough on that.
Now its time to look forward, which means taking the train to Beijing tonight, seeing Mao's remains and then meeting Chris Bother (conn college, ACC) for a day and evening in the city. Then we fly to Toky where I'm going to try and spend an extra day simply walking around. Then I fly into NYC around midnight Tuesday night and am planning on taking the morning train upstate which means I might sleep in Penn station like the vagabond I am. Staying up all night might not be the best way to start 5 hard days of traveling/sightseeing, but that's just how it goes sometimes.
This might be the last 'China' post of this travelloge. However, I am going to continue writing occaisional posts here. Hopefully they will be regarding news articles that I read about China and whether or not I agree with their viewpoints, but I might stray. I also might move back to my blogger page which I think is a little better looking, but that depends on how motivated I feel. I hope you have enjoyed reading this for the summer.
-morgan-