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Published: February 23rd 2006
My host family
Finally I get to show you the people who I live with! My family is really great. I think I totally lucked out.The last couple of days have been really great. I've been waking up in the morning to bike in, which is so much more fun that I'd imagined it would be. When we start biking it's still dawn, and the noises of the city are all kind of muffled. The traffic is busy, but routine is quite peaceful. I take the elevator down to the basement where my host girls and I pick up our bikes. I walk behind them as we go up the ramp to the sidewalk. I'm still half asleep. Knowing that within seconds I will be wide awake again and speeding down the pedestrian walk behind our appartment, I listen to the slow, rhythmic clicking noises of the bicycle; I'll soon be among the masses of cyclists, and crazy Beijing drivers, and somehow none of this makes me at all nervous. I toss my bag into the front basket, hop onto the bike, and we're off.
The biking is great because it allows me to connect to the city in an entirely new way. While taking the subway, or walking around the streets, I often feel like an outsider; people stare at me because I look
different, and it's slightly uncomfortable. This drills in the fact that really I'm only just a tourist, and I don't fit in here, and even that I'm unable to communicate with most of the rest of the city. People don't have time to stare at me when I'm biking, though. I'm far away by the time they notice I'm a foreigner. Anyway, most tourists don't bike, so that sets me apart from the start. It's the one place where I feel I'm truly a part of the city. I'm just one of the millions of people crowding the streets, one more biker on the road getting in the way of traffic, adding to the overall chaos.
Last night I made a new friend. My family went out to dinner with a college classmate of my host father's and some other people that were probably related to him. One young-looking girl came, and she said "hi" to me when she walked in. It seemed that she didn't speak much English, based on the 'what's your name' conversation we had-- she spoke slowly and had a definite accent. We sat next to eachother, and as the evening progressed, I realized
Dining room
Here's the dining room table, and my host dad cleaning up after dinner. On a side note: they won't even let me help clear dished here. more and more how good her English actually was. We talked for a long time, and throughout the course of the conversation, I slowly added more and more slang words, and English phrases I didn't expect most Chinese English-speakers to know. I wanted to test her, to see how good her skills were. It's something I've been doing with a lot of the kids in my class, so I know what level I should speak at. I want to challenge them, but make sure they can understand what I'm saying, so that they get the best practice. To my surprise, the girl kept up with me the entire time! By the end, I was speaking the way I would speak to any of my friends in the US, and we were having a great conversation.
After dinner, she told me that her appartment was right next to my appartment, and that I could come over any time. We all ended up going ovder to their place after dinner. We drank tea, and the sister (the twins call her their "older sister." She doesn't have an English name and I don't remember her Chinese one) showed us their massive collection
Dining room
Here's the dining room table, and my host dad cleaning up after dinner. On a side note: they won't even let me help clear dishes here. of DVDs. I don't think it's possible to describe the number of DVDs they had at their house. She showed us a whole shelf full of them-- there must have been a couple hundred there, and I was so impressed. Then she led us into the back room, where she kept three or four times that many, all in stacks, across a shelf that ran the whole length of the room. I wasn't planning on taking many, but she kept insisting that we borrow them, and I kept noticing movies there that I'd been wanting to see for a long time. So... I ended up taking five. And one of them is an entire TV series. I have no idea when I will ever have time to watch all of these.
So this girl is in her second year of college here in Beijing. She's very fun. She encouraged me and my host sisters to talk to eachother more. It was kind of funny, because it's not like we don't talk to eachother. We try a lot, and usually it works, but they're both a little shy, and they can't always say the things that they want to say
Monster TV
yeah, sorry about the repeat photo... I'm not really sure how to delete it. in English. Sometimes I try to talk to them in Chinese, but that works even less. We get along pretty well, though.
There have been some themes in my past couple of days, here. A couple of subjects have come up a few times. One of them is homosexuality. I was surprised to hear that this topic had come up with both Nicole's and Maggie's host families. I was under the impression that no one ever talks about homosexuality here, that's it's not acknowledged. But the older sister brought it up last night, too. She asked me what I thought of Brokeback Mountain. I said that I hadn't seen it, but that I would like to. Before I dove much further into it, I thought I'd ask her what she thought. I didn't want to make any wrong moves here, so I thought it would be safe to start by asking her if she'd seen it. It turns out that not only had she seen it, but she'd done a presentation on it for one of her classes. Apparantly, she thought it was a very good movie. It seemed that she was totally okay with homosexuality; she must have been quite accepting of it, in fact, to talk about it in front of her class. From what I heard Nicole and Maggie say, it sounds like people generally think that there is much less homosexuality in China than there is in the United States. And apparantly some people think that in the US it is actually encouraged. None of us have run into anyone who seemed to be homophobic (although the only people we've talked to are the ones that brought it up). Anyway I think that Brokeback Mountain is going to be good for this country. They won't release it here, or anything, but clearly it's causing a stir, so it will at least raise awareness.
Another subject that has come up numerous times over the past couple of days is this exam that Chinese kids have to take, to get into college. From what I've heard about it, it sounds really really scary. Basically, this is the only factor which determines whether or not you'll go to college here. You could get perfect grades your whole life, and do a million extracurriculars, and be an amazing student, but if you fail this test, you will not go to college, unless you retake your senior year of highschool, and pass the next time. But apparantly, most people who retake the test do the same as they did before, or worse, because there's so much added pressure. So essentially, you only get one chance. The older sister was telling me that she stayed up so late every night studying for this test, that she actually got some insomnia, at one point. She and her classmates would take pillows to class, so that they could sleep during their ten minute breaks between classes. She was really amazed when I told her about how you can take the SATs more than once, and how the colleges will only look at your best score for each subject. She thought it was really great how in America, your school grades actually count, and SATs aren't everything. I've always been against standardized testing, and SATs in particular, but this kind of shone (shined? shone?) a new light on them. I can't imagine how much pressure is on these students... they study for years and years, and what's basically their life's success comes down to how well they preform on this one day. So, in conclusion, I've decided to try not to take the American system for granted.
On a different note, today during lunch, I talked to little kids!! It was so much fun. After my group finished eating, we were walking outside and noticed some kids playing with a Chinese hackey sack (it's this cool bouncy thing that has feathers on top). We decided to ask them if we could play. The kids loved it! They all felt so cool, playing with big teenagers, American ones for that matter! We all laughed at the game a lot. They were so incredible adorable, in their little Jing Shan uniforms, and red scarves. We formed a big circle, them on one side, and us Americans on the other. I was next to the Chinese kids, and I noticed them looking up at me a lot, so I smiled. They said "hello" and I said "hello." Then they asked me some questions in Chinese! and I understood! They asked me where I was from, and I said America. Then they pointed at Gladys, and said something that I didn't understand. I knew what they were saying though; it was a common question. I told them that Gladys was American too, and then they said something else, which I was also expecting. They were definately asking why she looked Chinese. And I didn't know how to say the whole thing about having Chinese parents and being born in Hong Kong, so I just kind of repeated myself. They started asking more questions. They would tap me on the arm and say "Jie jie," meaning "older sister," to get my attention. I guess this is what they call any girl who's older than them. I loved it. They asked me if I liked to play this Chinese game (hackey sack) and I was all excited that I understood. So I said that I did. And they asked me some other stuff, some of which I got. They were so sweet. Then the rest of my group came over and we all started talking. One little boy told Maggie and me that we were very beautiful. And then he said that he thought all Americans were more beautiful than Chinese people. I thought it was funny, because at the same time I had been thinking that all Chinese kids were cuter than American ones. We all learned eachother's English names, and eachother's ages. They were mostly 9 and 10. Little kids are great to talk to here, because they speak clearly, and they're eager, and surprisingly patient, and you can talk about really simple things like what food you like, etc. without it being at all weird or boring. They're so much fun.
The other thing that I'm really happy about has to do with vegetarianism. People have been asking me about my vegetarianism, a lot. I was kind of worried about this, because I didn't want to go into my whole thing about factory farming, and how it's bad for the environment, and for people's health, and about the cruel, unusual things that go on in there. To fully explain why I'm vegetarian, I'd have to talk about the antibiotics they use on animals, and the debeaking of chickens, and everything else, and I didn't want to do this. I was scared I might offend the people here who eat meat; I thought that it might sound like I was saying that they were supporting cruel treatment of animals. In truth, I really don't mind if other people eat meat, and I certainly don't think that by doing so they're not doing the right thing. It's a personal decision. So anyway, for the first few days I told people that I just didn't like meat. Some classmates urged me to tell the truth to people, though. So last night at dinner, the subject came up. I wasn't sure where to begin, or how to make it short, so I ended up telling them that it was because of the way factory farms in the US treat their animals. I added that because it's been so long since I've eaten meat, I'd probably get sick if I ate it now, which is true. It turns out that they were really impressed that I was sticking up for the animals! Apparantly my host dad and his classmate told me that I was very brave. They thought that I was doing a noble deed, sticking up for what I believed, in. It was so great! It couldn't have gone over better. I'm so glad to have actually come out with the full story.
So basically, life is good.
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Aliza
non-member comment
long entry, kudos!
1. rokeback Mountain was an amazing movie - I almost cried -and I never cry. Yeah. :) 2. Find out that girl's name, sheesh! 3. You are rad. mwah!