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Published: September 7th 2011
I had a good dosage of Chinese media yesterday. One of the editors from my internship came to talk to us about the media here. It was pretty interesting to hear about everything from a Chinese journalist’s perspective. She mentioned censorship and how some publications are always pushing the limits of the government’s tolerance. Our magazine doesn’t really have to worry about that so much, although they still send their articles to the censor to be checked. Since it’s a publication for foreigners in Hangzhou, it contains information about the city and fun places to see—no sensitive topics. She went through other media like the internet, books, TV, and film. She mentioned children’s literature a lot because she has a young son. Children’s literature and TV is not very good here; she said the stories are very superficial. Instead, she and many other moms buy DVDs of foreign shows like Dora the Explorer and foreign books for their kids. Good children’s literature authors are very few here; maybe I should break into that industry…
In the afternoon, Brittany and I went to the magazine to start work. They put us in a room with several past issues of the magazine and
newspaper to read through and become familiar with what they write about and the style. We were reading for a good 2 hours before anyone came to bother us again. I thought maybe they would start us off with editing, walking us through that process—you know, start us off easy. No. Duncan wants a 400 word article from each of us by Thursday to put in Monday’s newspaper. I’m just a little frantic now because I still have no idea what to write! I have a list of experiences and observations, but I haven’t come up with any creative way to write about them yet. And I’m worried the subjects have all been already covered by other foreign interns. So much pressure—I don’t think I could be a journalist.
Now on a different note, I’m sure some of you know about the situation of bathrooms in China, or maybe not. They are not like toilets in America. Luckily we have western toilets in our dorm rooms and the apartment, but any public toilet is a different story. In China, the toilets are holes in the floor that you squat over. When I first heard about this, I was picturing a
kind of outhouse, with a crude pit or something, but thankfully it’s not that bad. It looks like the toilet bowl is just sunk into the ground, nice white ceramic or whatever their toilets are made of, with a nice flush button. It is very awkward the first time you use one though. I was nervous about losing my balance and falling over. It turned out fine, although I couldn’t breathe the whole time because the smell was nauseating. Far worse than any porta-potty I have ever been in. In addition, I have to remember not to flush toilet paper. I guess their sewage system can’t handle that, so we have to throw it in the garbage. I must admit I forgot the first few times I was here, and I still have to remind myself every time. Maybe I’ll get to where I don’t even think about it.
Yesterday media, frustration today. We took our Chinese placement tests to find out which level class we’ll be in and it was not pretty. We had an oral and written test. For the oral part, the lady asked me a few questions like where I went to school, is this the first time in China, how long have I studied Chinese. She had to repeat each question a few times before I could understand her. I was put in level 1.5, so at least I’m not in the beginning class. I don’t even want to talk about the written test. It was horrible. Six pages of questions—fill in the blank, read short essay and answer questions about it, write the Pinyin of the character, write the correct character, and write a 250 character essay from one of the four given topics—and I answered maybe 20 questions, probably less than 5 are correct. And I’m not being modest; it was that impossible. About 80% of the characters were ones I had never learned, and I only understood one of the essay topics, write about a friend, but I only got about 30 characters because I don’t know enough to describe much about anything. To say I am frustrated is an understatement. Hopefully they don’t put me in the beginning class now.
Here are some pictures of the Central apartment where we spend pretty much all of our free time.
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Jas
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I think that you should write your article about English Corner. I am sure that there are people in Hangzhou that do not know about it and I find it very interesting! Just a thought. Good luck!