"Life is Wonderful"


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September 8th 2011
Published: September 9th 2011
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Yesterday we went to the Zhejiang museum. It was really fascinating seeing all the old artifacts from 3000 years ago. Kelsey and I stayed with Miss Li the whole time so she could explain everything to us. Everything was in Chinese so without her we would have just enjoyed looking at some cool stuff but not knowing what it was or its significance. Everyone else rushed through it so it was just the three of us examining everything. I really enjoy the history, but even I was getting tired by the time we reached the end. There was also an exhibit on the Communist Party and its beginning in China. That wasn’t nearly as interesting for me as the ancient exhibit, but it was very informative. China seems to have a history solely of conflict and fighting amongst themselves. However, they usually united against any outside threat, like the Anti Japanese War, but then went right back to fighting each other as soon as the invaders were defeated.
After the museum, we had to rush back to the apartment for our first elective course, Classic Chinese Literature. Brittany and Peter are the only ones taking it officially, but Kelsey and I are auditing the course because it sounds really interesting. The professor really seems to know what she’s talking about, but it was a lot of information. I wrote four pages of notes in my tiny handwriting! I’m going to have a hard time remembering all the names, like Qu Yuan and Li Bai, and the names of works like Li Sao and Shi Jing. The names are so unfamiliar to me, I’ll have a hard time keeping them straight and remembering which are authors/poets and which are their works. Our first subject is poetry, then we’ll move on to prose, philosophy from Confucius, and novels. There are considered four great novels of China, The Romance of Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin, Journey to the West, and Dream of Red Mansions. I want to find a copy of these to read them. It will be quite the undertaking; the English translation of Three Kingdoms is in six volumes. We’ll only have time to read a few chapters from each novel for the class, so I don’t think that will be enough for me.
We went to Ellen’s Café last night to have a drink; it was 15 RMB glass of wine night. Ellen’s is such an awesome place with the motto "Life is wonderful". It’s geared toward international students at Zhejiang, so they play Western music, have Western food, and the best part—people write on the walls to leave their mark! The walls are covered in names, drawings, and sayings, newer overlapping the old ones. When Carey and I got there, it was pretty empty, but later it was packed with international students. Balazs and Raul (a Mexican student we met last weekend) joined us for some beers and pizza. I think we’ll be going here quite a lot in the future. Don’t worry, I still plan on spending the bulk of my time trying to interact with Chinese, but it will be nice to have a place to go that feels more like home.
Today we went to Cheng Huang Ge, which was part of Hangzhou during the Song Dynasty. There was a Buddhist temple there as well with three giant golden Buddhas. We had to climb a hill to see the pagoda. The hills here are so beautiful and there seems to be a pagoda or some traditional looking shelter on the top of every one. The name of the hill is Wu Shan Tian Feng, which means something like Heavenly Wind in the Hill. Unfortunately it was very smoggy today, so we couldn’t see very far or clearly to the other hills or the city, as you can see from my pictures. If we ever get a clear day, I’ll be running up the mountain to get a good picture. Then we went down to He Fang Jie, which is the same traditional street Chen Ying took us to see last Saturday. Miss Li had to park her car, and we waited at a Dairy Queen. We couldn’t resist some ice cream on such a hot day (another oppressively humid one). I really need to stop eating Western food; we had McDonalds yesterday and now Dairy Queen. Oh well, I have four months to eat Chinese food, and now it seems to be all the same—rice, noodles, pork, chicken, or beef, and some cabbage in oily sauces. Chinese must have amazing metabolisms because there’s no other reason to explain their good weights. I haven’t seen anything that looks like it would be very healthy. All the food here is very heavy and everything is served hot. I want to find a Chinese equivalent to our Subway—good cold, light summer food.
We had to eat a quick lunch at He Fang Jie and head back to the apartment for our business class. Miss Li could take four of us in her car; the other four had to get a taxi. We waited on the side of the road for about 20 minutes before we got a taxi. They kept driving by, or had passengers or someone got it before us. Miss Li and her four had already left so we were on our own. When one finally stopped, I gave him the address in Chinese! Before, Miss Li or Sukie had talked to the cab drivers for us, so this was a first for me. I had been rehearsing it over and over in my head while we waited so I would get it right: Zheda yuquan beimen xixi lu. And he understood me! I was very excited until we got into the car and starting driving. I couldn’t stop a little scream coming out a few times when I thought we would be hit, but we made it back to campus fine, and we actually beat Miss Li even though she left 10 minutes before us.
The business professor does not have as good English as the literature professor, but I got used to his style by the end of class. He didn’t really get to much about business for the first class. He just talked about different cultures and how those influence how we interact internationally. He mentioned two very important aspects of Chinese culture that are prominent in any interaction, mianzi and guanxi. Mianzi is face. Chinese are always trying to maintain face and not cause someone else to lose face by embarrassing them in front of others. Guanxi is all about maintaining relationships between people and usually includes gift giving to show you want to maintain the relationship. The differences between Chinese and Western networking is also interesting. In China, personal and organizational relationships are interrelated and in the West, there is a distinct line between personal and business. Ours are more contract oriented with more formality and clearly defined roles whereas in China, it is more flexible and informal, with trust based agreements. I think I’ll like this professor, James Jing. He seems to laugh a lot, and I think he really enjoys talking about business and culture. Although he made our class go long today; hopefully that won’t become a regular occurrence.
We’re going again to Ellen’s tonight for Free Beer Thursday. I don’t plan on drinking since I don’t like beer, but I think I’ll tag along to be social, maybe try some of their food.



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4th October 2011

Sue's sister
Taylor,just joined the fun in reading your blog. First blog for this old lady! Keep up the writing,it's fun,informative, and very interesting!
6th October 2011

Yay! I'm glad you're enjoying it! I love new readers! :)

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