Classes at Nankai

Lots of classes at Nankai take place. As we speak though the classes for the regular student body are finishing and people are graduating left and right. For me though on this summer study abroad though things are beginning to get difficult. I didn't realize how much of a drain traveling to a foreign country would be, but it is a wonderful experience and I am glad I am on this program!

I have two Hanyu language teachers and four Hanyu classes Monday through Friday. On Tuesday, Wednesdsay and Thursday I have a culture class after lunch and then of course Tai Chi Monday-Friday at 7:00.

I will in one of my upcoming blogs make sure to take photos of each of my teachers! My Tai Chi laoshi is pretty cool. Zhang laoshi - my recitation class teacher - goes wayyy to quick and never likes any of my tones and complains that I don't know enough characters - those are hard to learn, especially with our schedule - for me at least. Wen Laoshi - our main Hanyu or Chinese teacher - is really awesome! She is very understanding and always likes my tones :-D. Our culture class teachers have taught us only once each so I can't really comment on them.

I like the structure of the Tai Chi class, waking up though sometimes is really a struggle and inner battle - that so far I have won everyday! The Hanyu class is starting to get really hard and I just don't have the time to learn over 24 characters in less than a day. Luckily half of the class has had some, if not, 2 years of Chinese at UMD and so they don't make us all look that bad as a class.

If you take a close look at my pictures you will notice exactly what we are learning in classes. And I must add that whenever we learn how to easily get around China I pick those things up most quickly!

In the beginning of the course we were asked if we would like to partner up with a language partner to practice our Chinese and them their English. Well I wanted one, in fact I asked for a girl... and they gave me a wonderful language partner who has shown me all around Tianjin! And she has helped me practice my Chinese without laughing too much, and I her English - which is much better than my Chinese.

To recap as Xiao Ma - or little horse would say - to remind you of today. We saw a picture of the classes at Nankai, a turtle at Confucius' temple to remind us of UMD, a little girl in the city of Tianjin who wanted a picture with me and my language partner.

Zaijin till next time,
Signing off,
Joe

p.s. I asked her what she thought of Mao and what she did if anything for the victims of the earthquake. Apparently her highly educated parents wake up every morning and wish Chairman Mao a long life. She doesn't like him that much though and thought he made many mistakes. And she sent money for earthquake victims.
Sounds like any other girl.

朋友

We had our first day of classes on Tuesday. They were frustrating in the very beginning. I had a very difficult time with the tones as I happen to be tone deaf. But towards the end I got them down - somewhat. And as classes have progressed I have learned more and more words and characters, including 你好吗？ 我很好！ 爸爸，妈妈，火， 我， and many others! It takes forever to write them out and to copy them over, my handwriting is about as good in Chinese as it is in English.

I have to say that I have been enjoying the culture classes during this trip as well. The Martial Arts and Tai Chi classes make my legs ACHE! But I am glad that I am getting a lot of practice and am able to work out.

The Beijing opera class was very interesting, he taught us that the three treasures of Chinese culture are the artwork and calligraphy, the medicine, and the Chinese opera. He went on to describe the many different roles for the actors and give little skits on them. It was hard to understand the translator, but I could tell the teacher was very good! Next time, after the opera class, I will be going to a certain shop and dress up as an actor in traditional clothing and make-up! During the class he also described the colors on the actors and masks for the characters in the opera. White = sly, black = upholding justice, green = a hero come from wild, yellow = REALLY WILD, red = integrity. Some more interesting differences from Chinese culture and back home. White and black have reversed roles in this culture!


Friends.朋友





I have found one of the five F's to be true through personal experience. The second night of Nankai University a good friend that I met at Maryland last semester came to visit me! We went out to dinner and it was a real pleasure to hang out with him. But the fact that he would fly down to visit me really meant a lot to me!
I met him in one part of the world, and we were good enough friends to meet on the opposite side. :-)

We went out to dinner with another friend of his and then the next day we spent the entire day (after classes) walking around and seeing the city! He helped me get my cell phone card! - ahh yes, to contact me here in China the quickest way will be to call me - I get free incoming calls - at +86 15922136057.



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777, oops, 888

Hi again!
This is my second blog post during my trip to China for my friends and family!
I hope all is well on the other side of the world. While being on the other side of the world I have noticed that it is a small world after all (I can't get the tune out of my head now) and there are many similarities, and thankfully differences that make us all unique, interesting, and able to learn from each other. I am thoroughly enjoying the trip so far and love the many cultural nuances in the language and society as a whole.

Other cultural interests of mine include - what are considered - lucky and unlucky numbers. I've heard that the number 4 is considered unlucky - si(4) - 四 - which sounds similar to death - si(3) - 死*. As well I know that 8 is a very lucky number. As 8 is ba(1) which sounds very similar to fa(1) which means to make a lot of money. In fact the Olympics are taking place on 8.8.08. - So in this communistic society they are going to celebrate one world, one dream on a day of large financial success for China. An interesting side note is that when we had orientation on the first day they discussed how Nankai University is within the top eight universities in Chinese learning. In America I would hear top 10, 5 or 3, and never 7,8,9 or so unless the university was exactly in the seventh position.. etc. :-)

Here are some pictures of the orientation/welcoming party:






On the first day we traveled to see a large mansion - the family Shi's mansion - and had dinner at the restaurant called 1928. After the delicious 10 course meal there was an auction and I ended up buying a scroll painting and a large fan. I enjoyed the auction a lot, but returning to the outside and seeing the dark gloomy city sky took away the sense of victory and made me- or bicycling - around the area. Tons and tons of people are planting trees wonder how the city could improve with emission standards (seeing all of the cars exhaust on the highway made me want to cover my nose and breath through my t-shirt). However, I must note that it seems like everyone in the city has been working , weeding, watering and taking care of the parks and the roadsides for the upcoming Olympics and general improvement. Everyone is excited and signs are hanging everywhere! Hopefully all the grime will be gone before we realize it and the area will bloom with the hard work that will surely lead to success, an idea rooted in Confucianism.



To end with a quote, indeed the first line of the Analects, "Isn't it a pleasure to study and practice what you have learned?"

Hopefully, I will be able to learn more about the Confucian values on this trip, see them practiced, and the "Asian way" as Reid in his book, Confucius lives next door, describes and hopefully incorporate them into the my middle eastern, and western beliefs and culture.



*Wasn't sure how to represent pinyin on this blog. But the parentheses is the tone on the preceding letter and the number is the numbered tone.

To see more blogs!

I forgot to mention that a link to all the blogs from the participants in this trip is located at: www.freewebs.com/umdinchina

Take a look at everyone's blog and look at the wonderful pictures. I do not have the time to comment on everything we will/are doing so to get a fuller picture of this amazing experience go on over to my friends' sites.

Ni Hao!

We arrived in China safe and sound! The flight took forever and really was too long. I left the house around 8:30 am Saturday, went to Minneapolis, Tokyo, and Beijing on our way to Tianjin and arrived around 1 am Monday morning.

However, during the trip I was able to make some friends and was given a business card for a black market?! Apparently you have to call the phone number on the card, meet them at the address and then they will take you to the black market. I don't know if I will use it or not, but I thought that was interesting.

During the flight I was also privy to the five F's of China. The five F's are meant to describe Chinese culture in a succinct fashion. The five F's are:

Face
Face is representative of their proud people and culture. Despite the fact that China is a unified country of over 50 ethnicity's (learned that today from Dr. Liu's video about China and Tianjin) they all share a proud nature and have a proud air about themselves and their work, whether for better or worse. I definitely saw this proud reserve and conviction throughout the story of Jung Wang's father never bowing to pressure in the book entitled, "Wild Swan". Another aspect of their proud culture would be their reserved character and

Fate
Fate is meant to represent a very collective way of thinking the Chinese people maintain. A type of group thought takes place in Chinese culture and according to the person that explained to me the five F's, many problems that occur are due to, you guessed it, fate.

To me it seems that this fate can be extended to the way the government once held complete control over a person's life. The very restrictive way of forced thinking reminds me of Iran and the theocratic government that controlled the people's thoughts and actions through religion and fear, and now drugs.

Food
What culture does not have a food component? I have to analyze Chinese food a bit more to see how Chinese food can describe the culture as a whole, but I am sure it is rich and diverse like the make-up of China.

Friends
Loyalty would be another word for friends. My friend on the airplane explained that once you get close to someone from China and became his friend, you could shoot him in the foot and he would remain your friend. Not that I would ever want to shoot someone in the foot, but now I know if there was ever an accident around my friends from China; in short, I intend to have friends for life in this country. If you act poorly or deceitfully with someone, all the siblings and friends of the person you insulted will back their friend completely and immediately. As a true friend should!

Family
Last, but certainly not least is the Family aspect of China. The family is a big part of the culture and tradition in China. Not only the loyalty to the family group, but also the tradition surrounding the family and prestige it is to live close by. We learned in "Wild Swans" that having several generations in one house was a huge honor and that during the Spring Festival it was tradition to travel home.


Also during my stay I hope to discover how unified the multi-ethnic citizens are, (I assume they are at least in regards to the Olympics)! But more on that at another time. Until then, please post comments and leave a message letting me know you are reading my blog!

ps. I didn't realize this earlier, but even though China is a "communistic" government it feels a lot more like America than I would have imagined.

再见