Return of the Study Bunny

Yep, it's that time again. Finals time. You know what means...

See you on the other side.

(PS. Only 3 more days until break! Finally! Hooray!)

Chinese pop music

Lately, my huihua (conversation) teacher has been starting each class by playing different Chinese pop music videos. While I'm sure listening to music in foreign languages (along with films and television) is a great way to aide our learning of Mandarin, I must confess from what I've heard of Chinese pop music previously and after coming here to Beijing, I'm not much of a fan.

Perhaps it's just the music I'm being exposed to and that seems to be very popular, but all the songs seem to be slow, dramatic power ballads with music videos featuring even more over-dramatic story lines, e.g. right after a couple moves in together, they discover the girl has some sort of fatal cancer. Call me a cynic, but watching the music videos and listening to the songs make me cringe.

To me, listening to the songs and watching these music videos is much like taking an already super-sweet candy, drenching it in even more sugar syrup and then eating it. There's no way the overly saccharine tast of the candy, or in this case the music, appeals to me. I feel like I'm getting cavities just by listening to it.

Many other people in my class and other people I know in the US seem to like it though, so maybe it's just me. I also do realize that our musical taste is very much influenced by our respective cultures and I do like some sappy, slow longs from time to time (yes, James Blunt, I'm looking at you), but from what I've heard Chinese pop seems to be too much for me.

Of course, I don't profess to have very much knowledge on Chinese popular music. So if you perhaps want to prove me long or know of a Chinese band/singer that may appeal to me, please by all means let me in the comments or via e-mail. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

Jay Chou, a big Chinese pop star from Taiwan.

Sorry, I have no access to YouTube here in China, so I can't embed or link you to a Chinese pop music video. I'm sure if you search on YouTube "Jay Chou" or even "Chinese pop song," plenty of videos will pop up.

Classes & classmates

Looking back at my blog posts to date, I realized I haven't really mentioned much (or really, anything at all) about my classes here at BNU. Seeing as that I came here to study Mandarin, it's high time that I enlighten you about my academic life here, since up until now it's been a bit of a mystery.

From Monday through Friday, I have class everyday. My three classes here are Mandarin intensive reading （精读）, conversation （会话） and listening （听力）, each of which meet three times a week for roughly an hour and half each time. On top of that, I have an additional class on Fridays that basically acts office hours where I can ask my head teacher (my intensive reading teacher), any questions I have concerning class material or Mandarin in general. All in all, it adds up to approximately 18 hours of class a week.

Unlike in the United States where each one of my classes is with different people, here at BNU everyone in my class remains the same except the teacher. The only exception to this is my conversation class, which also includes three students from the 101 (level 2) class.

For the most part, ensuring that our classmates remain the same in every class really helps our learning process. It allows us to become comfortable enough with each other so that when we mistakes it's no big deal. However, on the flip side, there's often a lot of chatter going on during class time since we all know each other pretty well now, and this sometimes can be obnoxious.

Regardless, meeting new people from all around the world is always the best part of studying abroad in an international program, whether it be here in Beijing or in Paris. According to my teacher (and reinforced my my own personal observation), the program here at BNU is overwhelmingly dominated by Korean students, followed closely by Japanese students. However in the last few years, the program has seen an increasing number of students from Indonesia and Thailand.

In my class, half of the students are Indonesian. The rest of us come from Thailand, Sweden, Japan, the UK, Botswana, Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan, and the US. Despite Koreans making up the majority of BNU's international program, my class only has one student from South Korea. I'm also the only one with an American passport, although Tom, who's English, now calls the United States (North Carolina) home as well.

Now for some photos of my classmates from the classroom and around Beijing:

My class with our listening teacher

(Top-bottom, left-right) Robin, Jessica, Emilia, Tom, Janar

 

(Left-right) Teddy, Janar, O, Jane and I at Hongluo Si

(Left-right) Emilia, me, Christine, and Irene
at Xiangshan

Special thanks to Florensia "Gina" Regina , Jessica Lee and Yandi Santosa for the photos.

Midterms, midterms, midterms

...yep, It's midterm week for me at BNU. Until I'm done with midterms, no new blog posts for you. Sorry.

I'm off to memorize a million (okay...more like a couple hundred) vocab words.

Wish me luck.

Happy Chinese National Day!

As I'm sure you figured out from the title of this post, today is Chinese National Day, which honors the founding of the People's Republic of China 61 years ago.

Naturally of course, today is a holiday. But in China, you don't just get one day off in honor of National Day, you get an entire week. Meaning, I do not have class from today (Friday) through next Thursday (7 October).

During this week off, which is sometimes referred to as "The Golden Week," many people travel both domestically and internationally. This year in particular has seen a record number of international trips booked by Chinese people.

However, since the second portion of my visa is still being processed and my passport is currently holed up in some Chinese government building, I'm a hostage of Beijing this week. Not to worry though, there's plenty to see and do here (as long as it doesn't rain).

For those of you wondering if I've actually come here to Beijing to study with this recent rash of holidays, don't you fret. This my last break until January 1st; after this week it's just day after day of intensive Chinese learning (aside from weekends). So while the rest of you (especially those of you in the US) are enjoying your Christmas, Thanksgiving, Veteran's Day and maybe even Columbus Day, think of me, because I'll be in class.

You're American?!?!

One of the very first thing we learn at BNU is how to say which country we come from and how to ask other students where he/she comes from. This makes sense on several levels since it's a good way to introduce yourself, and to get to know the other students; not to mention that it's generally a relatively easy statement (unless, apparently, you're from Kyrgyzstan, which is very difficult to say in Mandarin).

But when people find out that I came from the United States, their face often looks a lot like this:

Classmates, storekeepers, and cab drivers all tend to get this surprised, and somewhat shocked and confused look on their faces. It's not that they don't expect Americans to come to China; it's just when they hear "American," they expect to see someone who's Caucasian, not a clearly Chinese-looking girl stumbling to compose a coherent sentence in Mandarin.

It seems strange to me that my nationality is so perplexing to everyone. This is partially because I was raised in the United States, where they teach you from a very, very young age that "Americans" can all look very different from each other but it doesn't make them any less "American" than the other person. In the US there's also the idea of a duel identity. That is to say, you can identify yourself not only by the passport you hold but also by your ethnicity, e.g. Chinese-American, Italian-American, Palestinian-American, etc, which is a concept that doesn't really exist in many other places aside from the United States.

In addition, all my life my mom has told me,"If there's a small opportunity to make money, then there are Chinese people living there," which basically means, no matter where you go, there will be Chinese people living there. Through people I've met and my parents' acquaintances alone, I know of people of Chinese descent that reside in Spain, Brazil, New Zealand, South Africa and Brazil. To me, it's not that unusual to be of Chinese descent yet not have spent most or perhaps, any part of your life in China (or Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau, for that matter).

However, for some reason, this concept seems very foreign to Beijingers and even to many of the international students I've met here at BNU. People never guess I'm American on the first try; normally they guess Thai first (probably because I'm still tan from the California sunshine) and occasionally Japanese. As a result, I've perfected a short explanation of how I was born in Hong Kong, but grew up in the States. I'm never sure though if the person I'm speaking to understands what I'm getting at although more often than not they do seem less confused after my short speech.

Either way, it's just another part of life here in Beijing for me. Onwards to tomorrow, during which I'll probably serve to confuse even more people.

晚安! (Wǎnān or good night!)

First Week of Classes

Last week was the first week of classes at Beijing Normal University. The Saturday before classes began, I received my class assignment and purchased my books.

Upon receiving the class assignment, I found out I was put in the level two class, even though I told the school at least 10 separate times I really need to start from the beginning level. But of course, they didn't listen. I think they were jaded by the fact that I could speak a little bit, understand most of what people are saying to me and read a very tiny handful of words, since some of Mandarin is similar to Cantonese and I still remember some things form Chinese school. But I figure, well, its their Chinese program so they probably know best; maybe the first level would be too easy for me.

I show up on the first day of class, and that class was way beyond me. There were a lot of words I had never learned. Not to mention that they study simplified Chinese in mainland China and I had previously studied traditional Chinese characters, so half the words I do know are unrecognizable to me now. (Traditional characters are still used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and maybe Macau.)

So after some explaining to the teachers and a visit to the College of Chinese Language and Culture, I was able to switch into a beginning, level 1 class. Truthfully, I might have been okay in the level two class had I worked really, really hard but I knew had I stayed in the class I would become increasingly frustrated and unwilling to learn. Plus, my basics of Chinese language are very faulty as is and you can't build a house on a faulty foundation and expect it to last.

Now, I'm in the level 1 class and it's much better. Currently, it's a bit easy for me when it comes to reading & writing and listening, but I'm sure in a few weeks it'll get harder for me. There's a few things I'm kind of "reverse-learning" as I call it, especially when it comes to pinyin. Pinyin is a phonetic system that uses the English alphabet to spell out the sounds of various words. When I studied previous, my school didn't use pinyin to teach us, so now I'm formally learning it. Sometimes, the teacher uses words that I already know the character and pronunciation of, to teach the pinyin so occasionally, I feel like I'm learning things backwards. Nonetheless, pinyin is very useful since all the street names here in Beijing are both in characters and pinyin.

However, I'm horrible at speaking Mandarin, so it's nice to be in a class with others who are struggling as well. I think my main problem with speaking what many would call performance anxiety. Often times, when I'm alone, I can think of the correct words to say and in the correct (or almost correct) tones, but when it actually comes to speaking, my mind goes blank and my tongue moves on its own. Hopefully though, I'll get over this soon...

Okay, gotta check if my clothes are dry, again.