I’m glad to be almost finished with PiB, and by that I mean I’m ready to take a few weeks off before starting Chinese again at Yale. I’m not going to be happy leaving my roommate and friends here though. Also, I will miss our teachers. I wish I could stay in China with everyone but not have to attend class. Unfortunately I’ll be leaving on the morning after our final test, at about 9am. AHHHH.

I’ve still got to buy presents/explore Beijing/pass the final test all in this final week. A lot of people to buy presents for.

It’s hard to come up with big reflections at the moment. The process has been more than worth the summer. It’s the most concentrated work I’ve probably ever done. I think returning to Yale should be pretty easy in comparison. We’ll see.

See you all in the states!

I’ve been meaning to write for some time but have been busy. I finally got Skype to work and spoke with my parents for the first time since arriving in Beijing–that was nice. Also, since Princeton in Beijing didn’t schedule an activity for this past Saturday, the weekend has been very relaxing.

Today I went to Liulichang, also known as Beijing’s "culture street." In many ways it was invigorating. Unlike many of the other famous places in Beijing, the shops there are actually very legitimate and offer quality products–mostly books, paintings, and calligraphy scrolls. I bought a few to take home. The bookstores there were a little intimidating–just looking at a dictionary made me realize that its going to be a long, long time before I ever master the Chinese language–but at the same time looking at a huge Chengyu dictionary was a visible indicator of how many centuries of culture support this language, and how much it is worth the effort. I bought a few brushes as well, as I’ve been attending the calligraphy classes here and intend to practice more often. Moreover, the shopkeepers are very intelligent–conversation flows easily.

The most interesting store was probably a Christian calligraphy shop. They had a whole bunch of proverbs and etc. from the bible written in calligraphy. Some scrolls had the characters arranged in crosses, others were more traditional Chinese brush paintings with translated bible verses written on the sides. Never thought the government would allow it.

Probably even more interesting ( from a purely historical and cultural standpoint) were the nude paintings/books of pictures of naked women we saw in several shops. China is much different from the states in that every woman dresses very modestly–even models on magazine covers dress modestly, and you never see anything approaching what you might see on a Times Square lingerie advertisement anywhere in China, even the really shady areas. So, to be walking through this bookstore looking at dictionaries and then wham, see this book on the bookshelf was a little unsettling–but also invigorating (again, from a purely historical and cultural standpoint). Like with the Christian calligraphy store, 这个现象说明言论的自由放开了. 琉璃厂体现了这个现象。(This shows that freedom of speech has been broadened. Liulichang embodies this phenomenon.)

I went with 何子强，a fourth year student who’s my classmate at Yale and a close friend. It was a good time. He’s a good friend. Good ol John Heroy.

I’m right now trying to consolidate the mass of what I’ve learned over the past month. Currently I’m downloading some flashcard software that I’m hoping is going to make my progress in Chinese more permanent. It uses the Leitner method, which allows you to focus on words that you dont know rather than ones you already know, so hopefully I won’t forget everything I’ve learned within a month. Moreover I’ve been reviewing grammar patterns a lot more thoroughly, so hopefully my speech will become more succinct and refined than what it is currently, which is primarily wasteful circumlocution.

I can’t believe we only have three weeks left. It’s gone by incredibly fast. I think I might want to spend a fall or spring term here, or maybe even a full academic year a little bit later. We’ll see. Here’s a question for Kelly, who should be reading this blog: If I take Chinese 150 and also an intro Japanese course, will the Light Fellowship sponsor study for both, or do they prefer students to attain mastery in one language?

Anyway, 3 weeks left. Ive already planned out my schedule upon arriving in America. Upon exiting the plane, I will go to the restroom and use the SOAP to WASH MY HANDS. After leaving San Francisco International airpoint, I will take BART to Powell St. Station and then go to Jamba Juice, where I will proceed to drink a COLD concoction of ICE blended with ORANGES and OTHER ASSORTED FRESH FRUITS. Afterwards, I will go to Chipotle and consume one BURRITO, or perhaps another FOOD ITEM THAT ISN’T FIFTY PERCENT OIL, and relax outside and BREATH AIR. I will also SEE THE SUN. I may even SPEAK ENGLISH AND USE LARGE VOCABULARY WORDS if I encounter someone nice. Then, I hope to bring my brother to Chinatown and take him to a real 当地的饭馆，eat some 公报既定, and afterward 喝点热水。Hah.

Obviously, the words in bold are those types of things which you don’t get in China. Its a different place. Its great. Oh well. Back to studying. ZAIJIAN

First off, because of the ethnic tension and resultant crackdown in Xinjiang, the government has blocked facebook. On the one hand, that means I can’t upload my pictures, but on the other hand, I’ll probably be able to get a lot more studying done.

Secondly, I did well enough on my last exam, so I have made amends for last week’s crapshoot. Still, we have a huge exam coming up in five days (equivalent to a midterm) and it covers twenty two chapters–I’m guessing thats about a thousand character’s worth of lessons. I have probably forgotten around two or three hundred. Hm. Won’t be too bad.

At Yale, one of my staple foods was a toasted cinnamon raisin bagel topped with peanut butter and bananas. I’ve been craving it for a while, so today I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands. I just bought some flour, peanuts, bananas, honey, yeast, salt, and eggs. I’m going to make baozi. The bread will be a banana bread sort of deal, the filling will be a banana chunk with peanut butter and honey. The peanut butter is going to be hand made, i.e. roasted and ground down peanuts + salt. It’s going to be steamed in the rice cooker that we bought at the beginning of the program. Hopefully it will be edible.

Chinese is much more comfortable now. I’ve lost the urge to speak in English, and speaking in English can even be uncomfortable at times. For example, I’m sure some phrases in this blog post are a little awkward. You just get into a different mindset.

After our exam this week we have our big break–i.e. three days’ vacation. Jack, Cecelia and I are going to go down to Taishan for a day of hiking and watching the sunrise from the peak. They’re sleeping in a hotel in the middle of the mountain–but I’m going to go for the mountain top and sleep up there. I don’t have a sleeping bag or tent, but I do have my dormitory room bed sheets. It’ll be a nitty gritty, raw-existence couple of hours.

What else? I got to start studying. We went to an acrobatics performance last week that had people doing flips and stuff while riding bicycles. They also managed to fit twelve people on a bike while riding it around. Pretty neat. Anyway, zaijian!

–Rewon

I’ve been trying to put cash on my Skype account but have thus far failed, which leaves me unable to call you guys (read, mom dad reman reesa). If you guys get skype, my name is “rewony." I could use my normal phone but it costs a lot of money per minute, so just get skype ba？

This week has been alright. I got sick on Thursday, slept about half the day, and did really bad on the test consequently as I didn’t study *too* much. Meaning, I only studied for like five hours. Aiya. Oh well. I’m learning a lot of Chinese regardless of the grade.

July 4th was a lot of fun. Ate PIZZA and it was great. I am sick of baozi and dumplings. (Although I’m not sick of gongbaojiding yet). Next time I come to China over the summer I’m bringing a big ol American flag to wave around everywhere.

I have a lot of characters for tomorrow. Wo yao xuexi yi xia. Zaijian.

-Rewon

HAHA PiB is very freaking hard. To give you an estimate of how hard it is, let me compare it to my Yale Chinese class. Our textbook had 18 lessons, and during our entire year at Yale we only covered fourteen of them. Moreover, covering those fourteen lessons in one year is enough for most students of Chinese 110 to call the work "Much Greater" than other classes at Yale in course evaluations.

Now, guess what. We cover one lesson every day at PiB. So in this past week I’ve covered roughly a few months of year one Chinese. How is that even possible? Well, we have two hours of "big section" each morning (that is, eight or so students to a teacher), then two more hours of "small section" (that is, four students to a teacher) then one hour of 1 on 1 chat with a teacher. Then we study for the rest of the day. AY YA. There’s really no time for anything else. Luckily everyone here is super intelligent and hard working so we’ve been having fun while working–also my roommate is awesome. Princeton kids aren’t as bad as you’d expect. Moreover, of our more than 60 teachers for our hundred-thirtyish students, there are only about eight male teachers, and it just turns out that most of the female teachers are young and pretty. So, our situation is pretty good.

Chinese can get tiring after a while, but sensory adaptation is starting to kick in. I don’t mind any of the dirtiness of China anymore–I bet when I return to the states everywhere will feel like a palace. Chinese food tastes great and is cheap. I can run now without choking on dirt and getting dizzy. Moreover, I’m starting to learn that we can express an enormous number of sentiments even with a limited vocabulary.

Two big events this weekend:
1. Climbed a good section of the Great Wall. It’s pretty big. Got a rice worker hat. Cool. Pictures on facebook soon.

2. Just saw Transformers at the theater. AMERICA RULES! 美国！It was a great break from all the Chinese to go and watch a movie with a whole bunch of big American cars and Army commandoes blowing stuff up. Shock and awe baby. Although the movie was entirely without substance, it was so awesome that I didn’t mind. We’re going to watch it next week in IMAX, on good ol 美国生日 (the birth day of our beautiful country), as the next event in our "America Fest," in addition to barbequeing some ribs and listening to Aerosmith. The US army really does have the best advertising in the world. I hear they donated a lot of money to this movie. Now I’m going to go look up how I can become a commando and blow stuff up. Or maybe an astronaut. I really do love America.

PS: it was really awesome how robots tore up Princeton’s campus. HAH suckers.

—

Below is about the farm, dated about 1.5 weeks ago.
———–
guess what i’m making right now? Im making bruschetta mix and putting it in baozi! We have a farmers market at the farm today and the manager wanted one of the girls here and i to do a cooking demonstration, so i am experiementing–hopefully it will taste good, even tho the old chinese ladies seemed to disapprove. The process for making the bread is essentially the same as western bread, except steamed instead of baked, so i figure if i add salt and olive oil to the dough it should taste pretty good with a very different texture. hopefully it’ll work. Iｔｈｉｎｋ　ｗｈｅｎ　Ｉget back home I’m going to try doign the same thing in a conventional oven–like a roll with bruschetta topping on the inside. I’ll tyell you how they turn out–hopefully they dont explode in the oven.

its really funny–the owner isnt having us do too much hard work, even tho its 8 hours a day. she’s basically using us as advertisements–she wants to use the fact that we are big white people to tell people to buy her vegetables (around shanghai, all the best stores have white people in their advertisements). We even went to the expat headquarters in shanghai to help sell vegetables yesterday, and they took a photograph of us that will apparently be featured in FＴｉｍｅｓ　ｎｅｘｔ　ｍｏｎｔｈ　ｏｒ　ｓｏｍｅｔｈｉｎｇ，　ｈａｈａ．

the farm is actually the first organic one in china, and the owner and i are talking a lot about the different challenges and stuff she’s facing. i;m going to get her in contact with Melinda and the rest of the ysfp–it seems like this farm is breaking a lot of ground here in china.　Ｉｔ’ｓ　ｖｅｒｙ　ｉｄｙｌｌｉｃ．　Ｔｈｅｙ　ｈａｖｅ　ｂａｂｙ　ｂｕｎｎｉｅｓ　ａｎｄ　ｐｕｐｐｉｅｓ　ｆｏｒ　ｐｅｔｔｉｎｇ，　ａｎｄ　ｔｈｅｙ　ｈａｖｅ　ａ　ｌｏｔ　ｏｆ　ｆａｒｍｅｒｓ　ｔｈａｔ　ｌｉｖｅ　ｏｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｆａｒｍ　ａｎｄ　ｗｈｏ　ｗｅ’ｒｅ　ｈａｖｉｎｇ　ｇｒｅａｔ　ｄｉｓｃｕｓｓｉｏｎｓ　ｗｉｔｈ　（ａｎｄ　ｔｈｅｉｒ　ｋｉｄｓ　ａｒｅ　ａ　ｌｏｔ　ｏｆ　ｆｕｎ　ｔｏｏ）．

———–

shanghai is alright. its pretty dirty. the food is pretty good–had some xiaolongbao yesterday. Probably everything has been tasty, and for the most part I’ve ignored the advice of the health dept at yale and have been consuming street foods and have not gotten sick. Youtiao is pretty good, and the fruit is alright if a bit pricey. Meat on a stick is great. Also we found a baoziguanr the other day (with baozi for 1 kuai apiece) and that was pretty awesome. Probably the best food I’ve had, though, is the lunch we had today, which was a "Mexican hot pot" that I got at a Japanese restaurant. I could really go for a big fat burrito at any moment now.

Yesterday we went down east nanjing road, one of the biggest shopping streets, and had a lot of fun messing with the fake stuff vendors. Basically people will run up to you and yell "watch? dvd?" and if you actually say yes, i want a watch, they’ll lead you through a few dark alleys and into the back door of someplace next to a chicken slaughtering stand and you’ll then be in an air-conditioned, well lit room with a bunch of gucci, prada, and other brand blazers, bags, watches, and etc. You’ll look around and find something that looks interesting and say "duoshao qian?" And they’ll tell you "liu bai kuai qian" and you’ll be like wtf and say something like 1/50th of it like "san shi kuai" and they’ll feign disgust and try and pretend its real. It’s not too hard to stick on a really low price like 30 yuan (7 yuan= 1 usd) because everything in the store is a piece of crap and you know it. The problem with it is that in order to deal efficiently with them, you have to suspend your desire to interact with these people normally. You basically go into the place and tell lies and put on a whole facade, and if they won’t drop the price you pretty much give them the finger and leave. There’s no holds barred and everyone will brazenly lie to each other. For a while it was pretty fun since none of us really gave a crap, but after a while it became very exhausting.

The local food market is interesting. I was looking for breakfast this morning and this guy led me on this convoluted path to this small building where where all the restaurants and street vendors get their food from, I’m presuming. Lots of raw everything and fresh fish, squid, and etc, even sea snakes and stuff. Upstairs they sold chickens and slaughtered them on the spot–pretty disgusting and I’m sure in an environment that would violate many health laws in the US. The butcher basically took the chicken, separated the head and guts from the body in one movement, and stuck the body in a large empty kettle pot where you could hear it rattling around for a while before it went silent. The butcher could’ve been from a horror movie–bloody hands and apron, no gloves or anything.

I’m starting to learn that Chinese people are in general accustomed to a less clean and sanitized environment than we are. Its true and it extends past the toilets (or lack of them). For example, I learned yesterday that little kids don’t have diapers–instead, they just have holes in their shorts and they just do their business on the street. No joke. Moreover at restaurants you don’t have napkins–in fact any sort of wiping device is difficult to find anywhere, so if you sweat at all, bad luck. Its radically different from ultra clean and hospitable Japan. Even when I come out of the shower I don’t feel clean. I’m looking forward to getting out of the city and onto the farm on the 12th-17th (It’ll be eight hours a day of work but hopefully in a great location with home cooked food), and then to Beijing to start my program. Maybe I should have taken Japanese. Hah.

Again, sorry for no pictures as this is all via email (if any of you comment I can’t approve them either–I can’t access the wordpress site from China). At some point they’ll all be uploaded to facebook tho, so you won’t have to use your imagination for long.

———————

JAPAN, CON’T:

TOPIC TWO: FAMILY

On the third day I visited my mom’s home town, Katsuyama. Hideichiro-san and Sachiko san, my oldest uncle & his wife, live there now as ancestral homes are passed down to the eldest son. The basic idea here was that we both wanted to be really nice to each other, but couldn’t actually communicate. So there was lots of kowtowing and dozo’ing. One thing we could talk about was baseball. BASEBALL. ICHIRO. Everyone can do that. Once everyone got used to the fact that I couldn’t say anything, it became pretty comfortable. By my last day there, however, I did develop a working vocabulary, so that was cool.

Katsuyama was interesting for two main reasons. It has a very distinctive smell which I never forgot. Walking through the city I recognized the main street and some houses, but many buildings were new and it all seemed a little bit too small and a little weird. Hideichiro-san’s house, in which I stayed the last time, had gone through a few renovations and It was unusually quiet as well–I’ve heard that most of the younger generation left to work in Tokyo and haven’t returned, so its mostly the elderly that stay there. But then I was on the roadside walking next to the rice paddy and the smell hit me and it was exactly how I remembered. Later I caught a smell of burning incense and its a smell I haven’t smelled since I was last in Japan but it was unmistakable. That night as I was sleeping on the mats Satchiko-san set out a scented candle against mosquitoes–and it was amazing how familiar and intimate the scent was.

Secondly, there was the family graveyard (which I wasn’t supposed to take pictures of, I learned after the fact). In the last post I mentioned that my Japanese name was 石井?原. Those first two characters were inscribed on about six of the gravestones in this small graveyard–probably about 15% of them. So about 15% of the people in there were directly related to me. Pretty crazy stumbling upon that after 19 years of not knowing anything about them.

TOPIC THREE: NOT FAMILY

This is a fun topic. These are about the people who basically treated me like family, despite them not being related to me at all.

1) Frimund and Masame-san were two people I ran into at the first hotel we stayed at. They were the only English speaking people so we became quick friends. Frimund is pretty awesome, from a little island off the coast of Denmark called FFFF. They were my main tour guides & it seemed like Frimund could relate with not being able to communicate with anyone. What a relief these guys were. I estimate they made my trip a bajillion times better. My favorite expression of Frimund’s is "Not so stupid, eh?" which means something like "That’s cool."

2) Yasuko-san
All I have to say is I am in love with Yasuko san, and its a damn shame I wasn’t born twenty years earlier. Here is how we first met. I was about five years old and riding my bike in Katsuyama, and it turns out the bike didn’t have brakes so I hit a car and scraped my knee and started crying. She came out of her house on the corner and helped me up, and we took a photo to commemmorate the meeting then didn’t see each other again. Fast forward ten years–I come back with the photo and go to the house on the corner, expecting to have to be all awkward and explain in my twenty-word Japanengrish that we had already met, ha ha, look at this picture. And then she opens the door and says, "Rewon-chan!??!" What the hell, right? Crazy. Anyway, I spent most of my last two days in Japan talking with her and her daughter, who both speak remarkably good English. I later went gambling with some of her friends from work. For reals. Anyway, I’ve spent so much time talking with her these past two days that I’ve actually adopted her (and by extension, the japanese) manner of expression. When someone says something vaguely interesting I don’t say "Really?" anymore but instead shout "Hehhhhh?!!?!" or "Hon ma!!?!?!?!?!?!" I did my part to teach her cool english words, like "yo," "what’s up," and "fool." This has been so awesome that she might even visit me in the airport during my six hour layover in Narita from Beijing back to home in August. Subarshi des.

TOPIC FOUR: FOOOD

I’ve eaten so much sushi and sashimi this trip that my mouth actually turned sore from the acidity. Great food is cheap and available. At one of the most popular seaside restaurants in Hota, right next to the harbor, they give you fish that has never been on ice–it is literally carted off the boat and into the restaurant. I’ve never liked the small red eggs (salmon roe), or squid, or octopus, but when you get this stuff fresh it is delicious. Just look at the pictures. The stuff melts in your mouth. In some of them, you bite in and the flesh feels like it’s still bleeding in your mouth, even though I think fish have a closed circulatory system. It’s hard to describe.

Oh–japanese breakfast. Nato and raw egg. Probably the most disgusting texture possible–like little insect eggs wrapped in a cocoon, then soaked in… raw egg. But as a wielder of a Japanese passport, I figured it was my warrior duty (senzoku) to eat it, and eat it I did

This restaurant is really cool, and many of my relatives consider it the best restaurant in Japan. It’s close by, fresh tempura and sushi, handmade soba, and all the woodwork is done by the owner. It’s family run–something that is alittle weird, sicne the area doesn’t have many young people yet their two children work there six days a week and only leave once a week. Can you imagine that? Hehhhhhh!!?!?! Regardless, they make incredible food.

TOPIC FIVE: BASEBALL

I don’t have much to say about this, but pretty much anyone in Japan will speak at length about it. This is usually the first question one asks a gaijin (or "outsider")–do you know Ichiro? And then they will ask you about every other Japanese player in the MLB. It’s a national obsession. While Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, and other manga are still popular, it actually turns out that the new thing to rave about is baseball manga. Yeah, I think it’s boring to watch too. Dunno.

SIX: JAPANESE

I’m set on taking it next year, even simultaneously with Chinese. I would have never thought it possible, but I guess hearing my mom speak it has impressed on me in some way. It’s been easy for me to listen and pick up, and easier to speak since I know what sounds right and what sounds wrong. Subarashi!

SEVEN: Influenza

I actually just noticed this on the plane right now, but the two people wearing masks (which I think is stupid) are also the two people who are pregnant, so I guess that is actually somewhat endearing. Not so stupid.

That’s about it. Next up is China, which is freaking crazy–I’ve been here for about two weeks already. 再见！