The holiday is over.
It never really was much of a holiday as did not go anywhere. I probably should have considering that it was the only real time off I am going to get until the end of my course, but without money or friends to travel with, it could not have been that good anyway.
In the event, I spent most of my holiday between catching up with my good friend the internet and further exploring this part of Beijing with Neal. On the internet front, I got skype up and running and so was able to talk to Rae a few times, Rachel, and my parents. This was nice because it had been some time since I had heard their voices.
In this time, I also got to check google news six times per day for anything new of interest. Through this I found something fun. If you do a google news search for "china" there are three kinds of hits. There is news from Chinese outlets, news from foreign outlets and news from both. Not surprisingly, the tone of these three types are different. When the Chinese report about themselves, it is almost exclusively in positive tones with lots of talk about "China's rise" and economic development. The foreign articles are often criticizing the government for their internet policy or talking of the existing imbalances in the Chinese economy or society. Finally, the only issues that are covered by both Chinese and international sites are positive statements about facts, figures and important news releases. Unfortunately, Chinese people who do not get their news in English only have access to the first category of articles as any foreign based Chinese language news site is blocked.
Last night I went out for dinner with Alex and Catlyn. They have just returned from a visa-extending trip down to Hong Kong. We had a good time talking about how amazing that city is. A few beers later and we got into a cab and went to Banana, the hottest Chinese club in Beijing. That place is intense. There are two lazers, huge light displays and a massive wall that acts as a screen with multicoloured lights making different patterns. All of this in a very foggy, relatively small and intensely packed space. The music, mostly of the hard-house and misc. variety is very loud and often ineptly mixed. At one point, a nearly naked Middle-Eastern man was lowered in cage over the middle of the dance floor to dance for the enjoyment of the audience. Unfortunately, there were not as many of these such performances as the last time I went to Banana and so we didn't get the full Chinese club experience. After we had all that we could handle, we caught a cab and headed home.
Today I started classes again. The text we did talked about how, in Chinese cultre, people respect their elders. On Chinese busses, people will get up and give their seats to older people. The teacher then went ahead and explained to us that in "foreign culture" this is not the case. A fact she seemed quite sure of despite having never left China. Class ened with a demoralised and much diminished (people must still be on vacation) class doing a 30 minute "repeat after the tape" session.
At lunch I ran into my roommate's friend Eagle (yes, like the bird...). Again, he wanted to talk about the difference between Chinese and "foreign" culture. I explained to him that there is nowhere in the world that is called "waiguo" (literally 'outside China') and if you want to talk about other countries you should specify which ones. After explaining to me that he considered Japan and pretty much all of Asia to be essentially Chinese, we settled on using "the West" as a point of comparason. We ended lunch with a tentitive agreement to become language exchange partners. I will do what I can to avoid this because he always steers the conversation to English and when I respond in Chinese he will criticise either my tones or my grammar. Perhaps next time I see him I should mock his accent along with his myopic view of the world.
To all the readers of my blog. As this is blocked in China, I have no way of reading the comments you might have posted. If you wish to email me, please do as I am always happy to hear from you.
Marc
It never really was much of a holiday as did not go anywhere. I probably should have considering that it was the only real time off I am going to get until the end of my course, but without money or friends to travel with, it could not have been that good anyway.
In the event, I spent most of my holiday between catching up with my good friend the internet and further exploring this part of Beijing with Neal. On the internet front, I got skype up and running and so was able to talk to Rae a few times, Rachel, and my parents. This was nice because it had been some time since I had heard their voices.
In this time, I also got to check google news six times per day for anything new of interest. Through this I found something fun. If you do a google news search for "china" there are three kinds of hits. There is news from Chinese outlets, news from foreign outlets and news from both. Not surprisingly, the tone of these three types are different. When the Chinese report about themselves, it is almost exclusively in positive tones with lots of talk about "China's rise" and economic development. The foreign articles are often criticizing the government for their internet policy or talking of the existing imbalances in the Chinese economy or society. Finally, the only issues that are covered by both Chinese and international sites are positive statements about facts, figures and important news releases. Unfortunately, Chinese people who do not get their news in English only have access to the first category of articles as any foreign based Chinese language news site is blocked.
Last night I went out for dinner with Alex and Catlyn. They have just returned from a visa-extending trip down to Hong Kong. We had a good time talking about how amazing that city is. A few beers later and we got into a cab and went to Banana, the hottest Chinese club in Beijing. That place is intense. There are two lazers, huge light displays and a massive wall that acts as a screen with multicoloured lights making different patterns. All of this in a very foggy, relatively small and intensely packed space. The music, mostly of the hard-house and misc. variety is very loud and often ineptly mixed. At one point, a nearly naked Middle-Eastern man was lowered in cage over the middle of the dance floor to dance for the enjoyment of the audience. Unfortunately, there were not as many of these such performances as the last time I went to Banana and so we didn't get the full Chinese club experience. After we had all that we could handle, we caught a cab and headed home.
Today I started classes again. The text we did talked about how, in Chinese cultre, people respect their elders. On Chinese busses, people will get up and give their seats to older people. The teacher then went ahead and explained to us that in "foreign culture" this is not the case. A fact she seemed quite sure of despite having never left China. Class ened with a demoralised and much diminished (people must still be on vacation) class doing a 30 minute "repeat after the tape" session.
At lunch I ran into my roommate's friend Eagle (yes, like the bird...). Again, he wanted to talk about the difference between Chinese and "foreign" culture. I explained to him that there is nowhere in the world that is called "waiguo" (literally 'outside China') and if you want to talk about other countries you should specify which ones. After explaining to me that he considered Japan and pretty much all of Asia to be essentially Chinese, we settled on using "the West" as a point of comparason. We ended lunch with a tentitive agreement to become language exchange partners. I will do what I can to avoid this because he always steers the conversation to English and when I respond in Chinese he will criticise either my tones or my grammar. Perhaps next time I see him I should mock his accent along with his myopic view of the world.
To all the readers of my blog. As this is blocked in China, I have no way of reading the comments you might have posted. If you wish to email me, please do as I am always happy to hear from you.
Marc
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home