Monday January 17th, 2011

Classes have begun. The model of the classes is very different from what I’m used to. We aren’t allowed to write notes in class, and I think that is very strange. On the flip side, we just repeat the sentence structures from the text read the night before, and I don’t even really need to take notes on anything. We go to a different room for our first and second classes, and our first and second classes are almost identical. I still don’t understand the reasoning for going to two different classes, and doing the same thing. Its good practice, I guess…

Our third class is called a “debate and speaking” class, and in this class, there are two students to a teacher. My partner is a girl from Yale, and I have no idea what her English name is. What’s in a name? Her Chinese one is Pu ZhaoHai. This class is pretty fun, and the topic for today’s class is colonialism, and the topic quickly turned around to modern quasi-colonialism and the Chinese presence in Africa. I had some good ammunition for this topic, but neither my partner nor teacher had particularly studied modern economic development (not that I’m an expert by any means).

Then, I took lunch at the Muslim cafeteria on campus with some of the other students. Most of us had one-on-one class at 12, so we ate quickly to make it back to class in time. My one-on-one class was with the same teacher as I had for debate class, and the topic gravitated back towards quasi-colonialism in Africa. Turns out that she thinks that I have 1) really bad pronunciation and 2) really bad grammar. By the way, I challenge anyone to talk about Chinese investment in Africa (Chinese people included) with accurate grammar. Tis a most difficult feat to accomplish, but it is my duty (play Hail to the Chief in the background now).

The teachers here are a little more “technical” about their Chinese than at Ole Miss. Back home, the teachers emphasize fluency with the language. By their logic, if the common people make a grammatical mistake, we should make that same mistake when communicating with them, so that our speech is more like the average Chinese person. I am also a supporter of this logic, and I’ve used it when studying Spanish (with pretty good results, I would say). However, the teachers here want us to sound better and more educated than the people on the street, and we can only do that by having perfected grammar and pronunciation as it appears in textbooks. While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this approach, it will certainly take some time for me to get used to it.

I got out of class and reviewed for the next day. I had some free time after getting done, and I decided to watch Nanjing! Nanjing!, a movie about the Rape of Nanjing. It was a very difficult movie to watch, but I understand more of the Chinese opinion on this historical event now.

I decided to get some grub about 6:30, and Shazeda, Cailin, Lee, and myself all went to another Chengdu restaurant in the neighborhood. I approve wholeheartedly, and we ordered potatoes and eggplant braised in soy sauce, spicy asparagus, and stir-fried lamb and onions. It was so good. We even ordered a couple bottles of Qingdao to celebrate St. Anthony day, a most glorious feast of yore.

Then, I headed back to the dorm to study with Shazeda. I retired at about 10 to my room to fall dead asleep.

Over the last week, the heating situation in the rooms has been steadily declining, and I think the entire matter came to a head yesterday. Most of the rooms hover around 15 C (58 F), which isn’t so bad if you wear a couple of layers to sleep or walk around in your room with your outside jacket on (as some students do). My room is lucky in this right because its on the west side of the building. I have the afternoon sun to warm the room, and for some reason, the west side of the building doesn’t stink as bad as the east side does. It smells bad over there – I will let you use your imagination. They “say” that the problem will be resolved tomorrow. We shall see…

I’ll write soon!

Love,

Jamey