A Few Random Things

1. Harbin happens to be experiencing its hottest summer in history. When I applied to this program, I was under the impression that Harbin is consistently 70 degrees without and not humid during the summer. Yet after having one of its coldest winters ever, the city has been in the high 90's for the past week, pushing past 100 this past weekend. Harbin has been hotter than Beijing this summer, which doesn't really make any sense... And no air conditioning in my room. I guess I'd take 100 over -30, which is what Harbin hits in the winter.

2. I've had many encounters with Harbin Institute of Technology students (many while playing basketball) in which the student assumed I was also an HIT student. I was initially kind of confused why they would make that assumption. While I've seen other foreigners here, I assumed they were on language programs similar to mine (there were many other language programs at the university I studied at last summer). Bad assumption. HIT actually does have a fairly large foreign student population. Students from around the world (Russia, Korea, all over Africa, and I even met one from Yemen) come to Harbin, many on government scholarships, study Chinese for a year here, then become full-fledged HIT students. Learning Chinese is hard enough. Taking college courses in Chinese? I can't imagine what that is like for the foreign students. I asked my roommate about it, and he said none of the foreign students can really keep up with everything in class. They all go to the professor for help. He added that it's ok because the Chinese students don't understand what the professor is talking about either (because the material is hard...)

3. I had one of the strangest and most fun meals of my life last week. One of the Chinese roommates suggested a 串儿 (chuar - meat skewer) restaurant. When we (4 Americans, 4 Chinese) arrived, there were no open tables. No problem. The manager told us to go outside. As we were waiting, a few of the waiters pulled out some old, dilapidated pieces of wood and set up a table out in the middle of the street. We proceeded to eat probably around 300 skewers as a constant stream of people walked by, staring at us, puzzled to see a table out in the middle of the street, especially given the racial makeup of the table. The meal was unfortunately tarnished when someone walked out of the restaurant and vomited while walking by our table. Nonetheless, a fun experience.

4. I had to give an oral presentation on the recent U.S. financial bill in my business Chinese class this morning. To my surprise, CET's academic director decided to sit in on our class. Fun.

5. Pictures from leaving Shanghai to the beginning of CET:

http://picasaweb.google.com/LouisGilbert15

CET Harbin

Finally something hopefully useful for anyone reading this who is considering applying to CET Harbin at any point in the future. I've been in Harbin for almost a week now, so I figured I'd briefly summarize what the program has been like so far. I apologize to anyone reading this with no intention of ever applying to CET (though it might be interesting anyway).

In general, it's been a pretty good opening week, though there have certainly been ups and downs. First, the good parts. Unlike many of the Light Fellowship programs, CET students share a dorm room with a Chinese student (from Harbin Institute of Technology - 哈工大). While essentially having a hotel room all to myself at HBA last summer was great, the Chinese roommates have been an amazing addition to the program so far. My Chinese has improved a lot simply from talking to my roommate at night while the two of us do homework (he's preparing for finals unfortunately). All 24 of the Chinese roommates are genuinely interested in getting to know us, and many of us (both CET students and HIT students) hang out together almost every day. Whether it's going out to dinner, playing basketball, or watching the World Cup at night, it's been a ton of fun and a great way to both improve our Chinese and just learn about college life in China.

HIT's campus is great too. For those of you who like to play sports, our dorm is literally 20 feet away from close to 20 basketball courts, 6 tennis courts, four volleyball courts, and a soccer field. The basketball courts are absolutely packed at all hours of the day, so you can play pickup whenever you want. There's a huge supermarket on campus that has nearly anything you will need for the summer. And there are a bunch of cafeterias on campus that are unbelievably cheap (you could easily get by on $1 a day for three fairly big meals). If you're willing to spend a little more (not much more because most things are cheap here - cheaper than Beijing), there are also some very good restaurants near campus.

So far the academic side of CET has been mixed for me. One positive aspect of CET's program is that you get to take a wide variety of classes. I'm taking a newspaper reading class (5 people), a business Chinese class (4 people), a pronunciation class (2 people), and doing a 1 on 1 summer long project. Getting through a week at HBA was always a huge struggle because it was nonstop drill-memorize, drill-memorize. While the workload here has been pretty tough so far, it is certainly more mixed.

Unfortunately, I wish the classes forced us to be a little more creative. Most of the classes so far have been tons of read or listening and repeating. That strategy has its advantages, but I really thought HBA did a good job of forcing us to try to come up with our own sentences and express our own thoughts. HBA's 1 on 1 class was purely conversational, and I don't feel like there is a similar opportunity here to simply practice freely speaking Chinese (perhaps that's what the roommates are for).

Nevertheless, it's too early to be critical. The Chinese levels of the students here are incredibly diverse, so the first week has included a lot of adjusting and figuring out how to go forward. Maybe I just need to get used to a slightly different style of teaching.

All in all, I would definitely recommend CET so far. Even if HBA's classes were stronger (which is still debatable at this point), there are many other aspects of CET that I'm looking forward to for the next 7 weeks.

That's it for now. Off to watching the World Cup (in Chinese - good listening practice) with two HIT students and my friend Dominic while doing homework.

Louis

Scenes of Shanghai

I’ve blogged from many different places, but never from above the clouds. As I write, I am flying from Shanghai to Beijing, where orientation for our Harbin language program is taking place. We unfortunately were too late in attempting to make an overnight train reservation to Beijing, so we were forced to spend a night in an apartment a few friends are renting for the summer and fly this morning. Though stressful (such as when someone at check-in told me “sir, your flight is tomorrow, what would you like to do?” then realized he was wrong – I almost had a heart attack), we are on our way (and it even gave us a chance to ride the 267mph Shanghai Maglev – why do we not have one in the U.S.?). Less than an hour until landing.

Anyway, we had an all-around great week in Shanghai. We experienced a bit of everything: the Expo, the jam-packed tourist sites of Shanghai, a day trip to the nearby canal city of Suzhou, and even a couple trips to ex-pat sports bars to watch the World Cup. As I mentioned before, one of the things that amazed me most about the city was the tremendous differences between different neighborhoods. Words (at least mine) can’t completely describe how one experiences a place, but I’ll do my best to illustrate our various excursions.

Breakfast near the hotel: One morning, Dom and I woke up and had a couple of hours to kill, so we decided to walk around our hotel’s neighborhood and look for a place to eat. Unintentionally, we wandered into one of the most crowded, boisterous streets I’ve ever been on. Bikes swerving in and out of masses of people. Endless rows of tiny shops and restaurants lining either side of the narrow street, their owners calling out “Hello! You want shopping? Eat here!” whenever you walked by. We walked up to several restaurants, only to find every single one absolutely packed with only Chinese people, no empty seats. We finally stumbled upon one where the owner said “Lai! Liang wei? Zuo ba!” (“Come! Two seats? Sit down!”) With maybe 15 Chinese people staring at us, apparently never having seen a foreigner in this hole-in-the-wall restaurant, we decided to give it a shot. After being informed that they only had one dish, I found myself with a giant bowl of soup, noodles, tofu, vegetables, congealed blood, some raw meat that I couldn’t recognize, and a bunch of other oddly shaped things that I didn’t want to know what they were. I stuck to the vegetarian parts. We paid and left, back out into the unending throngs of people.

Windows Scoreboard: The England vs. U.S. World Cup match was on, beginning at 2:30 AM Shanghai time. Windows Scoreboard is on the 11^th floor of a mall. Along with cheap beer, the bar serves hamburgers for $1.50, buffalo wings, fries, and anything else you might imagine at an American sports bar. The bar is packed with foreigners. American flags, British flag, chants of “England sucks!” or “U.S.A! U.S.A.!” fill the room. One guy in an England jersey is blowing one of those annoying and loud horns that people claim are ruining the World Cup (the flight attendant made me put my computer away, so I’m no longer writing from the plane). A complete madhouse.

Fuxing Gongyuan (Fuxing Park): A rare open green space in the middle of the city. We walk in and see people scattered along the paths, some practicing tai-chi, others meditating, some just standing next to trees and hitting them. Nearly all are elderly. We continue to walk and find a badminton match, dozens of people dancing to upbeat music blasting over a radio. We continue through the park. Some sort of dance performance. A few men and women with some sort of spinning device that they spun around them on a long string. Men gathered around tables of card games. A massive crowd of people all shaking maracas in unison to music (Rondo ala Turca). Crowds of people standing in front of a chart with song lyrics singing. Everyone seemed thrilled to be there.

Cotton Club: Dom is a huge jazz fan (we’re in a band at Yale together), and we had heard Shanghai has a fairly good jazz reputation. So we decided to check out the Cotton Club, supposedly one of the most famous jazz clubs in Shanghai (apparently Winton Marsalis once played there). We walk in to a dark bar, some foreigners, some Chinese. The band is playing Aretha Franklin songs (kind of unfortunate because I don’t really like singing in jazz). An old white guy is standing alone at the bar, bouncing to the rhythm, apparently mesmerized by the not so good music. Dom gets angry that they put us in the back and doesn’t like the music, so we walk out.

There were more, but hopefully these give something of an idea what our week was like. There were several times we walked into restaurants to a crowd of customers all staring at us, clearly shocked to see foreigners eating with them. Then there were times where there were hardly any other Chinese people around at all. It was certainly an interesting experience.

I am actually in Harbin now. I haven’t had time to finish up this post for a bit. But I’ll save writing about the start of my program for the next post. For now, hope you enjoy more pictures from Shanghai.

http://picasaweb.google.com/LouisGilbert15

Shanghai - Days 1 and 2

It's only been two days, but it's very clear that I am back in China. Getting off the plane to see an endless sea of smog covering the sky. Walking in the streets and seeing nearly everyone stare at you, surprised to see a foreigner. The constant assaults of, "Hello! Where you from? You want watch? DVD?" (probably over 20 times already). The endless lines and vast crowds of people everywhere you go.

Nevertheless, it's been exciting to be back. My friend Dominic (who was in Beijing with me last summer) and I are making a week-long stop in Shanghai before heading up to Harbin for the rest of the summer.

So far, it's been pretty incredible to see the contrast between different areas of Shanghai. Yesterday morning, we checked out the Bund, a historic row of buildings along the Huangpu River built by European traders starting as early as the end of the 19th century. In the 1940's, the Bund was one of the major financial centers in all of East Asia. As my pictures hopefully show (there's a link at the end of the post), I felt like I was walking around Europe or even back home in New York. Here's a picture of the Bund:

Yet as you walk along the Bund, if you look across the river, you see this:

Pudong. Shanghai's incredibly modern central business district. Check out this link to see how this space station of a city emerged from basically nothing in only 20 years: http://gizmodo.com/5558350/shanghai-skyline-before-and-after (thanks Dad for the link). More pictures of our journey to the top of the Oriental Pearl Tower (that tall, thin tower with the giant spheres) and our tour around the rest of Pudong in the link below.

One major reason we chose to come to Shanghai was to check out the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. With $48 billion spent in preparation, participation by more than 190 countries, total visitors expected to range from 70-100 million, and a site covering 5.28 square kilometers, I was shocked that many people at home had no idea what the Expo was.

Despite my initially high expectations, I heard from my aunt and uncle, who went a couple weeks ago, that it was a bit of a letdown. And unfortunately, it matched their description of it more than my optimistic hopes. The most impressive aspect of the Expo was the architecture and designs of all of the pavilions. Many of them, especially the enormous China pavilion, were absolutely stunning. Yet once you entered the pavilions, there really wasn't all too much to see. Many of the exhibits featured a movie on a giant projection screen, but nearly all of the films lacked anything of substance. Most of them were filled with empty phrases echoing the them of the Expo, "Better City, Better Life" and contained few details on how that particular country was actually working to achieve that goal. I thought the exhibits too often tried to shock and awe the audience instead of trying to present something interesting and informative about the country. For anyone else who has been, I'm curious what you thought. Good? Bad? It was entertaining enough and there was far too much to see in one visit, so Dom and I are planning on heading back once more before we leave.

Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, the Expo "signifies Shanghai's new status in the 21st Century as the 'next great world city'". At school, I run a discussion group on Chinese current events. In the final meeting of the year, a post-doc led the discussion and made the argument that despite Shanghai's efforts, he still thinks Shanghai is merely a "Chinese" city, and not a global city. I've only been here for two days, but I'm beginning to agree with him. It's still a rarity to see a foreigner. The Shanghai Museum contains nothing but Chinese art. There are jazz clubs, some foreign restaurants, and international companies here, but while walking around, I know that I am very much in China. Any thoughts, for anyone who has been here?

That's it for now. I'll be writing again soon. Hope my horrendous writing wasn't too painful.

- Louis

Pictures from Shanghai Days 1 and 2:

http://picasaweb.google.com/LouisGilbert15