Spring in Beijing

Sorry I haven't written a new post all week. I've been otherwise engaged, and just generally lazy. What can you do.

The only thing I can remember that happened last week was our presentation to the sixth grade, which basically means that last week was pretty boring.

While we're here, we have to give several presentations to various people/grades on America culture. When the Jingshan kids were in America last fall, they gave the same kinds of presentations on Chinese culture. We gave this one to the sixth grade, which is about 100 kids (I think). We made a massively large powerpoint presentation, in which we talked about various aspects of American culture, such as school, food, hobbies, TV/movies, etc. My topic was TV/movies, so I made a short slideshow with pictures of different genres of movies and TV, including The Dark Knight, Grey's Anatomy, Law and Order: SVU, Gossip Girl (at the urging of Hannah), and Slumdog Millionaire. I simply explained each type of movie or TV show, and asked the kids which one they liked the most.

The funnier parts of our presentation were as follows: Elias "singing" the YMCA song, teaching the kids the wave, teaching them "Take Me Out To The Ball Game", and mistakenly writing in Chinese next to the picture of the swimming pool "swimming car" instead of "swimming pool" (the word for pool and car sound the same, but are NOT the same character). It was overall a really fun/funny experience and I'm psyched to do it again this Friday, this time with the 8th graders.

This week will definitely be an eventful one. Monday, we go to Beihai Park which is a little NW of the Forbidden City. On Tuesday, we turn in our first paper (yay!) of the trip and then venture to the Forbidden City. I'm really excited for that not so much because we're going to the Forbidden City, but because we're going to the Forbidden City in 75 degree weather!!! Thursday we're going to an exhibit on Tibet at the Nationalities Center, and Friday we give our second presentation. Hopefully it will be a fun week.

On another note, Spring has arrived!!! In Beijing, it switches from winter to spring almost overnight, with no real transitional period. One week it was cold and cloudy, the next it was warm and sunny. Today it was a balmy 65 degrees!! I'm loving the warmth, after what seemed like such a snowy winter (in Newton, I mean. I didn't even get half the snow, after I left Boston got hit with a few more feet of snow!). It's great to feel spring in the air again, though it makes me miss home a bit. I always love the way spring smells in Newton, especially right after it rains. That's what I miss most about home, the feeling I get after a spring rain, when you can smell the flowers blooming and the warmth of the sun and that nice breeze just take you away.

Enough daydreaming, I'm off to bed. I promise I'll post more this week, as I'll definitely have more to talk about. Zaijian!

Olympic Park

The seats are designed like they were in the water cube, though I'm not sure why. After all, earth doesn't splash up, unless it's lava I suppose.

Today we went to the Olympic Village. It's not the first time I've seen the Bird's Nest and Water Cube, since I walked around them about a week after I got here. This time, however, we got to go inside them. The Jingshan School takes every exchange group on several outings to all the really touristy places in Beijing, like the Forbidden City, Great Wall, and the like. Our group, being the first to go after the Olympics, is the first to be taken to see the stadiums by the school.

We arrived at the school at around 9am, and hopped on a bus to take us to the village. When we got there, we walked to the Forest Park. The Park is at the northern edge of the Olympic Village (called ao yun cun, 奥运村 in Mandarin), and I have to say it isn't very exciting. It's called a "Forest" Park, but there's not that much forest to speak of. It's more like a lot of brown grass with a tree planted every few meters or so. We found a coffee shop near a lake, and got lattes. Then we went back.

Walking down from the Park to the Nest/Cube, there are these really funky looking lampposts everywhere. Each of them is outfitted with speakers, and they kept broadcasting the same three songs over and over. It was a little weird to be hearing music outside like that, but it was fun to dance to it.

The Water Cube was our first stop. You've all seen pictures of it, so you know that the outside looks like bubbles. When we first stepped inside, it was very bluish-white looking, which I guess you'd expect. What made me laugh was that they were selling bottled water. It seemed somewhat ironic that bottled water was on sale inside a giant "water cube". Anyways, we promptly walked into the room with the pools. It looked just like it did during the Olympics and in pictures online, though today it was noticeably more serene. The seats are colored so that towards the pools there are more blue seats, and the farther you go up the less blue there is. It's designed to look like splashing water. Becky and I decided to sit down and absorb the atmosphere for a while. We sat and listened to the music, which was very peaceful and relaxing. After we were finished taking pictures (literally everyone had a camera. Usually I feel too touristy in these situations, but everyone else was taking pictures, so I didn't feel weird) we sat and almost fell asleep it was so nice. I kept thinking to myself, "This is where Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals. Here he defeated that guy by 0.01 seconds. That actually happened in this room. Holy crap." It was a somewhat surreal feeling.

Next stop was the Bird's Nest, site of the opening/closing ceremonies and the track and field events. I'd read before that during the Olympics it had a seating capacity of 91,000 people, although post-Olympics it has been decreased to 80,000. That's still a ton of people, and for some regional perspective Fenway Park had a capacity of around 35,000 (granted, that was built in 1912, when I'm sure attendance at sporting events was smaller. If only Boston could ever make plans to rebuild that darn thing. That's another tangent altogether). As we walked towards the main field, it looked to me a lot like the stadium for the Washington Nationals in DC. That is until we made it onto the field. My first impression was that it was gigantic. I mean like epically big, so huge you can't imagine it. We walked around the stadium, where there were the Olympic Mascots (called Fuwa). There was a jumbo tron playing the same sort of video as in the Water Cube. The Olympic torch was noticeably gone. On one side, people dressed up in the mascots put on a little show for the audience. It was hilarious, because the music was really funny and those poor people could barely move in their costumes. As we exited, we walked through the gift shop where I considered buying Olympic paraphernalia, but reconsidered thinking what my host brother brought to me in America was sufficient.

After that, we had lunch and went home. It was a really fun experience and I'm really glad the school took us.

One last thing. I was talking with my mom (my real mom) last night, and she said she saw a news report by one of the networks about how Beijing is struggling to find a use for the Bird's Nest and Water Cube post-Olympics. I can attest to that. The city spent millions of dollars on these facilities, even building a 3-stop subway line for easier access to them (although I'm sure the subway was extremely packed during the Olympics). Now, however, they lie there more or less unused, their only purpose being to charge visitors to see them. I really hope the city finds some use for them, since it would be a real shame to let such fascinating and amazing facilities go to waste.

Morning Exercises and Teaching 6th Graders

Today was a fairly eventful day in my life here in Beijing. Several things happened for the first time, and they're all at least mildly exciting.

First, today was the first day that we did morning exercises. Every morning since we've been here before the first block the entire school goes onto the track area. However, up until today it's been too cold in the morning (we do this at around 7:45, the first block starts at 8) to do the classic morning exercises, so the school just runs around the school and the track several times. It's cold, but it's nice at the same time because it wakes me up, which is necessary after waking up at 6:20. This morning the school administration decided it was warm enough to do the real morning exercises. Every class lined up single-file next to each other (with 50+ kids in each class, they were long lines) and waited for instructions. A male teacher got up to a microphone that's on a raised podium in the middle of a wall fence that faces another school next door. He talked for a minute or two, and I didn't understand anything he was saying. Then, we started the exercises. First, he told us to spread our legs and link our hands behind our backs. Then he told us to go back to our original position. He told us to do this about five times, and then he had us raise our hands in several different positions. Then we turned to the right, took a step, turned right again, did a 180, then repeated the same thing. That was about it. It wasn't what I expected, but I'm guessing that once it gets warmer out we'll do the full exercises I've heard so much about (and I'll get a chance to make a bigger fool out of myself :P). I'll bring my camera to school this week and film it, because seeing it for yourself is probably better than my terrible description. It was almost 12 hours ago, and my brain can't remember. Sorry :(.

The next thing that happened in our English class. We Bounders (the term the program uses to refer to the Newton kids who go to China. I think it's because we're "bound" for China. Don't ask me, I didn't come up with it) have this English seminar so we can get our final 2.5 credits in English and graduate. I think I've mentioned it before. Anyways, every Tuesday and Friday, we have one block where our teacher chaperones facilitate discussions on China, based on what we've read and seen. Today, they gave us our first real assignment. We each chose pieces of paper out of a hat, each describing a person. Our assignment was to answer a list of questions about that person in a creative format (i.e. dialogue, journal entry, interview, etc). Mine is "You are a 13 year old girl in the 12th century. You are the daughter of peasant farmers (tenant farmers) in the Yellow River basin." This basically means that I have a pretty crappy life. I'm a girl, which in traditional imperial China is never nice. I'm poor, which also isn't great. And I'm 13, which means I'll be married off soon. My feet are also bound, a particularly excruciating process (ever read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan?). I got frustrated when I was told I couldn't do a powerpoint or a video diary because computers and powerpoint didn't exist in the 12th century, but I'm sure I'll think of something. Feel free to give suggestions.

The last exciting thing that happened today was I got to help teach a class. Our teachers each assigned us a block or two during the week when we get to assist in their class. They teach English to the middle schoolers, and it can be especially tiring for them. We want to get taken out of class, so it all works out. I'm helping Ms. Richard teach a 6th grade class. It was really fun. They read these really thin (like 40 pages) books about different people and topics (Prince William, Surfers, MLK, The Canterbury Tales, Moby Dick to name a few). Today she taught them about Leonardo DiCaprio. She had a timeline of all the movies he's been in (I didn't realize it was so many), the only one they knew of was of course Titanic (which I believe is still the top grossing movie of all time). She then had them write details of DiCaprio's life, the ultimate goal being to write their own autobiography. She had me walk up and down the ailes, making sure kids were doing what they were supposed to be doing and such. When they started writing their autobiographies, I noticed they were all born in 1996/1997. This surprised me because while I know 12 year olds exist, it didn't dawn on me that there are people born in 1997. It was a little weird, perhaps my first "mid-life crisis" of sorts. Who knows. The class was really fun, and I'm looking forward to getting to know some of the kids, rather than sitting in Chemistry class.

More Pictures from the Museum

This is the plaque that was at the entrance to the Propaganda Wing. I know it's annoying that it's in three images, my camera couldn't take one that was readable. You really should read the whole thing, even if it takes a minute. It's really interesting and enlightening.

 

Pictures from the Military Museum

The Military Museum

Yesterday we went to the Military Museum of Beijing. It was one of the most fascinating museums I've ever been to, and you'll see why.

At first, we were only really going because of Elias. He had wanted to go the previous weekend, but we ended up getting sidetracked with lunch (it seems like we're always eating over here), and so it was postponed to this Saturday. The only reason I wanted to go was to hang out with the Newton kids, because my relationship with museums has always been strained and I usually end up being bored out of my mind. This was different.

We got to the museum, which is conveniently right next to a subway stop (called Military Museum, easy enough) at around noon. The museum's free as long as you don't want to go into a boat that's on display near the entrance, in which case the cost is 5 yuan (about $.73). I went, and it wasn't all that remarkable. As you enter the museum, you're greeted by a stone statue of Mao that stands about 30 feet tall, with chambers to his sides. The first one we went into was the one dedicated to the early history of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) during the Chinese Civil War. There were lots of statues of revolutionaries cast out of different medals. In the display cases were artifacts such as letters, rifles, and paintings commissioned later to depict certain important events. It was all set up very neatly (in both senses of the word) and was interesting to look at.

The next wing we went to was the one dedicated to weapons. I'm not sure whether what we saw was real or fake, but nevertheless I wouldn't want to face it in combat. There were tanks, planes, missiles, and guns of all kinds. Some were made in China, others in Japan, and others in the USA (I know this because the signs describing them were in English and Chinese, although I can read all three in Chinese. That's very common throughout all of China). The fact that they displayed weapons made in Japan surprised us, for China and Japan have not had a history of good will. Outside they showcased more weapons and tanks, and Elias had fun playing on some of the weapons (it was really for little kids, but we're all 6 at heart :P).

The last wing we visited was by far the most interesting. I'm not sure what it was really called, but for our purposes let's call it the Propaganda Wing. At the entrance, there was a plaque describing what the wing was about. In it, it described how the Chinese people and their civilization are amazing and that all they've done has contributed invaluably to the advancement of mankind. It even mentioned Hu Jintao as "comrade," something I haven't seen since arriving in China, and a term that has fallen out of common use in the past few decades. As we made our way through the hall, we saw many very interesting things. There was a wall dedicated to Hu Jintao (as a side note, my host brother's real name, Hu Xinyuan, is the same Hu (胡) as Hu Jintao), with pictures from recent meetings with world leaders and his accomplishments since becoming Party Chairman. They showcased China's pride in being awarded the 2008 Olympic Games, which pictures of people cheering in the streets and waving signs. There were plaques commemorating the return of Hong Kong and Macao ("wiping out the hundred-year humiliation of the Chinese nation"), and the overall accomplishments of the Chinese people/nation. 

There was an entire section devoted to the Communist Party and its achievements, along with all the good things it did/has done/will do for China. This wing was extremely interesting because of just how blatant and obvious it was that it was all propaganda. Ever since coming to China, I've been keeping my eyes open so I can recognize when something has obviously been censored/Party approved, but never before has it been so obvious and in-your-face as it was here. Looking at all of it, I was thinking of how the Party controls information and tries to have people think in a certain way. Everything I saw was somehow either positive about China, or ridiculing something negative. Don't get me wrong, of course China has done many good things for its people and the world not only over the past few decades, but for thousands of years (they did invent paper, the compass, gunpowder, etc). But that doesn't erase all the bad things they've done and the bad things that have happened to them (the Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward, and their continued destruction of the environment), none of which got a single word of mention in the entire wing. This museum was a wonderful example to me of how the Communist Party controls what its people see and how the Chinese people perceive their nation and the Party. As we walked through this wing, we discussed how in America, if the government ever tried to create a wing of a museum that only showcased its positive accomplishments, there would likely be such an outcry from the public and the media that any plans would have to be abandoned. In China, that's not the case because the Party's word is law, but also because the Chinese people generally don't want to talk about the negative aspects of their society they know exist (the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward aren't taught in schools), and would rather flaunt the positive elements.

I'm going to post several pictures of the museum here and in other posts, including all the plaques I described above. I encourage you to read all of them so you can see what I'm talking about with your own eyes.

What Makes a Great Leader?

This week we finally began our special classes. For the first week of the semester, we sat in on all the classes our Chinese classmates had, and as I said before, it was extremely boring. Beginning this week, however, we only sit in on some classes with our Chinese classmates and take our own classes with just the American students for the other periods. We have Martial Arts/Tai Chi (MATC), Chinese, Brush Painting, Calligraphy, Geography, Chinese History, and our own English seminar to satisfy the credit requirements of NPS. Monday we had MATC and Chinese, and today we had our English class and brush painting. 

MATC was really fun. Our teacher was extremely nice and very patient with us, because it took us awhile to learn how to do what she was teaching us. We learned some basic martial arts poses, like how to punch and block (although I doubt these kind of skills would come in handy in any real life fight). For tai chi, we just learned the basics as well, but we did them to traditional Chinese music that was so soothing I started falling asleep while standing. In our English class today we had a quiz on the first three chapters of our core textbook for the course. It's called CHINA: Empire and Civilization, and it's one of the driest textbooks I've ever had the misfortune of reading. It's the kind of book that once you've read a sentence, you forget it immediately. It's very useful when I'm having trouble falling asleep though (which causes problems when I read it during school here-not supposed to fall asleep! {I haven't, though I've come close on several occasions}). The quiz was fairly easy, just a standard answer 3/5 questions in paragraph form thing. The main problems was that I haven't written anything more than e-mails, journal entries, and blogposts in a month, so it took some adjusting to write school-quality work again.

Moving on, I shall now explain the title of this post. Today during English class, Ms Kamerik taught my class. From now on, she'll do this one block every Tuesday and Wednesday, and today was her first day. She gave us a powerpoint introducing herself (where she's from, where she teaches, that kind of thing). She then moved on to a powerpoint on Abe Lincoln titled "What Makes a Great Leader?", in honor of his 200th birthday. She described the basics of his life, and then when on to say that he's considered a great leader in America. She asked us to work in groups to think of qualities great leaders should possess. The class thought of all the usual ones such as honest, courageous, dynamic, that sort of thing. Then came two unusual ones. The first was sexy, which came with a collective laugh. Ms Kamerik thought it best to not write that one down, because, let's face it, that's not always a quality a great leader possesses :P. But then came an interesting one. Someone said autocratic. Ms Kamerik wrote it down, but said "let's come back to that one." The class found that to be a somewhat strange choice as well. I found it fascinating. In the US, if we ever do this kind of exercise, people come up with the obvious qualities, and not much else. If anyone ever proposed adding autocratic to the list, it would be laughed at as ridiculous, and tossed aside. Here, however, it's not cast aside so quickly. While it wasn't embraced by the class as an essential quality a great leader must possess, it wasn't branded as insane either. It definitely interested me as an aspect of Chinese culture much different from my own.

As a side note, Ms Kamerik also asked the class to list people they thought of as great leaders. The first person mentioned was, you guessed it, good old Mao Zedong. I've noticed so far that here most people are more concerned with studying or shopping to give much thought to Mao and what he did for/to China and how he affected the country.