Your Mom

CET Chinese roommate (to me): ni jidlfkjw;oiaehrouhg?
Me: Shenme? (What?)
Tianqi: She’s in the 300 level class.
Aforementioned Chinese roommate: How can she be in 300? She didn’t even understand my question.

And so goes my life. Thanks a lot, by the way, Mr. Chinese-roommate-with-a-heavy-Beijing-accent-who-likes-to-mumble-and-slur-his-words-and-whose-mouth-I-can’t-see-because-it’s-dark-outside. You do wonders for my confidence.

I know that my listening skills are sub-par to my reading and writing skills. I can actually speak fairly well when I am either talking to people who know less Chinese than I do or when I have time to prepare what I’m going to say. I can also usually carry on a conversation with a professor, because professor-Chinese is much easier to understand than real-people Chinese.

I think that listening and carrying on a real-life conversation is the hardest thing about Chinese. Most people think reading and writing is the hardest, but I guess I’m different. This happened to me when I was in Shanghai—it just takes forever for me to adjust my brain to listening to Chinese. I’m sure it doesn’t help that I write a blog in English.

Speaking of speaking English, the reason I chose this program is because of the “strict language pledge.” Well guess what—they say it’s a strict language pledge, but really, people don’t stick to it. The past two nights when I’ve gone out to dinner, people have been speaking English (or really bad Chinese) or some Chinglish. I don’t get it—you sign up for a program knowing full well there’s a language pledge, so why the hell don’t you adhere to it? When I was walking out of the restaurant today at dinner, one of my classmates spoke to me in English, and I answered in Chinese. It was a rather short conversation, but I refuse to speak English. Sure, I’ve slipped up with a word or two, but that’s pretty much unavoidable. You’re here to learn Chinese—USE IT.

I’ve also noticed that here, I try to be around guys more than girls. I think it’s because when I’m at Wellesley, I don’t have the option to even see a guy, let alone eat dinner with six of them. In my opinion, guys are better at having fun because it’s less structured. We all know I’m a big planner, but it seems to me that if you had a room of guys and a separate room of girls and gave each one a balloon and a rubber band, I guarantee you that the room of guys would be laughing in no time. This is not to say that I don’t have fun with girls, because I do. Quite often, actually; it’s just that it’s a different fun, and since I don’t get that fun at school, I have to get it here. But since I’m socially awkward, it’s hard work for me to have fun either way.

I have finally learned how to swear in Chinese. I wanted to learn when I was in Shanghai last June, but when I asked one of the students to teach me he just blushed and shook his head. Luckily, Tianqi is awesome (in many ways) and taught me how to say, “What the fuck are you doing?” That would be:

Ni ta ma de zai gan ma!

“Ta ma” means his/her mom. Isn’t it interesting that on both sides of the Pacific, referring to one’s mother is considered an insult? There are a lot of differences between cultures for sure, but the similarities are always rather unexpected. On the differences side, I think it’s notable that the Chinese don’t consider it taboo to comment on one’s appearance. Tianqi and other Chinese people frequently celebrate the virtues of my height, figure, and ‘beauty.’ Tianqi calls me ‘meinu,’ which means ‘beautiful girl.’ She also doesn’t hesitate to tell me how thin I am, or to pinch my sides and tell me that that’s where I have comparatively more fat.

Speaking of fat, I think I’ve ingested more grease this past week than I have in the past seven months. Chinese food is oily already, and I though Shangai food was oily, but here our dishes arrive literally drenched—swimming—drowning!—in oil. By the time I finish eating it seems like spoonfuls of oil are left on my plate. But last night I had probably the best meal I’ve had so far in Beijing. I went with Tianqi, two guys and their roommates to the famous (in the CET circle) jiaozi fanguanr ( dumpling restaurant). I’m not a huge dumpling person, but these were good. Plus, Tianqi ordered this spectacular dish called basi digua. Essentially, it was sweet potato deep fried and then coated with a sweet glaze and then served hot. Kind of like yam donuts. Oh, they were SO good I almost died. Of course, I ate too much and proceeded to eat ice cream afterward. The flavor was sunnai binggunr, a sort of yogurt-y milk flavor that kind of reminded me of yogurt gelato. CET also gave us a famous roast duck lunch yesterday, so it was a good food day.

Anyway, long update. Hope you read it all, because I think it’s interesting, and you should too. Happy 21st birthday shout out to my hao pengyou (good friend) Rachel. Wo ai ni!