外国人的眼睛：My Year in China: Blog #1: The Great Beginning

Greetings from the land where signs don't mean anything and restaurant menus don't make sense! It has been a long first week (6 days to be completely accurate), but it has been beautiful. 'Beautiful' may seem like an oddly placed adjective, but it best describes the entering into and getting my first taste of Chinese culture. Before arriving in China, I was given many "observations" about China. I could name them and debunk these observations, but that isn't what I want my blog to be about. I want to write about my experiences and how I have seen China through my own eyes, my foreigner eyes at that.

Beginning with the flight from Houston to Beijing, I began to see differences in our cultures. Instructions were often only taken as suggestions. At one point, I heard the flight attendants announce that there was some turbulence ahead, yet it was almost as if she had said that now is the time to go to the restroom because everyone got up. My experience wasn't just a singular instance. My peers commented about the same behavior on their flights to Beijing. This disobedience, if you want to call it that, didn't end on the plane. Cigarette smoking is very prevalent in China. The first time I saw someone smoking directly under a 'NO SMOKING' sign, I wanted to take a picture. However, I soon found this was the norm. In some restaurants, they will even throw cigarettes on the ground. It is quite the change from America, but this experience made me realize a very important lesson from the beginning; I cannot impose my values/morals on China. I will not change China, rather, China will change me. I don't mean to scare anyone (I am talking to you, Mom). I won't be coming home with a smoking habit. The change will be internal. I am already learning not to be as quick to judge. While smoking in non-smoking sections or standing up when being told to sit down is highly discouraged in America, it is the norm here. As I spend more time in China, I will learn and become more accustom to this intricacies of China culture.

View from the South Gate Entrance.

Welcome to 对外经济贸易大学 or the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE). It is located in the Chaoyang district of Beijing. It has an enrollment of 13,000 Chinese students and 3,000 foreign students. Here are some pictures of my dormitory.

My Dormitory

The Bathroom (yes that's the shower).

View looking out of my window to the left.

View looking out of my window to the right.

Enough of that introductory stuff, onto the fun adventure stories. My third day in China seemed to be when the real adventures started. For the first two days, I was very jet lagged and went through the motions to get by in China. However, upon waking up on the third morning, I felt refreshed and ready to experience new things! I went to breakfast at a Taiwanese chain restaurant called Yong He King. We were served a item that resembled a breakfast burrito, the only difference was that it was some sort of bread wrapped in a burrito. It tasted great, but I still didn't know exactly what I was eating (this is a common tread in Chinese dining. You never know what you are eating until after you eat it. You get used to it eventually). The inside of the restaurant was too small to hold 36 international students, so being the innovative, American thinkers that we are, we sat on the stairs leading into the restaurant. The stairs were very wide so we weren't blocking the way into the restaurant, so we figured 'no harm, no foul.' Wrong. It could have been the shear number of international students and not the action of sitting on the stairs, but everyone that passed by us stared at us. One student joked that someone even took our picture. A Chinese roommate (some students, myself included, opted to live with a Chinese roommate. These individuals study at UIBE and help the international students through orientation) told us that it wasn't very common for people to do that and we should leave. It wasn't a big deal, but it was very interesting to be the spectacle just because we were something foreign. I didn't get to experience that much in America, rather, I probably partook in the staring.

After breakfast, we had a couple hours of orientation. The orientation covered the basics for living at UIBE. I won't bore you with the details. However, after the orientation, we went for a night out on the town to see an acrobatic show. First, we took the subway which was an adventure of it's own. We had a security check point and then were allowed to purchase our tickets. The subway was extremely crowded. I have been on the L in Chicago, the T in Boston, and the Metro in Washington DC. The Beijing Subway is much more crowded. I learned my first few Chinese mannerisms in the subway: 1) Just because it looks like an queue, doesn't mean it will be followed like one. 2) If the train you are about to get on is completely empty, two seconds after the door opens there will be no room left in the train. 3) PUSH!

Once we arrived near our theater, we went to go find food for dinner. The group was being lead by Chinese roommates and I must give them a lot of credit. I put myself in their shoes and changed the city to Chicago and there was no way I could have done a better job then them. However, we walked 25 minutes to a local mall to find some food and we needed to meet back at the theater in 15 minutes to be on time for the show. Their sense of ease they replied with when I told them that we should turn back so we would not be late to the show reminded me a lot of the summer vacations I spent in the Dominican Republic. In the Dominican Republic, there is time and then there is Dominican time. On Dominican time, 7 o'clock really means 8 o'clock. I wondered if there was also a Chinese time, but I didn't want to wait to find out. Eventually, I convinced one of the Chinese roommates to turn back so at least those who wanted to forgo dinner could make it on time to the show. The show was definitely worth missing dinner. There were jugglers, balancers, contortionists, and what I liked to call pole jumpers. If you have seen the modern version of the movie Oceans 11, then you know what I am talking about because the Chinese team member they recruit is one of these pole jumpers.

Tim at said Korean restaurant.

The forth day in China was a rude awakening. I have been studying Chinese for a little over 8 months now, but no amount of textbook work will prepare you for the real world. My friend (who has taken over five years of Chinese) and I went into a local restaurant for lunch. The fuwuyuan (server) greeted us at the door and my friend replied in Chinese, "Two people." The fuwuyuan replied with something that we thought sounded liked 2 yuan (the currency here). We were confused and my friend replied again that just us two wanted to eat. The fuwuyuan, expressionless, just replied again with 2 yuan. After he repeated it a third time, I remembered back to a Pimsleur Language Lesson that talked about restaurants. The man was saying "guan men" meaning that the restaurant was closed. Both of us ran out quickly and were quite embarrassed. We both knew the vocabulary, but the accent the man had was too hard to comprehend. We instead enjoyed a nice lunch at a Korean restaurant nearby. The fuwuyuan there was not expressionless and instead taught me some new Chinese words! The environment is my favorite classroom.

The last story I have to share is a bit personal and may seem gross to some of you, but it is part of the culture so I thought I just had to share it. There is a word "matong" in Chinese that refers to western toilets. The more prevalent case in China are the infamous squatting toilets. I was given the choice on my fourth day to either wait until I returned to my dorm for the luxury of the matong, or try out a squatting toilet. I opted for the latter. I wanted to experience it, and experience it I did. I almost took a picture, but after thinking about it, I thought that was gross and too touristy. To explain the setup, there is communal toilet paper on the wall before you enter the stall (This is only the case in fancier places. Most of the time you must supply your own). Once inside your stall, there is what looks like to be a bedpan mounted into the ground, a little button to step on to flush, and a waste bin to throw away your paper. Without going into too much detail, I had quite a few worries, but overall, the experience went off without a hitch. I guess this is one way to get stronger legs!

I hope you enjoyed my first blog post. The length may very from post to post, but since I was given some free time before my trip, I thought I would spoil you all. I promise that my posts will cover a variety of topics and conveyed through various mediums (as you have seen I will try some Vlogs, blogs, and maybe just a series of pictures).

What's next? I am now headed off onto the Silk Road! I will spend from August 16-29th traveling the historical sites from Xi'an to Dunhuang. I am currently unsure if I will have internet access, but I keep a journal. If it is the case that I don't have internet, then I will post another blog upon my arrival back to UIBE. If I do have access to internet, expect another blog update in about a week!

Until next time...

Zachary Zehner
张睿杰

Extra Cool Pictures I didn't talk about in my blog:

Tim and I stumbled upon this gem while trying to find Nanluoguxiang. It is part of the East Imperial City Wall during the Ming and Qing Dynasty (partially restored).