The first month of the spring semester in China has just ended, so it seems like a good time to do a little reflection. What have I learned? While my vocabulary might not have improved as much as I had hoped, and my pronunciation seems more or less the same in my mind, I certainly have plenty of stories and thoughts to share from this month of class.
Though none of my classmates would ever admit to it, I think the best class we have this semester might very well be our Chinese Culture class. The reason no one would admit it is because the good thing about the class has nothing to do with the subject he lectures on or how interesting it is. Admittedly, most of us are really struggling to stay awake at 8:30 Wednesday morning when we get into that room and start hearing our teacher’s impressively monotone voice (impressive because Chinese is a tonal language). But this is why I say it’s a good class: we are learning first-hand what the Chinese education system is like. We walk into class, sit down, take out paper, and take notes quietly for an hour and a half as the teacher talks. He never stops. He never slows down. He just talks. He tells us what we should know, and it is our job to learn it. Sure, I’ve learned a few interesting bits of information from the content of his lectures, but mostly I’m not too terribly interested in studying the elevation changes across China or the names of all the different changes the Chinese characters have gone through in the past several thousand years. But I’ve learned a lot from his approach, understanding that he is a typical older Chinese gentleman who only knows one method of education (even when his students hardly speak Chinese!).
The one interesting topic our Culture teacher discussed was about the 56 ethnic groups in China. Having studied this country for several years already, I obviously already knew some of what he talked about, but I was struck by his representation of the relationship between the Han Chinese (the majority group, constituting appr. 92% of the whole population) and the 55 minority groups, and the importance of the issue at the national level. According to our book, the 8% of the population that is of minority descent controls/lives on nearly 64% of the total land in China, leaving only 36% of China to the other 92% of the population. Furthermore, the 36% that the Han live on is primarily in the Beijing-to-Shanghai area, leaving the minority groups to live on the periphery. All of a sudden, I understand why the government has established so many laws that favor the minorities.
I have the same teacher for my Watching Movies class at the end of the week. (Okay, okay, the literal translation of the course name is “Watch, Listen, Speak,” but really it’s just a watching movies class. Woo-hoo!) Most of the time we’re just watching Zhang Yimo movies (he’s a famous Chinese director), but of course our teacher enjoys lecturing so sometimes gets off on various tangents about the movies. I was particularly tickled the other day when he started giving us some photography lessons based on the cinematography of the movie. How bizarre to think I could understand someone talking about such things in Chinese!
My Speaking class is what we call “ma ma hu hu” in Chinese. Literally translated, that’s “horse horse tiger tiger,” but that obviously doesn’t make any sense. It just means so-so. Mediocre. Ma ma hu hu. The problem in my speaking class is that the teacher doesn’t like when we speak. At least, she doesn’t like when we speak our own things, when we don’t just use the exact sentences that are in the book. Seriously, our homework this weekend is to memorize one of the texts, word for word. Because clearly, being able to recite three unknown individual’s perspectives on the internet is going to come in handy one of these days. (Sense the sarcasm…) But that’s just one of those “Chinese approach to education” things. The most bizarre of our speaking classes so far, though, was the day we were talking about the problems related to aging populations (for the up-teenth day in a row) and she brought in a song related to the topic. Not only did she manage to find a song about such a thing, but she brought it in and made us sing it out loud together. Talk about an awkward class!
My favorite class, and hands-down the best class in terms of content and teacher, is my Writing class. Every week I have to write an essay in Chinese (400+ characters, which is maybe like a 200 word essay in English? So not too long). It’s been a really good opportunity to get some feedback on writing style and structure, besides being good to get back into the habit of organizing and writing essays. But I really had to laugh to myself the night I had to avoid going out and experiencing China in order to stay in my room and write an essay about alligators. What a strange experience, to write an essay in Chinese explaining to my teacher and classmates how to get away from an alligator if they are ever being attacked by one. Because, of course, that’s likely to happen around here!
A few other random things I’ve learned from class this month: There are 100 million people in China with the last name “Li” (Lee). Traditional Chinese music only has the five notes, do, re, mi, so, and la. I learned the Chinese term for unrequited love, which is a term I’m not even sure I know how to use in English. For some reason, using liquid laundry detergent is supposedly better for the environment than using powdered (I just don’t know why). And finally, the cause of every problem in China can be understood by one simple sentence: 人太多！(“ren tai duo!” – Too many people!)
Really, my Belgian friend and I have started counting every time we hear that claim as an excuse/cause for some situation, and to date, every single one of my teachers has used it at least once. There was one day I heard it 4 times before noon.
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