It's a small world after all...

This has been quite an eventful week. It feels more like a month…

First and foremost, it's a small world. On Friday during lunch, I saw someone who looked strikingly similar to a girl we went to graduate school with at NYU. The girl I had in mind was Chinese so I started to think, 'Ok Andrea, you have met over 100 Chinese people in the past two weeks; your eyes are playing tricks on you.' But then she walked over to our table and it WAS HER. Victoria Kong, one of our fellow CGA alumni, happens to be here at the very same, very TINY university on the other side of the world, not through the same classmate we got these jobs through. Not only is she here, she is studying Chinese for a whole year, maybe even two years, LIVING IN THE SAME BUILDING AS US. I am still flabbergasted by this mega-coincidence. It is so nice to have not only another friend here, but a friend who knows so many of the same people we know and so many of the same places we know from New York and NYU.






This weekend was also very action-packed. Saturday, we met up with a young British guy who was introduced to me through one of the board members at Mission Markets. He has been living here in China for a few years, but in Chongqing and was here in Beijing on business for the weekend. Appropriately, he took us to the best (according to Zagat, at least) Peking duck restaurant in Beijing. This place was the real deal. (Li Qun for any of you Peking duck snobs out there.) It was back in the hutongs near the Forbidden City with grease on the walls and low ceilings. I had never had duck before so I was a bit nervous I might not like it. Needless to say, that was not a problem. The duck was AMAZING. It was so juicy and flavorful and they serve it with this plum sauce. It definitely served as the perfect first Peking duck experience.




Sunday I had my first tutoring session with young 12-year old Nancy. She is a very sweet girl, daughter of one of the faculty members here. Her English is pretty good for a 12-year old, even better than some of my Oral English students. Teaching new words to Chinese people is becoming one of my favorite things -- it is incredibly difficult to explain a new word to a student using only very simple and basic words. I really enjoy the challenge and it makes me think so much about languages and my own word use. I am realizing how much I ask questions by simply making statements but having the tone go up at the end. You know what I mean. If you say, "You came from the subway." That is a statement. But if you say, "You came from the subway?" the tone goes UP at the end and it becomes a question. In China, they use tones only within syllables in words. They have certain words that need to be added to a sentence to make it a question; the intonation is not part of it. So I find myself saying these statements and then having to repeat them with the right word at the beginning so they will recognize it as a question, like, "Did you come from the subway?" Otherwise they just stare at me blankly because I just said a statement and they aren't sure how to respond to it. It is making me incredibly aware of exactly how much I do that.

Another highlight from this week was my adventure to Walmart. Yes, Walmart in China. Who would have thought? I have to say, walking around that supercenter felt so familiar, it was actually pleasant. I found a mattress pad (beds here are INCREDIBLY firm, like, bruises your hip-bone hard) and some better pillows so I was very happy. Don't get me wrong, it was a much different place than Walmart in The States. All of the products and brands you know and love had modified Chinese logos; it was a little bizarre. The strangest part hands down was the food section. There were tanks of live fish you could pick out to take home. You know how at the grocery store there are open shelves in the produce section with apples piled high that you can just take and put in a bag to add to your cart? They had very similar things in the meat area but for raw chicken legs. Also, deep open topped freezers with loose slabs of racks of ribs that looked like you could just pile them into your cart. I really wish I had taken pictures but since we still don't have our phones connected (got SIM cards today!! just need to 'unlock' the phones - hopefully tomorrow) I haven't been carrying mine around with me, let alone charging it. I will definitely take photos next time and be sure to post them since the scene is really unbelievable in that meat department.

Speaking of strange scenes.. In China, they have outdoor adult playgrounds with non-electric exercise equipment and there is one very close to our school, on the way walking to the subway station. We are told these are very common here and the elderly love to make use of them. They have these elliptical type machines, rowing machines, nordic-track-type machines, and other weird things I can't really explain, like a bunch of bus driver wheels that I guess stretches their arm muscles out. Again, this is one of those things I will take a picture of next week once my phone is in business and I have it charged and on me 24/7.

In other coincidental news, we had one of our fellow NYU-ers come through Beijing on a visit this week, Irene. She is planning to move to Shanghai in March so she was here scoping out the scene with her parents. Chris, Vickie and I met her for lunch/dinner on Thursday and we had ourselves a nice little CGA reunion China-style. Delicious Shanghai cuisine of dim-sum was involved. Again, it was so nice to visit with people who know all of the same people as we do and who are as excited to be here as we are. It will be great if she moves out here! (Chris might mention during this paragraph something about seeing the US Energy Secretary at Irene's hotel, but I find that much less exciting than the dim-sum.. It was that good!)

Thursday night we went to a sustainable agriculture talk at The Bookworm, which is a western bookstore in the western area of Sanlitun. The talk was super interesting and we learned a lot about how China has been raging sustainable agriculture for millennia. Unfortunately, I didn't spend too much time schmoozing since I've been a bit under the weather this week. Eight AM classes four days a week are kicking my butt!

On the classes note, things are improving with every class. I am much less nervous with each class that passes. The English kids are still the most stressful since they are just so hard to communicate with and to keep under control as there are just so many of them. This week the topic was food so I had them come prepared to talk about a dish local to their hometown. During the first half of class, I showed a powerpoint with pictures of different foods on it and the English names of the foods. Some of them were very basic, like apple and banana. But I purposely included local foods that I have asked very fluent speakers what it is and they say they know what it is but don't know how to say it in English. I set up the animations on PPT so that the pictures came up first and they all knew what it was called in Chinese but they had to guess what it was in English. I was completely unsure as to whether that method was going to be too easy that it would borderline insulting but it ended up being a huge hit! I think I will use that method with this group going forward, show pictures of things relating to the topic of the day and have them learn the English word for it. I have to use pictures since I don't know Chinese.

The economics students are very smart and I find myself incredibly curious what they will think about various policy debates in the United States. This week we spoke about financial regulation and whether the markets need more or less of it. It boiled down to a long-term view (in favor of regulation) or a short-term view (in favor of less regulation) and the majority fell on the side of the long-term view. I drew some cultural parallels to the Chinese being traditionally patient and long-view oriented. I remember reading this summer about how some ancient Chinese rulers would enact policies that were part of a 200 year plan where they would be long gone before any of the results were realized. I tell them Americans want everything and they want it yesterday. They argue the structure of the political system plays a role since China is not a democracy; long-term policies can be enacted and the public just has to accept it. This is in contrast to the US where policymakers are concerned with keeping their voter base happy so they can keep getting re-elected, which means focusing more on short term results. Each of my classes said somewhat similar things but brought up very different points. Next week we are talking about world currencies and what impact bringing back the gold standard would have.

I have to mention Chris's foray into political punditry. He has now been on CCTV's show Dialogue twice! They asked him back a second time to talk about Libya. It turns out his journalism training may have prevented him from being too forward; they actually said to him during the commercial break that he didn't have to be so "subtle". He is still learning what flies and what doesn't here so it's better for him to err on the safe side. He did a great job and I am very proud of him! Here is the link to view the video.


Tonight we were able to meet up with the niece of one of Chris's father's clients. Her name is Leanne and she was very sweet. She took us out for our first Sichuan food experience here in China. (Sichuan = SPICY) It was one of the best meals we have had here so far. We will definitely go back there. It was great to visit with her. She was about my age maybe a little bit younger and has been living in Beijing since 2003. She seems like someone I would want to be friends with in the real world so I think this blind date was a success =)

This week we made plans to venture up to the Great Wall during our week off of school the first week in October. The Great Wall is only about 45 minutes outside the city of Beijing but we wanted to make a mini vacay out of it so we are going to stay at a hotel up next to the wall for two nights. I am very excited to do some hiking and see some of the amazing scenery firsthand.

In the meantime, we will eat our way through this weekend and get through next week because after that, it's a whole week off! Great Wall vacation!

PS -- I think Dingdong dropped my class..?


(photo of the Beijing Opera House)