Abroad In China 体验中国

It is official, I have asked my chinese roommate / the dark horse china man / Loreal spokesman to only speak chinese to me (he comes and goes at mysterious times and works for Loreal, hence the nick-names). ONLY chinese. It will be interesting to see where our relationship goes. Actually we have already talked some and he seems way more comfortable in his native language. I have a feeling this switch will be more fun for him than it will be for me. Oh well. I was reflecting on how I seem to have forgotten how to do actual work here in China. I don’t want to come home having wished I had done more or learned more. This will definitely help my chinese.

Today was the first fridged day of the season. The perfect mid 60′s weather couldn’t last forever. I was ready for a change anyway. It is true, I am missing the New England fall. Hard to beat that. On an awesome note, I just I booked my visa and now I am all ready to go to Vietnam. I am so pumped. VIETNAM!  With 5 other guys, it is going to be a total bro trip. You know what that means, hookers and beer! I’m just kidding, I hear the Vietnamese beer is bad. (Mom, Dad, Grandpa that was a joke). One thing I know for sure is that I am looking forward to coming back and starting all my stories about Vietnam with “this one time, back in NAM…”

Little know fact: rock climbing is the coolest sport in the world. If you have any trouble believing this, just youtube Alex Honnold. HOLY crap. My hands get sweaty and my heart starts racing just thinking about the things he does. In fact, I am going to youtube him now.  Wow, the kid’s amazing. I am hoping to do something like that, but on a smaller scale in Vietnam. There is this thing called Deep Water Soloing, and it is when you climb a cliff on the water as high as you can with no rope. Then, when you mess up or when you can’t go any higher you fall into the water. Makes my lips numb just thinking about it! (What About Bob reference for those who have not seen this hilarious movie). Can’t wait to try it. There will be some unbelievable climbing. And in my case, some really great falling into the water. Can’t even wait.

T0day marks the halfway point of the semester here in China, so naturally, we all got together and voted on the “chinese star.” Basically, the chinese star is the person who we think so far has worked the hardest and deserves to be recognized for it. Ok, first let me give you a quick back story. Last week we watched this BCC documentary about the chinese schooling system. The underlying message of the movie is that being a student in china is no fun and tons of pressure (at least that is what I got out of it). In addition, public positive rewards for good behavior and public punishment (in the US this is called public humiliation) for bad behavior is quite common here within the education system. Take this kindergarden class the documentary focused on. These kids were learning the important value of taking good care of your things. First, the teacher picked out the most well behaved, top student to judge the quality of everyone eraser. This “best student” picked what she thought were the three erasers in the worst shape (these kids obviously did not know how to take care of their stuff). Then, these three kids were brought to the front of the class carrying their “bad” erasers and the teacher says to the class of 5 years olds, “ok class, by a show of hands, which student has the WORST eraser?” The vote comes in and one poor little boy, who by a vote of his peers, is the worst at taking care of this things, is left up in the front of the class. It’s not over yet, though. As if that isn’t punishment enough, he is forced to wear a the sweater labeled the “bad student sweater,” a ratty, old, torn up sweater that is equivalent to a dunce cap, reenact a dialogue with fellow students that talks about the importance of taking care of your things, and go around to EVERY other student and apologize to them individually. Not surprisingly, the kid goes back to his seat, humiliated and starts to cry. If that happened in America, this kid’s parents would be all over the school with law suits in a second. The teacher would probably get fired.

Our chinese star wasn’t this brutal, but it quickly became apparent that the goal of this voting process was not only to recognize the hardest worker, but to publicly illustrate every person’s individual standing or perceived diligence, among teachers and fellow classmates. Here is the scene. We are all gathered to come into a room and vote for who we think is the “chinese star.” Student’s votes count as 1 and teacher’s votes count as 3. We hand in our votes. Then, the votes are read aloud one by one. Students names are put up on the board, and votes are counted so it becomes immediately clear to everybody who people have voted for, and who they haven’t. I don’t think any of us really cared that much, but if you got no votes and everybody knows you got not votes, it can’t feel too good. These chinese teachers definitely did not realize just how chinese they were being. They probably all grew up with this kind of teaching / motivating method. Kinda brutal if you ask me. At least nobody had to wear the dunce sweater. Needless to say, the final message was “work harder and you too could be a chinese star,” which really meant “if you work harder people might think better of you next time! and we will ALL know!” Motivation fueled by public embarrassment and opinions of friends. So chinese. That being said, I doubt people will really change because of this (how hard working you are isn’t really what we care others think of us as), but if this happened in kindergarden DIFFERENT story entirely. For me, it just a little shocking and reflective of some cultural differences.

Today was a fun day. Shelly, Rocio, and I went to see the Shanghai Art Museum. Free admission and they say it is the best in china. My verdict after going…I haven’t seen many museums in china but it was pretty good. Definitely one of the better museums I have been to. Afterwards we just walked around and explored some cool building. Couple quick highlights: finding a hidden rooftop bar,  spontaneous, deep life talks in a sky top lounge of the biggest Mariot I have ever seen, and of course drinking some delicious mongo crunch. Nothing like some mongo crunch to brighten your day.

Shells, quick shout out, check out this life changing epiphany. In fact I give credit to Andrew Beuhler for this one, who threw out this gem of a sentence the other day. It is better to do something and regret doing it than NOT do something and regret the lack of action. I think this is a good way to live. You learn way more from action than from inaction. Pushing your comfort zone is the only way to grow. It is the slight hesitation you have to just overcome.

On a rougher note, my buddy Nate and his girlfriend back home of a year just broke up the other day. So brutal, those are never good times. If there is ever a place to distract yourself or find fun things to do, it is shanghai. Hope he pulls through.

The group of americans studying abroad in Shanghai is starting to feel incredibly small. I mean everyone from all the programs who are here. It is not uncommon to meet someone around and have a mutual shanghai American friend.

Just real quick. Wanted to post something my dad said while he was here that I liked.

“Adventure is inconvenience rightly considered.” 

My dad speaks the truth.

Ok let me do a little follow up from my last post. Quickly, hanging out with my dad for the week was awesome. I showed him all around the city, some of my favorite spots. Though it did make me miss home, overall, it was just great to see him. One of the benefits of him being here is that we got to go to all the places to eat that I am normally to cheap to pay for myself. One night, we met up with some friends here and went to the Hyatt on the Bund. Probably the best view of any city I have ever seen was just to the right of us as we sat next to ground to ceiling windows in a “living room” style restaurant 50 floors above the city…on the river front. It was pretty spectacular. Plus the food was amazing.

Another place we went to was a brazilian meet place. Little fact that I didn’t previously know, but now I do: brazilians know how to cook a steak. Literally the meet melts in your mouth, which before I didn’t think was possible. They say they don’t put anything on it either. The place is called Latina. If there is one near you, i highly recommend you try this place out. If you like meet, you will not regret it.

So yes, I also have a different chinese teacher. Still a young, female grad student but the feel of the class is totally different. Just now getting used to it. Besides wearing the same outfit for multiple days in a row, she is really nice. GuLaoshi, which is actually the same name as my high school teacher.

Since ping pong didn’t work out, I decided to start up a new sport. I gotta be doing something. Brazillian Juijutzi was obviously my next logical option, so thats what I am doing! Started last week, and so far so good. I have been telling people I am doing it for the fitness and sport of it, but really it is for or all those street fights I am constantly getting into-really it has become a problem. Chinese street fighters, watch out. I can now consistently throw you on the ground if you come up behind me with a choke hold, as long as it is not too hard.

My new philosophy on life: mental rehearsal. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but I just read this book called Evolve Your Brain, recommended to me by my Intro to Neuroscience TA, and it has gotten me psyched about the power of visualization done on a daily basis. My roommate Jacob could tell you all about this, cause we have talked all about it. Let me run this down for you, this actually is pretty cool. If you visualize yourself practicing the a piece on the piano, you will be JUST as effective in learning the piece than if you had physically practiced (your mind doesn’t know the difference!). Just by thinking, you can change your physical ability. You do this by altering the way in which your mind is wired. By mentally rehearsing, you create a new neural net for this new piano piece that involves your fingers “knowing” how to play the piece, without actually moving you fingers. THAT is cool, and it applies to so many areas of your life.  It all comes down to the ability to activate the frontal lobe (the part of the brain that is responsible for attention, planning, abstract thought, and learning new behaviors). We all know the feeling of getting lost in an activity because we are paying so much attention to it. It is these times, when your attention is so great that you lose track of time and space, when your frontal lobe is running at full force. If you can replicate this state while visualizing can actually consciously change the way your mind is wired and learn a new skill or behavior. MAN this stuff is cool. If you are aware of what you want to learn, and know what you have to change, just by thinking you can do so much! haha I’m getting all worked up. Pretty cool stuff though!

Vietnam! I am leaving next week with some buddies. Scuba diving on Pu Cok and rock climbing in Ha Long Bay. 10 days. Sick. I am also interested in how they perceive Americans there, given our recent not so good history. I’ll be just to blog about that.

It has been a long time since I have last posted. Even though I have a chinese tomorrow, after a friendly reminder from my sister, I decided to just write something quickly now. Since my last post, many things have happened. I went to Tibetian China for a week, I have even more really cool people, I have planned a trip to go scuba diving and rock climbing in Vietnam, I have had 3 changes in chinese teachers, I have cemented a newly found philosophy on living and studying abroad, and I have even started training with a brazillian jiujitsu club. I’ll talk about all of that in another post, when I have more time and I when I am not preoccupied with my test tomorrow and what I am about to quickly write about.

I think times of panic are the most revealing of one’s character. My dad had planned to come out to visit me in Shanghai. He was supposed to be boarding a plane right now actually. I just now talked talked to him on the phone and he said that he was at the airport, all packed, checking in when he was reminded that he needed a visa to get on the plane. For whatever reason, neither one of us ever thought about him needing a visa. Though I had gotten one before I came, I think I thought that coming for a week was a different than coming for 4 months. I thought wrong. The required change of mindset, from “I will be meeting my dad at the airport tomorrow”, to “I am not sure when he will be able to come” is a hard one. I know it is for him too. He kept saying he was “sick from it.” We were both so excited for him to come tomorrow. Now it is just a race for him to get a visa and catch another flight over asap. His visit will have to be cut short; the question is just how much.  I know my dad is doing whatever he can. If anyone can make it happen, it’s my dad. I will write another post soon about what is going to happen when I know more. I will also write a more extensive post later about my life since my last post, because it has been really exciting.

So my internet is becoming more and more spotty. I did actuallywrite a post about the weekend in HK last night but it wouldn’t let me post it. I think the internet is working now. Here is is.

And I’m back. Hong Kong was unbelievable. Turns out Frasier’s dad got us this super nice hotel, so we were living in the lap of luxury all weekend. Our room was on the 43rd floor of the hotel, called The Comrade, and it had a gorgeous view of Hong Kong / Kawloon. If I ever had any need for a western fix, that need has been met. Hong Kong knows how to do it all. We ate everything from roasted goose to “chicago style” burgers and milkshakes. Again, if I ever get to internet that is fast enough, I will upload some pictures. We also hung out with a couple of guys that Frasier hopes to work for in Hong Kong (the trip was technically a networking trip for Frasier), but these guys were great–total big shots in this company called South Co. There were two old guys, one of the guy’s son, Frasier, me, and this private jet pilot we met along the way named Frank. He tagged a long too. Frank was somethin else. Besides feeling that he was following us around a bit (he was in HK by himself), he had some unbelievable stories about his travels. Because of the recession, he has the year off. I guess billionaire businessmen have had to scale back on their weekend trips to Nantucket via their private jet, poor guys. However, not poor Frank. With his time off, which is really more of a forced, mini retirement, he travelled to every place I have ever heard of and more. With all of his pilot buddies and special pilot discounts, he told us he had been on 19 different trips this year so far. In fact, he was only in HK to kill time before he could fly back to London from beijing. The guy is a globe trotter if I have ever met one.

Anyway, so the gang all went to a jazz bar called Ned Kelly’s Saturday night. To give you a sense of the place, most of the staff and players were wearing shirts that said “Ned Kelly’s: Jazz, Blues, and Booze.” I loved it. Every member of the band was over 60 and they were phenomenal, hadn’t lost it. The most amazing thing is that they could play amazingly and drink simultaneously. The leader of the group, Colin, was buds with one of the big shot South Co. guys named Rob and the two of them kept taking shots together during the set. Very impressive. Colin played and sang amazingly. Lot of old jazz classics. Then there was the trumpet player, Pepe, who had a round imprint on his lips from the mouthpiece of the trumpet. The best was after his solo’s when we would cheer so loud he would smile and flash a huge gap between his teeth. The guy also wore 70’s-style, tinted, round glasses. What I am trying to say is that Pepe is the man. The rest of the band was great too.

So this big shot who was taking shots with Colin, his name is Rob. Going into this bar with Rob was like being with the President of Hong Kong. He knew everybody, and everyone loved him. It was really amazing to see how he just owned the freakin place. He had been going there for 20 years. It was his spot.

After the Ned Kelly’s Brook (the son), Frasier, Frank and I hit up the biggest block party I have every seen. These HK streets are transformed at around midnight on weekends, the “bewitching hour” Rob called it in his half drunken state. We got there at midnight, and it was such a fun scene. People just take over the street. Bars and clubs blast music outside. I actually met a couple from Watertown, Mass! We also ended up hanging out with these girls who were teaching english in Hong Kong. One was from Manchester and the rest were from Nova Scotia. It’s crazy how diverse HK is.

Grandpa, you will be glad to know that I got back home to my apartment safely. Looking forward to our next skype time!

Hope everyone is doing well back home. I’ve been seeing some pics from the football games, can’t believe I’m missing all that. I already can’t wait to see everyone in January.

Yep, I have a crush on one of the chinese teachers. She is like 24 and super cute. Mostly she is really funny and laughs a lot. We had chinese game night and so a lot of the chinese teachers were there showing us different games. All of our chinese teachers are like 23-25 so they are fun to hang out with. Jiao laoshi (the best one) was showing us chinese chess, so I played chinese chess. haha it was great. She is just so happy and funny. The whole time while we were playing I was just trying to make her laugh haha it was a good time.

Tomorrow morning none of us have class so we are having breakfast at nate’s place. I’m bringing some eggs. For those of you who don’t know Nate, he is a great cook, and a great guy for always inviting us to his place to eat. Fraiser, his roommate, who is 26, is also a great guy. The two of us are going to Hong Kong this weekend. Should be sweet, I am actually taking a night train so that will be an experience. Those two are probably my closest friends so far, those I still like almost everyone here so much. Max, Zain, Rocio, Lay, Lexi, Jacob, Nawei. Fraiser and Nate’s chinese roommate is also THE man. His name is Kuan, but his friends call him Kuanzi (zi means kid, because he is so young for his grade all of his friends call him a kid, but it is definitely also joke about Kwanzaa, I think) so I call him Kuanzi. He is the most helpful, hilarious, earnest, happiest chinese person I know. He is our super hero. He is just hilarious and awesome all at once.

One more thing then I gotta do some homework. I am psyched. I am officially joining a nearby college’s ping pong team. The opportunity came up and I was like YES. I am fully aware that I will most likely get my ass kicked, but I am very excited to try to beat at least a couple chinese people at their own sport. Mostly though, I figured that ping pong is so huge here, how could I NOT be on a team, especially since I have played a little ping pong in my day. I ping some pong. Can’t wait to see how I stack up / represent america in ping pong to the best of my ability.

On a quick side note, the kid who is my contact into this club called me today. I haven’t met him yet, so he introduced himself. He said his name was dangxiao. He only speaks a little english so he speaks chinese to me and i speak chinglish to him. Anyway, so he says his name is dangxiao, but then he goes, but you can call me Leslie if you like. hahah. I started laughing a little on the phone, but he was serious. Can’t wait to play some ping pong with a chinese guy named Leslie.

So I just picked up some laundry I had done at a place just down the street, and wow, when the chinese say the do laundry they do laundry. I get my clothes back, each piece of clothing pressed, folded, and INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPED in plastic. Now whenever I next wear these clothes I will first have to UNWRAP them. It is going to feel like christmas morning every morning. I can’t wait. I took a picture of the wrapping job. If I can figure out how to upload a picture on this thing I will show you guys. I just want to say one thing about this though: THIS is exactly the reason why China is becoming a super power. They go the extra mile. All the time.

On an unrelated topic, last night a bunch of us went to this club called MINT. The reason why it is worth writing about is because it is the nicest, most expensive, most exclusive club in shanghai. In order to get in you have to be on “the list.” Which means you either have to be a celebrity (Lady Gaga and Kobe Bryant were both there very recently) or buy a table which is 5000 kuai or about $800 (US dollars). Yeah. What we did to get in was we split the cost over a lot of people so it wasn’t that bad, but even still getting past the bouncers was very difficult. One of the cool things about this club is that it is in this office building and is completely inconspicuous. You would have no idea from the outside that it is the nicest club in shanghai. It is in this tall office building. So after you get past the very intimidating bouncers you get onto an elevator and go to the top floor. The first thing you see when you get out of the elevator is a massive shark tank. How badass is that? Pretty much everyone in the club are high rollers. A bunch of really rich guys and hot girls looking for rich guys. I got a standard drink there…80 kuai. Which is about $13. That is expensive anywhere but especially in china where you can also get shots of tequila for 10 kuai or a buck 50. The place was nuts. It was so fun. The rich expat life is a life I could get used to around here.

One more abrupt segway. This monday is the Mid-Autumn festival in china, which means we have a long weekend! That also means that some of my friends and I are taking a train to Suzhou, which is a city built around water about an hour train ride from here. People have said it is the “venice of china.” I’m psyched. Apparently there are canals all around the city and you take water taxi’s everywhere. They are also known for the gardens, so we are going to be checking those out. We are going tomorrow morning (Sunday) and getting back Monday night, so it is a quick visit, but it will be great to get out of Shanghai for a little. Also next weekend I am going to Hong Kong with a buddy. We are finding cheap flights and just going. I love it.

Sending love to my family and friends. If you are reading this, you are probably either family or friend, and so we should Skype. My Skype name is dcgleason. Add me!

Today in class we saw a documentary about Tianamen square  and the so called “new generation” of china (the actual documentary is banned here in china, but our teacher, who is chinese showed it to us anyway). It was all about the many demonstrations and political / social unrest among mostly young people in china in the 1980′s. We got the whole story, and although I had learned it before, I didn’t really know a lot of the details surrounding the Tianamen incident. The movie was interesting / provocative, but it was more interesting talking to my chinese roommate about it tonight. He is a really smart business student at one of the best economics schools in china and although he knew of the incident, he had never seen any pictures from it or had never actually learned about it in school. He says schools just “skip over” that part of chinese history. I was shocked that he had never seen that iconic picture of the unknown man standing in front of the tanks. He didn’t even know what i was talking about. So I went on my proxy (which allows me to get around the great firewall of china), and googled tianamen square and showed him the picture  and a video clip. It was the first time he has seen any of it. It was so fascinating hearing his reaction. He obviously thought it was horrible, but he felt as if dwelling on it wasn’t worth one’s time as long as we work to make it not happen again. This is a very sensitive topic, one the people here in china generally stay away from. In fact, chinese people generally stay away from politics in general. Nawei said himself, there is no point in worrying about the government because there is nothing you can do to change it. From what Nawei says, it seems as if people put all of their attention on the good of their family’s lives and of their own lives. They do what they can to make money a lead as good of a life as they can, and they pay little attention to what goes on in the government. That is SO different than in America, where people are constantly arguing over politics.

After Nawei saw the video clips/ pictures he said that he couldn’t really comment much on the situation. He did say something that was very interesting though. He said that western thought is very focused on the individual, which i think is true, but chinese think very much on the scale of the majority. They think about what is good for the nation, for china. RIght now China is developing at unprecedented rates. The government pours money from all over the country into specific cities and modernizes them extremely quickly. Nawei said that often they develop city by city, and in the meanwhile leave so much of china untouched. It is China’s nationalistic mindset that allows for this type of piece-wise, uneven yet rapid development. In a situation when everybody contributes to the development of china’s main cities, china city people benefit but many people do not see the result of the money they are giving the government. It has resulted in a social economic gap between the rich and the poor that is huge and getting bigger in China. The benefit of a unified central government with all of the control is that things happen quickly.

Back to what Nawei said that was so interesting. He said that he couldn’t comment because he didn’t know what was good for the majority at the time. He also said that perhaps if the China government had been easier on the demonstrators that it would have set a precedent for uprising, for people complaining about their problems. That is not to say that Nawei thought it was a good thing (Nawei is one of the nicest people i know here in china and wouldn’t hurt a fly), but the fact that he even considered the possible detrimental effect on the country as a whole is so representational of the chinese way of thinking. And i guess my strong reaction to what he said is so representational of American thought, which is built upon certain basic “unalienable rights” of the individual. Taking a step back from all of this, it’s so hard to talk about any of this stuff without speaking from standpoint tainted by the biases of our own home, family, society. It is so hard for me to understand how people can so willingly give up certain human rights for the benefit of the “the majority,” how people can live so easily knowing that they have no influence on national policy. It seems oppressive, but people oblige.  I guess they have no choice. Nawei said that chinese people are very adaptive and always always have hope. I have actually heard that in other places too. That’s awesome and so impressive.

I explained all of my reactions to Nawei, and he basically said that if China allowed itself to be influenced by western ways of thinking they wouldn’t be making incredible advances they are making now. What is good for america isn’t necessarily good for china, and american’s just assume that what is good for them is good for everyone else (classic american ego for ya). For people with such a different mindset, democracy might not be suitable. I would believe that. Nawei also said that as american’s our opinions have weight because we are on top. If China becomes the next world superpower, people may be more accepting of the chinese way. Even if i don’t fully agree, I understand his point. I do think that valuing the individual is a concept that pervasive among many countries / societies. My perception is that in china “western influence” is a very broad term that basically describes all European / American countries and that China, a very “non-western” country, feels like it has to prove itself and legitimize a way of doings things that is different yet possibly equally good or maybe better. This is a case of respecting our differences and that is how i ended it with my good friend Nawei. I’m very lucky to have such an open / nice person who is willing to talk about these sensitive topics. The differences still blow my mind though.

This post was a bit of a ramble (excuse the many typos I am sure I have), but I knew that I would forget my thoughts if I didn’t just bang them out right now. If you read through it all, you are amazing.

Sorry for the wait Sara! Told you this was a monster.