Week 3 - Shisanling, 4th of July, Gugong, and Beihai Gongyuan

So we've finished what the director of the program told us was the hardest week. I don't buy it. On top of a midterm next week covering well over a thousand new vocabulary words, we have to begin outlining our social study reports and the questions we plan to ask for the interviews we will be conducting. Week 5 is what HBA calls the "Social Study Week." Every student chooses one of several trips and spends a week somewhere interviewing locals and writing about their experiences. So next Friday night, I'll be on an 11-hour train ride to Inner Mongolia for what should be an exciting break from classes. I had initially planned on going to Shanghai, but in the end I decided that if I am ever back in this country, travelling to Shanghai would be far easier than going to Inner Mongolia. Who knows. Our first breakfast there is lamb intestine. I think I'm in for a fun week.

Anyway, this past week was busy enough. On Monday, we had our first guest speaker, Gregory Gilligan, Head of Government Relations for McDonald's in China. He is an old friend of the director of HBA. Coontinuing something I mentioned last week, I thought one of his comments about conducting business in China was very interesting. A student asked him what the major differences were between business in America and business in China. He said in America, people generally start business relationships with a full level of trust. Only once someone else does something to break that trust does the relationship begin to deteriorate. In China, on the other hand, business partners begin with absolutely no trust in each other. They have to work their way up from the bottom. To me, this made sense. Down to the most basic street haggling transactions, it seems like most people here assume others are trying to rip them off. I don't get that feeling back home.

A busy week was followed by an even busier weekend. We boarded a bus at 8:00 Saturday morning to head to Shisanling (literally 13 tombs), the burial site of 13 of the Ming Dynasty emperors. Though not as fun as the Great Wall, the pictures I'm posting hopefully paint a picture of how impressive the site was. Shisanling is massive. We needed a bus to travel from tomb to tomb.

When we returned, we realized it was July 4th (none of our teachers were excited). We decided we needed a break from Chinese food and were going to try to find an American restaurant for dinner. We ended up at TGIFriday's. Can't really get more American than that.

After dinner, a bunch of students had the idea to go to a Karaoke bar. Karaoke is wildly popular here. You rent a private room, choose a bunch of songs, and compete against one other person. Only the scores never made any sense. No one cared. Probably the best song of the night was some song from SNL about putting something in a box. As many of you would expect, I didn't sing at all. I hate singing.

Sunday morning, my host father volunteered to take us to Gugong, the Forbidden City, where the Ming and Qing Dynasty Emperors lived. We met him at 9:30 and spent the day walking through Gugong and Beihai Gongyuan, a beautiful park nearby. After a late lunch (in which I felt obligated to try the strangest looking food I've ever eaten and am glad I still don't know what it was), we got back at 3:30, exhausted from hours of walking in humid weather approaching 100 degrees. Also mentally exhausted from six hours of trying to piece together our host father's rapid Chinese. Not much is more awkward then listening to a whole lot of Chinese, then trying to figure out whether you are supposed to laugh, act surprised, answer a question, or just agree. Most of the time we just said, "O, dui" - a polite way of agreeing. To be fair, I'm exaggerating a little. We are able to communicate and carry out conversations with him. It's just very challenging.

Once again, it's Sunday night and I have lots of homework to do. Nevertheless, Andy Roddick vs. Roger Federer will be on my tv in the background. Can't miss it. Plus, it's in Chinese, so it's good listening practice anyway. Until next post, check out my new pictures (HBA Week 3):

http://picasaweb.google.com/LouisGilbert15