It’s been a few weeks since I have returned from Beijing, China. It’s still hard to believe that I spent the past 5 months abroad in a completely culturally different country. I’ve fallen in love with the city, the language, learning the history, and with the tight-knit group of friends that I’m glad to call my “China Family.” The thing is, I can’t even begin to describe my experience or put it all into words.

My Spring Semester China Family

My Janterm Semester China Family

Flash backwards to fall semester, when my family and friends were asking:

“Where are you going?”
“China!”
“…Oh. Why are you going there?”
“I want to improve my Chinese.”
“Why don’t you just talk to your parents in Chinese? Can’t you learn from them?”

All the responses were similar. There may have been only been a handful of people who really seemed excited at the idea of studying abroad in China. A lot of people believe that China is really dirty, or the people are rude, they are concerned with what’s in the food, or they think it’s weird that there are a lot of fake designer things there. Most of all, I feel like everyone was wondering why I didn’t choose somewhere more scenic and popular – places like Paris, Italy, or Australia. Everyone was set on the question: Why on earth would I choose to go to Beijing?

My main purpose for choosing to study in Beijing, China through the CET Program, was because I wanted to improve my understanding of the Chinese language – speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The unique thing that attracted me to the program was that I would be 100% committed to the language pledge, a contract I signed saying that I would speak using only Chinese, 24 hours of the day, 7 days of the week. Sure, I could speak to my own parents at home. But a 20-year-old habit of speaking to my parents in English was not very easy to break. I needed a stable environment that I could practice my Chinese in. If everyone around me was required to speak Chinese as well, and if everything around me was written in Chinese, I would be forced to practice Chinese. And that was one of the program’s many perks that I saw to my advantage. And I can proudly say that I kept to that pledge, and saw my Chinese improve tremendously. My parents had always tried to get me to speak Chinese when I was younger, but as soon as I learned English in kindergarten, I had refused to speak Chinese. My friends only knew English, so that’s all I thought I needed. What’s the use of learning Chinese when my friends didn’t know it? It’s hard because i’m expected to speak in perfect Chinese because of my physical appearance, so I’ve always felt extra pressure to speak Chinese well. That pressure paired with my insecurity in speaking the language made me more and more afraid to speak it. So I didn’t. After returning to the US, i’m glad to say that I now speak to my parents in Chinese, and I know that they’re touched that i’ve changed my habit. One of my parent’s friends had recently told me how my mom gushed to her that I was finally speaking to her in Chinese, and that made me really happy.

Beijing has an intense air pollution problem –there’s no doubt. Also, the old streets and alleyways may not be as glamorous as NYC. But the thing is, there is so much culture and history in this city. And I got to experience it all firsthand. In Beijing, there’s so many historical sites: the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace, the Great Wall, the National Museum, just to name a few – there wasn’t enough time to visit them all! Another reason why I chose China was because Chinese culture is so incredibly different from American culture, and there was so much for me to learn. For example, in China, when a person says “You’ve gained weight,” it is not an insult. It is simply an observation, and the Chinese people won’t take it to heart. However, in America, when someone comments “You’ve gained weight,” then that person may feel incredibly self-conscious and may even be upset at the person who commented. Chinese people also are more conservative when it comes to clothing – so many girls wore stockings under shorts and skirts… even when it was 100 degrees outside! Also, just like how American girls are obsessed with tanning and being “bronze,” Chinese girls are obsessed with being pale and lighter-skinned. During the summertime, you can’t be surprised if you see a bunch of umbrellas open in broad sunlight.

Another thing that goes on my list of my top 5 favorite things about China was the food – how delicious and how relatively inexpensive it was compared to American food! I got to try so many new foods in China – authentic Kung Pao Chicken, Tomato & Eggs (a personal fav), Egg Pancakes, Pork Buns, Peking Duck, Fried Scorpion (a must for the full tourist experience), Eggplant (which I had refused to eat in America, but ended loving in China), etc. The average cost of my breakfast was $0.50-$1.00 USD, and the average cost of my dinner was anywhere from $2-8 USD. The best part was tax and tip were all automatically included into these prices. The food was so good and so cheap, so naturally, I ate so much of it. I’m quite the eater. You can understand my pain, coming back to NYC where you’d be happy to get away with a $15 meal. I’m going to miss the delicious, authentic Chinese food!

I could write a whole book about my China experience. There’s just so much to say about it! However, I know no one wants to sit there reading a super long blog, so instead, please enjoy this video with clips that I pieced together to illustrate my experience. Luckily, my camera had this neat little function where it could record videos and take photos simultaneously. Sometimes, photos can’t always tell the full story. Granted, nothing can really take the place of the actual experience. However, with these little snapshots, I was able to capture the little moments right before the click of the shutter – sometimes I got a video of somebody dancing, or a face popping in and disappearing right before a click, or a switch of a facial expression. I hope that everyone can get a little taste of my semester abroad!

Zai jian zhong guo! (Goodbye China)

Cheers,
Sophia
金羽庭 (Jin YuTing)

A picture is worth a thousand words, and i’d like to share some worthwhile Instagram photos of my semester abroad!

Last glimpse of the US

Welcoming in the Year of the Horse

Connecting with Chinese middle school students

Won my first game of Mahjong

But of course, a panda sighting!

Animal onesies? Check.

The Forbidden City

Chinese New Year – Temple Festival

TRUE LIFE: I ate a scorpion (the tiny ones, bottom right)

Yunnan Province!

The view from my hostel in the Tiger Leaping Gorge

My two favorite Chinese roommates

Ice castle in Harbin

The Terra-cotta Army!

Shoutout to HC’s Ballroom team: I went to a swing event!

Living the Mission: on the Great Wall

Serenity @the Summer Palace

Makeshift studying: imperfect calligraphy

We planned an American-style Prom!

The bittersweet goodbye

Cheers,
Sophia

金羽庭 (Jin YuTing)

(This is a post I wrote a while ago, but was unable to post due to our slow internet connection.)

During one of our orientation meetings a while back, we had a speaker who showed us a lot of amusing slides of interestingly worded signs that he has found around China. With any language, things don’t translate exactly when you go from one language to another… so you’ve got to be careful. I thought that this was a marvelous idea, so during my five months traveling around China, I put together a mini collection of sayings that you can check out below. Keep in mind that not all the signs in China are misspelled, but there are a few if you keep your eye out for ’em. They were amusing.

HmmmMmmmMmm…

(Do you think she knows?)

The little pocket with a hanger on it adds a nice touch

So this one isn’t really mispelled… but I just thought this was hilarious.

Careful, they want to Meat you

Love elevator?

Here’s the actual elevator.

Pretty sure they forgot an ‘e’ there

You should obey the stuff.

Did I mention that you are the best?

Hope you got some laughs or chuckles 🙂

Cheers,
Sophia
金羽庭 (Jin YuTing)

One of the things that really look forward to doing every week is attending our Chinese Painting class. In Chinese, this is called “国画 (GuóHuà).” It uses the same techniques as Chinese calligraphy, and you use the same types of brushes, except instead of only using the traditional black ink “墨水 (MòShŭi),” you add colored ink as well. It’s very similar to watercolor painting, because the most important part of drawing GuoHua is learning how to control the amount of water you use. Most of the time, we draw landscapes or things that you see in nature. My GuoHua class is in the middle of the week, so it’s a really nice stress break, to wind down and relax my brain a little bit.

I’ve hung up a bunch of my pieces on my wall, my roommate jokes that our room is an Art Museum because she has her work on the wall as well.

This was one of our first paintings!

The Great Wall! This one took over 3 hours to paint…

Fun fact: I’m born in the year of the Rooster.

Not the finest, but I liked painting this one the best.

Besides painting my own work, I’ve also gotten the chance to see a lot of Chinese art in Beijing. Art has played such a huge part in Chinese culture – from the clothes the Chinese wear, to the beautiful patterns involved in Chinese architecture. And because Chinese has a long history, they also have a lot of experience in the arts.

This artist collaborated with a European artist, who created custom frames to frame the paintings.

A famous artist had a gallery opening the day we went to the Beijing Art Museum.

Traditional Chinese Paintings

Abstract art in Beijing’s 798 Art District. This piece is a series of scribbles, which I thought was really cool.

The artist painted a series of pictures like this, with metallic paints. The contrasting colors paired with the metallic paints create a really bold effect.

Also in the 798 Art District… sculptures!

Ah, Beijing Opera. In the past, female roles were played by men. Can you guess if this character is a man or a woman?

I’d also like to take this opportunity to place a spotlight on my wonderful roommate. Not only does she take me to cool places or helps me when I have problems with my Chinese homework, but my Chinese roommate is an Art major. She also regularly draws in our room, and I love watching her paint. It’s really allowed me to get a deeper understanding of Chinese Art and culture.

My roommate working on one of her paintings

With less than 3 weeks left in China, I had asked her to take me to buy my own set of brushes and paints to take back home to the states, so that I can continue painting GuoHua. A day later, she surprised me with brushes and a set of paints – turns out that she had already prepared this as a graduation gift for me!

Cheers,
Sophia
金羽庭 (Jin YuTing)

At this point in time, we are already almost halfway into our semester, and time just flew right on by. For the CET Spring Intensive language in Beijing semester students, there’s only 1.5 months left. Although i’ve only been in China for four months, I feel like i’ve been living in China for a few years. My mind functions 100% in Mandarin Chinese now. Sometimes, Chinese words come quicker to me than English words.

It’s also at this point that I want to bring up this quote:

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift, that’s why it’s called the present.”

A lot of the students, myself included, have been feeling a bit homesick lately. It’s definitely a lot of pressure to be speaking in a second language 24/7, and the pollution in Beijing has been quite harrowing. We have all settled too comfortably into our daily Chinese lives that we forgot to grasp the present and explore! Even though you can learn from the past and you should most certainly plan for your future, most of your time should be spent living in the moment. I think that’s one of the biggest lessons i’ve learned being abroad. We waste so many days waiting for the weekend and so many nights wanting morning, but you get the most satisfaction from what you’re currently doing – true happiness occurs at the present moment.

Cheers,
Sophia
金羽庭 (Jin YuTing)

P.S. I’ve been chosen to be a Student Correspondent for my Beijing program, so i’ll also be blogging for my program here!

Last weekend, our school took us on a weekend trip to Hangzhou, a city in China’s Zhejiang Province. All of us students and our Chinese roommates boarded a 16-hour night train to southern China. Half of the time we were sleeping, and the other half was spent chatting and playing games. Our favorite during the train ride was Mafia. The roommates taught us the Chinese way of playing it, and we taught them the American way. The real difference was that the way that we played it was with a storyteller telling a story when somebody got attacked by the mafia players. In the end, we mixed up our two different versions and created our own little twist on the game. It was really exciting to play this because you really needed to rack your brain and try to figure out who’s telling the truth and who’s lying; when it was time to pinpoint the mafia, the discussions got extremely intense. It was also very funny hearing everyone argue in Chinese.

The five main places we visited in Hangzhou were 西湖 xīhú (West Lake), 灵隐寺 LíngYînSì (Ling Yin Temple), 飞来峰 Fēiláiféng (Flying Peak),  the Bamboo-lined path at Yunqi, a Tea Leaf planting area, and Qinghefang Ancient Street –where our hotel was located.

Walking around the West Lake was probably the most memorable part of our trip. The park around the lake is huge, and there are 10 different tourist spots that you can visit. There wasn’t time to visit them all, but one very important one was ‘Three Pools Mirroring the Moon,’ three stupas staked in the lake. It’s the scene pictured on the Chinese 1-dollar-bill/yuan!

This is the back of a 1 yuan dollar bill

My failed attempt at taking a photo with the bill + stupas

The park that the West Lake was located in was HUGE. There’s so much to see in the park! At one point, we rode a boat to another side of the lake, and at another point, we decided to take a break from the park and rent bicycles and ride along the perimeter of the park. I was really just following one of the roommates around, the lake was too big for me to figure it out on the map.

Seeing clear blue skies and green trees was a nice change from Beijing’s city pollution scene

Tons of boats were being rowed across the West Lake

My friend took this photo while we were waiting to board a boat

Another mini-lake in the Park. Tons of wedding photos were being taken here!

Flowers everywhere!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We climbed up to a high tower just in time to see the sun setting against the West Lake

I really love being outdoors. Beijing’s pollution has been really intense lately. The average pollution level in the past few weeks was usually anywhere from 150 – 300  (the US Embassy recommends wearing a face mask when it’s 150). So this trip to Hangzhou was literally like a breath of fresh air. Climbing the mountain (and bamboo) was also great exercise, because let’s be honest… I needed it.

Just hangin’ around… on bamboo

My roooooomate

These are all tea leaves! I bought a little box of freshly picked tea leaves here.

Picking tea leaves

I truly enjoyed our little mini-vacation in Hangzhou. It’s completely different from Beijing. Beijing is in the north, Hangzhou is in the south. Beijing has pollution, Hangzhou has clear skies. Beijing is a city, Hangzhou is more like the countryside. My only complaint about our trip was that it was too short, I definitely could’ve stayed for a few more days!

Cheers,
Sophia
金羽庭 (Jin YuTing)

Two notable things happened on March 14^th.

1) Prior to this date, all the CET students (there’s a total of 29 of us in the Beijing China Program!) participated in a Chinese speech exam. The exam focused on the pronunciation and fluency of each student’s spoken Chinese. For those of you who don’t know, accents and pronunciation of words are EXTREMELY important when speaking Chinese. If you pronounce one character wrongly, you could be saying a whole different word. After the exam, seven students were chosen to participate in a final round to see which student’s pronunciation and speed was the best. Despite my “southern Chinese” accent, I was chosen as one of the seven students to participate in the pronunciation contest! So on Friday, we all had to read tongue twisters and sentences in front of all the CET students and teachers. All the teachers served as judges.

My friend snuck this photo of me during the competition

In the end, unfortunately I did not win the contest. But I was extremely happy that I was chosen to participate. Sometimes, it gets very frustrating when I speak Chinese in Beijing. I grew up listening to Taiwanese people speak Chinese; Taiwan is considered “the south,” so I naturally have a “southern Chinese accent.” However, after coming to Beijing, I realized that the northern Chinese have their own different accent. I’m learning Chinese in the north, so we’re taught to speak in the northern accent. I think having a Taiwanese accent is something special, and something that i’d like to keep, but I also think it doesn’t hurt to learn the Beijing accent. So I’m very happy that got chosen to be in this contest… and I even got a cool Chinese fan as a prize!

2) The second part of March 14^th was that it was a holiday! I’m not talking about Pi day. This date is also my birthday!

After our pronunciation contest, at around 4:30pm, a bunch of my friends and I went to go eat “linner” (lunch + dinner) to celebrate. We went to this delicious hotpot buffet restaurant. Chinese people love eating hotpot, especially in the winter. Basically, there’s a boiling pot of soup on a hot plate and a bunch of raw ingredients on the side, and you place the raw ingredients into the hot pot. You wait for the food to cook, and then you eat it. I think it’s great to eat hotpot with a big group of people, because it’s an interactive food experience. At this buffet place, everything is 10x better because everyone gets their own pot, the food is unlimited, and everything tastes SO GOOD!

So I also learned traditional Chinese customs during birthdays. Most people eat cake on their birthday, but Chinese people like to eat noodles on their birthday. Noodles translated into Chinese is “mian,” and when you eat noodles on your birthday, it means that you will live a longer life. My friends told the hotpot buffet employees that it was my birthday, so they gave me a big bowl of “long-life noodles.”

Birthday noodles!

It’s also customary for the birthday person to treat his or her closest friends. I think this is interesting, because usually in western culture, everyone will pitch in some money to pay for the person who is celebrating his or her birthday. (Because i’m American and we went out with a huge group of people… I had to skip out on this Chinese birthday custom).

I’ve really made some great friends here in China. After we all stuffed our stomachs with as much food as we could handle, we headed back to our campus, where I was surprised with cake and lots of presents. I’m sad that I wasn’t able to celebrate with my close friends from back home, but I’m very appreciative of all the new friends I’ve made and how well they’ve been treating me. You think that in 5 short months you wouldn’t be able to make such wonderful friends, but I know that I want to keep in touch with these friends even when we all return to the states.

The beautiful cake my friends bought for me

My two favorite Chinese roommates

Great friends and study abroad companions 🙂

Cheers,
Sophia
金羽庭 (Jin YuTing)