Though I wrote this post in Italy over a week ago, I’m only posting it now because I didn’t have internet access in Italy, and because here at Yale I’ve been pretty busy unpacking and running errands.

I meant to write another post before I left China, but I ended up being very busy with work. So instead, this post is from Italy, where I am on vacation with my family. In some ways, this is actually a nice way to finish the blog – I can reflect on my experience in Beijing from a place that really seems to be its opposite. The Tuscan countryside is slow-paced, calm, lush, and clear-skied, everything that Beijing is not. I was almost in shock the first few days we were here, since even the towns seemed eerily empty to me.
Another big adjustment for me since leaving Beijing has been the change in language. Speaking English on the last day of the program felt extremely bizarre, especially when we were spending time with the teachers. Even though they were supposed to only use English for our graduation lunch, we ended up speaking a lot of Chinese just because we were more comfortable with the teacher-student dynamic that way. To make things even more confusing, the next day I flew off to Pisa by way of Munich, where I was suddenly confronted with huge amounts of German. Though I could understand all the German I heard perfectly, I couldn’t speak it at all. When I tried to produce very simple German sentences, Chinese came out instead. I also had to think for a very long time about certain grammar structures, especially those for which Chinese was more similar to English than German was. Since I had so much trouble speaking German, I actually had to speak English with all the Germans in the airport, which was quite embarrassing. In one case, I asked a Chinese passenger for advice about something rather than a German airport official, just because I felt so much more comfortable speaking Chinese.
The last week of HBA sped by as quickly as I expected it would. I didn’t have extracurriculars, so I took advantage of the extra time by doing a bit of exploring and last-minute gift shopping. One of the highlights of the week was a quick trip to Peking University, which is quite beautiful. It’s very large, and a lot of it seems to be a pretty park, with no university buildings at all. Other than that, the strangest thing about the week was that it was business as usual for the most part. We did, however, get to ask our teachers questions about themselves for a change on our last Thursday afternoon.
I promised last time that I’d write a quick description of each of the fun and interesting things I did during my second semester. Our first weekend HBA activity after we got back from the social study project was an acrobatics show. Most of the things the acrobats did were absolutely jaw-dropping – balancing themselves on each other in very contorted positions, balancing on tiny wooden boards stacked on piles of precariously positioned chairs, riding a bicycle twenty at a time, and so on. I’d already seen a lot of these sorts of acrobatic performances at a Cirque du Soleil show a few years back, but that didn’t make the show any less amazing. The next weekend, we went to a famous tea house in Beijing. Though they served us pretty good green tea and some small snacks, the main attraction was a series of performances including traditional music, martial arts, more acrobatics, and, of course, ceremonial tea pouring. It was a lot of fun, and I particularly enjoyed hearing some of the traditional folk music.

So that’s it! (Well, besides the post entirely filled with pictures I’ll put up after this.) I can’t believe I’m about to start up Chinese classes again, but I think I’m more excited about it than I was a week ago (when I wrote this post). I’m so, so grateful to the Light Fellowship for giving me the amazing opportunity to learn Chinese in Beijing at such a fantastic program. And thanks to everyone for reading!

It's been a while since I last posted! In fact, it's been so long that I only have a week left of HBA! This is sort of hard for me to believe, but at the same time I have to admit I'm ready to be done with classes (if only so I can go have adventures in Italy!). I think I mostly feel this way right now because the past week has been such a challenging one. My whole week has been completely consumed by preparations for the events of this weekend: HBA has a talent show of sorts on Saturday evening, during which I will be participating in four programs, and then I have to be up bright, early, and prepared for the speech competition the next morning. Though I did a lot of the important creative stuff last weekend (arranging a Chinese pop song for four-part a cappella and writing a completely new report for the competition because my first one wasn't "suitable"), the stress has carried through into the week. I have spent countless hours in rehearsals, as well as a lot of time preparing on my own. Needless to say, I've been kicking myself for being so overcommitted, but I also have had moments of satisfaction when I think about how much I've done.
Originally, I was planning to memorize my social study report that I wrote after my trip to the countryside and use that as my speech for the competition. Only after I had spent three days memorizing and polishing it did my teacher tell me that I should probably write an entirely new speech instead. Luckily, I was still able to incorporate some of my experiences in the Hebei elementary school into the new speech, since I decided to focus on the ways in which studying a foreign language makes us more like children, and the things we can learn from children to help us study a foreign language. At this point, I'm actually glad that I had to write it, not only because I think this speech is more fun and interesting than my social study report, but because writing it gave me even more practice with the language. I've clearly learned so much Chinese this summer: when I came here, I was scared to say even very basic sentences, and now I'm about to give a speech that includes fairly nuanced concepts and complicated sentence structures.
One thing that intrigued me during the editing process was a difference in style between Chinese and English writing. When I showed my teacher the first draft, she said that it was okay, but that it would be much better if I added more chengyu, or four-character idiomatic expressions that are very important in Chinese. I explained to her that I hadn't included certain chengyu I knew applied, because I've been taught that it's important to avoid cliche in writing, and they seemed very much like cliches to me. To this, she basically replied that the Chinese think very differently about this: if you use chengyu, you seem more educated and your writing seems more formal than if you don't. I found this very interesting, and I wish I knew more about the reasoning and history behind it. One interpretation that occurred to me is that since Chinese people apparently like to think that they have mostly the same opinions on everything (explanation for this observation later!), they enjoy referring to the common wisdom when presenting their own thoughts. My mom also came up with another plausible explanation: maybe the appeal is partly the way a writer artfully integrates these old expressions into her own writing.
So now I'll quickly defend my rather startling assertion in the last paragraph that Chinese people want to believe they have very few differences in opinion from one another. A few weeks ago when I was eating lunch at one of our Tuesday Chinese tables, I took the opportunity to ask my teachers a few questions (usually, we just have to answer their questions, so the one chance we get to have a genuine two-sided conversation with them is Chinese table). I can't remember everything I asked, but the answer to one of my questions caught me completely off-guard. My question was (translated as closely as I can): What are some of the issues Chinese people most commonly have differing opinions on? The teachers looked at each other for a couple seconds, seemingly at a loss. To help them, I gave them examples of divisive issues in America, yet they still couldn't come up with anything. They finally said something like (I kid you not), "Chinese people mostly have the same opinion on everything." Of course I didn't believe this, so I followed up again, but got basically the same response. Though I'm still sure Chinese people actually differ in their private opinions almost as much as people of any culture do, I still think it's extremely interesting that they might believe that they don't.
In my next post I plan to tell you about some of the fun things I've done in Beijing since I got back three weeks ago. In the meantime I'd love to hear your thoughts on these interesting cultural discoveries.

I'm making up for this post being extra-late by including a lot of pictures (they finally cooperated!). I'll start off with a few from the day I already described in my last two posts.

When we walked into this first-grade classroom, another student on the trip said, "你们好!" (hello), and then the kids, after a collective moment of hesitation, replied in unison "老师好!" (hello teacher!). It was very cute, and I also think it's interesting that they do this every day with their actual teachers. I'm pretty sure school is at least a little stricter here than in the U.S.
These are the four fifth-graders I talked with for a while. I asked them about their favorite classes (all of them said English was their favorite), ideal qualities in a teacher, how often they get to see their parents during the school year (not very often), and what typical classes are like. They were all extremely friendly and happy to talk to me, though the boy was a little shy. After I finished asking them questions, they asked me questions, too, and I ended up giving them English names based on the meanings of their Chinese names (one was "Aurora" because I thought it sounded better than "Dawn").

A typical classroom. The students each have their own assigned desk, which can be adjusted for their height be raising the seat up and down (this is presumably done at the beginning of the year, although it's possible they would adjust along the way for a fast-growing child). On a part of the wall not visible in this picture is a bulletin board with all the pictures of that classes students divided into three groups: the "polite kids", the "smart kids", and the "kind kids". I found this absolutely fascinating, and would like to have learned more about the reasoning behind it, but unfortunately most of the teachers had left since it was the last day of school.

Xi Yang Yang is a popular kids' TV show here that stars the character depicted on this classroom's curtains. A better translation would probably be "Happy Sheep", but "Pleasant Goat" is really much more amusing.

This is a girls' dormitory at the elementary school. You can tell from the pillow density on the right how crowded it is. It's also pretty amazing that they have so little storage space; as far as I could tell, the under-the-bed space was the most they had.

Gratuitous kitten picture. This adorable kitten was prowling around one of the houses we visited in the ancient town that afternoon. Unfortunately you can't see how big and blue its eyes were.

This is an example of the houses we visited, complete with vegetable garden, piles of wood and stuff, and tarp door.

Freshly-made tofu drying (and apparently some clothes as well)!

Part of the view from the temple in the old town.

Now I'm going to continue with things you haven't read yet. That evening, we had dinner in the town, which was quite tasty, and afterward walked around the little square where people collect at night. Again, we got many stares, and this time we even attracted a small group of children who attached themselves to us and followed us everywhere (I have no idea where their parents were). With our new little friends in tow, we went to watch a traditional molten-iron-flinging show. It was absolutely beautiful, reminiscent of the very bright golden kind of fireworks, but even more dazzling.

This was one of the few girls in our group of followers, and since I was the only girl HBA student, she naturally chose me to follow. I held her up so she could see the show better.
The next day we got up bright and early again and headed to a farmers' market a few blocks from our hotel. It was interesting, because in addition to the usual farmers' market produce, there were also a lot of random things for sale (plastic shoes, laundry detergent, scrubbing brush, etc). The produce itself was also of course not exactly what I'm used to seeing -- though they had plenty of corn, peaches, and other familiar stuff, they also had exotic fruits and some interesting-looking nuts and spices (lots of star anise!).
After the market, we drove out to the house of one of our 叔叔们 (literally "uncle" -- the word used for a male host younger than your father) which was very much in farm territory. We met the rest of the household, as well as other friends and family members who had come to see us, and then we all practiced getting water from the well. Our host seemed to think I would have trouble with it because I was a girl, but he was willing to admit he was wrong after I drew a bucket with no problems at all.

After eating the welcome fruit and chatting a bit, we went out to the fields with our new posse. These fields happened to be Christmas tree fields, so our work was just weeding around the trees with the hoe. I was pretty amazed at how old a lot of the workers were (a few we talked to were in their seventies), and I am even more so now that I've heard from a teacher here that the government "requires" women to retire at 50 or 55 and men to retire at 60.

The next part of the day was very pleasant. We went to lunch with the whole family, and afterward walked quite a long time to get to the local spillway. Along the way, I chatted to the high school girls who were with us, mostly about school in America and school in China. They were all super friendly and really patient with me about my Chinese (especially since I'm sure they can speak really good English). Basically a minute after we reached the spillway, the weather took a dramatic turn for the worse, and we had to take shelter in a tiny shed with a lot of other people. It's possible this wedding photographer got a picture with a strike of lightning in the background. That would be cool.

That evening, our hosts treated us all to dinner at our hotel's restaurant. I think they ordered just about every food on the menu, and they kept making toasts, each of which required that we down a small glass of beer. It was very fun, and I learned that Hebei makes lots of delicious deep-fried things, such as somewhat sticky cornmeal or millet fritters filled with bean paste.
The next morning, we visited a place that had very pretty ancient buildings. It was some sort of museum, because in each building we could look at lots of ancient artifacts and read about various aspects of Hebei history.

After visiting the museum, we walked along the streets of Yuxian to get to a paper-cutting artisans' studio. The streets were very busy and had lots to look at.

The paper-cutting technique used in these stores is very different from that of the class I've been taking at HBA -- we use scissors and they use knives.

One of the more startling things I saw on the street was a man slaughtering chickens.

Pleasant Goat returns again, this time with Big Big Wolf, on some sort of strange balloon-hammer toy for sale on the street.

That afternoon we drove to the very small farming village where we would be spending the night. We dropped our stuff off in our hosts' house and spent time getting to know the family, which was astoundingly huge (I'm not sure how they were all related to each other). There were plenty of kids, all of whom were very interested in us, but talking to them was quite a challenge, because they spoke the dialect of the area and couldn't really speak "standard" Mandarin. Nevertheless, we persisted through a series of guesses, and followed them as they led us around their town (which you can see in this picture).


After our tour, about ten of us piled into this little mule-drawn carriage and made our very slow way out to see the fields. We saw a lot of corn, some beans, and trees that produced a nut very similar to almonds.
That night we ate a home-cooked meal and slept at the family's house (I shared a bed with my two female teachers), though I went to bed kind of late because I wanted to avoid the huge clouds of mosquito repellent someone had sprayed in our room. I was amused by this blanket that says "honey time".
The next morning, we ate a delicious breakfast (again completely home-made), and then left for Beijing! I read a lot on the bus and enjoyed the beautiful mountains we passed on our way. Since then, it's been more school as usual, though of course I've also done other fun things. I think I'll end this post here, though, because I'm meeting my "Chinese family" at 8:30 tomorrow morning to go hiking, and I'd like to get a little sleep.

Time for the next installment! It might be a bit shorter than I intended, since I was only just now able to tear myself away from the Yale Online Course Information website that just went up today (I've already made my shopping list!). I guess I'll start from the second part of Monday of last week, after we left the elementary school, and maybe after I'm done describing the trip, I'll go into more detail about my impressions.
That afternoon, we visited a very old farming village. It had a brick city wall with large gates, both clearly relics of its ancient days. The streets were charmingly narrow, and everything was sort of the same muddy brown, since the road was made of dirt and the houses were either made of muddy brick or actual mud with straw. Despite the lack of variety in color, however, it was very cute -- certainly better-looking than most of Beijing and other Chinese cities with similarly hideous new architecture. One not-so-appealing feature, though, was the many piles of trash outside the walls.
We explored many of the little streets, and got to look into quite a few houses. Each house is basically a series of rooms constructed around a courtyard that you enter from the street through a main gate or door. In this town, as in some other farming villages we later saw, most families had pretty impressive, if small, vegetable gardens in their courtyards, and almost every courtyard was home to a dog. The houses themselves were extremely simple: they usually only had two rooms plus a storage room per family. In many of these houses, the entrance was into the storage room, which was between the two rooms. It's important to keep in mind, too, that a Chinese family living in one house often consists of more than one generation, so it's not uncommon for a husband and wife and two children to all share one room, while the husband's parents share the other room.
After we explored the houses, we visited the large temple at one end of the village. It was quite beautiful, but most importantly it offered us a chance to see the village from above, since it had a tower. From up high, we could see the village and the neighboring village, as well as many farms. The farms were broken up into much smaller sections than I'm used to seeing in Iowa, and it was also clear that they were a bit behind in farming technology. I didn't see a lot of farming machinery, but I did see quite a few farmers doing manual labor out in the fields, as well as plenty of mules and donkeys. (Side note: this made me especially sad when some of my fellow students ate mule meat for dinner that evening.) We also got a clear view of all the trash piles around the periphery of the village.
Bad news: it's past midnight, and I'm planning on getting up close to six. I'll be able to write more tomorrow, though, because I don't have any afternoon activities. I'm so sorry this is such a broken-up narration!

I've given up on getting pictures up here for now, so instead I'll just write about my countryside travels. (I apologize if my English is worse than it used to be.)
Even though it was a mere four days long, I really think this trip was one of the more memorable trips I've been on (and I've been to some amazing places!). This may be partly because it was more removed from my world and the world I'm familiar with than anywhere else I've been. Right off the bat, it was clear that we were a bit out of place -- everyone stared at us. Since there were only five students on the trip, we often found ourselves absolutely surrounded by curious onlookers, most of whom were too shy to actually talk to us (except to request pictures with us). In other ways, though, the Chinese countryside wasn't as different as I thought it would be. Hebei is a big corn-growing region, so when we visited actual farms I was reminded of my lovely home state of Iowa. Also, many of the differences between Beijing and the Hebei countryside were similar to those I'd expect to find between American urban and rural regions.
After I wrote my last blog post, I was a little worried that I was only going to get three hours of sleep before my trip, but that turned out to be a very good thing. I slept the entire way to Yuxian, first on the train and then on the bus, both of which I probably would have found a bit cramped for my taste had I been conscious. As it was, I arrived feeling very refreshed, which helped me handle what happened next a bit better. What happened was this: at the hotel, they wanted to see our passports, presumably because they had to check our visas by law. Unfortunately, another student and I hadn't realized that we had to bring our passports, and the hotel absolutely refused to let us stay there. Instead we each spent the night at the house of a different host (our hosts were two extremely gracious men who had been classmates in a class taught by our teacher's mom, and who basically led us around during our entire visit). That evening we went to a sort of town square, where it seemed that the whole town was eating, dancing, and chatting. In that square we had our first taste of the staring, which was probably only intensified because we were speaking Chinese.
The next day was extremely fun and interesting. We began by visiting an elementary school in a farming village, where we first got some basic facts about the school and about Chinese education from the principal, and afterward talked to a few teachers and students. I learned too many things to write here, but I'll mention the most surprising and noteworthy. Probably what startled me most was the discovery that the students board at the school starting in third grade. I saw for myself that their dormitories are pretty crowded, and as far as I could tell, they really didn't have much private space or time to themselves. Nonetheless, the kids seemed really happy, and they told me they like school a lot. Another surprising discovery was that they all take "morality class". Apparently this is a class in which they are taught right from wrong, as well as less weighty matters of etiquette. I guess this makes sense, because since they live at school, they can't learn that kind of thing from their parents, as we typically do in America. Other than that, the subjects they study are mostly what American elementary school students study, although they begin learning English in third grade.
I realize I've only gotten through half of the first real day (actually not even that, since I haven't fully described my experience at the school), but I really need pause for now if I'm going to get any sleep. This time I really will continue this post tomorrow.

I just spent an hour trying to upload pictures to the blog, with no success. I'm now too wiped out to write anything about the trip (except that it was unbelievable!), so I guess I'll just wait until tomorrow morning. Sorry, folks!

By "I'll save that for tomorrow" I clearly meant "I'll save that for late Saturday night". At this point, I really should be going to bed, because I leave for my social study project in the countryside at 7, but this is the last chance I'll have to write before I get back on Thursday.
I guess I'll start with a quick description of what I'll be doing this week. For my social study project, I am going to the countryside town of Yuxian in Hebei province. Hebei is the province that wraps all the way around Beijing, so we won't be going too far, but it sounds like the living conditions couldn't be more different from what we're used to seeing here. On the trip, we'll get to visit a school, see a local fair, explore Yuxian and a nearby village, visit the farms, stay in a farmer's house, and apparently even go to castles in the surrounding countryside. We were also advised that while we will not be swimming, we may fish at some point. Needless to say, I'm really excited about this trip. Most relevant to my particular research will be our visit to the school on the first day, since I have decided to write my social study report on education in the Chinese countryside. I'm planning to ask the teachers and parents questions like "What do you think the most important aspect of children's education is?" and "In what way could China's education system be most improved?", and ask the kids questions about what they want to do when they grow up, their favorite quality in a teacher, and their favorite subjects. Although I'm really excited to find out how people answer all my questions, I'm a little nervous about being able to follow and take down their answers. Luckily I'm bringing along my phone, which has a "voice memo" feature, so I'm hoping I can record my interviews.
Obviously, the point of this week is to learn as much as I can culturally. I think it's really great that HBA gives us an opportunity to get outside Beijing and explore some aspect of Chinese culture in depth -- it's definitely not something most of us would have the chance to do without their help. But the social study project certainly isn't the only way to learn about Chinese culture in this program. As I've mentioned before, the one-on-one classes we have every day here can be a lot of fun. They're almost always my favorite part of the day; after I recite the day's short memorized passage for the teacher, we can just talk about basically anything. Unsurprisingly, our conversation often turns to the lesson of the day (it is, after all, another class in which we're supposed to be practicing new vocabulary and grammar structures). Each lesson is in the form of a dialogue, always starring at least two of three fictional HBA students as they adjust to their lives in Beijing. This week, every dialogue focused on some aspect of Chinese customs, particularly what to do in certain kinds of social interactions and get-togethers. While it was certainly very interesting to read about this, I remained skeptical because of the alarming over-simplification of a lot of the characterizations in the text (our Tuesday's recitation was something along the lines of: "To Americans, Chinese people seem to overdo politeness to the point of deceit, but to Chinese people, Americans' extreme frankness seems rude"). Fortunately, the one-on-one classes were perfectly suited for discussing my dissatisfaction with this black-and-white mentality. It was great to really talk to the teachers about what is considered polite in the two cultures, especially since a lot of them had never been to America, so they could learn from me too. On Monday, I spent almost the whole class discussing the finer points of wedding etiquette (which I hope I got right, since I'm not exactly an expert), and amused my teacher by explaining the concept of a gift registry. Tuesday's conversation focused on the interesting topic of when it's appropriate to tell white lies to various people in your life. By Wednesday and Thursday, we had moved away from the "customs" side of things a bit, but I still had great conversations. My favorite of the week was probably Wednesday's, in which we discussed food and agriculture and I tried to explain factory farms, subsidized corn, and the local and sustainable food movement.
It's so nice to be getting to a level of Chinese where I actually am able to have conversations like these. Of course I still often find myself reaching for my dictionary (usually after attempting elaborate and very unsuccessful pantomimes), but it's clear that I have a much better grasp of the language. I don't know if I'll ever be in a language-learning situation this fast and this intense again, so I'm especially savoring the feeling of incredibly tangible progress.
Stay tuned for pictures and a report of the countryside!