Study in Beijing leads to questions of nationality

By: Andy Freedman

Posted: 2/24/06

It was a Wednesday night when my plane landed at the Beijing International Airport in, well, Beijing.

Or was it a Wednesday night? It certainly didn't feel like one, as my circadian rhythm had been shattered by the abrupt time changes we traveled through.

I knew that Beijing was a polluted city, in constant contention with Mexico City for the title of most polluted metropolis in the world, but no one could have prepared me for the kind of air that entered my lungs when we stepped out of the airport. When the streetlights shone as if they came from the bottom of a swimming pool, I knew something wasn't quite right. I started questioning my decision to leave everything I knew and loved to fly halfway around the world to study for almost four months.

I traveled to China with fellow Guilford students Andrew Brener and Dylan Black, and we met the rest of our group at the airport before crowding into tiny buses that took us to dormitories. Quickly I realized just how little I knew about what was in store for me, and that I would attend a school totally different from any I ever imagined.

The bus ride itself was unreal. Our entrance into the outskirts of Beijing revealed endless office and apartment buildings, which all seemed to have been built in a hurry, since there was not much of an eye for aesthetic value.

A girl behind me on the bus claimed that there were currently 8,000 construction sites in Beijing. It makes sense, since the 2008 summer Olympic Games in Beijing will be the first Olympics to ever take place in China - a country that, until very recently, was culturally and economically cut off from the rest of the world.

It was at this point that I realized I happened to stumble upon China during some of the most rapid changes in its history. We drove by people lying down on top of cardboard in the beds of pickup trucks; we saw people precariously biking onto the on-and off-ramps of highways, with people sitting on the back of the moving bikes. We saw illuminated construction sites, still going hard late at night where the workers didn't even wear helmets. We continued driving, and it felt like eternity, when in reality the ride was only 20 minutes. It is very hard to describe the culture shock I experienced.

Surprisingly, it was not hard to fall asleep that first night. However, the real challenge began the following morning, when I woke up and wasn't able to see any of the buildings across the street because of the pollution. What had I gotten myself into?

The purpose of the program was to study the Chinese language and culture, and use the language to further immerse ourselves in Chinese society. The fact that we were all rooming with Chinese students enrolled at the university really helped us learn the language quickly. Our school, Capital Normal University, had a large campus located 30 minutes (by car) west of Tiananmen Square.

Our group consisted of 26 American students from all over the country - all with varying levels of Chinese language experience. There were those who, after just a few days, could seemingly effortlessly navigate their way through the city. There were also those who, like me, had absolutely no prior experience in speaking Chinese.

Once I learned how to ask even the most basic questions, such as "ni duo da?"(how old are you?), or the ever-popular yet mind-numbingly un-interesting, "ni xihuan zhong guo fan hai shi mei guo fan?"(Do you like Chinese food or American food?), I decided to take small risks and use these questions wherever possible. The problem: I had absolutely no idea what the response would be.

This made conversations over the whole semester very challenging; I could ask my language partner what they were doing for the night, and for all I know, they could have been going to their grandmother's funeral. But since I usually wasn't able to understand what they meant in reply, the next question would usually be about what their favorite kind of weather was.

It was easy to get frustrated by slow progress, but the funny situations we got in from the misuse of Chinese were well worth it. This doesn't even cover the challenge of the tones, which, if misused, could turn someone's mother into a horse. For each time I tried to say "I can speak a little Chinese" but accidentally said "I'm a little Chinese person," or every time "I eat American food" came out as "I eat American people," I felt a little more immersed. One just had to accept the embarrassing challenges as part of everyday life.

After a while, it was fun to get together with friends and talk about all the people that stared at us that day, or how many people stopped us on the street - and for me, how many people told me that I look just like Harry Potter. Every time I walked down the street and heard the phrase "Hally Botta!" exclaimed at the sight of me, I knew another comparison had just been made. But I knew that it was all in good fun.

I remember a student proclaiming how amazing it was that you could come to a country like China and get invited to dinner by someone you had just met on the street. It's true, for the most part; people there are incredibly friendly, always willing to talk, and always willing to listen.

Some people would stare at me like they'd never seen a foreigner in their life, and even though in some cases this may be true, one has to remember that the gateway to western culture has just opened in the last 20 years, and many Chinese people are still grappling with trying to find a place for it in their lives.

The modernization and westernization I saw all around me when I stepped outside my dorm room forced me, for the first time in my life, to own up to the fact that I was American. You never really have to think about that at a place like Guilford, and it never occurred to me before to think about what that means to other people who might not be American. The discussions that I had with my Chinese- and English-speaking friends were invaluable in beginning to really understand the place I come from.

Does being an American in a foreign country make you a representative of a great, democratic country, or does it make you the representative of an economy that is rapidly consolidating cultures all over the world? When you walk past a McDonald's in Beijing and see the line for ice cream cones going out the door and into the street, it makes this question even harder to answer.

Over the three months, we took program trips to the Great Wall, Xi'An (the city in central China where all the famous Qin Terra-Cotta Warriors were found), and I took personal trips to Yunnan Province (right next to Tibet and just north of Vietnam), and the town of Shacheng, a very dry part of China three hours north of Beijing, whose name literally translates to "Sand City."

Traveling about the country was easier than I thought it would be. No matter where I went, I was able to meet amazing people who were willing to converse with me. From being forced into wearing my friend Moor's father's old army winter coat because it was too cold outside, to going on a 44 kilometer bike ride that we all thought would be 17 kilometers, there was no shortage of adventure to be found.

If you ever have the opportunity to go to China, I strongly suggest you take it. Once there, traveling and living expenses are relatively cheap (about eight yuan to the dollar; you can get a good meal for about six yuan). There are plenty of travel agents there to help you along your way. Or better yet, just figure out where you want to go for yourself. You will find yourself wanting to go back again and again; or at least I have, so far.

Sometimes, when I think about all the pollution, the ocean of people that crowd the streets, the smell of the public bathrooms, or the never-ending urban sprawl, I question why I want to go back. The only logical answer is because it is so different, because of that smell, and because of that ocean of people. Yet it's not different-enough that you can't learn invaluable lessons about yourself and your place in the world.