Settled in

^Hired by Uncle Sam's English on July 4th.  #'Merica.  The morning of the grand opening ceremony, they 'informed' me that I would be giving a brief speech.. once in English and the second time in Chinese.  I love the way things are done in China.  #WhyDidYouTrustMeToDoThat?

I think I haven't written in a while because I've gotten pretty used to living in China. My barber says, "same as last time?" when he sees me.  The lady I buy my fruits and vegetables from stopped complimenting me on my Chinese.  I go to work, I teach English, I study Chinese, in fact, I have gotten so efficient at handling things back home that I don't even think about time differences now; my meetings are always sometime between 9-11AM EST.  The only thing that hasn't normalized is riding the metro, which comes in varying degrees of excruciating.  It poured here today (and on a side note, I didn’t realize how serious the storm was until people in America started asking me if I was ok, read here) and no matter what time of day you get on the metro, it’s always packed and you're skin will be touching someone else's.  Add the smell of wet dog on top of that, and you've really got a hot mess on your hands.

^Tough work out here at the USCBC.

I do miss Shanghai for several reasons, maybe the first one being that you could always get a cab and the second one being that at least in the afternoons you could get a seat on the metro.  Beyond the superficial, I do miss my roommate Jeff, who just arrived in Minnesota for school, along with the chance to speak Chinese everyday.  It’s kind of ironic that when I left Shanghai, my Chinese was pretty good and I pledged to myself that I'd find an awesome group of new Chinese friends in Beijing. On top of that, I'd have to find Chinese girlfriend who could put up with awkwardly phrased Chinese text messages for a few months.

^The 12 year-old girl memorized a brief speech on the effects of technology on eduction. Wow.

Well, things don’t always work out as planned, but sometimes that’s for the better.  I have been teaching my host family’s daughter English about 5 times a week and if I have the chance, I have dinner with them in the evening.  So her father, who is a pretty high level manager in a bank here in China, is a brilliant guy, with English skills that far exceed my Chinese!  Well fortunately, he’s both smart and patient enough to work through our economically and politically charged conversations in Chinese, so I find myself talking with him for hours after dinner and learning so much about Chinese modern history and current events from a Chinese person’s perspective.  On top of that, I’m seeing first hand the struggles that the millions of young Chinese students face to get into competitive middle schools, just so they can get into a good high school that can prepare them for the Gaokao (the Chinese SAT, but on steroids).  The 12 year-old girl’s parents give her a lot of pressure and it really is out of hope for her to have a promising future.  Although its summer vacation, she tells me in perfect English that everyday from morning until night, her whole day is a series of blocks, starting with math lessons in the morning, two English lessons, piano practice, along with any of her other extracurriculars that she does. Living here in China has given me such a better inside look at what’s really happening in China, at least more so than what most Western media outlets can offer.

It is Good to be in Beijing

^The launch of the Boao Review, with Secretary-General Zhouwenzhong giving a speech

Man it is good to be in Beijing!  My work at the US-China Business Council has offered me unthinkable opportunities, such as attending a CEO-Dialogue between top American and Chinese business leaders.  I got to see the launch of a new magazine called the Boao Review, published by the Boao Forum, the leading organization that facilitates high-level exchanges between government leaders, business leaders, and academia in Asia.  My Chinese friends have introduced me to politicians, business leaders, and highly influential people in the Chinese community.  I’ve been to grand openings, such as the opening of the restaurant Q-Mex in Sanlitun, which even has a Mexican staff in the kitchen cranking out awesome guacamole.  While in Beijing, I’ve also had the chance to meet with a few teachers and fellow classmates from last summer’s Middlebury program.  Seeing them brings back great memories.  Plus I have one more friend there right now who has been sending me messages and updates on the Twilight Zone, better know as 明德大学 (Middlebury).

^Meet-up with Jin Ha in Beijing.  My friend Fran in the middle made a pig by blowing caramel.

It all seems sort of surreal.  When I think of all of the people that I’ve been introduced to in China, I ask myself, could I offer the same caliber of introductions to people back in the US?  To answer honestly, I still have some work to do.

This leads me to the next thing that I’ve given a lot of thought to and has been sort of the result of the previous situations.  My Chinese is good, but when I go to dinner with the Chief Representative of the Economist Magazine for China and the Head of International Programs at Qinghua University, and they discuss in-vitro fertilization, I’m sort of at a loss for words.  I’ve already invested so much in China, but I think every language learner will have days that they feel that they will never catch up on a lifetime’s worth of interactions and speaking.  So where will I be after graduation?

^The Beijing Office of the US-China Business Council.  We are one big family.

I flip back to my aspirations of becoming a consultant in China, and the necessity of speaking fluent Chinese, and it sort of complicates my first move.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to discuss all of China’s intricacies at length by the time I graduate from undergrad, in which case, that makes me far less employable by a consulting firm in China.  However, my resolve is still strong.  In fact, Chinese has posed a challenge since day one.  But I have always looked at this seemingly impossible feat of learning Chinese with a sort of delusional Steve Job’s distortion field and surprisingly I’ve come a long way in a year and a half of learning Chinese.  When you start looking at the impossible as realities waiting to be pursued, a lot of opportunities become very clear.  As Deng Xiaoping famously said at the start of China’s Economic Reforms, “There is no turning back now.” (不走回头路)