BIG NEWS: I changed my Chinese name. I’ll explain in tomorrow’s post…

The past week here at PiB was definitely our most intense week thus far. I do have to say, though, that I’m beginning to become somewhat frustrated with the learning process here at PiB. On one hand, since I’ve come here, my abilities to communicate in Chinese have escalated more quickly than I could have possibly imagined–and what’s harder for me to totally soak in is that I’ve only been here for three weeks. On the other, I am annoyed by the fact that the language pledge, in my opinion, has not been that effective. The issue I have is that, as a second-year student, I’m mostly just communicating with other people who can’t speak Chinese all that well. As a result, if we say something wrong, make a grammar mistake, or don’t know what word to use, well, yeah, the pledge doesn’t help. I’ve learned far more during my time here talking to local Beijing ren, picking up some slang words and getting a better grip on how to understand what people are saying when it sounds like they have towels in their mouths while they’re talking (during class, our teachers do NOT talk like how the Beijing locals do….at all). And there’s no other way to learn that in 普通话 that the word for pistachio (开心果) is just a synonym for “a happy person” ;), because our teachers purposely (at least in my opinion) restrict the vocabulary they use in class to solely the lesson-based vocabulary. Time and time again I have listened to my teachers nearly say something that they would normally have said, and then quickly correct themselves. Although PiB’s classes are great, they are by no means all-encompassing. If you want to learn Chinese, you MUST go out in Beijing and talk to strangers.

Which leads me to some great things that happened last week. 马森茂 (Sam Massie) met a 北师大 student who was studying in our dorm last week, and we ended up getting together with him and his girlfriend at the student cafeteria. Prior to this event, I had been feeling really down about the entire language-learning process–after talking with two other people who had grown up here, my entire viewpoint changed drastically. They spoke frankly with us about any issue that we brought up, including shows that they liked (Prison Break is SO popular here, I just don’t get it!) and opinions on Mao. They asked us about George Bush, and we thought it would be funny to bring up the fact that he always says “nucular” instead of “nuclear”. Heh, they didn’t seem to get the humor that the President of the United States mispronounced words in our own language. I think this stems from the fact that in China, there are so many different dialects that one is almost expected to speak with one’s own twist.

Aight, it’s almost two in the morning, I gotta go to sleep. 晚安!

罗文瀚