Today was a pretty good day…I’m feeling a little better than yesterday I suppose. And I got to talk to my parents, so I’m happier. I miss home so much…I didn’t realize I would be homesick so soon.
Today we woke up at 8:30am, and grabbed breakfast before our first day of class. I ordered something in Mandarin for the first time! It was cool…she understood me. We went to this little shop off the street that sells baos (buns), and it was really cute. They had all different types…I ordered 2 red bean baos J It was deeeeeelicious! I love red bean though, so anything with red bean in it is delicious for me.
Anyways, next, we walked over to Fudan (about a 10-15 min walk) in the HOT humidity. I was sweating like a pig when we got there…but everyone else was too. We met the head of the Dept of International Relations at Fudan, and he introduced us and welcomed us to the program. After that, it was a pretty chill day..we kind of just watched movies and talked about the history of China up until the 1970s, because that’s where this course will start teaching about. We just talked about the Opium War, then the rise of the Communists, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. For this class we have 2 sessions, one in the morning at one in the afternoon. The first session, 9-11:30am, we watched a movie about the Opium War and discussed it a little bit.
After that, we went to lunch at this good hot pot restaurant down the street from our hotel. It was more yumminess :) It was kind of like shabu shabu, because we each got our own little individual pots. It was adorable :) and then we ordered a bunch of stuff like vegetables and meat and just cooked it in our own little pots. So yeah..that was delicious.
After lunch, we have another session of class from 1-3:30pm. Soooo, we headed back to Fudan campus for more class. We watched another movie, called “To Live,” about a family during the communist time of China. It was a good movie, but it was really sad because everyone kept dying. But I still liked it… I think I’ve seen it before because some scenes looked really familiar…and I could accurately predict what was coming next. I don’t know why or where I’ve seen the movie before, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it. Or at least parts of it.
The plan after that was to visit the Bund, but it started raining really heavily with thunder and lightning. The skies got SUPER dark super fast, and the thunder here is RIDICULOUSLY loud. So yeah..it’s raining super hard right now, so we cancelled the visit to the Bund and hopefully we’ll get to do it another day. And that’s where I am right now…I’m in the hotel room talking to my parents on Skype. I’m not sure where the rest of my group is…but I know that my roommate and 2 other people went out to dinner. I’m not hungry and I wanted to talk to my parents, so I stayed in. I’m still jetlagged so i don’t get hungry at the right times…I’m not hungry during dinner and lunch but I get hungry during mealtimes in the US. I’m kind of glad that it started raining today…it was in desperate need of contact with home.
So the rest of my night is free…I will probably spend it reading for class. We got our readers today for the class, and they are GIGANTIC. Not only is it THICK as hell, but it’s TWO books. It’s like the size of the 7^th Harry Potter book, but there’s 2 of them. I don’t know how they expect us to read all of it in 4 weeks. I definitely do not plan to.
So the way the class is graded is we have to journal 4-5 times per week about our experiences/readings, there’s a 5-page essay at the end of class, a class presentation, and class participation. It’s a lot of work. But I don’t think I really care to do all of it. At this point I want this trip to be fun and a learning experience. I am interested in learning from the profesors and activities, but I don’t plan to put a lot of effort into the work. I’ll definitely read some, but not all. It’s way too much. I think if I put the same amount of effort into this course as I would for a course at UCSD that I’m actually taking seriously, I would miss out on a lot of the experiences here in China because I’d be too focused on schoolwork.
I’m very tired again..and it’s only 6:30pm here. I’m feeling a little better today…I think I’m adapting to the group a little more…but I still don’t feel grounded in my faith. I’m thinking about talking to my roommate about it…but it’s really a lot of baggage that I’ve been carrying around with my for such a long time and I know I will start crying. I really don’t want to start crying…it’s just so early in the program and I don’t want to just put that out as my first impression. I know I can talk to her, but I don’t even know how I would go about bringing it up or telling her about it. But I don’t think I can continue this program for 4 weeks just putting up a front. I’ve been putting up a front for way too long and I’m so tired…I don’t think I can do it for another month.
Anyways, I’m talking with my mommy and daddy on Skype right now and I can’t wait to call Wesley afterwards. I miss everyone very much…I hope I can last for 2 months… it’s definitely not home. I know that I miss home already…everything is so different here, and it’s not really a good different. I hate to say it, but I feel like everything is so grungy here. I don’t want to sound like an arrogant American, but that’s how I feel it is. But it’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s just different. I know there are grungy places in America too, I just don’t go to them. But I think it’s a good thing to experience both the good and bad parts of places, so it is a good experience for me to be here.
Dan keeps saying that this program is really designed for us to learn about the Chinese culture. But not just learn about it, he says we need to become active learners and bridge the knowledge gap between the US and China. China has so many students and scholars studying in the US, and they go back to China with such a great understanding of American society and American thinking that the Chinese have developed a pretty accurate portrayal of us. However, there aren’t nearly as many American students and scholars studying in China, so America doesn’t really have that same knowledge about China. This was the main issue in the article “The Real US Deficit with China – Knowledge” by Xu Wu. I COMPLETELY agree with this article. I really really liked reading it. For one, I completely agree with the 3 faulty misconceptions that Americans hold because of how the media portrays things. China is a rising power, but not a threat like American portrays it. Also, commnism is TOTALLY portrayed as this evil terrible thing that must be taken down and replaced with democracy, but that’s really not the case at all. And then, T Square just shows how completely outdated our thinking is because we still think it’s such a major issue. It’s really not though, because it happened 20 years ago and it’s like the Watergate scandal to us – it’s a mistake but it doesn’t linger in our minds. I thought it was really interesting that the author brought up these 3 misconceptions because I admit that I fell victim to all 3 at one point, especially the communist issue.
It definitely opened my eyes to what my purpose is here in China. Dan mentioned that although I’m Chinese-American, I may never fully understand Chinese culture because I don’t know what it’s like to think, act, and BE Chinese since I am also (if not mainly) American. I totally understand this and totally agree with him. For the 20 years of my life, I’ve been living as an American. I don’t speak Chinese, and don’t identify much with Chinese culture. Instead, I think of myself as American and I feel like I blend in with Caucasians. However, this totally isn’t the case. I feel now like I need to be educated of my ancestral country so I can accurately represent my physical characteristics. I look Chinese, so I need to, to an extent, BE Chinese. I think it’s a good thing that I’m here.
I wasn’t excited about this course to begin with, because I had only wanted to take the language program that starts in 4 weeks (after this course). However, Dan told me that the language course is a continuation of this course, so there would be no new orientation or anything for the language course. So he suggested I just take this one as well. So…pretty reluctantly, I agreed to take this course. I don’t have a huge interest in politics or economics or international relations, so I really wasn’t enthusiastic about taking this course. But now, I’m really glad that I’m here. I mean, I miss home and all and I don’t know if I can last for 2 months without seeing my family, but I think it will be of really good benefit to me if I do last. I think this course will be really important in shaping my identity as a Chinese-American and teaching me about China’s history and way of thinking, since I don’t know ANYTHING about it. In school, I SUCKED at history and had no interest in it, so I don’t know anything about history. I don’t even really know America’s history. But this course will definitely help me to learn about China’s. Anyways, like I said before, this course is going to be really helpful to my identity. In a cheesy way, I’m kind of proud that I’m here, because I get to be one of the students that bridges the knowledge deficit in the US, just like author Xu Wu wrote about.
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