Old News

Remember how we had that scavenger hunt the first Saturday we were here? Remember? Tiananmen Square, Mao, taxi driver? We also had to write a Fieldbook Entry about it - a "letter home". I was meaning to post it and then got lazy, and forgot. So here it is, about two months out of date.

On our first Saturday in Beijing, we were released into the city – in pairs with ostensibly normalized linguistic ability – to complete a series of tasks that would probably make a good Amazing Race episode. I couldn’t help but imagine a camera crew frantically elbowing its way through the crowded subway. I could see confused pairs of competitors wondering how to cross the street to Tiananmen, or begging suspicious locals, – in flimsy Chinese – “Please, can we borrow your cell phone, it’s a local call, I promise…”

It was fun, intense, and a crash course in the local attitude towards foreigners. Kearney and I made no apologies for our whiteness; we’re waiguoren, and there’s no point in denying it. And to be honest, it helped us that Saturday: although we brought a map of Beijing with us, we didn’t use it once. Every time we were confused, we’d ask a passerby for directions; that’s how we changed subway lines, crossed the street, found a hutong, got to Wangfujing.

It was surprising, really, how willing people were to help us. Part of it was that we were at a national landmark, and everyone seemed to be in a holiday mood – probably a combination of clear blue skies, Spring Festival, and the grandiose Tiananmen Square. But even on the way to Wangfujing, while randomly asking guards, passerby and vendors, we consistently got (accurate) directions and arrived without issue.

At Wangfujing, however, we got a taste of the negative aspects of being an ostensible foreigner. Pushing our way into the side-street maze, full of overpriced snacks and stalls overflowing with bright trinkets, we were accosted from every side with cries of “Hi lady, look this! You want this? This? This?” The alley was bursting with every aspect of the Chinese culture that a foreigner might want to carry away with him.

Scorpions on a stick, still feebly waving their legs; foreigners buying them and taking pictures with them: “Look at me; I’m eating crazy Chinese food!” Roasting kabobs, weaving their greasy fragrance between the heaving masses, stall owners calling out in hope of capturing a fragment of the public’s splintered attention. Packages of brightly colored chopsticks, cheap and mass-produced, an ancient cultural symbol wrapped up in the new symbol – of high output commerce, thrust upon a hastily built foundation. Ranks of alarm clocks with Chairman Mao on their faces, arms ticking, ceaselessly waving goodbye to the ancient Qin clay army statuettes across the alleyway. Fake jade, fake calligraphy brushes, fake silk – the street was full of it, neatly overpriced to take full advantage of the insensitive tourist with his too-big camera, ready for him to take back his meaning of China to his home and display his worldliness on his mantelpiece.

But Kearney and I have dual citizenship: not only are we waiguoren, but we also zai Beida du shu, we’re Peking University students. PKU is the top-ranked university in China, and in a country where one exam determines what university you go to, it’s far out of reach for all but a select and lucky few. On the Beida campus, you see the highest-ranked students of their year’s gao kao, the national college entrance exam; it’s dizzying to think how much effort these students put into preparation, and how proud their families must be that their own effort paid off. Over the summer, when I was studying at Yunda, it was interesting to hear the students’ stories of how they ended up there. Some were from the province, but for many, it was their only real option. Milan, my language partner, was from the Beijing area, and four times a year she would undertake the three-day train across the country, between her home and her university. Yunda was the best school that accepted her marks.

So this is why Kearney and I received so many incredulous stares. We were butchering this country’s language, yet we went to the highest-ranked educational institution in the country. Kids study all day, for their entire young lives, to get into this university. My roommate has lived away at school ever since middle school, and she did very little but study the whole time. It’s an honor to have my picture inside the little red plastic ID cover.

One of our scavenger hunt tasks was to talk to someone in line to see Mao. The crowd that was bunched around the beginning of the line was milling and busy, and it proved difficult to catch a person to talk to, since everyone was pushing forward and pulling out their IDs and calling out to one another: “Hey I’m over here, he’ll hold our bags, let’s go let’s go here take my hand!” However, after some scoping out of strangers, we easily engaged a grandpa in conversation. He was perched on a fence with his granddaughter, watching the rest of their family’s bags while the family members shoved their way through the melee to be herded past the waxy Mao.

Our grandpa was from Shanghai, and had come up the day before; he was here on vacation with his family, since it was Spring Festival. Yes, he’d just seen Mao, you should too! Oh but seeing Mao is free - you have bags? You can check them over there across the street, yes yes, right over there. Where are you studying? Beida?! Waaa! Studying Chinese? For how long? His admiration for Beida was evident, reinforcing our impression of the pride of the Chinese people in their premier university.

It felt good to talk to him, too. Stacking words on top of one another – three from Chapter 2, two from Chapter 11 – and fitting them into increasingly highbrow grammar structures, I finally was getting satisfaction from wielding my clunky command of the Chinese language. No more were we drifting aimlessly, straining to catch momentary glimpses of clarity – oh, that’s the bird radical, I think that’s chicken, let’s order it! – and constantly discovering our limitations, for example when our order of “chicken” resulted in bony chicken feet swimming in a greasy, unbearably spicy red broth. Now I was actually staying afloat, even when I – as per our scavenger hunt instructions – engaged our taxi driver in conversation. At first, it seemed a daunting task, since he was rather taciturn, probably due to the dubious quality of our language ability. I was fidgeting in my sticky seat, looking back at Kearney with wide what-do-I-do-he-won’t-talk eyes, desperately grabbing possible topics from conversation from the streets rushing jerkily past our windows.

“Uh… jin tian tian qi hen hao, the weather is very nice today,” I began. “Wo yiwei Beijing dongtian leng...” I trailed off after expressing my confused expectation of a cold Beijing winter, but he only appended an affirmative grunt. I peeked at the meter, clicking away and spontaneously spitting out lengths of receipt paper; it was partly hidden by the thick metal divider between my seat and the driver’s. Craning around, I saw Kearney melting into a tired puddle of experiences, and felt sleep tugging at my own mind too; forcing myself awake, I ventured again towards the driver.

“Nali you hen duo youke, a?” I asked, pointing out the gaggle of tour buses arrayed around what looked like a Daoist temple. He nodded, and added something about the weather, then asked where I was from – and used “America” as his springboard to leap into the political tirade that encompassed the failing economy, the connection between China and the US, and the cost of living. His words washed over me, tinged with a thick accent that was momentarily incomprehensible until I could re-focus my hearing to accommodate it; I grasped at recognizable sounds, jing ji, meiguo, guanxi, and nodded assent, made intelligent sounds, and every now and then interjected an entire sentence.

Beijing chugged past me, full of delicious hutong food, of helpful locals, of touristy foreigners, and I fell asleep for a few minutes until we finally arrived at Beida. Hopping out of the taxi, Kearney and I lunged towards the entrance, ready to begin our true stay at Beida.