Anastasiataber.com has been silent for two months. The silence ends now.
I have a few posts for you, one I wrote on the plane ride over from China on January 8th and another introducing you to my 16 day excursion in Yunnan Province that took place January 15-29. It is my goal to write posts for every day experienced on the Yunnan trip, which was amazing just in case you were wondering. As always, I appreciate any form of encouragement from you dear readers. I always enjoy reading your comments and emails.
Since returning from the trip, I have experienced my first week of classes. At this point in the narrative, I have been back in China for almost a month.
It is difficult to explain exactly how I feel about China at this moment. At some moments, I feel like I have just arrived in China—I have that fresh excitement and doe-eyed love for Chinese culture. But then a new student asks me a question on where to get the best coffee or how to copy books (ehem, of course, that doesn’t actually happen in China 😉 and I’m reminded of just how much I know. When I get into a discussion on the political, social, or economic situation of China, I cite several books that I read last semester, discussions with professors and experts, and my own experience in a weave of hard-earned knowledge.
When I go out to eat or buy supplies, Chinese people talk to me quickly (for them it is a normal conversation pace) and I actually understand what they say! I may not be able to respond coherently, but I can at least get the gist of what they are telling me. Of the signs on the street, I can usually understand about half of what they say. The other day, I picked up a Party newspaper and was able to get a basic understanding of an article on education in China. I still have a very long way to go in learning Chinese, but in that moment I felt like Rocky on the steps of the Philadelphia capitol.
I do have moments of insane dislike here, most of them revolving around the incredibly slow Internet, which I recently confirmed is kept intentionally crappy. When I spent two hours trying to send in a summer internship application to no avail, I was ready to chuck my laptop (more appropriately, the internet router) outside a fifth floor window. There are things about living in China that no matter how much patience you develop, can be hard to deal with.
During the Yunnan trip I started questioning how smart my decision was to return to China. I am essentially getting no credit while I’m here, aside from the completion of my Chinese minor (about freaking time!). And when students don’t get credit for a whole semester, it makes us feel very, very uncomfortable. Several of the new students here based their course selection on what they can get credit for.
Personally, I’ve come to think course requirements are a load of bull. Students miss out on taking a potentially life-changing class because it won’t “count for credit.” Our dean here told us that it is precisely the subjects we don’t know much about that we need to take. Because of that mentality, I’m taking an economics class taught by a writer for the Wall Street Journal, a class on religion in China taught by a Pulitzer Prize winner, a class on Chinese film in the past century, and two Chinese courses, one of which is studying modern Chinese literature in Chinese. These are subjects I don’t know much about and do nothing towards my English major, but they are supremely helpful in understanding the life I observe around me. These classes are ultimately why I returned to China.
