苏州大学 - Suzhou University

Hi all,

好久不见! Long time no see!

Melissa and I are still alive and are now halfway through our first semester of the Mandarin Chinese program at Suzhou University. We registered at SuDa (this is the totally hip version of the university's name) the Friday before classes were to start. We woke up at the crack of 7:00am, rode our electric bike all the way across town, stood in line and paid about 8000元 each for books and tuition fees for the entire term. That's a lot of red (the Chinese RMB 100 notes are red... I'm so funny with my cross-cultural jokes that I need to explain)!

Melissa and I are absolute beginners, but we decided to take the placement test anyway because we heard that there are different levels within the 'absolute beginner' group. After all, we had been in China for about a year and a half, so we thought we might be able to get into one of the higher-ranking classes. Turns out, we didn't totally flunk the beginner's test, so they put us in a higher-level 'absolute beginner' group.

This group is divided into two classes; one is reading & writing and the other is listening & speaking. Each class is an hour and a half long with a twenty minute break in between, and they are taught by two different teachers. These classes switch time-slots about every day, which is a little strange, and classes are Monday - Friday at 8:30am - 11:50am.

I think the only real problem with this program is that the two classes use totally different text books that are not tailored to their specific topic (i.e. reading & writing and listening & speaking). So, what happens is that we must take two 'absolute beginner' level classes with different course materials and homework. Basically, they're the same class, but with different books. Maybe this is not the case for all of the levels, and maybe this policy will change in the coming years, but it is the case for us during this term.

Melissa is sticking with both classes, but I have dropped one of these classes. I don't really think of it as a failure because of the flawed course structure that I just mentioned. In fact, I think that I am better able to really learn the material in the one set of text books simply because I now have more time to devote to them. Now I don't have to split my attention between the two different 'absolute beginner' textbooks!

It's not so bad though! Just attending the classes at SuDa every day forces us to study, and with studying comes learning! Our classmates are mostly interesting folks from many different countries, and some of them have even given us opportunities to earn a little extra cash on the side (teaching English, get your mind out of the gutter)!

We already have a mid-term examination coming up this week, so we have a lot of studying to do! Wish us luck!

Mandarin Cram-a-thon

Da jia hao! Cullen and I have made a new friend in town named Xiang Xiang. I managed to somehow invite her over for dinner last night, and Cullen frantically managed to prepare another masterpiece four course dinner while also teaching a class in the afternoon and juggle 30 students at English corner, while I struggled with our crazy washing machine (everything's in Chinese, so for all I know I could be cooking the clothes in there) and tried to figure out where in the heck Xiang Xiang was on campus so I could get her back to our apartment. Xiang Xiang, if you haven't already guessed, speaks no English, which is why I want her to become a permanent fixture in our lives - it motivates us to finally study some Chinese. I've been listening to Pimsleur over the past seven months, but the way that people regard my Chinese is the way I imagine we might regard Edmund Spencer if he were to suddenly rise from the dead and start speaking to us in ye olde English. And they don't speak the "very standard" (as they kindly put it) Chinese back to me, so I don't understand them anyway. I've discovered an awesome new learning tool - www.askbenny.cn. For anyone currently in China who doesn't have access to the amazing and talented Dana for lessons, try this site! I swear I am not being paid by the righteous, ingenious Benny to promote it. You know it's a current learning tool when one of the first things you learn is how to say "Starbucks" in Mandarin.

So, we've been watching askbenny videos and frequenting nciku.com, but it'll take us a while to be the Chinese - English dictionaries you all expect us to be! Hopefully Xiang Xiang won't tire of our pant-o-miming anytime soon, fluency is a ways off I'm afraid...

Fenghuang: Must... Paint... Picture...

On our way to breakfast, we stumbled across a lanscape painter in the middle of arting it up. You see, we had just arrived at the peak of a small mountain that offers a marvelous view of what Melissa described as 'The Ancient River Town Phoenix'. That's right; we went to breakfast via a mountain path. Our legs are strong!

We attempted to speak some Mandarin to the gentleman, to which he replied, "I don't understand. My Mandarin is not very good." Bwaahhhh? It turns out that the artist is from Singapore, and he speaks English pretty well. Now, I'm not going to pretend to be sorry that I profiled the guy as a Chinese native, as I really do just assume that everybody who looks Asian in China speaks at lease a little bit of Mandarin. It's not like I'm trying to be racist or anything. It would be like assuming that everyone who looks Caucasian in America speaks English. It's just an educated guess, and that's science.

The Singaporean artist was very friendly indeed, and he even gave us permission to take a photograph of his smiling mug with his promising landscape painting. Above and below are two photos of the view from the artist's perch.

Talk about some prime real estate!

Cullen

Chinglish: Um, Yeah...

In this very special entry of Zwischel - The Blog, I will introduce you to Chinglish. Now, as the name entails, Chinglish is a super-language invented by the Chinese. It combines the grammatical structure and randomness of the Chinese character system with very poorly translated English. Hence the name, Chinglish. Melissa and I were informed that the problem is not that China lacks translators, but that China lacks proofreaders. However, after reviewing an incredible amount of Chinglish during my brief time here in China, it is my opinion that China's fleet of English translators are child laborers on summer break from preschool. Of course, I'm kidding (don't block this site, China!). 

Above is a photo of an advertisement for some sort of skating rink/small city located within Martyr's Park in Changsha. Below is a description of an abandoned children's playground (complete with outdoor ball pit), called Rainbow City, and its rules. Please read:

Hilarious.

Our Chinese teacher gave us a survival guide that lists certain dishes that we are able to order in restaurants. I don't know what 'strewed chooped fish' or 'cucumbers friend meat' are, but I don't think I want them. 

We didn't take a lot of photos of Chinglish, but since there is such a high demand, we will do our best to supply these pictures. Hope you enjoyed the pictures so far!

Cullen

Mandarin: We're Not Very Good

OK, so this photo shows our entire Mandarin class, which we go to every day from 10:00am to 12:00pm. It is the 'absolute beginner' class, which may even be a little advanced for us.

Our teacher, Maggie, is very nice and likes to laugh a lot. Here is a picture of her laughing at what I can only assume is our butchered attempts at pronunciation. Seriously though, Mandarin is tough. Like, if you ask for a baozi one way, you will ask for a steamed bun stuffed with meat (popular for breakfast). If you ask for a baozi another way, you will be asking for a leopard. It's all about what tone you place over the word that you say.

As Melissa said below, our days are packed with stressful activities. Mandarin is really tough, but it is being overshadowed by practicum lesson planning. Each day we must create a different lesson plan and teach it to a group of 20-25 Chinese students. So, as you can imagine, we don't get a whole lot of time to study Mandarin. The one time that we do get to practice is by going out to dinner, and the results have been delicious. We're actually getting OK at ordering food, and we get served what we order about 90% of the time. More on that later though...

~ Cullen

Ordering Hunanese... On Our Own!

Every time that Melissa and I have eaten out, it has been with a group that has ordered food for us. Tonight, we decided to go out on our own and try out our incredible Mandarin skills by ordering dinner for ourselves.

Before we left, we took our handy cheat sheet and dictionary, and got some advice from our field director. Armed with these resources, we entered the restaurant and were promptly seated. Every Chinese meal starts out with a light tea, which is the substitute for water, as all Chinese tap water is undrinkable, unless it is purified somehow. When the water for the tea is boiled, all the bacteria and parasites die, and I think that the restaurants would rather serve tea and make it special, rather than just serving boiled water.

We ordered an eggplant dish (qie zi), a sliced beef and green pepper dish (qing jiao shou rou tiao), a bucket of rice (mi fan) and a pi jiu (Budweiser). The food so far has been heart-stoppingly oily, MSGy and all around bad for you. However, it all has been delicious. I can't think of one thing that I've eaten at a restaurant that I have not liked. In all, our dinner came to 42 kuai, which I think is something like 6 dollars. Luckily, we are receiving a meal allowance that covers most of the cost of our meals.

More on the food later...

~ Cullen