Thursday was an early morning for Kellianne and me because we were the only ones who volunteered to go with Zhao Laoshi to check out people doing Taiji in the park. Apparently there are a good number of people that do this every morning beginning at 6:30. People come and go though the group moves as one doing a style of Taijiquan (tai chi boxing) that has 80 plus forms and then practicing Taijijian, tai chi sword. We left the dorm at about 6:30 so we didn’t get to the park until the practitioners were in the middle of their routine, but Zhao jumped in as Kellianne and I were content to watch.
Zhao then took us to pop over to Xinancun for breakfast and treated us to a couple of Tianjin dishes. The first was a kind of rice soup that I’m not sure of the name, but the other was jianbing, a type of food that can be found throughout China but is from Tianjin! The kind we got was prepared for us by one of Zhao’s laopengyou (old friends) and though other kinds are simply fried dough with various insides, ours was the jidan, chicken egg, variety. Picture a sopapilla if you know what that is, or an extremely oily, bubbly, crispy piece of fried dough that then is encased in a huge fried egg. Both the dough and the egg are about large crepe sized and folded into one another so as to also wrap in the greenstuffs inside. A little too oily for my taste, and quite filling!
Zhao's friend making our jianbing:
Our xiaopengyou (small friend, aka how everybody addresses a child) who kept biking all over the market yet coming back to us:
After our lovely dining experience sitting on plastic stools in the middle of the craziness of a tucked away street market, Zhao took us the scenic route to class by way of a small square in front of the new library. There were quite a few Chinese students alone talking to themselves, and when we reached a decent hearing distance, we realized they were all practicing English aloud to themselves! Kellianne and I hope to perhaps come back here some day, perhaps make some new Chinese friends, and swap language tips. We also had a look at the daily newspapers which are behind glass for anyone to see.
Time for class! Mornings are dedicated to Hanyu ke and lianxi (Chinese class and practice) for which our program is divided into three sections: 207, 307.1, and 307.2. 307.2 is for the most advanced students, most of whom have done more language training outside of Carleton, thus, I am in 307.1 with just 6 others. Our teacher, Xiao Laoshi is a petite 24-year-old young woman who will very soon have to get used to a bit of our silliness and insanity. Thankfully three short breaks are inserted into our four hours of Chinese class so we don’t completely overwhelm our teacher.
A bunch of us went to the canting (pronounced tsanting, means dining hall) for lunch. Woah. At lunchtime it is completely packed with students, so once you pick a food station and hand over a few kuai, if you’re hoping to sit with your friends you have to stalk a section of tables until one opens up. Then pounce!
At 1pm we had our first culture class. Different facets of Chinese culture are taught to us each day, so Thursday we struggled to write our names as beautifully as true shufajia (calligraphy masters), and Friday we warmed our ears and voices to what now sounds a little less like cats screeching, aka jingju (Peking opera). Our teachers are true masters at their arts, and it’s unfortunate some of their expertise gets lost in translation. Culture classes are all in Chinese, and while there is an interpreter, a girl who looks not much older than us, once in a while the masters will spout off what seems to be an essay full of information and all the ends up in English is about a sentence worth. Charades help.
Next task: relaxing while making Chinese friends. Best method? Create a circus. How to accomplish? Get a bunch of foreigners in a common public space to do outrageous tricks that Chinese people haven’t really seen before. Staring is culturally acceptable, so see what happens. I’m not much of an extrovert, therefore this is completely Max Diddams’ idea, not mine, but I wanted to tag along to check it out. One of his favorite hobbies in the US is called slacklining: 1) create a tightrope low to the ground between two trees, 2) walk (or attempt). This was my first time slacklining, so I was excited to get a couple steps before flying off, but Max is an old pro so a bunch of us were tossing frisbees with him and other crazy things. I also handed him one of my tennis rackets and he managed to volley back and forth with me while staying on the line. Pretty cool.
This method was pretty successful as passersby stopped to watch or gawk from afar. A couple young men even came over to talk with us, and one even worked up the nerve to hop on the line to try. One of the young men, whose name is Zhangxun, quickly became our friend and has even hung out with us a couple times now. He is pretty awesome at Taiji apparently, and when this other random guy showed up, we learned “red shirt guy” is really into martial arts so they got into a pretty heated discussion about which is more useful in life! I talked with a really nice girl who stopped by who was in a skirt and heels or we would have convinced her to try slacklining, and after she left, “red shirt guy” talked to me about various topics for about 45 minutes! He was not originally from Tianjin and had a really thick accent, so I mostly just let him talk and tried to get bits and pieces.
I also got to weave in and out of the slacklining activities as various friends agreed to play tennis with me! That was actually the original intent of my sporting adventure as Emily and I headed out with my two beat-up rackets and a can of balls, but when we entered the gate to the tennis courts, we got stopped by a whole host of old men all shouting various things. Eventually they calmed down so one could speak at a time, and that was how we learned they were still having gym class and even if we wanted to use a court we had to go to the gym to buy tickets. You can’t even hop on a court if it’s free! Improvising became vital, so Emily, Max, and Rob all ended up taking turns hitting with me in the open parking lot by the gym. This also brought on a lot of stares from the pedestrians, bike riders, and drivers hoping the waiguoren (foreigners) wouldn’t pelt them with tennis balls. No injuries, successful workout.
A group of us then went to Xinancun for dinner and chose which would soon become one of our favorite establishments: a small noodle restaurant. Other foods that cater to my tastes in Tianjin I've discovered are jiaozi, your standered steamed filled dumpling, and chuanr - skewers of whatever you like: lamb, beef, mushrooms, bok choy, other veggies, various portions of squid, you get the idea. My ideal lunch is a few veggie baozi and a couple beef chuanr. Here Alek and Rob ordered what seemed to function as omelet noodle soup (noodles, broth, tomatoes, and egg all in a bowl), and Kellianne and I both got bowls of niurou lamian, a beef and noodle soup, which was quite stingy on the beef, though. Our chopsticks went scuba diving for our few pieces of meat in that bowl. A delicious, warm meal nonetheless. A study party to get back into the swing of learning characters was just the ticket to end a good day.
Yesterday morning was a pleasant surprise. Apparently Tianjin's air quality is better than Beijing, but we found ourselves overjoyed to see direct sunlight and blue skies on Friday! After it rains (which very well could be acid rain, who knows...), the smog clears and brings lovely weather, but it doesn't seem to last long.
Although I’m still completely confuddled as to how to get to all of our important buildings on campus, it’s nice to feel like we can get into the swing of things here. After a full day of classes, we had to start thinking about our midterm break that is two weeks away. Our program will split up into travel groups that have free reign for about 10 days, and then we’ll reunite in Shanghai. My travel group went to the ticket station in Xinancun and stood in the drizzling rain for about a half hour only to be told it was too early to buy tickets for our trip because they only go on sale 10 days before. At least we know the tickets we want exist even though we’ll have to try again to purchase them in a couple days.
For our evening meal, Zhao Laoshi took out a group of whoever wanted to try a couple of Tianjin’s famous dishes. The main course of our dinner was called goubuli baozi. Baozi are steamed stuffed buns, and I guess Goubuli is Tianjin’s special variety. We ended up with a bro table and a girls’ table, and we swapped dishes back and forth so everyone could have a try before they’d be devoured by the boys. They were good to try once because they are Tianjin born, but I’m perfectly content with baozi that are just as tasty that you can get 5 for 4 kuai (a solid lunch for about 60 cents) at Xinancun! We all then headed to the village to poke around for some desserts, and I tried another Tianjin specialty recommended by our teachers called mahuar. It is a twisted braid of dough kind of like a churro but less sugar and much denser so again, yummy to try once!
The night’s entertainment is called kala-o-k or simply KTV by the Chinese. Guesses? One of my favorite activities with my Carleton friends, karaoke! Although at school we whip up our own version as we sing along with a laptop, but here it’s a pretty legit Friday night activity. A bunch of us foreigners divided up into three taxi groups and made sure there was at least one cell phone in each taxi, which came in handy when we made the “great, we’re here too, meet you inside phone calls,” only to meet only one of the taxi groups inside. Uh oh. We described the places we were on the phone to each other, and when they sounded quite similar but we still couldn’t find each other, we realized the other group had been taken by their driver to the exact same KTV but in a different district! These places are insanely nice, like a really elegant, expensive hotel atmosphere but filled with mostly rowdy teenagers, so I’m kind of surprised by how this type of Chinese business can afford to be extravagant compared to your average shops etc.
The other taxi group finally made it to the right KTV, and we got to hang out with our friend Zhangxun for a bit while waiting for a room. We had invited him to come karaoke with us only to discover that he worked at the KTV and was working the night we wanted to go! He got to sneak away to check on us once in a while, so that was fun. We packed 10 of us in one room, so it was pretty hard to hear yourself when you sang, but we all belted out a bunch of American songs, a good mix of pop, rock, and Disney tunes, and threw in a couple of Chinese songs for good measure when Zhangxun joined us at the end. And everybody made it back to campus safe and sound.
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