上中文课 May the classes begin

UIBE, 32ºC, sunny

I woke up at 7am in time to grab a quick breakfast and to review my 汉字 characters before my first class of the programme. The first order of the day was a daily quiz - even though it was the first day, we hadn’t been let off the hook! 汪老师 Teacher Wang then introduced me and my fellow classmates to the course before diving straight into our grammar for the day. Our “big” lecture class of twelve students was then split into smaller classes of just four students. We had two separate fifty minute grammar and vocabulary drilling sessions. Our class day ended with a 一对一 one-to-one oral class. All throughout the morning, the emphasis was very much on speaking. This is a skill I know I can greatly improve, but my stamina for speaking Chinese was being tested to the full – I had never spoken so much Chinese in a single day, let alone a single morning!

Having seen more than four hours of preparation for class fly by throughout the day’s class, I realised that everyone’s Chinese improves on this course for good reason. At 3pm, I had my first scheduled meeting with my language partner. Cue one more hour of Chinese. Using as much of the grammar and vocabulary I had learned for the day, I spoke about my first impressions of Beijing, shared my thoughts on 中国海关 Chinese customs, and asked about the neighbourhood near the dorms. As time went by, and the given prompts started to dry up, every character I spoke became harder and harder to enunciate, every grammar structure became more and more cumbersome.

Beyond purely learning Chinese, this programme is also about cultural exchange. Although I was tiring from speaking so much Chinese, I did manage to enlighten 李钱 on university life in the US. She told me about life at UIBE, which is very different. From her own experience, I found out that she goes to bed before midnight and wakes up at 7am every day. Graduate students in the US would shudder at the thought of waking up so early. I was stunned that she shares a room with two others (despite being a graduate student!) and that every Friday and Saturday night, the electricity is cut off in her dorm at 11pm, forcing her to go to bed! She did tell me that some students seek out a KFC or McDonalds so they can study in the comfort of a lit space.

It is astonishing that students can live under such conditions, but 李钱 is clearly happy to be at UIBE and will certainly have great job prospects when she graduates from this well-reputed university. Imagine what life is like at some of China’s poorer and less-renowned universities.