Five day immersion in a suburban Chinese high school

Five day immersion in a suburban Chinese high school

  1:59 PM    Jlu17

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Note: This is the first post in a series of posts that I will make about my time in SYA China. I tried spending a lot of time writing about all of my experiences in one post before realizing that I would take forever to post the entire blog post. I'm going to divide my posts up into certain aspects that I really enjoyed about my time in Beijing.

 

5 Day Immersion ("五日浸泡") is an optional program available to SYA students after November. Students who participate go to a school in the suburbs for five days, living in local dorms and attending local classes. Participating students cannot not contact anyone outside of the local school during their time there. I applied for this program in November, but they misplaced my application. I finally participated for the first time in March.

The experience was absolutely phenomenal. I will always remember my roommates/classmates along with the two-story cafeterias. I lived in a temporary dorm with 7 other classmates with the highest English marks in their class. I was glad that despite their high English scores, only 1 could really speak to me in English. My Chinese greatly improved because of the lack of English during my time there.

The first two days passed so slowly because I did not understand anything the teachers were saying. I felt pretty alone because I also did not really understand what my classmates/roommates were trying to say to me. Because I didn't understand much, I finished reading my first Chinese book, Chronicles of a Blood Merchant ("许三观卖血记") during the classes. 

After a few days, I understood more of the lessons, so learning about the CCP version of Chinese history and math really interested me. The history teacher was interesting -- he kept emphasizing that despite what the textbooks said, Chiang Kai-shek (蒋介石) (who, before the CCP took over, tried to run a fascist-like government and escaped with his army to Taiwan) was not an entirely bad person. He still then proceeded to bash the Chiang Kai-shek in his lesson. The way the math teacher taught math was also foreign to me -- she used a microphone to project her lessons onto students who scribbled the answers to hypothetical problems. In a class size of 60 kids, the classes were impersonal and lecture-based.

No matter how much I tried, I could not understand the Chinese class because they covered traditional Chinese.

My deskmate/roommate was so adorable. Here, half of her table is covered in loads of textbooks.

Couldn't ask for cooler roommates.

The experience really made me appreciate America's education system. The students lived on campus and attended classes every day from 7:30 am to 10:30 pm. They were not allowed to bring any electronics including phones, computers, etc. They had computer class and a double free period once every two weeks. Two days a month, the students had a "weekend" where they could return home and relax. Even though the students lived such an intense lifestyle,  I did not hear a single complaint from them, a huge contrast from the SYA students. They were grateful for the opportunity to attend the best high school in their area despite the harsh conditions. I realized how much I take my education for granted.

Aside from the food, my favorite part of staying there was playing basketball with my classmates. I was lucky enough to be there when there was a two-free-period block of time where the students could do whatever they wanted. A couple of my classmates and I wandered to the basketball court. The courts were all filled with guys playing pickup basketball, but I really wanted to play. We eventually got a basketball and a free court, and we all (hesitantly) played a few games. None of my classmates knew how to play, so the game was more of a wrestling match for the ball and a few halfhearted and self-conscious attempts at shooting the ball into the rim. The guys playing games around us stared since girls in the school never played pickup basketball. I loved it. 

I got so attached to my classmates during my five days there that I returned a month later to visit them. I didn't have a chance to participate in the program a second time because SYA wanted to give other interested students the same opportunity. Even though I had travel restrictions placed on me at the time, I traveled alone on the HSR for 1.5 hours to the suburbs of Hebei to eat lunch with them. (Looking back on it, I could've gotten in huge trouble, but I don't regret it one bit.) I can't believe that my friends spent half of their two-day monthly break wandering around the city with me. I happened to go on the day that catkin (柳絮) fluff was everywhere, so we spent most of the day chatting indoors.

 

 

I really wish I could've participated a second time, but I am so grateful that I was able to do such a wonderful program at least once during my year.

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Chinese artist feature: Cao Yong

Chinese artist feature: Cao Yong

  10:12 PM    Jlu17

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There are so many Chinese artists that I discovered during my time in Beijing. I think that my discoveries are relevant to my GIP blog because the Global Scholars Program encourages the sharing of different cultures. Not only is traditional visual art in China completely different from western art, but Chinese poetry is also unique because of the amount of flexibility that China's character system provides for poets. I hope to make my features into a series. First, I would like to highlight Cao Yong's art (which is not traditional Chinese art).

"The Wall"

"Voice of the East"

No amount of words can capture the vibrance and beauty of Cao Yong's art.

I discovered his Beijing gallery in the 798 Art Zone while wandering through the streets. His work is absolutely phenomenal. The detail in the painting above cannot be captured through a digital screenshot. Up close, the brushstrokes are still nonexistent because the detail goes beyond what my eyes can detect. Since the showcased painting in the gallery was not the original, there was also a special glimmering effect that came with the type of canvas used for this print. I was amazed.

  

Cao Yong's biography is pretty intense.

• He was born in China during the Cultural Revolution, a time when being wealthy or distinguished was harmful. His family received huge discrimination because of their previous status, so he was forced to do work as a child while others attended kindergarten. 
• He studied with a prominent artist in Beijing as he grew up, eventually earning the highest marks in the National Entrance Exam of Art Universities. He was rejected the first year he applied because of his family background but was accepted into Henan University the second year. 
• After graduating, he became a professor at Tibet University, eventually living with only a horse for almost a year to study prehistoric cave paintings in Tibet. 
• He then created such magnificent art that he held a one-man show in Beijing in 1989 which gained international attention. Chinese authorities felt threatened by his work, so they burned seven of Cao's paintings before Cao escaped to Japan with his fiance. 

I returned to the gallery a few weeks after my first trip to look at the art again and to buy some postcards. While looking through potential postcards, I found one with this painting on it:

"After Shower"

Recognize the scenery? I was so shocked.

"This street near my home is part of the old town of Pasadena. I often stroll down the sidewalk enjoying the everyday charm of bustling people, passing cars, and noisy bars. But the moment of the day that I appreciate most on this street is captured in this painting: the moment when the dust of a busy day has just been washed away, when afternoon has said its good-byes, and evening offers a familiar greeting." Source

Turns out, after fleeing to Japan for a while, Cao Yong moved to New York for a while before moving to Pasadena. Out of all places, he decided to continue painting here. To be fair, this isn't much of a coincidence because he lived in Pasadena before I was even born in Beijing. However, I still see this coincidence as absolutely amazing.

"Santa Monica"

Cao Yong has a "Golden Coast" series, where he paints his surroundings from Catalina Island to San Francisco. I love this series so much because I recognize so many of these areas. Here's his "Golden Coast" series and their captions.

Now that I look back at my experience, I think that it is so ironic that I discovered Cao Yong's work in China, a place he previously fled from government prosecution. Clearly, he is now celebrated by the Chinese government. Isn't the government inconsistency interesting?

Cao Yong's full gallery is here, his detailed biography is here, and his professional timeline is here.

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Researching smog

Researching smog

  11:26 AM    Jlu17

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I studied in Beijing for my junior year. The first thing people told me when they heard I was going to Beijing was to make sure to wear a mask at all times. While I was in China, people often asked me how the air quality was, and I always became defensive. "The air quality is not nearly as bad as everyone thinks," I said on a clear day. However, I also didn't know about the severe impacts that smog could have on my health until later in the year, when I finally started wearing masks that my friends sent me.

Beijing is rightfully known for its smog -- In 2014, only 175 days were "clear" or good. 

In LA, the smog issue seems so far away because smog levels are at an current low, but in Beijing, good masks are essential for one’s comfort during smog-heavy days. The articles that claim that living in Beijing is equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes a day are false, but it is hard to ignore these claims when smog levels rise above a countable level. There are clearly issues with how the government deals with smog; a Red Alert that cancelled schools for two days was due to factional infighting in the government rather than an actual predicted danger with high smog levels. The air quality levels during the "emergency" were not half as bad as the levels the week before. The week before, everyone outside walked around wearing a mask. Visibility was so low that driving became dangerous. However, there was no Red Alert at that time.

The view outside the classroom window was somewhat apocalyptic.

My environmental science teacher made sure to incorporate China's environmental issues into our course. The textbook itself had an entire chapter dedicated to air pollution with London and Los Angeles being the main topics in the chapter. As a result, I'm currently still interested in investigating and comparing the differences in legislation/regulation in LA, London, and China. Since India's smog problem is worsening at a quicker rate than China's, I also want to investigate how India's government is handling this situation.

I am going to teach a class in the 9th grade World Culture's Pacific Rim curriculum about smog legislation in LA, China, India, and London. In order for people to understand the smog situation in developing countries like China and India, they also need to know how smog works and what the national governments are doing to combat smog. There's not much that civilians can do about an overarching smog problem other than be educated about it.

Houhai, Beijing

Mudanyuan, Beijing. Not going to lie, the smog sometimes makes beautiful sunsets.

If you want to learn more about the difficulty of establishing efficient smog regulations in China, I highly recommend the documentary "Under the Dome" by Chai Jing below. Jing does a great job of investigating loopholes and clarity issues in smog legislation. The documentary itself is in Chinese, but there are English subtitles.

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