Well readers I hoped to update before I left China but alas here I am 3 weeks later. It would appear I like to be fashionably late with my blogging nowadays.
After taking a couple of weeks to settle back into life in Glasgow I’m definitely feeling the Post-China blues. I miss Beijing Normal University, my dorm plus my lovely roomie Sarah, my Chinese Laoshi’s, My Chinese host family and I think I even miss my daily look of disgust at folk spitting all around me. I surprisingly miss the food too, well mainly eating with chopsticks. It’s funny to think how much angst they gave me before I left for China and now I actually prefer them to a knife and fork. I miss practicing my awfully pronounced Mandarin in the uni canteen and having the dinner lady smile and laugh at my efforts. I miss taking taxis everywhere and not having my wallet feel incredibly light at the end of the day. I miss the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and all other amazing places I was lucky to visit. I could go on for days, maybe even weeks.
I realized in my last post that I didn’t share some of my favourite photos, depicting some of my most favourite moments of the whole programme. Some are educational whilst others are well…not. But I thought it’d be nice to dedicate my last post on China to them!
These photos are from my day spent with a lovely Chinese family at their home. Litang, Shu Ge and their son Mark (5) made Jake and I feel so at home and what was even more amazing was just how competent their English was! Even little Mark could understand a lot of English and would happily shout “hi” and “bye” at us constantly, which was unbelievably cute. As part of our visit we got to help make dinner, which involved making pork dumplings from scratch! My technique at the beginning was dreadful but after some pratice and lots of encouragement from Shu Ge, my dumplings became top notch. Afterwards we sat down to a huge meal together, which was really delicious and chatted about lots of different things. I even practiced some of my Mandarin that I’d been learning in class such as “xie xie” and “Ni hao ma?”. On the walk to the subway later that evening we came across a group of people dancing in their neighbourhood and of course Jake and I felt obliged to show our best moves. This was without a doubt one of my absolute favourite days in Beijing. The family were so welcoming and I had so much fun. I’m so eager to return to Beijing and visit.
Our first evening out! We decided we wanted to see what Chinese bars were like and ended up in a bar called Stepps, which also resulted in trying Shisha for the first time. To make it clear I don’t smoke so I don’t fully understand why I was so up for this but let’s just blame it on the Beijing buzz. This night was really memorable for me because after a couple of hours I remember the waiter coming over and saying something unintelligible in Mandarin, us being very confused and him then taking the pipe out of my hand and taking a long draw for himself. Everyone was killing themselves laughing and I was amazed at just how much of a pro he was. Definitely the coolest bar staff ever. This night was also great because our little group of pals all got to know each other a bit better and I think it was a really fun albeit hazy way to begin our journey in Beijing. Even if my voice was considerably croaky the next day.
Our late afternoon visit to the Temple of Heaven was a very cool but also very memorable part of the trip for me. We arrived around 4pm straight after our classes and unfortunately couldn’t actually go inside the temple but still managed to go for a walk around the beautiful park surrounding it. That day we’d noticed the sky was literally raining cotton (from the trees we think?), which was incredibly bizarre for us as we’d never experienced this before but it was a pretty regular occurrence in Beijing. After inhaling my fill, I decided I’d invest in my very first face mask, as modelled in the photo above. It was probably the best decision I could have made because less than an hour later the sky was practically black with smog and people on the streets were holding their hands over their ,mouths and running indoors. We were in a taxi by this point so luckily escaped the worst of it but it was still very surreal and we couldn’t help but be amazed at how people can become accustomed to such stark pollution. Later we discovered that there had also been a sand storm, which explained a lot. I swear to God that day looked like it had been conjured straight out of an apocalyptic movie.
I’d like to end this post by encouraging anyone who is thinking of spending time abroad to seriously consider the Study China programme. I was very happy to get my first choice of Beijing but you can also apply to Hangzhou or Shanghai, two amazing cities, which I would love to visit in the future. The programme supervisor Lucy took great care of us while we were out there even in the midst of various health crises that did occur while we were there. The student volunteers also helped us out a lot on campus, in writing down the characters for various places and coming with us on all our trips. I feel incredibly blessed to have been selected for the programme as China was always a dream destination for me and having one of my dreams fulfilled at this stage in my life is an amazing feeling. If like me you enjoy being culturally challenged and like new experiences then this programme is definitely for you!
I don’t know when i’ll write again but I’m sure I’ll be back sometime in the future with more travelling exploits to share!
Till then,
Emma x
emmaineuropa 