My Social Study topic is Martial Arts and the Shaolin Temples

The Great Wall (written Saturday Evening)

Great Wall at Simatai today. Bus departure time was around 8:15;
after about 2 hours drive, plus a bit more for refueling and a
bathroom stop, we got there around 10:30, the landscape changing from
city to rural countryside as we drove. Each person was given 2
bottles of water (and 2 eggs and packaged goods for breakfast, but I
already ate and brought my own water). A few people shopped for hats
at the bottom (myself included; this was my first time I can remember
bargaining for something with a vendor), and at about 11:00 we started
the climb. I originally planned to take the cable car one way, but
instead I walked both up and down. The climb started fairly easy; a
newly-paved path leading to the wall itself, passing by a river with a
few dams. Once we got to the wall itself, there was a path atop the
wall leading up and one leading to the bottom of the valley, then up
again; we took the one up. From here, the climb got more difficult.
It was much steeper on the wall itself (the pictures don't give a
sense of how steep it is, as they were all taken at an angle from
horizontal), and after awhile the square steps (which already were of
notably differing heights) gave way to steps cut into stone, which
were more uneven. If we had gone here when it was raining, it would
certainly have been dangerous. The climb was mostly uphill, with
occasional shaded spots in guard towers. I was among the first to
reach the "top" (the point where climbing further was off-limits, due
to the trail being too dangerous), and those up there took pictures
while we waited for the rest to mass up top.
At 12:30 or so we started down. Both on the way up and down, we
passed salespeople selling water, soda, ice cream, art (medals and
carvings), and t-shirts saying "I Climbed the Great Wall." We also
saw people parasailing nearby. At 1:35, I reached the bottom and went
with the rest of the students around to a nearby restaurant, where the
teachers bought us lunch. We left around 2:30 (most of the rest of
the students sleeping on the way back, or trying to, given the loud
honking) and returned at about 5. According to Mao, I have now
satisfied one of the prerequisites of being a true man (I'm not sure
if he specified any others, though).

Wudaokou (written Saturday evening)

Explored Wudaokou yesterday evening, a shopping center and
entertainment center which a lot of students and expats frequent. I
started by trying to find a heavily Korean-owned neighborhood which
"Baba" described on a side street I went down, but no luck. I
proceeded west, passing by movie theaters, street sellers selling
fruits and sauteed skewered meats and various goods (handbags and
beads, for example), and a large mall. Around this time I walked down
an alley with a lot of restaurants and shops using Korean writing,
which I think was the street Baba mentioned. Walking further west, I
passed by more shops and apartment buildings and food sellers,
including several American chains like Pizza Hut (Bishengke) and KFC
(Kendeji), and an American-style bakery, as well as Chinese places.
Near the mall area, I went to a kind of food court place outdoors,
with sellers framing a central area, where I got a hot pot dinner – I
selected vegetables, noodles, and meats, and these were boiled in a
clear broth and then put into sesame sauce and hot peppers. I talked
with two Koreans working in China, spending a little while explaining
the nature of the summer program – they mostly used English, so our
relative understanding of Mandarin was about on par (though one used
"s" instead of "sh", so he wasn't using a Beijing accent). Afterward,
I went into the mall to find a particularly spicy restaurant one of
the teachers mentioned, and saw a large supermarket in the mall
basement.
Social study options were displayed – I'm thinking of going to
Shanghai, the Shaolin temple, or Inner Mongolia.

Pictures from around BeiYu and Dinner with Baba

I had dinner with my Chinese father yesterday (I think I made a
mistake earlier - he teaches at universities, not elementary schools).
We went to a small hotpot restaurant a little ways outside of the
west gate. The food was very good - we had a boiling pot with a
divider, with one side containing spicy broth and the other containing
clear broth. We got many types of foods, from leafy vegetables and
mushrooms to noodles and mutton meat, and put them in the broth; after
a few minutes, they were cooked. Baba was very interesting; during
our conversation, he introduced my "sibling" (another student, Chang
Xun) and I to many Chinese metaphors and sayings, for example "If we
are happy, 1000 glasses is not enough, but if we are not happy, half a
sentence is too much."

My Chinese Family

I met my Chinese "baba" on Sunday morning (he's the one on the far
left). He teaches PE at an elementary school, and seems to know a lot
about Taijiquan. At our first meeting, he explained (and we partially
understood) some of the philosophy behind Taijiquan. Hopefully, we
will meet today for dinner.
I realize I wasn't clear about the Great Wall - the weather on
Saturday was poor, so we went to the Opera instead. If all goes well,
this Saturday we will go instead.
I've learned most of the Harvard vocabulary; since then, the work has
become relatively easier, as I understand the entirety of sentences in
class now without needing to ask if certain words can be substituted.
However, I'm still far from fluency - if, for example, one adverb is
swapped for a different one with an identical meaning, the meaning of
the entire sentence is very hard to divine. Since Chinese is so
different from English, when I hear a new word, it's almost impossible
to tell what it means without context, and the word in question might
be the one providing the context. Nevertheless, making great progress
- I can understand far more now than I could even a week ago.

Saturday Night, 6/20

Well, the first week's finally over; by Thursday night, I managed to
get ahead of my work, and so things started to slow down a little
(even with Friday's exam). The limiting factor in learning Chinese
seems to be vocabulary; at least for now, the syntax/grammar isn't too
difficult to grasp, but the sheer volume of words we don't know is
ultimately what limits conversation (this view may change as I learn
more). For example, given a random object, I won't know several words
to describe its parts; for example, I know how to say "bicycle," but
not "wheel," "spoke," "handlebars," "chain," "gear," "brake," "rim,"
etc.
We just took a trip to the Beijing Opera. It was quite a spectacle.
There was a short opening play, which I think was a traditional style
opera scene between a woman and an old fisherman, but the next part,
"Monkey King Fights 18 Warriors" in English, was very fun to watch.
It featured heavily painted characters (many resembling animals)
acting out choreographed fights – very complex ones, including flips
over stick-swipes, lots of tossing back-and-forth of weapons
(including one move where the weapons of five actors were laid in a
pile, four scattered, and the lead pulled up the bottom weapon of the
pile so that each weapon flew to its owner), and the inverse-ninja law
(the fighting ability of a group of fighters is inversely proportional
to the number of fighters in the group; the Monkey King easily
defeated the 18).
For some bizarre reason, casterboards seem unusually popular here;
I've seen far more casterboards than standard skateboards. I have no
idea why.
I can't access my blog behind the Great Firewall, so I'm not sure if
my recent photos have made it up. I didn't bring my camera on the
trip to the Beijing Opera, but my friend (Chinese-named Lin Ke) took
some photos for me, which I will hopefully be able to upload soon.
It's my dad's birthday, so Happy Birthday! Sunday for me . . . I'm
going back to study.

A Few Photos

4 Days Into Classes

This is definitely the hardest I've worked in my life, at least in
terms of time spent on work; when I'm not eating, sleeping, or working
out (or blogging), I'm either in class or working on one of the
lessons. I also have a very early-shifted schedule; whereas I
normally go to bed around 11 and wake up from 7-8, I am now going to
bed at 9 every night and waking up at 5. One of the biggest
challenges is the differences in vocabulary sets between Harvard and
Yale students; the teachers tend to use Harvard vocabulary, so things
that Yale students have learned using one vocabulary set are mostly
unintelligible when other words are used. That's a good thing,
however, as we are being exposed to a wider range of vocabulary than
we would otherwise hear, and we have to know all the ways to say one
phrase for the ultimate goal of fluency.
I got here on Friday afternoon, where I met a group of other students
while waiting for a full busload to go to Beijing Yuyuan Daxue
(Beijing Language and Culture University). When we got here, we dealt
with some matters of setting up first. I went with a group of other
students to the Wudaokou area to eat dinner, then returned to the dorm
and slept. Saturday morning I went on a tour. Later, I took a bus
into the city with some others to eat lunch, then explored the (very
touristy) Wangfujing area. The other students wanted to stay in the
mall area longer than I wanted, so I took the subway back; the subway
system was very easy to navigate, even for someone who has only
studied Chinese for a year (the English option on the terminals also
helped). I forget what I did the rest of the day.
Sunday we signed the language pledge; I haven't conversed in English
since. Learning Chinese without using English poses special problems,
as we cannot ask someone the meaning of a sentence they just uttered,
instead asking them to describe it using other words or structures. I
think the most important part of learning Chinese will be vocabulary
accumulation, as if I do not know any words for a certain object or
action, I have to look them up or describe said object/action in a
roundabout way. If I can't do either, I simply have to switch topics.
This coming Saturday we will go to the Great Wall.

Night of the Final Day

12 Hours Remaining