Quick Update!

And by “quick update,” I actually mean a post of normal length and verbosity. Sorry….

So it turns out, surprise surprise, that now that classes have gotten into full swing, I have less free time than before. Who would have thought. Hence the long silence. I guess that last post was so long, though, that it sort of made up for the long gap.

This past week has been good, but sort of quiet; it definitely feels like we’re getting into more of a routine, which is actually pretty nice, even if I have homework and have to get up early. As it turns out, the long period of “orientation” we had from our arrival on August 27 until last Friday the 11th was, in fact, unintentional on CIEE’s part. Apparently, ECNU (East China Normal University, where I’m taking classes) starts on an arbitrary date each year which is decided sometime in mid-July. When CIEE set the start date of the program back in May, they had to approximate based on last year’s schedule when the university would start. And for whatever reason, ECNU started a week later this year…what a system. So after our two weeks of leisure, we’ve finally started classes. I’m in a pretty hard class, but I chose to move up from where I was originally placed because I figure if I’m only here for three months and my grades don’t matter, I might as well be challenged. Hopefully I won’t regret that decision. So far, though, I really like the class. It’s three hours every morning with a 15 minute break, but the time goes surprisingly quickly (except for the last half hour, which is killer and usually involves me checking the time every few minutes).

Other happenings…I’ll work backwards. On Tuesday, I taught English at the school for the children of migrant workers for the first time. This basically consisted of me and the friend I’m teaching with making complete fools of ourselves in front of 50 bemused fifth graders. We got really into miming baking a cake, and it may have gotten away from us a little bit….I think it went well, but I also think it’s hard to say after only an hour of teaching whether you’ve accomplished anything or not. One thing I noticed was that girls would not raise their hands to answer a question, but most of the time if we called on them anyway they could answer, while the boys were more likely to raise their hand, but often would have an answer that had nothing to do with the question asked. This may be true of fifth graders everywhere, but I found it interesting nonetheless.

Saturday, I met up with a recent Milton and Yale grad, Lisa Campbell, who is working for an environmental organization in Shanghai (Thank you, Ms. Wade!). It was a very fun afternoon, and it was so great to get to talk to someone with so many experiences in common with me (she was co-head of PIB too!), and with so many thoughts on China and Milton and Yale and the environment and so many other interesting things…basically, you should be jealous. It was awesome. It was also the first time that it really hit me that I’m now a Milton alum, probably because it was the first time that I’d really reflected on Milton through the rose-colored glasses of knowing that I’m not actually enrolled there. Not to say that I don’t miss Milton (to be honest, I probably miss Milton more than I miss the US or home in general, by a combination of lingering post-graduation nostalgia and general warm feelings towards anything across the Pacific). It was just interesting to feel myself looking at Milton from a completely different frame of reference.

After meeting Lisa, I went with a friend to the famed (and fame-worthy) Shanghai Museum, which houses an amazing collection of ancient artifacts, in particular ancient Bronzes and Ming and Qing Dynasty porcelain. I mention this visit because we were not at all prepared for the epic line to get through security to enter this free museum…just from the amount of Mandarin we heard in line, I would say that going to the museum is not only popular with tourists, but with Shanghairen as well. Interesting, since museums in the states hardly ever have lines for the general exhibits and are usually filled with school children, tourists, and the elderly.

Thursday we had our first martial arts class, with our teacher Yang Shifu (Master Yang). Yang Shifu is nuts. He is a martial arts professor at ECNU, and he showed us some of the stuff he can do, which was simultaneously amazing and scary (scary, because it involved him throwing each of us to the ground in turn…). He’s very friendly and I think Thursday afternoons will him will always be pretty entertaining.

The highlight of Wednesday, and indeed one of the my favorite moments of the whole time here so far, was the walking tour we did of the French Concession. The French Concession is home to the shikumen lilongs, tenement housing from the early 20th century built in a hybrid East/West style. Each complex is huge, expanding from a small entrance on a main street into a web of small alleys and lanes lined with narrow, low-ceilinged houses, most with a little courtyard or patio in front of them. Walking into a shikumen lilong is a bit like walking into a time warp, except for the high rises and construction that looms over each one. Indeed, most of the shikumen lilongs are being razed and replaced by high rises in the government’s efforts to “modernize” Shanghai; apparently the residents are normally forced to move to housing far removed from the center of the city, albeit housing with better sanitation and modern conveniences than the shikumen lilongs. It was an absolutely fascinating walking tour, as the whole neighborhood felt like it was in a confusing mix of degradation and renewal, nostalgia and evolution, loss and the push to keep moving forward despite the loss. I know I’m romanticizing, but it’s one of those little pockets of the world that one feels totally justified in romanticizing, especially since it’s disappearing. As I walked through, I kept thinking about Boston and the West End, and how this push by the Chinese government to “modernize” feels pretty “retro” rather than “modern” to me…another one of the numerous (infinite?) paradoxes of modern China.

Other news…I got selected to go to a reception for American students studying abroad in Shanghai at the US Consulate on Wednesday! I will definitely let you know how that goes. I’m excited.
My group is going to Beijing during the first week of October, which is a national holiday week and also the 60th anniversary of the PRC. We’ve been told by like every Chinese person we’ve told our plans to that we’re insane to be going then since everyone in China wants to be in Beijing, but we have a plane ticket there and a hostel room reserved. No way home yet, but we’re going to get a train ticket as soon as they go on sale…we hope.

I have so many more observations and thoughts, but no time because it’s almost 11 here and I have to go to sleep. I’ll post this weekend, I think. I can’t believe I’ve already been here for three weeks!