So what's the latest?
I decided to turn over a new leaf and try again with classes. I sat down Sunday night and made a whole new exploration schedule, and complete with notes about classes I was pretty sure had moved, and which I should go investigate. First thing Monday morning, I went to a class with an unsuspicious room number…only to find there was no one there. Okay, I should have gone to the department to look again at the notices before. As I was on my way out to do just that, I happened to see a girl I had sort of started to recognize because I'd seen her in several classes. She was going in to the Historiography class I had decided to abandon. She looked questioningly at me and so I decided to go back to that class after all. It was the one that I had found completely incomprehensible the first couple times. This time, though, the professor had finished the wide-ranging introduction and settled down to an ordinary chronological treatment. Well, that at least I could understand. And I was able to figure out more this time, so it was less of a total waste.
I had sat down near this girl I recognized, and she pointed out that there was a syllabus--another nearby student had an extra copy and gave it to me--also telling me which of the "recommended" books were particularly recommended. Then she told me her name, which was Crystal, and we exchanged phone-numbers. I think she must be from Hong Kong, as she speaks quite good and slightly British English but sort of Cantonese-accented Mandarin. After the class, we both together to the Chinese department to ask about a class we both wanted to take but hadn't been able to find. We had to wait in a long line at the department office, and eventually found out that it was on a very complex alternating-week schedule with rooms different even from the announcement. I tell you, around here schoolin' doesn't come easy.
Went back to the foreign students' cafeteria to have lunch, and somewhat to my horror some random person sat himself down directly across from me. I will add that there were plenty of empty tables. It was clear that he had decided to have a conversation with me. He asked me standard things about myself, and I ascertained that he was a professor, though I didn't quite catch what he taught. We had a longish conversation about a variety of things, including the average age of marriage for girls in America. Ugh. It was somehow very wearying, even though I should have welcomed the change to practice my spoken Chinese. Unfortunately, I had thoughtlessly gotten two bread rolls instead of one, and I somehow felt constrained to keep talking to him until I had managed to eat all of both of them! Decided I would stop eating lunch at the foreign students' cafeteria.
While in that area, though, I did manage to capture a prize: my so-called "campus card." There seem to be all kinds of IDs here, and the campus card is the one I need before I can get my library card. I had first gone to the place I had got my photo taken before (they'd said "come back next week"), but they said to go to Shaoyuan, the foreign students' building. So I went there and wonder upon wonder, they actually had my card.
In the afternoon, I had the Chinese Research Tools class, taught by the professor I came here to work with, YHz. She still hadn't answered my e-mail of Saturday, but during the break she came up to me and said that she had received my e-mail, and had given my name and number to one of her students and he would call me. She also said some things about my dissertation topic, suggested that I might concentrate on Song, Yuan or Ming Shiji studies, as she has basically done Han-Tang and a grad student of another professor, APq, has just finished a dissertation on Qing. I know I would do things differently than any of them, but it makes good sense to start with what has been least done, and what she might be most willing to help with. She also recommended a book that's a good brief introduction to the subject, and finally added that she was going to get together with her grad students for dinner this weekend to sort of get to know each other, and that I was welcome to come. So I felt very pleasantly included even at the same time as I felt very stressed out.
The latter part of her class was a lesson on how to use the four-corners method for looking up characters. Believe it or not, I had never learned this method, and it was good to be taught it in a systematic way. In fact, I'd say this was the first piece of concrete knowledge I had thus far acquired.Above is a picture of one of the stairwells in the classroom building. I have not yet managed to find any classrooms that are empty enough that I can sneakily photograph them, but I will soon.
Below are some pictures of the construction that is going on on either side of the classroom building, and creating such a racket of construction noise that I can barely think straight, let alone here what the professor is trying to say. Of course, one can always close the windows, but then there's the problem of the classroom getting hot and stuffy. I was impressed by the sheer amount of manpower in evidence in the second photo, as well as the general absence of power tools. That's China for you, huh?
It was a miserably hot day. I decided that after the Research Tool class I had had enough and went home. Being successful in connecting with YHz was of course a very good event, but was stressful in the way good events sometimes are, and I was exhausted. By the time I got home, Google told me that the temperature in Beijing had reached 92. Argh. What season do they think it is anyway? Isn't fall supposed to be starting sometime?
At home, I worked very hard on preparation for Tuesday classes. I also watched a great television program about an earthworm farmer, and all kinds of things about earthworms. The earthworms reproduce so fast that "Mr. Chen" had a hard time giving them enough to eat. He raised chickens and ducks and things--I guess the earthworms can eat their droppings?--but it wasn't enough. So he contacted a neighboring dairy farmer and made a deal with him to get some cow manure. After the earthworms had "processed" the manure, what was left was good fertilizer and was also a preferred food for the chickens and ducks. (Gross!) Soon a local environmental protection guy became interested in Mr. Chen's worm farm, and tried on the worms on various types of industrial sludge. They weren't so good with chemical sludge (it was quite sad to see the worms leaping around so miserably) but they liked the paper-mill sludge just fine, and processed it in such a way that (they claimed) it was no longer toxic. I have my doubts that the worms were really as miraculously efficacious as they claimed, but it made a good story. (Photo not by me but from the CNN, which ran a similar story on an Indian worm baron.) I admit it was on the English channel, so I wasn't even practicing my Chinese... but sometimes a person needs a break.
In the evening, I sat on the couch reading until I realized that something was biting the heck out of me. A big fat mosquito. I recalled my long-drawn-out mosquito stalking expeditions in my bedroom back in Taiwan. Asian mosquitoes are horrifically clever and fast. They seem to have a sort of prescience about when you will be trying to swat them and have already long disappeared by the time you do. And they disappear into thin air--I have no idea how they do it. Some kind of mosquito martial arts trick. I got this one in the end, though only after she got me a few more times. The key is to turn on absolutely all the lights, even the horrible florescent ones that you ordinarily don't touch. Then it's much harder for them to hide. Who knows how she got it, as my windows are well screened. She must have come in the door or (shudder) in one of the vents. (Who sits long enough to let a picture like this be taken while a mosquito is biting them!? These guys, apparently; sorry to be unoriginal, but better them than me.)* * *
Yesterday morning first thing, I went to get a meal card, using my new campus card, and was successful in acquiring one. Now all the cafeterias are open to me, and my word there are quite a few of them. There are practically as many cafeterias as there are classrooms--at least that's how it seems.
Then I headed to my first class, on Qing dynasty evidential scholarship. This is the class that I had tried unsuccessfully to locate on Friday and that Crystal and I had gone to inquire about the day before. Now she and I met again in another quest for the correct room. The room mentioned by the department secretary was full of people silently studying English and business administration, which she and I agreed was a bad sign. The room next to it, which was the one that had appeared on the room change announcement for the course had two professors disputing about who should get to teach in the classroom. One of them turned out to be ours. The other one vanquished him by suggesting that her class was in 401 and his was in 407, but the 7 had been smudged so it appeared to him like a 1. (The department secretary had told us 403.) We went en mass to 407, but there was a class in there too. The professor disappeared briefly. 
"He's gone to do evidential scholarship on the matter of our classroom," Crystal quipped. He came back and said that since the class was supposed to meet on Tuesdays and Fridays on alternating weeks, today wasn't supposed to be a real meeting anyway, but just a question period. If we didn't have any questions, we could go. Well, Crystal and I didn't have any questions yet because we hadn't been to the class yet. The only question in our minds was, if even the professor can't figure out what room the class is supposed to be in, what hope is there for us? (These photos depict the two buildings where I have almost all my classes.)After this I had some free time so I made another (unsuccessful) attempt to get a library card. This was actually the third time I had gone and tried to get a library card. This time, I had the right stuff but didn't have 500 RMB in cash. Why do I have to pay over $60 to get a library card? But that was what the grumpy lady said and it didn't seem negotiable.
I went home for lunch because my meal card wouldn't work until evening. I made myself some jiaozi (gyoza/ mandu)--I got a big bag of frozen ones for amazingly cheap, and have been eating them about once a day--and watched a television program about jade. I am usually not much for TV, as anyone who knows me can testify, but I have decided it's practically my duty to watch it as a way of helping my Chinese. After all, lots of people learn English from TV, right? Well since I have a big TV in my room, it seems worth a try. (Colin: like this picture but a lot lot cooler and not for sale.)YHz's graduate student called me when I had just finished eating. I feel I didn't do such a good job in talking, but it was almost impossible for to, I was so nervous about it. Well at least it's over now. This guy, SXb, suggested I just go ahead and buy a new bicycle instead of trying to wait for a second-hand one because most second-hand ones are stolen and one wouldn't want to contribute to the problem. That seemed reasonable. I will just try to go buy an ugly one maybe. We got done talking about bicycles, and then we had to think what to talk about next. I said clumsily that I was very glad to talk to him because I don't really know any of my classmates. And he gave me his cell number and said I should call him anytime and not worry about being polite. But then I asked him what he studied and was a little confused about the answer. He does not take classes because he is preparing for the qualifying exam. And it has something to do with the Hanshu bibliographical treatise, but I got confused with that and the class on same, and I fear my response may not have been quite right in retrospect.... Maybe I didn't give him a very good impression of my Chinese listening comprehension, but he at least seemed friendly. He suggested I go to the history department and ask them if I could change over to the Chinese department, because some things might not be very convenient otherwise. I thought this was a sage suggestion and may go do that this very day. Or tomorrow.
I really need to hire a tutor to work on my spoken Chinese. I'm starting to feel like a real chump, always stammering and not knowing what to say. I saw several "experienced Mandarin Chinese tutors" advertising in the same Beijing expat classified ad website that I found my apartment in. So maybe I'll try some of them out. They're cheap and if they're not good I can always not continue.
After this stressful success, I went to LL's class on the Daodejing. It was less crowded than before, but still crowded. I got there early and sat in the very back corner. My old roommate, KS, had been planning on coming but at the last minute he had a conflict, so I had to go it alone. There was a lot of mutual distribution of papers among the favored few who were LL's students and whom he actually wanted in the class. But I wasn't the only left out one sitting on the "loser's bench" in the back either. I asked for a look at one of the papers--it turned out to be LL's notes on what he was going to say. Would have been useful, but LL speaks pretty clearly and I had fortunately brought my own copy of the Daodejing, so I was pretty much able to follow what he was saying. He was mainly just going through the text one piece at a time, starting with the famous, "The Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao." He was more or less analyzing variants that occurred in the earliest excavated manuscripts, and discussing how they might have come to be different in the transmitted versions. He didn't talk about Hanfeizi at all, so I guess maybe that was just an offhand remark of his at the last class.
In the absence of any clear syllabus, there is so much that is a matter of nuance. As a non-native speaker, I have a hard time telling, when a professor said, "You should read x," whether he means, "You should read x because that is what we are going to be discussing in the next class," or whether he means, "You should get around to reading x sometime in your life." My sympathy and respect for foreign students who brave a trip to the US becomes ever higher. But at least most of our classes have syllabi!!
Even without the notes, the class was pretty interesting, enough that I think it worth trying to continue. He did say again that he really wanted the class to be smaller (it was about 20-30 or so people) so that we could have student presentations instead of just him talking. Then he added, "Best would be three. Four would be too many." Well, my going or staying will not have the effect of reducing 20 people to three, so I might as well stop worrying. But it would be nice if one could get the notes…
I had picked up 500 RMB back at home, cursing that it was five whole days worth of books. This library thing better be worth it. So after LL's class, I went straight to the library and hit the ID desk for the fourth and I hope final time! (Here is a picture of the library.) The ID desk woman was very annoyed that I had showed up because she was about to leave, and had no hesitation about showing it.
But she angrily wrote out a receipt for me, took my two IDs, and told me where to pay the money. Unfortunately, she was irritated and in a hurry, so I had absolutely no clue what she said. It sounded like "bluh bluh stairs bluh bluh bluh door bluh bluh." I wandered around a bit, but I felt I should hurry. I noticed some other Americans who had also been at the ID desk and who seemed to have a Chinese person with them. They were chattering in English so I asked them. They had absolutely no clue. Then I decided to ask the people in the photocopy room. I was a bit apprehensive about that, because if there's anything that would make me mean and grouchy, it would be photocopying things for a living. But the photocopy room women turned out to be very helpful. They pointed and when my angle of departure was off by 20 or so degrees they called after me and we played a warm/cold game until I found the right hallway. "Hurry!" they called. "They're leaving soon!" I made it in time and received the esteemed privilege of forking over my 500 RMB. I wonder if it's some kind of deposit maybe? It really is a lot by local standards, and I'm certain it's more than any of the Chinese students have to pay (grumble). By the time I got back to the ID desk, she quickly handed me my cards and another receipt and said, okay, you can use it now. I guess that means I don't get a separate library card? or I do but I have to come back for it later? and what about the receipt? Do I need to keep that because it will enable me to get my 500 RMB back at the end or do I just have it because everything's in triplicate and they had to do something with the extra copy? I hate being so confused.
One good thing was that my meal-card definitely works. I had dinner in the huge and luxurious Nongyuan (farmer's garden) cafeteria, which is the one nearest my classroom buildings. I really liked it because all the food was laid out kind of buffet style. You didn't have to know the name of anything. You could just walk by and take what you wanted. I had a really good dark leafy greens dish, and one that was an odd combination of potato and chicken pieces which were indistinguishable from one another in a dark brown sauce. A bit odd, but not bad.
After dinner I read for a while in the fading light, acquiring several new mosquito bites. Then I went back to the "Concept of Literature" class. It was a bit slower this time. I guess the idea is that you're encouraged to read the books, but since it's unlikely anyone can read them all, he summarizes each one. He had a good way of telling a story, and it was interesting to hear the story of Hamlet and of Oedipus told in Chinese. I was starting to get pretty proud of my listening comprehension. But when it came to a book I hadn't read, I barely even got the gist of the plot. Sigh, back to the drawing board. Also, the guy's book isn't quite as interesting as his class, though it does have its good bits. All in all, I think I'll keep on but maybe will do slightly less work for it.
The girl sitting in front of me was really nice to me during the break and we chatted for some time. She is a German major, but her English was also very good. She had studied Japanese too. I suspect she may be one of those lucky people who are language geniuses. In any case she was really friendly and complimented my Chinese and we talked about different languages and how hard they are--German, we agreed, was harder than any of the others, maybe even harder than Japanese. I gave her my contact information, though I forgot to get hers. But anyway, this whole thing was good practice. I need to practice making friends, even if some of the friends I make are just "practice friends" and I never see them again. It's something I've been bad at all my life, but I suppose it's not too late to change.
I also discovered that Mr. Lime-Green, who was mean to me last week, is a philosopher. Huh! I should ask him what he studies, but he's such a bully I don't really want to talk to him! I thought I wouldn't be able to recognize him, but in fact I had no trouble at all. He is just so big and aggressive and practically vibrating with combative enthusiasm. One of the things he is most enthusiastic about is to prove the over-riding importance of intellect in the study of literature, which is in direct opposition to the professor's rather more romantic and "expressive" view. I decided that part of Lime-Green's meanness was really just a lack of social skills not uncommon (sorry Colin) among philosophers--at least in my observation. (Colin: I'm imagining a Chinese NS…)
After the class, with some trepidation, I approached the professor. He's rattled off a really long list of things we should take a look at for next time, but I'm not used to hearing Western names pronounced in Chinese, and I just couldn't keep up. So I had to ask for a repeat. Lime-Green was, of course, hovering in attendance. He nodded knowingly when he heard me say that I hadn't quite caught the reading. (Just what he'd expect from an ignorant barbarian.) But he didn't say anything snide, and even helped the professor to recall which things he'd mentioned. Of course he was just showing off his attentiveness, but help is help. I'm not choosy! And I have in readiness the most perfectly civilized cutting response should he give me any more trouble. Yeah I know it's not so cool to devise witticisms in advance, but on the other hand being prepared is better than being cool.
A 7-9 PM class is really exhausting. I hadn't had one since my brief experience with the Harvard Extension School while I was working in Boston. I'd forgotten how rough it is. But then everything is kind of rough here. Finding water to drink, steeling oneself to use the awful bathrooms, trying to figure out what paperwork you're supposed to do or supposed to have done, finding which classroom you're supposed to be in. So the small matter of evening classes pales in comparison.
Going out the southwest gate I saw a bunch of fruit-vendors. How well-placed they were! They were doing a brisk business, and I could understand exactly why. Fruit was just what I wanted. I decided, cautiously, on grapes--big red ones, not green! I selected such a modest number of them that the vendor laughed at me. They were fun to eat. They were huge and the best way to eat them proved to be squeezing them out of the skin. The skin was really too tough to eat, and besides, who knows what pesticides were on it? There were about one or two seed per grape, but the seeds were also enormous and easy to find and spit out.
So there I will leave me, eating grapes and working frantically on my reading for the Wednesday morning class until I couldn't keep my eyes open any more.
Below is a picture I took yesterday afternoon which I thought was really pretty but unfortunately just a tiny bit blurry. Let's call it "soft focus." It depicts the chrysanthemum truck. All over campus there are these slightly monotonous flower arrangements consisting of potted plants ringing any thing that can be conveniently ringed. But just this one image of the chrysanthemum truck reminded me how, at age five, one of my ideas about what I wanted to be when I grew up was a truck driver: a flower-truck driver. Well, this fellow has realized my childhood dream...
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