Fourth Week

This was the last week before our social study projects.

On Monday, we watched the second movie of the term. It was called “The Wedding Banquet” and was directed by Ang Lee. It had all the elements of a good movie: elderly Chinese parents who pretend not to understand English, interracial relationships, homosexuality, rowdy wedding banquets, illegal immigration (marriage for a green card), illegitimate children, dynamic characters, vitamins, mah jong, painting, and real estate. I suggest you rent it. Calligraphy isn’t going so well either. The “teachers” wrote my name for me. Of course it was perfect and of course they expected me to replicate it within 15 minutes. This time only 4 people showed up, equaling approximately 40% of the previous week’s attendance.

On Tuesday, dignitaries from China’s education ministry (I think) came to visit HBA. I was asked to participate in a mock-daban ke, taught by Wang Laoshi. So the chosen 12 assembled and watched Wang Laoshi pace back and forth in nervous anticipation. When HBA’s director, Feng Laoshi, came, accompanied by BLCU’s vice president and members of the education ministry, the mood instantly changed from a tensionless one to a tensionful one. I wasn’t nervous until I saw the five camerapeople file in, rolling film and snapping pictures like crazy. While our performance wasn’t on trial (Wang Laoshi’s was), I was still uncomfortable about the fact that every single mistake I made would be captured potentially for the whole world to see and mock. But everything went smoothly. I could tell because Wang Laoshi instantly began teasingly scolding us as soon as the dignitaries were out of earshot. “Get to class or I will beat you to death.” I think that’s a pretty accurate translation.

Wednesday was the worst day of HBA for me. I think it was a combination of being sick and realizing I wasn’t going to have any “relaxation” time this summer. On Monday, we were told we were going to have to do a skit in addition to taking a midterm exam. If there is one thing I hate doing, it’s performing a skit. The requirements were that it had to be between 10 and 12 minutes long, about any of the lessons or movies we’ve read/seen, and in Chinese. I’m not a very creative person, so the brainstorming session was about the most miserable I’ve ever been. Luckily had a great group in Carl, Mike, and Kelsey, so we easily came up with a storyline and funny quotes. We based our skit on a story by the famous Chinese author Lu Xun, except ours was not profound.



I was incredibly unhappy Wednesday afternoon. I remembered a Light Fellowship orientation meeting where we saw a graphical projection of what our moods would be over the course of the 9 weeks. It was a V-shape, and I’m fairly sure I hit the bottom of the V that week. Although, looking back on the graph, I think mine was more like a cliff: I was doing pretty well until week 4, when I completely crashed. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone, I didn’t study well, and I didn’t exit my room except for class and food. That night, no matter what, I couldn’t memorize my lines. Our rehearsals were rough and I didn’t have much hope for our performance the next day.

So Thursday arrived and I arrived to class with the props I had spent the rest of Wednesday night making: calligraphic posters of Chinese characters for my Chinese medicine clinic (I had to put my shufa skills to work somehow), eyebrows and a beard made out of toilet paper, and the Centrum vitamins my dad packed for me. I also had my violin. I must say that our performance far exceeded my expectations. The night had really solidified our artistic sides and we attacked our skit with a creative genius I have never witnessed in my life. Like the “Wedding Banquet,” our skit had many of the elements of a great performance, in no particular order: acupuncture, Beijing Opera, abduction, diarrhea, “The Moon Represents Your Heart” by Deng Lijun, diabetes-inducing melon seeds, computer nerds, and a narrator. We got a lot of laughs, quite the opposite of what I was expecting. So I became happy once again. It was like a light switch: before the performance, I wanted to zisha (I won’t translate this because it may not be appropriate. I will say that the tones are 4 and 1), but I was incredibly relieved afterward. What’s more, the teachers ordered pizza to congratulate us. I would learn later that another reason was so that they wouldn’t have to treat us to Zhongwen Zhuozi on Friday.

If you’ve ever had Chinese pizza, it goes without saying that it is strange. The toppings I mean. Here are some of the winning combinations: corn and beef, hot peppers and chicken, banana with unidentified other fruit, straw mushrooms and wood ear, etc. I can’t remember the others. Since one of the skits used a mah jong set, a few of us gathered after lunch to play. All of us were a bit rusty, so we argued over the rules for a while. Our conversation slowly evolved to English, and at one point male Wang Laoshi popped his head in to tell us to speak in Chinese. It was funny. We finally got to play and it felt so good. I didn’t want the sensation to stop, but they still made us go to xiaoban ke. Since the grades Yalies get at HBA don’t factor into our transcripts, our Thursday night was relatively relaxed compared to the Harvard kids’.

Friday was our dreaded midterm. There were some translations that we hadn’t encountered before, but all in all it was doable. I should have studied my characters a little better because there were some phrases that I completely forgot. It’s impossible to study 13 lessons’, 2 extra stories’, and 2 movies’ worth of vocabulary thoroughly. You do what you are capable of, picking out the more frequently used words, skipping ones like “concubine,” “abductor,” “revolutionary song,” and “slave.” Our teachers decided to spare us the agony of finding out our grade before embarking on our social study projects, so we get to have a week off with nothing to worry about.

On Saturday, Carolyn took us to Pan Jia Yuan, an outdoor market for Chinese antiques and art. I got to practice my haggling once again. I decided to buy a mah jong set myself since the one we used on Thursday was missing the crucial flowers. There was also a really neat art tile vendor I found. The tiles were painted and glazed I think with abstract Chinese characters, combining two of my favorite artistic components.



Sunday I did nothing.