Final Week

The last week of HBA was just as hectic as usual. We managed to get through three lessons, and the last one was definitely the hardest of the program. We read another one of Lu Xun’s esoteric essay/story, which many of our teachers had a hard time interpreting on their own as well.

On Thursday, we had our final oral test, which consisted of reading one of 5 pre-selected textbook passages and then answering questions about the content and our own opinions. It sounds like more than it really was. Each student was allotted only 10 minutes and there were only 2 teachers in the room to make us nervous. Friday’s final exam was the same length as our usual weekly exams, and it was about the same difficulty as the midterm. Honestly, by that point I had lost most of my motivation, so it wasn’t hard for me to neglect studying for more than an hour. I did, however, go to office hours, where we were treated to arm wrestling between teachers and students. Even Feng Laoshi participated. It was a great time to just chat with teachers in a more relaxed atmosphere, joke with them, and reminisce about the past few weeks.

After everyone finished the final, we attended our “graduation” and final ceremonies. We heard from representatives from BLCU, HBA, and a student speaker from each grade. I enjoyed this more than the opening ceremonies because this time I could understand most of what they said. We all received diplomas, a group picture, and a contact book to keep in touch with classmates. Then we were treated to an elaborate banquet held at the elegant and high-class….BLCU conference center. I guess they wanted to save money? Or trouble. It was fine because they invited all of the host families so we got to see them one last time before we left. Feng Laoshi even let us order 2 bottles of beer per table, so needless to say some of the teachers became quite rowdy. The mood was very relaxed and jovial as HBA had finally come to an end.




All in all, I’d say that the experience was worth it. Of course I’ve already developed selective memory, which in my opinion anyone who has done something like this acquires (especially if tuition is involved) just to make the experience not seem like a waste of time. That’s probably too harsh. HBA really did have a remarkable effect on my Chinese skills, but there were times where I was sick of studying, sick of the pollution, sick of Beijing. 9 weeks was definitely long enough for me, and that was even with the 5th week of social study. I have nearly no complaints about the teachers, except that the majority of them were so good that when I had one that wasn’t as good, it made the drill or tutorial excruciatingly painful. They are all professional and well-prepared, but they also have great senses of humor (at least in the Chinese sense of the word).

Would I do the program knowing what I know now? That would actually be a hard decision for me to make. This was my first academic summer, my previous ones being spent at music camp. I know what it’s like to work hard during the summer through practicing music, but to me playing the violin is something fun. Studying grammar, characters, and sentence structures was more a chore. The students there are a lot of fun, and I should have utilized my free time more efficiently by going out an exploring Beijing instead of sleeping the afternoon away. I always felt tired and out of time, when in reality afternoons were a great time to go see something new and innovative (which in Beijing is kind of difficult…Shanghai is better). I will always remember HBA as a program that had more good attributes than bad ones.

Eighth Week

We’re nearing the end. I’ve been ready to go for a while, but now that it’s nearly over, I’m going to miss the teachers and students.

This week our focus was Chinese news. In order to save paper, Chinese newspapers shrink article sizes, and therefore reading newspapers is extremely difficult. Many connectors, nouns, and verbs, essential to Chinese learners, are omitted, and only through years of reading newspaper can one get used to the modified system. Whereas American newspapers are written using middle school vocabulary, Chinese newspapers are substantially harder to read. The teachers required us to listen or read Chinese news for three nights in order to discuss them during our one-on-one sessions the next day. We were to speak for 30 minutes pertaining to news. Most students gave up after not understanding very much of the fast-spoken news reports and the esoteric newspapers and turned to CNN or the New York Times online. The teachers understood, and we were able to talk about world news that wasn’t horribly filtered by the government. In addition, the time after our weekly test was devoted to a debate. We were divided into 3 groups to debate topics such as the rate of democratization in China, corporal punishment of children, and China’s abortion policies.

Saturday was our talent show, a showcase of skits, music, and dance. I accompanied the third years as they sang “Kan guo lai” (Look over here) and “Yueliang daibiao wode xin” (The moon represents my heart). I also played “Liang zhu” (Butterfly Lovers’ Concerto-the Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet) while Ming Min danced. A lot of the second year programs took American songs and rewrote the lyrics so that they were in Chinese and had something to do with HBA. I was thoroughly impressed until I heard someone mention that the teachers did it all. Some teachers also performed: male Wang Laoshi and Luo Laoshi represented third year. Wang Laoshi sang some kind of Cantonese song I think. I was too busy grimacing to understand. My favorite act of the entire night was Luo Laoshi’s awkward performance of a combination of Peking Opera and fast speaking (if that’s what it was: I couldn’t tell). As soon as he got on stage, nervously gripped the microphone and started bobbing his head to the piercing music I couldn’t stop laughing.

Seventh Week

Wang Laoshi did indeed coerce me into participating in the speech competition between the various study abroad programs. There were different categories for different levels of Chinese, and participants were separated according to huayi and fei huayi status, those with and without Chinese heritage. I was entered in the third year huayi group. We all had a maximum of 5 minutes to speak about anything. Most people described some aspect of Chinese life/culture/economy and the improvements needed. Although I didn’t win, HBA as a whole had a very good showing.

August is the rainiest month in Beijing, and it lived up to expectations. On Tuesday, rainclouds gathered overhead, turning the sky an eerie brownish color and poured rain over us. It was still raining during danbanke and the power went out for about an hour. When we went outside, we found everything to be flooded. The water was nearly a foot high and we waded through trash and mud to get back to our rooms.

On Sunday we went to Long Jing Xia, a touristy part scenic wonder part amusement park nestled near the Badaling section of the Great Wall about 2 hours away from Beijing. Not only does it cost money to get in, but we also had to pay for everything we could do inside. There was boat riding, sky-car lifting, slot-car sliding, and my favorite, bungee jumping. I don’t know what came over me, but I decided to do what I would have never thought of doing in the United States. Not only am I afraid of heights, but willingly falling off of a ledge hundreds of feet up with nothing but an elastic piece of string attached to my legs isn’t very appealing. But it was inexpensive (according to US standards) so I decided to get it over with. It was thrilling, but I don’t know if I would do it again.




Sunday night I ordered my ticket from Beijing to Shanghai. I was originally going to be on the same Hainan Airlines flight as Lulu, but when I checked the prices online, it had been raised from about $60 to over $190, so I decided to find another deal on my own. The website I ended up using was elong.net, an experience you won't find in the United States. The site is very easy to navigate (I think it's expedia's partner), but since it is an exclusively Chinese destination search engine, all prices are in RMB. That's not really a problem either. The sketchy part about it is that as of now, there is no online credit card payment system. When you book the ticket, you enter your mobile phone number so an agent can call you for your credit card number. You can either do this an pay a 3% surcharge, or you can pay in cash when a courier on a motorcycle-scooter shows up at your door with your ticket receipt.