Last test before the rest

I spent the last few days studying for my Chinese final, which I finished today, ending the semester except for a two week long study trip that we set out on tomorrow. As I labored over page after page of grammar and flashcard after flashcard of vocab, it was gratifyingly evident how far I had come in a very short time. It was also painfully evident how much I had learned for just a day or a week and then immediately forgotten.

In my experience, this is bound to happen in language learning. To use an analogy you Americans still working on Thanksgiving leftovers might appreciate, imagine throwing all the food that graced your table last Thursday at a wall. Some, like the mashed potatoes and the pumpkin pie, will really stick, like the vocab and grammar that easily stays in the mind because it interests you or because you use it daily or because it is similar to English. On the other hand, the turkey and stuffing and ham are going to hold on for just a moment before falling to the floor, just like a large portion of vocabulary and grammar that slides to the floor unnoticed and unused.
It is that grammar and vocab that I was really focusing on as I studied yesterday, attempting to give it a good coating of cranberry sauce or gravy before again throwing it at the heavily loaded wall. Again, some slid down the wall just moments after finishing my final, but more and more get entrenched in mashed potatoes or crystallized in cranberry sauce.
I'm done, but I am also well prepared for next semester and more Chinese.

I apologize if that analogy was a bit much for you, and especially if you, like me, have no leftovers (or even recent memory of a Thanksgiving meal) to sate the hankering for Thanksgiving food that you just got.

I will leave tomorrow evening for a trip going to Luoyang, Xi'an, Xi'ning, Lhasa (Tibet), and Chengdu. We will see a number of monasteries (including the famous Shaolin Temple), ride on the highest railroad in the world (from Xi'ning to Lhasa), and see an incredibly large Buddha among other things. I will be unable to post anything during that time without my computer with its newly repaired VPN, but I assume I will have many photos and experiences to share when I return.

First candidate on the left

American election, Chinese style. This morning, as election night began in the US, my friends and I began election morning and afternoon in China. We got our teachers' permissions to skip the first class of the day, and went to a cafe in Wudaokou, where they had the election results coming in on a projector. As results came in, the diverse, (and very liberal) crowd of Americans, Germans, Chinese, and more clapped and whooped as states were called for Obama, and hissed when Romney or the Republicans made gains. We anxiously and, at least on my part, mostly ineffectively studied Chinese as we waited for polls to close and the final result to come in. When Obama was projected to win the election with a projected win in Ohio, the crowd cheered and clapped as a few organizers for overseas Democrats thanked people for coming and invited everyone to have a beer on them. We waited for Obama's speech and then went to class.
Meanwhile, as we listened to election results from the US, China began its own process of choosing its leaders for the next decade. The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party began its incredibly opaque process today in Beijing, bringing with it heightened security measures noticeable everywhere from the internet (incredibly slow and unstable) to Chinese activists (forced to leave the city until the end of the Congress) to the Beida campus (ID cards checked on arrival with about four times the usual number of guards at entrances) to taxis (window cranks had to be removed) to shops (knives are not allowed to be sold) to all things flying (no balloons, kites, or pigeons can be flown).
Certainly somewhat different than the American method for choosing its next leader.

My red tie made some people think I was a Romney supporter, which earned me some looks of concern for my mental health

First snowman of the year

It snowed in Beijing!
A beautiful, wet, and cold snow came last night after a rainy day, leaving my feet drenched in icy water as I came back from dinner with friends. The sidewalks and roads were cleared by cars driving, feet walking, people with handcarts shoveling, leaving the sidewalk partially dry and mostly either ice or icy cold water. Kids played in it as adults tramped through and around it with umbrellas to protect from the continuing rainy snow. A snowman was erected in front of a nearby shopping center. Beautiful, wet, and cold.
The past week has been mostly filled with classes with brief intermissions of social life.
Last Wednesday, a Chinese girl came up to me at the bus stop, asked if I was a student at Beida, asked whether I had a girlfriend, and then asked for my number. She is from Hangzhou, so I guess she isn't so circumspect as conservative Beijing girls. I ended up giving her my number, and a friend of mine and I went to dinner with her Saturday night. A lot of fun and very good practice for my Chinese.
Friday night, a few classmates and I went to see a ballet on the Beida campus called "The Red Detachment of Women," which is a famous revolutionary ballet in which a badly treated servant of a landlord escapes, joins the Red Army's women division, and helps in the uprising against the evil landlord. It was a fantastic ballet, though the subject led to a few head-scratching moments for me. One of the most interesting part of the play was the prevalence of weapons. Dances were very frequently performed with rifles, pistols, swords, spears, and even hand grenades. In the ballet, the weapons served not so much as the objects of destruction that most of us see them as today, but rather as objects of liberation and empowerment. Another really interesting moment came when the evil landlord was at last killed. The lead protagonist shot him, bringing, in my mind, a kind of vengeful, peaceful, and foretelling silence, only to be broken by about a dozen other soldiers turning their weapons on his dead body (which had fallen off the back of the stage as he tried to run away) and shot him several dozen times. The crowd clapped. I was left surprised by the seeming childishness and brutality of that final act of violence.
Other than that, life goes on as I try to come up with a plan for my two and a half months of vacation this winter break. As we Americans steel ourselves for the upcoming election, Beijing (and its internet censorship) is steeling itself for the Party Congress that will begin the day after the election. As such, Facebook and actually commenting on my blog (I can write new posts, just not go to my actual blog page) are getting harder and harder, so please forgive unanswered comments. I can skype fairly well and easily during my evenings (US East mornings) if anyone would like to talk! My skype name is drkolhoff.