Hello, readers!
I apologize for the lack in posts – my already poor Wi-Fi
decided to go out this week and won’t be fixed until sometime next week. I’m
writing this post from a cute Tibetan café with lots of plants and overpriced
coffee.
Since my last post, I’ve been getting settled into the
routine of classes. I’m only taking 13 credit hours, but the program I’m using
only offers intensive language courses. So basically, I’ve already finished all
of the content that the CHIN 302 class at MC will learn this semester, and it’s
only week five. I have a final exam this week, then we're jumping into two more
semesters worth of content. Needless to say, I’ve been very busy with work, and
I haven’t done anything horribly exciting.
As I get more and
more settled in here, things in general are less exciting. I’ve gotten used to
some things about Chinese culture that used to bother me. For example, lines
are a rare thing here. I get genuinely surprised when I go into a store to buy
something and there’s a line-up at the register. Most of the time, there’s just
a crowd of people and whoever puts their goods on the counter first gets to
pay. A few weeks ago, this really bothered me, but I’ve grown to kind of like
it, or at least not mind it.
I’ve also gotten a job since my last post, tutoring a twelve
year-old girl in English. She’s getting ready for her junior high interview,
and needs to work on her writing and vocabulary, so I go to her house once a
week and help her for an hour, then they feed me dinner. She lives in a wealthy
neighborhood, in an actual house,
with her mom, sister, and their nanny. It’s been quite the experience getting
to know them. A general rule is that the more Western something is, the more
expensive it is. For example, Western food costs about 10-15 USD, which doesn’t
seem too bad until you remember that you can eat Chinese food for 2-4USD. The neighborhood
they live in is very Western, and they live in a Western style house instead of
a Chinese apartment, so you can guess just how wealthy they probably are. I don’t
think the neighborhood I live in (Wuhou) is bad, but it just doesn’t compare to
the glitz of their neighborhood (Tongzilin), and I do walk past a Maserati and
Ferrari dealership on my way to their house. How exciting.
This weekend we took a field trip to the Jinsha museum.
Jinsha was an ancient civilization that was discovered when trying to dig the
foundation for a new apartment complex in Chengdu. They stopped the building of
the apartment complex and instead turned the area into an archeological site,
then built the museum around it. When you go through the museum, you get to see
the actual site, which was unlike any museum I’ve been to in the US. Some of
the object they discovered included sacrificial animal bones and tusks, which
were preserved from being buried. These objects would decay if they were
removed, so the archaeologists reburied them. The Art History nerd in me had an
awesome time here, and I plan on visiting other Chinese museums while I’m here.
Pictures of the museum are below.
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| An elephant tusk preserved in silicone |
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| The Modi River |
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| Cong - these represent the Earth. |
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| The archaeological site. |
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| A burial site - the Jinsha people were buried, but without coffins. |
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| The symbol of Jinsha, a sun surrounded by birds. |
As always, I look forward to reading any comments and answering
any questions you might have!
