Well, not exactly “late” night, as it’s only 7:15 PM here in Beijing, but it feels like late night to me because for many of the people I know and love in New Mexico, it’s 4:15 AM.

I’ve been thinking of what I dislike most and like most about China, on this, my 11th voyage to the Middle Kingdom. First, the dislike category.

The communication gap is, of course, a big problem. As for instance last night, when I tried to get a cab to take me to the restaurant where I would be meeting my colleague Deb and her family, and after I got in the cab (at my hotel), the driver turned the car off and just sat there. Um, what’s the problem, I asked. Grunt, he replied. OK, I figured that he was reluctant to take me because the restaurant was “too close” (although a pretty far walk for me) and wouldn’t be worth his time. “I’ll pay you double,” I told him. He grunted again and pointed to his ear, clearly meaning that he couldn’t understand what I was saying. OK, I thought. Maybe money talks. So I took out 25 RMB and waved it at him (his usual fare for such a short trip would be 10 RMB). OK! he said, and off we went. Success! It ended up costing me a whopping $3.91, but the aggravation was in the failure to communicate the first time.

But hey, maybe we did communicate successfully. But it made me very nervous . . .

It also gets really old here that pedestrians NEVER have the right of way. It’s just a constant worry about crossing an intersection and hoping not to get mowed down by a car turning right ON A RED LIGHT WITHOUT STOPPING and even though the WALK SIGN IS CLEARLY FLASHING. When I told a Chinese friend of mine here that in the US pedestrians actually do have the right of way and that cars have to stop for us, she was amazed, couldn’t believe it.

And the air is really bad here. Some mornings, I can’t see the buildings pretty much across the street, the pollution is so bad. The Chinese know this too, and are very worried. It remains to be seen if there is anything that can be done about it, and soon. Ack. Ick. Gack.

OK, now for the good news. On rare days, the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and Beijing is absolutely beautiful (as much as a big city can be, anyway). And then there are the Chinese people who are just delightful (unlike my grunty cab driver). Some years ago I was on a bus here in Beijing and a lovely elderly woman pulled on my sleeve and insisted I sit on the empty seat next to her.

And then there are my students, who “love” me. (No kidding, one of my students just sent me a “Happy Thanksgiving” email which ended with, “We love you.”) I have such an amazing assortment of students this year: Chinese, of course (the majority), but also Iranian, Brazilian, Malaysian, Korean, Turkish, Russian, South African, Nigerian, Swiss, Italian–I feel like I’m teaching at the UN! And I am learning so much from them.

So I guess it all comes down to this: Beijing is like any other big city (17 million people!) with all the “horrors” of a big city (pollution, difficulties just crossing the street, smashed up against each other on subways), but its people are spectacular. And very dear to me.

So here I am again, another fall semester of teaching at the Beijing International MBA (BiMBA) program, and marveling at the warmth and sunshine of Beijing in November. (There are still roses in bloom!)

I have been eating at some wonderful restaurants here (more and more places have English menus, yay) and it occurred to me that there are two things about Chinese restaurants that I have experienced, one a little annoying, the other actually very nice.

In a Chinese restaurant, the minute you are seated, the waitress comes over and stands next to you, pen poised over pad, to take your order. This is slightly nerve-wracking, as typically the menu is EXTENSIVE (just like in the States, there are an amazing number of selections), and it could take awhile to go through it all. But there’s that waitress waiting, waiting, waiting. So one (me) is forced to zoom through the menu quickly so as not to keep the waitress waiting too long. This is somewhat annoying.

Then, after you have ordered and your food has arrived, you never see the waitress again until you actually flag her over for the bill. This part I really like. No waitperson hovering, hovering, asking, “Is everything all right?” (NO! I want to yell. IT TASTES LIKE GARBAGE! just to see what the reaction would be.) No “Can I get you anything else?” No “Can you hurry up and finish because we have this table reserved for another party?” No, no, no, one (me) is left in peace until I decide my time is up.

I’m still trying to decide who is more civilized here. (I’m leaning towards the Chinese.)

Flying back home today (Tuesday, Dec. 7). It’s been an adventure, as always, but maybe our last night in China was the best adventure of all. See it here.

I just finished a very interesting book about learning Mandarin, called “Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons In Life, Love, And Language (by Deborah Fallows), and it occurred to me that it was time to list all the words/phrases I knew in Chinese (after four years and ten times of coming here), just to see how long the list is.

Beijing University, West Gate
Beijing University, East Gate
Dumplings
Steamed Buns
Beer
Salt
Hello
Goodbye
Thank you
Rice
Tea
Doggie Bag

And I can count to ten.

So this makes me, I figure, on the same sophisticated language level as, oh, maybe a two-year-old? (And the Chinese two-year-old child would of course produce much better tones than I can.)

My reading ability is much, much worse (if that can even be possible). I can recognize the characters for one (one horizontal line), two (two horizontal lines), and three (three horizontal lines). I know the character for people/person (looks like a very skinny abstract Gumby). And that’s it.

Good thing pantomime is indeed a universal language!

My full-time class ended today (Monday, Nov. 29) and, as is always the case, the students insisted on taking a class picture with me (their most beloved professor, of course). When Chinese people take a picture, they often say their version of our “Cheese!” to make a smile. The word they use is qie zi (KAY-juh, is the pronunciation, I think), which means “eggplant.”

So here we are, smiling away (Click on the picture to make it bigger):

Entree on the menu in a rather posh Chinese restaurant here in Beijing:

“Stir BBQ Pork with pleurotus nebrodensis”

Excuse me?????

OK, should I be worried? Because the Koreas are RIGHT OVER THERE. Everyone here in Beijing (the ones I come in contact with, like my students) are somewhat concerned about this situation. Most of them pooh-pooh the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) crazies and think they’re basically harmless. Yeah, right. Crazies with (maybe) nuclear weapons.

I didn’t have to worry so much about this when I was in New Mexico. But here in Beijing . . .

A: When the taxi won’t even take you.

Deb and Juliann and I were trying to get to a dumpling restaurant we had heard about (Ummmm . . . dumplings . . .) and had to show our little paper with Chinese address on it to three different cab drivers before we found one who would actually take us. And this place was just a ways down the main street! Don’t know why the cabbies refused us. Maybe they just think western women are loud and obnoxious?

WHO, US?!?!?!?!

I had “Thanksgiving” dinner tonight in Beijing at a very posh (and yet with squat toilets) vegetarian restaurant. Among the many dishes we had (there were four of us) were spicy “chicken,” chewy “sausages,” and – the main course – Peking “duck.”

Actually all were quite tasty and I brought home leftovers. Just goes to show that you can’t judge a duck by its tofu.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

My nephew, Philip Dowling (isn’t he handsome?), spent a semester in Beijing last year and has graciously allowed me to publish his account of his experience here:

In the fall of 2009, I set off from Mannheim University in Germany, where I was studying for a Bachelor in Business Administration, to travel to Beijing. There I would spend four months studying business at Peking University (Beida for short) and see everything China had to offer. My trip proved to be an amazing experience and I can only encourage other people to go and check out China!

It all started off with trying to organize a place to live during my time in Beijing. As a typical German I tried to plan everything in advance – but that doesn’t work in China: The Beida international office quickly told me that I shouldn’t apply for a campus dorm. Even the international dorm was way below western standards and unless I wanted a real adventure I should try to organize an apartment on my own. That’s when I got the email address from “Hawk,” a Chinese housing agent who specialized in helping foreign students find a single or shared apartment. Hawk is a great guy – I exchanged several emails with him trying to find a suitable shared apartment that wasn’t too expensive and located near campus. However, as soon as I had picked an apartment from his website and wrote him an email, the apartment was already gone. After what seemed like hundreds of emails, I finally managed to reserve one apartment and hoped that I wouldn’t have to sleep under a Beijing bridge. On the day I arrived in China, Hawk picked me and another exchange student from Austria up at the airport and drove us to a huge (in Chinese terms tiny) apartment complex. There he showed us several apartments and in end we both chose totally different apartments from the ones we had reserved. That was my first Chinese lesson: Why make plans if they change in the end anyway?

Lots of other exchange students and I all found apartments in the neighborhood, “Hua Qing Jia Yuan,” in Beijing’s district “Wudaokou.” The good thing about Wudaokou is that it is very close to Beida (2km by bike or three stops by bus – which is just next door for Beijing!) and surrounded by lots of other Beijing universities. It is also right next to a subway station that goes to the city center, and there are plenty of restaurants (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, American, etc.), shopping places, fast food chains (McD, KFC, Starbucks), popular student bars, and clubs. In other words, the best place to be for exchange student looking to have a good time! (Especially since beer and food is incredibly cheap.)

Peking University itself is located right next to Tsinghua University and is said to be one of the most prestigious universities in China – if not in all of Asia. Some professors have originally taught at universities like Harvard, Columbia, etc. My courses were all in English and were usually designated only for the 100 exchange students the business school hosts each semester.

The university’s campus is simply beautiful and sealed off from the noisy city around it. There are several dining halls and cafeterias, offering very cheap Chinese food. However, in the beginning, it was important to have somebody who was able to translate the menu in order to tell you if the dish was good or if the dish was some sort of “specialty.”

For me, Beijing is a fascinating city. It is one of the few cities that is able to combine traditional and modern Chinese culture. If you are looking more to experience a modern Asian city, Shanghai, Hong Kong or Singapore is the better place to go. But if you are out for an adventure, but still do not want to give up Western culture completely, Beijing is the place to be.

Beijing is huge and offers a variety of activities – so many that I could never have done everything in one semester. There are hundreds (I am not exaggerating) of shopping centers (lots of them cheap “fake temples” but also very modern and expense ones), several “concert halls,” entire neighborhoods with bars and clubs and even several “Art Districts” with an amazing number of art exhibitions and galleries. It was also very easy to find cheap English-speaking travel agents, so a bunch of us booked cheap flights to Vietnam and Thailand or a night train to Shanghai or even Tibet.

All in all, my semester abroad in Beijing was a great experience. I recommend (almost) everybody to try it out if you get the chance to do it. If you are somebody who values extreme cleanliness and hygiene, you’re probably in for a cultural shock. But if you’re up for just a bit of adventure, you will love this city, this country and its culture.