The Nanjing University Orchestra

It's been a few weeks since I've posted. Apologies. I promise I haven't been slacking, I've just been extremely busy over the past two weekends, so I haven't had much of a chance to write. Last weekend in particular was quite the adventure.

As one of my classes at Nanjing University, I joined the Nanjing University Orchestra. It's been an awesome experience. The teacher/conductor is awesome, and even though nobody in the orchestra is a music major (there is no music program at the university) we do pretty well. The first week of school, we started rehearsing. At first glance, I thought the music was challenging, but doable. The second week of school was a national holiday, so we missed two weeks of rehearsal. However, during those two weeks, a message was sent out to all the orchestra members saying that in just a few short weeks, we would be going on our first tour around the province. As might be expected, our next and last rehearsal before the tour was a much needed 9AM-9PM marathon. Utterly ridiculous. I don't think I've ever been so tired after playing the violin.

The next Friday at noon, we left Nanjing on a bus. We drove about two and a half hours until we arrived at HuaiYin High School (which looked more like a college campus, to be honest -- it was huge). We took all of our stuff off the bus and immediately started rehearsing. After dinner, we immediately changed our clothes and went to perform. The next day was almost the exact same schedule: Get up, eat, get on a bus to the next location, eat, rehearse, eat, perform, eat some more, sleep. The same thing happened on Sunday, but this time we finally made it home to Nanjing. It was an exhausting weekend for sure.

The performances themselves were a good experience -- and they definitely went better than I had anticipated -- but I think the best experiences of the trip were not necessarily centered around these performances. Most importantly, this was my first time going out and doing something with a giant group of Chinese students. Up until this point, I had definitely had opportunities to interact with Chinese people in classes and such, but most of the big activities had been with my fellow American students. Last weekend, I got to ride the bus for hours on end, eat lots of big meals, perform, and explore with Chinese students, and it was super fun! I think Friday night was the most noteworthy. We got back to our hotel at about 10PM, and a few orchestra members decided to go out and explore the city. It turned out that there was only one street in the city that actually had anything going on at that hour, but we had fun buying snacks from little street stands, drinking fresh fruit juice, and eating barbecue together. It was a fun time.

On this trip, I also got to know our conductor a lot better. He's a very special person. Because all of the performances were at various high schools, he would explain a lot of background to the audience. I learned very quickly that he loves to tell stories through music. There is one piece on the program in particular that was written by a Chinese composer, which he would explain in great detail every time we played. His story would always draw the audience in, and they would always clap when we played the main theme. It was awesome. Our conductor is the kind of person that reminds me why I love classical music.

Well, there you have it, that's what I have been up to the past two weeks -- violin, violin, and more violin. Great times had by all. Here's to better performances in the future!

-小强

A few side notes: We ate some interesting food while on our tour: pig ear and giant crab dumplings. We stayed in super nice five-star hotels both nights. My picture ended up in the local newspaper of at least one of the towns we visited. Lastly, the piece that our conductor would explain in detail is called 第一交响序曲 by 关峡 -- I'm sure you can copy and paste and find it on Youtube.

The school gym slowly being filled with students excited to see our performance.

Picture Book Story Time

I'm going to be a little lazy this week and merely post pictures and short descriptions of some of the more memorable moments in China thus far. There are far more memories than just these ten pictures, but I felt like these were some good ones. Also, before you judge too harshly, I apologize for the low quality of most of these photos: I am no photographer, and I am just now realizing that my phone and its camera are slowly becoming outdated. Anyway, enjoy!

Here I am in all my selfie glory, triple chins and all. This photo was taken on my first full day in China. I was sitting on the back of a realtor's motor scooter, being chauffeured around to different houses apartments that were up for rent. It was also raining a little bit that day (as it tends to do in the JiangSu province), so I'm holding an umbrella for the driver and myself. Most of the places these realtors took us to see were disgusting, dusty, and moldy. Luckily, on the third day, I found the place I live now.

This is what is called the "Xuanwu Gate," located alongside the Xuanwu Lake. Most of the older and larger Chinese cities have city walls (not unlike the Great Wall), and this is what the gates of those walls look like. Pretty awesome. This picture was actually taken the second time I went to the lake; the first time I went involved a sudden cloud-burst that lasted longer than my patience could hold out. I have a picture from that time, too, but this one is more clear.

Here we have some homework, my laptop, and a table, plus a little white-out. In China, they use pens (as opposed to pencils) to write most things, so they use white-out a lot. I found a bottle of it in the Flagship office, and I was trying to use it to fix some mistakes on an essay I had been working on, but the white-out wasn't coming out. After fiddling with the cap for a few minutes to no avail, I decided to pull off the cap entirely and try to pour some out onto a pinhead and rub it onto the paper. We'll just say that was a terrible idea, I wasn't careful enough, and the stuff went everywhere. I ended up rewriting my essay anyway, my computer is fine, and one of the teachers brought some mineral oil to get it off the table, so no long-lasting damage was done.

This is a sign that I pass nearly every day on the way to breakfast. The left side is a nice reminder to respect your parents and so on. The right side is a list of the socialist ideals. Signs similar to this, usually emblazoned with a list of the Socialist Ideals, are everywhere -- on bill boards, on sides of buildings, in the metros -- pretty much anywhere people go, you can find these signs. These are some good ideals (nationalism, honesty, democracy, liberty, etc.), but I find it funny that China takes it upon itself to place these reminders everywhere. It's one way of doing things, I guess.

This picture was taken at the top of Purple Mountain. This mountain is supposed to be gold in the daytime and purple in the evening, but when there is a shroud of mist (or smog?) completely enveloping it, I'd say it's just a plain old mountain. We hiked this for a classmates birthday a few weeks ago. It was a fun hike, but unfortunately we couldn't enjoy the view from the top because of the fog. Oh well.

Here are some of the third-graders that I taught at the school I mentioned last week. I taught some computer basics to this class, and they were quite well-behaved. Cute kids.

There isn't much to say about this picture because I really don't understand what was happening or why. As I was leaving the Xianlin campus the other day, I heard some loud dance music and looked over to see this group of what I assume are students dressed in military garb just dancing away. I couldn't help but take a picture. I didn't bother to ask why they were dancing in uniform.

This is the ZiFeng ("Purple Peak") Building in Nanjing, located about 10 minutes walking-distance from my house. I'm not sure what goes on in there, but I do know that it is the tallest building in the area. That's about it.

These last two pictures are a tribute to my landlord. Last week was Chinese National Day (like the Fourth of July, but the First of October instead), as well as the Mid-Autumn Festival, so we had the whole week off. The time off was great and all, but I got really bored really fast staying in Nanjing by myself. A couple days in, I got talking to my landlord, and he volunteered to be my tour guide for an afternoon. I happily accepted, so he, his wife, and a friend came and picked me up and drove me around the city. One of the places we went to was the ZhongShan Harbor, across from which was the PuKou Harbor on the Yangzte River. We took a ferry across the river and back, during the course of which I got a great view for Nanjing from the river.

On that same river, just downstream from where we took the ferry, there is this bridge. Apparently this bridge was the first ever Chinese-made bridge to cross the Yangtze River. Built during the Mao Era, this bridge has a bottom layer for trains and a top layer for cars. Before this bridge was built, there was a smaller one in the same spot that was built by the Soviets. This bridge wasn't big enough to support trains, so to cross the river, trains had to be taken apart and shipped car by car to the other side. This picture was taken from right on the edge of the river. To get to this spot, my landlord led me through a construction site(which I'm sure would not be kosher in the U.S., but the Chinese workers didn't seem to mind), over some fences and walls, and past some flooded walkways. It was a little sketchy, but it was worth it.

Well, that's it for this week. Hopefully these pictures and stories are evidence enough that China is awesome and that I'm thoroughly enjoying myself here. Happy China Day and Moon Festival!

-小强

The Chinese Phenomenon

The other day, I overheard a classmate talking to a teacher about a possible safety hazard around his apartment. The roads and alleyways in his neighborhood are very narrow, and even though there are no parking signs all over the place, every road is lined with cars, leaving just enough space for a car to get through. This classmate of mine was ready to call the mayor of Nanjing and report the problem because if there was an emergency of any kind, it would be nearly impossible for a wider-than-normal emergency vehicle to get to his apartment complex -- a legitimate situation to worry about, I would say. In response to this, the teacher reminded my classmate that this is a "Chinese Phenomenon," and even though it is not legal, the fact is that there just isn't enough space to park all those cars, so there is no easy way of fixing the problem. Ever since this little dialog, I have attached the name "Chinese Phenomenon" to a lot of different little quirks in the Chinese society. I would like to share three of those in this post.

The first Chinese Phenomenon is closely related to the example I brought up above: the Chinese line (or lack thereof). I learned very quickly that queues in China are more like clumps; whoever can get through to the front is the first in line. On the plane ride here, I was one of maybe five non-Chinese people on the flight, so I had to fight my way through customs. Even though there are signs all over the metro saying that you need to wait for people to get off the train before you get on, once the doors open, the people flooding in and the people flooding out hit each other like two opposing waves. Lots of pushing happens. People even cut in line at government agencies. I went to get my residency permit, and as I went up to the desk after my number was called, a lady cut in front of me because something was wrong with her friend's paperwork. I though it would be a quick process, but it turned out longer than I expected, and I was late to class on the first day of school. Nice.

I don't know if this actually qualifies as a widespread Chinese Phenomenon, but I had an interesting experience with the Nanjing Piano Club. I went to an activity of theirs the first week of school to see what it was like, and it just so happened that they were about to have a performance the next week, so they were rehearsing the pieces they had prepared and giving each other feedback. A few of the more experienced students took it upon themselves to tell the newer students what they were doing wrong and how to correct the errors of their ways, which I found a little awkward, seeing as none of them were teachers by any means. This wasn't the worst of it, however; none of these older students had the same opinions, so they ended up just surrounding the piano and the performer and all talking at the same time. It was chaotic and a little humorous at the same time. I don't think I will be going back to their activities anytime soon.

The last Chinese Phenomenon that I've come in contact with recently is the migrant worker problem. This is one of the big social issues in China right now. This problem stems from the Chinese residency registration system, which gives people registered in big cities better benefits those outside the city, including good schools. Better work opportunities and these benefits lure a lot of people from the countryside to the city, where they end up living. Unfortunately, becoming a registered resident is extremely hard for these people from the countryside, so they rarely (if ever) obtain these benefits. This lack of welfare, combined with the fact that they are noticeably different from the city-folk, makes life very hard for these migrant workers, and they usually have to work excruciating hours to make ends meet. This makes things hard for their children, too. Not only do they have to deal with not having parents around, they also can't go to the nice city schools; they have to go to special "migrant worker children" schools, which have little to no amenities. It is at one of these schools that I came in contact with this Chinese Phenomenon. This past week, a couple of classmates and I went to teach English and music to the kids at one of these schools on the outskirts of Nanjing. The school was nowhere near the city -- in fact, it was hard to tell that we were even near the city, it was so isolated. The school was a very small, dirty building filled to the brim with elementary school kids. We talked to the principal of the school -- an evident chain-smoker with a heavy Nanjing accent -- and he told us where to go. We ended up teaching four class periods, which was absolutely exhausting. While some of the kids showed a lot of potential, there were a lot of them that were very misbehaved -- we even had a little scuffle break out when we were teaching the sixth-graders. Seeing the kids in these circumstances was very eye-opening. Hopefully reform will take care of this problem soon. Until then, all I can do as a foreigner is continue to volunteer occasionally.

China is an interesting place. I'm glad I'm here -- whether I like it or not, living here is making me expand my views and learn more about the world first-hand. Some of the things I experience here are humorous, some are annoying, and some are just plain sad, but they all have one thing in common: they are for my profit and learning.

Until next week,

-小强

Sixth-graders Doing Between-class Exercises

Piano Club Chaos

The Church in China

To many Americans, China may seem like an atheist country that is completely devoid of religion. True, things do tend to work a little differently around here -- laws concerning religion are much more limiting and strict, and education does tend to lean a little more toward atheism than American education -- but China does claim to have religious freedom, just like the US. What differs between the two countries is what you can do with that religious freedom.

In China, I have found, the thing the government worries about is the influence religion can have on people. For example, there are two things specifically prohibited for Latter-day Saints in China: proselyting to Chinese nationals and attending the same meetings as Chinese nationals. I believe that this is because government officials hope that their citizens' loyalty to the Communist Party and to China aren't swayed by religion. In a communist society like China, this kind of loyalty to the system is required for things to function properly -- so who can blame them? The situation now is already much better than it was around the Communist and Cultural Revolutions. As of right now, China recognizes the "Big Five" religions officially, those being Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism, and other religions are free to practice as they wish as long as they follow the rules. The Church tries very hard to do things by the book and impress the Chinese with our integrity, so hopefully some day soon, the LDS Church can be officially recognized, too!

For now, the Church here in China works almost the same as it does in other countries. At the beginning of each of our meetings, the member of the bishopric conducting the meeting reads the "Statement Regarding Expatriate Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in China," which basically states the twelfth Article of Faith and links it to the laws of China, and then reminds us that we cannot proselyte or have joint meetings with Chinese nationals, even if they are members of the Church*. After they finish reading the statement, the meetings go on completely normally.

As for the ward here, it's great! We meet in a nice hotel for our meetings, and we have probably 50 people in attendance, on average. The demographic of the ward is definitely very unique. There are lots of students in the ward because of Nanjing University's connection with BYU, but there are also a few families and older people here for work and teaching. Most of the ward members are American, but there are others, too: families from South Africa and Germany, and students from Zimbabwe, Brazil, Russia, and Latin America.

I recently received a calling to be the primary pianist, and, I have to say, I'm stoked. Not only do I get to play fun piano songs every week, I also get to listen in on primary, which is always a treat. The kids in the primary here are all very bright, so it's a great time. There are two South African kids in the primary, and they have awesome accents. There's also a little German boy that doesn't speak any English or Chinese, so we're not sure what to do with him. The all-star of the primary is a little four-year-old boy named Dominic. He is very active in just about every sense of the word. He volunteers to do everything, and usually does it whether or not the teacher calls on him. He also talks more than all the other kids combined. Today, we started learning the primary theme for the year, "As a Child of God." Dominic insisted that he knew the song, so he stood up at the front of the class to teach everyone how to sing it. I started playing, and he said, "That's not the song I know, I though we were singing 'I Am a Child of God!'" He still didn't sit down.

Another interesting thing about China is that it feels a lot like the mission in many ways. First of all, we have our meetings in a hotel in China, which is pretty comparable to meeting in a four-story house in Taiwan. Next off, every Church meeting is like a mission reunion. There are quite a few missionaries from the Taichung Mission that I know personally from the mission in the ward, and there are also a few from before and after my time. It's fun to reminisce with them.

The last way I can think of is the service we do here. We are required by the Chinese Flagship program to do at least 10 hours of community service during the school semester, so most students end up volunteering as English teachers. This week was my first week teaching English to the kids at the YMCA/YWCA -- flashbacks of teaching the kids' English class as a missionary in Taiwan flooded into my mind. The little boys are super wild and loud, and the girls are very quiet and mellow. I walked in the door and was immediately confronted by Frank, a 10 year-old Chinese boy with pretty decent English. Our conversation went like this:

Frank: "What's your name?"

Me: "I'm Mark."

Frank: "Hello Mr. Mark. Nice to meet you. I am Frank. Do you want to see our class rules?"

He showed me a list of three rules that he had written in his notebook. According to one of my Flagship friends that I went with, he had made up these rules last week. Unfortunately, we had to add an amendment to his rules this week: "No fighting."

This week we taught a lesson on fruit, so we played "fruit basket" for about half the time there. Frank kept calling coconuts "QQ-nuts." Oh Frank. There was also a little eight-year-old girl in the class that had an urgent question for the teachers at the beginning of class. She doesn't speak much English yet, so she asked in Chinese, pointing at the other guy from Flagship that came with us, "Why is he so handsome?!" He didn't have a very good answer for her, so she said, "Is it because you're so white?" He didn't really know how to react that, either. Later on, during our game of fruit basket, I saw her making googly eyes at him. It was hilarious.

In short, the Church is alive and well here in China, and even though the members here are few, the spirit of charity and service is still very present here in the Chinese society. I am very privileged to be able to live here among such great people -- they are generally very kind and friendly, and they look out for each other. There is a lot I can learn from them.

-小强

*The Church is growing among Chinese nationals. Even though regular proselyting missionary work is not allowed in the country, direct family members can share the gospel with each other. There are many Chinese nationals that take weekend trips to Hong Kong to officially take the missionary lessons and get baptized, and then go back to their homes in the Mainland. Once they return, they can meet with congregations of Chinese nationals that report to Chinese national church leadership. Interesting how it works, isn't it?

Playing Fruit Basket at YMCA English Class

Our "Chapel"

Student Life

As many of you know or probably could have guessed, school in China is very different than it is in America. In fact, "very different" is probably an understatement -- "completely different" is more accurate. Starting in elementary school, kids are under a lot of pressure to test into a good middle school, which will get them into a good high school, which, in turn, will open up opportunities to test into a good university. You may have also heard that Chinese universities are very lax because all the big, life-altering tests are over. While this may be true to some extent, I am here to tell you today that life at a Chinese university is no lame walk in the park.

Chinese universities are much more structured and stiff than American universities, I have found. Nearly all students -- even the masters and doctorate students -- live in the dorms on campus, and most of the time they eat at the school cafeteria. Graduating late or slow is barely even an option, as all required general and major classes are planned out by semester for each major. Students can loaf around and not be diligent with their schoolwork if they want, but if they want to do well in their classes, they have to work just as hard as they did in high school. One other big difference is that classes are often lumped together into long, drawn-out blocks. For example, in America, a three-credit class would probably consist of going to a one-hour lecture three times a week. In China, however, this means that you have one long three-hour lecture every week. On top of that, semesters are generally eighteen to twenty weeks long, and chairs are not comfortable at all. My back is hurting already.

Nanjing University itself has some "special features." Originally, Nanjing University was an American Christian school established in the late nineteenth century called Jinling University. Jinling University was one of five of such American schools, and according to one of my probably very biased professors, it was the best of the five, maybe even the best in the whole country at the time. I cannot verify the accuracy of this statement, but I do know that award-winning author Pearl Buck and her husband were stationed in Nanjing as professors, so I feel like it was at least a noteworthy university. As time passed, wars, revolutions, and other things happened, the American professors were sent home, and the name of the university was changed to China Zhongyang University, then to Nanjing University. Today, it still ranks around number five out of all Chinese universities, and the original campus remains intact.

Although the original campus is still there, nearly all of the undergraduate classes and many of the graduate classes have moved out to the new Xianlin campus. The study abroad building is on the old Gulou city-center campus, so all the students in our program are required to live close to this campus, even though most of the classes are about 40 minutes away by metro. This also means that most of our undergraduate peers are living out in the middle of nowhere on the Xianlin campus. New freshmen at Nanjing University probably have it the worst, though: Not only do they have to live out in the middle of nowhere, away from their families for the first time, they also have to participate in full-time military training for the first two weeks of school. According to my roommate and tutor, this training is a nationwide tradition borrowed from the Soviet Union, and the students are not expected to become soldiers after graduation.

Now, all of these things that I have brought up about Chinese universities and Nanjing University in particular are quite different than anything I have experienced in the US, but none of them hold a candle to the havoc that is wreaked when a foreigner walks into a Chinese classroom. I got to experience this exciting phenomenon on my first day of class, and I have to say that the attention I got for being the only white guy that any of these Chinese students had ever been in a class with is much more notable than any of the differences listed above. For example, in the first class I attended, the teacher himself was obviously very perturbed that I was in the class. He stood up to start teaching, and said in hesitant English, "Hello everybody, welcome to class." Then, gesturing at me, "It looks like we have a visitor here today. Where are you from?" If not all of the students knew I was there before, they definitely were keenly aware now. All eyes were on me. I answered in *Chinese, and the professor immediately looked much more relieved. His English was pretty good, but it probably would not have made it through the whole three-hour lecture. That aside, I have no idea what the other students would have done if he had continued in English. They have enough material to wade through as it is, adding a foreign language on top of that would be chaotic.

The second class that day was even more exciting. It was a bigger class full of bright-eyed sophomores. The teacher had the foresight to talk to me beforehand and make sure I could speak Chinese. What I failed to realize was that he was going to use me in his lecture. He started off like most professors do on the first day with some general life advice, telling the students that freedom means you have to accept the consequences of your actions and such. He went on with that for a while, and the topic eventually drifted to American politics. The next thing I know, the professor is asking me across the whole classroom in his thick Jiangsu accent, "American friend, why did President Nixon resign?" I was caught off guard, and literally the whole class was staring at me, so I just said, "Ummmm." He asked me again, and I managed a slightly more coherent response about something to do with the election. At this point, the class had already exploded into mini-conversations about what I can only assume were about the Chinese-speaking American that doesn't even know his own country's history. The teacher didn't call on me any more after that, and none of the students were willing to make eye-contact with me, even if I caught them staring.

In short, attending a Chinese university is simultaneously eye-opening and exciting. I highly recommend it if you have a chance.

-小强

*During the next lecture, I decided to talk to some of my classmates and try to make friends. The guy I ended up talking to said that he had heard that I had lived in China for a long time and had been speaking Chinese my whole life. I guess rumors spread fast around here!

Here I am on a rainy day at the front of the Xianlin campus

Introduction

Dear Reader,

Whether you are a relative, friend, acquaintance, or someone else, welcome! As for general introduction, this is a blog of my adventures as a student in Nanjing, China. I am studying electrical engineering at Nanjing University (NJU) for a semester, after which I will continue living somewhere in China for another semester while I intern at a yet-to-be-determined company.

There are three most important reasons I am writing this blog: First and foremost, I hope to share my experiences and newfound knowledge of Chinese culture with everyone. Second, I think writing this will help me, as the writer, to see China in a different light. Third -- and, yes, this is legitimate -- I don't want to forget English.

I plan to write once every weekend or so, depending on how much time I have. If you have any questions, you are welcome to contact me. Also, if I miss too many weeks in a row, please remind me -- I want to keep this up.

There you have it! Enjoy!

-小强