I joked a few weeks ago about writing a blog with this title, but now I’m really doing it. Ha, isn’t life always like that. As soon as you think you won’t do something, the next moment, what do you know, you’re doing it.

I bought a cute little blue bike back a couple months ago, since for the first time in my life, I need a bike for daily transportation. I ride it every day to university, 20 minutes there and 20 minutes back. I also whiz around to buy groceries, meet friends at coffee shops, and go shopping. When the weather is beautiful, and Beijing in autumn cannot be described any other way (except maybe cold, windy, and dry), I feel like I’m floating on clouds, pedaling happily along, watching snippets of Chinese life pass me by while golden leaves swirl around me and my trusty bike.
I can’t help but hum these lyrics (shout out to all the Germans):

Oh wie liebe ich mein Fahrrad
Warum das weiss ich nicht genau
Meinem Fahrrad werd’ ich treu sein
Im Gegensatz zu meiner Frau
Niemals werd’ ich es verlassen
Niemals werd’ ich von ihm geh’n
Denn wir fliegen wie auf Wolken
Weil wir uns so gut versteh’n…

(abridged translation: I’m in love with my bicycle, and my bicycle loves me too)

So where, one might ask, does the “life-threatening” part come in to play? One need only traverse the streets of Beijing for a day (or an hour) to know the answer. Beijing traffic is MESSY! That’s the translation of the Chinese word often used to describe the traffic here. You’ve got pedestrians overpopulating out of the high-rises and onto the streets; taxis, legit and unregistered alike, exercising poetic license with the traffic regulations; buses, vans, and cars frantically fending for survival; and all of the above swimming in a ceaseless sea of fearless bicyclists.

And in this frothing sea of disarray doth I daily swim. Is it any wonder that today, both my bike and I are a little the worse for wear?

I was pedaling home from a tea house this evening, contentedly contemplating my forthcoming repast, when without warning, I heard a sudden crunch of metal and found myself hurtling along on a one-way train to Black Asphalt Junction. After I hit the ground, and as I was simultaneously disentangling myself from my bike and trying to avoid being run over by an oncoming taxi (as I had managed to land most inconveniently in its direct path), I realized what had happened — the driver’s side door of a parallel-parked car had opened suddenly, just as I was riding by, and BAM!! the rest is history. As I was painfully dragging my wounded bicycle to safety, the driver suddenly appeared before me, shouting something. At first I thought she was angry with me for not paying attention and running into her car door. But my thoughts cleared, my Chinese faculties returned, and I soon understood that she was apologizing profusely and offering to take me to a hospital. I told her, no, no need, I’m fine, really, I know you didn’t do that on purpose, I’m fine. After checking to see if I still had two legs, two knees, and two feet; inquiring after the health of the car door; and trying to convince Profusely Apologetic Driver Lady that a little blood was no cause for alarm, I hopped on my bike and rode off - only to discover that my bike was also in a sad state of affairs. I did manage to make it home alright, and I am happy to report that both Bike and I are making a swift recovery. I’m going to have several nasty bruises (which I plan on proudly displaying as signs of my traffic martyrdom), and I’ll need to make another Band-aid pilgrimage. But other than that, no harm done.

This is actually the second time I’ve had a minor bike accident, and my bike has needed to go see the bike doctor on multiple occasions. But I feel quite optimistic about the whole thing, and besides, me and Bike are becoming excellent friends, having gone through so much together. I look forward to another day of braving Beijing traffic.

-Bethany

(P.S. To the motherly/fatherly types among my audience, i beseech thee not to worry about me. Despite appearances, biking in Beijing is actually quite safe, as there are bike lanes just about everywhere. Small bump-ins like the one above are somewhat common, but major accidents quite rare. So begrudge me a bruise or two and don’t lose any sleep ^_^)

This semester I opted for the “Intenstive Option,” which involves 10 hours of one-on-one tutoring every week. After the first week or two of classes (20 hrs/wk) and tutoring (10 hrs/week), I came up with a really good way to describe the Intensive Option — intense! An extra two hours every day of Chinese practice has been great for my spoken Chinese, but on top of classes and homework, it really makes weekdays almost 忙死了 — busy to death! In the first few weeks, it was possible, but now that my number of Chinese friends here has increased exponentially, I find that 1) I have almost unlimited (and free!) opportunities to practice Chinese and get help with homework, 2) I often have to give up fun Chinese-friendly activities in order to meet my tutor at our scheduled time, and 3) necessary on-my-own study time (such as for memorizing characters, which for me is best accomplished alone) is reduced. So for these reasons I have decided to opt out of the Intensive Option for next semester.

That being said, I arrive at the real purpose of this blog - to talk about how incredibly grateful I am for my tutor Sunny! We’re like a match made in heaven. We have so much fun together. During the week we usually eat dinner together at her school’s cafeteria (cheap AND delicious, at least in my opinion! And definitely much healthier than eating instant noodles every night, which is probably what I would otherwise be doing), then run a few errands together, and then go to my apartment to study and chat. In all, I’d say we usually only spend a quarter of our time together formally studying Chinese (which is possibly why I’m having a hard time balancing homework and real life, he he). In the beginning, I felt a little guilty about this, since I’m paying for a private tutor. But I evaluated the situation, and decided that me and Sunny’s modus operandi allows me to learn what can’t be learned from a textbook or audio tapes — culture. Like, genuine, deep down culture. For example, by spending so much casual time together, Sunny and I have really gotten to know each other’s lives quite well. We know each other’s daily habits, where we like to shop, how we usually treat shop clerks, how to tell when the other one is tired/angry/happy/embarrassed/worried/confused/content/whatever, what our plans for the future are, and what kinds of jokes we enjoy. Sunny and I have shopped for clothes together, eaten at restaurants, hung out at coffee shops, bought eyeglasses, gone on walks (when it wasn’t yet ridiculously cold outside!), and dressed up for Halloween together. Next week we plan on going to an amusement park together with her younger sister, weather allowing. When Sunny and I walk together, we link arms or hold hands, a habit between friends that I really wish we had in the US.

And of course, we always speak Chinese. She is patient with me and very helpful. We talk about everything under the sun, from boy trouble to the Olympics to cultural differences between the East and the West. She is currently getting her masters in teaching Chinese as a foreign language, and thus has the opportunity, if she chooses, to go abroad. We discussed the character traits a person needs to succeed in another culture, to make close friends and prevent cynicism and isolationism from creeping in to one’s attitude. I didn’t think it was possible for me to already be having these kinds of conversations in Chinese, but somehow with her it is possible.

I’ll miss her seeing her every day next semester, but I’m sure we’ll still see each other, watch movies together, go shopping, and laugh when I mistakenly say her feet are really cute dumplings. I heart my Chinese tutor!

-Bethany Allen

The books we use in our Chinese classes are pretty good, I think. The textbook for written Chinese (Hanyu) is fabulous, though I have a soft spot for everything Hanyu, since it’s my favorite class. Although the English translations in the oral Chinese (Kouyu) book are usually a little amusing, the dialogues are interesting, useful, and full of new vocabulary and grammatical structures. Often the dialogues and short essays contain useful, though usually unintentional, cultural cues. For example, the following is an abridged translation of Chapter 5’s dialogue:

Boy: Mom, Dad, guess what?!? I got almost perfect scores on my math, Chinese, and English tests this week! I’m ranked first in the class now.

Dad: That’s great, Son! I tell you what - since you’ve done so well, your Mom and I want to give you some extra spending money.

Boy: Actually, Dad, could I ask for something else? Not money.

Dad: Sure, ask away.

Boy: I just want you to promise me something. If I continue to do well in school, I don’t want you to beat me again, ok?

Dad: Oh, but Son, you don’t understand. If I hadn’t been so strict on you before, you wouldn’t be who you are today. And how could you get such good grades?

Boy: But Li Ming’s dad never beats him, and he gets great grades!

Mom: I also think that beating isn’t the best way. Son, Dad is just afraid you won’t grow up right. Ok - so can you continue to study well later on, just the same as today?

Boy: Oh, I know I can!

Dad: Ok Son, I promise, from now on I won’t beat you.

Boy: Mom, did you hear that? Dad isn’t going to beat me anymore!!

The greatest thing about Chapter 5 is that the evening before we were supposed to begin the chapter, our teacher received a phone call from The Powers That Be informing her that Chapter 5 was not to be studied, because it was a little bit strange and also contained too many difficult words, and we should skip directly to Chapter 6. But, being the curious and rebellious foreigners that we are, of course we stuck our noses right in Chapter 5 and demanded that we study it anyway. Because really, it’s priceless. I mean, c’mon - “Mom, did you hear that? Dad isn’t going to beat me anymore!!” I just about died laughing during class. I felt a little bad for our Kouyu teacher, she’s a tiny Chinese girl just a year older than me, and I think she felt a little offended that a roomful of foreigners were heeing and hawing all over the floor at the absurdity of the text. But what’s so funny about the text, and why I think the Powers That Be were trying to save face by preventing us from reading it, is that it isn’t meant to be absurd at all. The Chapter 5 dialogue is nestled right in with other perfectly ordinary dialogues about boyfriends, traffic lights, and soccer games. Included in the Chapter 5 vocabulary, alongside “to praise” and “mathematics,” is the phrase “to beat somebody,” as though it’s perfectly normal.

I feel that the laughable Chapter 5 dialogue is an excellent analogy for China’s current situation as a whole. They have made huge strides towards modernization and industrialization, and they seek everyday to prove to the world what a forward-looking, advanced, and postmodern country they are. But so frequently, little mistakes like this one (or bigger ones, like their reaction to the protests in T*b*t) reveal that the adolescent China has yet to grow into the adult attire they have already donned.

**Caveat** I feel self-conscious about saying this, because I truly love and admire China, and I realize that many of its more conspicuous mistakes are a natural result of not having completed the processes of industrialization, modernization, and westernization (can westernization be completed? Would anyone really want that for China anyway? But that’s another topic for another time).

-Bethany Allen

I’m not sure what to write about. Writing travelogue-style is easy, entertaining, effortless. I can write a thousand columns with cute titles like

“As Easy/Life-Threatening as Riding a Bike”
“101 Reasons Not to Buy Food from Street Vendors (and Why You Should Do It Anyway)”
“You Know You’re in China When…”
“My Boyfriend is a Space Heater”
“Superman is a Cross-dresser (and Other Frightening Halloween Tales from China)”

I could be a one-woman cutesy-travelogue factory, cranking ‘em out fast enough to oversupply India.
But - I don’t really want to. Those kinds of feather-light surface-material funny-haha blogs seem so meaningless to me lately. Not meaningless, really. I’m searching for the right word, but cranking the rusty English cogs is getting harder and harder. It’s like this (shi zhei yang de!): Those witty pithy snippets of daily life in China are authentic cultural experiences, yes; the average short-term traverser of Chinese cities can relate to them, yes; but I’m not the average short-term traverser. I live in China. I moved here. I’ve abandoned my snorkel, donned scuba gear, and made my home on the bottom of the ocean, right beside the coral, sea cucumbers, and stinky toufu (wait, how did that get down here…).

I want to write about the deeper things, not just how Chinese people hock loogies (I have no idea how to spell that) every 2 seconds, or enjoy gnawing on chicken feet, or clean toilets while wearing high heels. I want to write about what it means to be a life-long friend here in China, and how different that is from the Western idea of best-friendship. I want to write about how Chinese grandfathers dote on their tiny pig-tailed granddaughters, and how a young Chinese woman deals with the death of her mother. I want to write about post-modernism among China’s youth, and the movements that might become post-post-modernism (I’m hoping some wordsmith more talented than I comes up with a better name for it).

So who’s stopping me? There’s obviously only one answer to that - my greatest enemy, and really the only enemy I have. Me. Wo. Moi. Mich. Ngo.

-Bethany Allen