Jinan wrap-up

All good things must come to an end…

With the China portion of our trip coming to a close, we are starting to look ahead to what we have in store but at the same time, we all look back on our China adventures with the fondest of memories. China is a nation rich with ancient culture, a communist yet capitalist nation that is moving impressively forward in almost every category. Construction is everywhere, the smell and sounds of progress and development are never far away. We’ve all been fortunate enough to come here to live, to meet people, to party, to travel and most importantly: to learn. The experiences we’ve had, the insight into our own lives and western culture has been priceless. It’s hard to see the forest for the trees, and taking ourselves out of our country, even out of our hemisphere helps to gain some perspective. I think everyone here has been surprised and impressed with respect for this nation of 1.4 Billion people that boasts over 5000 years of written history. I don’t think anyone will be quite the same when we get back.

We were told in our predeparture classes to look around, that many of the people sitting there with us would become lifelong friends. Some people have confessed to looking around and being doubtful, but now, I don’t think there is anyone on the trip who hasn’t made great friends. Some of us brought people we already knew on the trip, and some of us didn’t know anyone else in the group when we first started, but we all call each other friends now. And even more significantly, we all call this place home (at least for another week!)


How long does it take living somewhere new before you call it home?

Our group has been in country for less than 2 months, and I think we speak for almost everyone when we say that it seems like at least three times that. It’s not surprising to hear how many people now refer to Shandong University as ‘our home’. Whenever we leave Jinan for a weekend excursion, whether to go to the beach in Weihai, drink Chinese beer at the Qingdao festival or even just adventuring around town, it’s always comforting to come back to the University campus. The streets are busy with pedestrians and bicycles everywhere, the trains are crowded, traffic is on the verge of insanity (yet I think we have yet to see a car accident…shocking, considering how bad everyone seems to drive!). When out in this hustle and bustle, we forget how different it is from our own life and experiences back home. Personal space is much different, as is the concept of waiting in line. I don’t think there IS a Chinese word for ‘line’, and we mean this from the bottom of our heart, but WOW, the proverbial New Yorkers have nothing on the locals here. In any sort of public place, if you snooze, you lose, and if you don’t assert yourself, you’ll lose your spot and before you know it, 20 more people will be pushing past in front of you. I guess with 1.4 Billion people, it’s rather hard to keep traffic and queues neat and orderly. But even despite our initial surprise at what appears like chaos, the Chinese people are phenomenally welcoming and polite. After talking to most of the people here on the trip, we can’t think of many negative things that have happened. In fact, most of us feel safer walking around town here after midnight than we would in Santa Barbara!


Socialism with "Chinese Charactistics?"
In our adventures, we’ve seen just about everything for sale. Everything from goldfish you can feed from a baby’s bottle, to street vendors selling rabbits, kittens, hamsters and turtles, to “Niki shoes”, designer Italian handbags that were “Made Initialy” or anything else you can possibly imagine. Some of the things people on this trip picked up are razor-sharp swords, powerful green lasers, a blow up doll, pirated dvd’s, foot massages, pets, ipods, snake blood, etc. It’s not a joke when you hear how most things are “Made In China.” If you can’t find it here, you either aren’t looking hard enough, don’t know the right person, or it just simply doesn’t exist. Whether you’re shopping or just going out around town, it all becomes an adventure, near-death experiences in traffic (just kidding mom!) getting food, going to a restaurant, looking for entertainment or just seeing the sights can be a wearying experience and its always calming and refreshing to come back on campus, through the large gates, past the security guards, where the traffic is lighter, everyone else is our age, and no one is trying to sell you anything! This campus is a welcome and wonderful refuge from the occasionally maddening chaos of the streets of Jinan, and we are eternally grateful to our hosts and friends we’ve met here,


About Shandong University in Jinan:
Jinan, “the city of the springs” is a large sprawling industrial metropolis, but is also the Province Capital and is a hodgepodge mix of old and new. Shandong University, where we are living and studying is a 107 year old foundation of higher learning. There are 6 (LARGE) campuses in Jinan alone, and satellite campuses in other cities like Weihai. With a total land area of 157,000 sq. Km., Shandong province makes up only 1.6% of the territory of China yet has 93+ Million people, making it the second largest populated province in the Country. The province has a warm temperate monsoon climate with most of the rainfall concentrated in the hot summer. It has a short spring and autumn, but long winter and summer. The mean temperatures in a year are 11-14 C°. The annual average rainfall is between 550-990mm. Jinan neighbors Mount Tai to the south and the Yellow River to the North (Hint: Google Earth is a great way to see these sights and get some aerial perspective! Just go to http://maps.google.com ) Jinan is known as the City of Springs because it boasts over 700 natural springs throughout the city. The water from all of these springs gathers in the Daming Lake in the city center. The city center has a large and beautiful square with pavilions and fountains that light up at night. We’ve visited many of the other Shandong Campuses in town and we even saw a 100 year old Catholic Church that has been restored and is still in use. Trust us, its weird to see gleaming European Judeo-Christian spires in the middle of China.


Food:
Many of us have sampled various street foods that would make our parents faint. (Some people even got sick, but that’s what they get for eating river frogs, scorpion, penguin, liger and even dog! Ok, that’s a bit of a fabrication. I’m not sure WHAT they ate, but it apparently tasted like chicken.) There are also several vegetarians on the trip, (including 2 people who wrote this blog entry) and even they have had a fairly easy time finding food. To people reading this that haven’t had the pleasure of visiting the “Middle Kingdom”, trust us when we tell you that ‘Chinese food’ that you may have had back in the states bears little resemblance to the delicious and varied cuisine we’ve had here. In fact, people who don’t even like “Chinese food” back home have had a wonderful time here exploring the food. I think we speak for most students when we say we’ve all found some favorite eateries around campus. Hot Pot places are popular, as is the Little Bamboo House out of the South Gate. We even found a 24 hour western style restaurant and an “Italian” Restaurant that serves a decent impersonation of Italian food. The cafeteria on campus is fun and lively but usually leaves something to be desired.

Tutoring Internship:
The Internship has been both stressful and a blast. Everyone on the trip (who chose to take part) was assigned 3-6 Chinese students who we meet with regularly, for a couple hours, to help them with their English, which is on the whole, incredible. Most of our students have been learning English for 10 years or more, however, most of that is writing, grammar and book learning. Some of us have students with vocabulary comparable to ours, but with a basic to mid-level speaking ability. “Th” sounds (like in three or those) are often hard for some of our students, as is the “v” in vegetable or the “ths” in months. But to appreciate how advanced their knowledge is, and how different Chinese is from English, we only have to ask them how to say something in Chinese and then watch the riotous laughter that ensues as we attempt to repeat what they said. Chinese is no easy language to learn, especially for westerners. Tones have been the hard part for us in trying to speak Chinese. It’s rather difficult when you can repeat the word “ma” 4 times with slightly varying inflections and say “mother”, “horse”, or “hemp”.
But where we might be lacking at communication, our students have more than made up for our lack of Chinese. Almost all of us have been out to eat with our Chinese students, and not only are they fun to be around, they’re polite, friendly and in many cases, have paid for the bill (and then refused to take money!) In fact, even local students who weren’t in our language internships have taken us out to eat and paid for everyone, and enjoy playing video games with us, taking us around town or just hanging out in the dorm.


This is our final week in Jinan, Shandong, and we have one more week left in China in Beijing, but after that, we will be heading south to Vietnam and we will have a whole new collection of stories and pictures to share. We also speak for most people on the trip when we say we wish we spoke more Chinese. Tian Mi Mi is a lovely song, but we can’t sing it to the train conductor when we want to know what time the train comes, nor can we sing to a waiter to tell him we want our check. We are all grateful to our friends and schoolmates here in Jinan who have helped us get train tickets, order food, find directions, and have just been great friends.

We invite anyone reading this to take a look at our picture site on photobucket. Just go to:

http://s374.photobucket.com/albums/oo183/SBCC-Asia-2008/

There, you can click on any of the favorites on the left to view our photos of Mt. Tai, Jinan, the Zoo, the Aquarium, Predeparture, Qingdao, Qufu, Shanghai and Weihai, and to any students reading this, feel free to submit your own pictures of the trip so far. All of the albums there are group albums and anyone can upload photos, you just have to have a photobucket account (don’t worry, they’re free!) Thanks for reading and zai-jian!


- Sage, Mary, Andrew, Matt N., Brian, Shannon