Having a Chinese roommate

So the first thing I notice when I get back to campus in Beijing is that another person is living in my room. This person is my Chinese roommate, Ni Bing. His english is amazing (he's been studying it for seven years) and he's a sophmore in the international economics program at Bei Wai. All of the Chinese roommates speak english but I think Ni's english is exceptionally good. The only thing I notice is that he tends to use really extreme adjectives like "fantastic" or "brilliant" to describe things that aren't that impressive. On the other hand, he could just be a really enthusiastic guy.

REAL EXAMPLE:
Ni: (eating a bowl of green beans at his desk) Manny, what do you call these beans in english?
Me: green beans.
Ni: Ah, yes, we also call them green beans in Chinese.
Me: Oh
Ni: Do you also have black beans?
Me: yes
Ni: and red beans?
Me: yes
Ni: Ah, that's so fantastic!

Like most Chinese college students, he seems very studious. I got that impression when I first met him. When he realized we both had very similar majors and he said without hesitation "Ah! So we will become colleagues one day!"
He's a really nice guy and I think we've both gotten a lot out of living with each other. It's really interesting helping someone learn english especially since his english is already so good. A lot of the things he has trouble with are very high-level issues like using specific, complicated words or knowing when to use sophisticated english idioms. Its always an interesting challenge to try to articulate the minute differences between words to him and trying to help him express what he's really trying to say when he writes english papers or speeches.

Lately he really hasn't been around that much because sophmore year at least at Bei Wai is the busiest and most stressful year of school. The college culture here is very different from the US. There are some students who go out and everyone is very social but in general they go out at night a lot less than American students. From the way my roommate described it, the general mantra Chinese students live by is "study first, have fun later" which to an American student means "study until 10PM and then go out" or "do work until friday night and then go out" but in China I think it's more like "spend your entire time at college working very hard, and then after you graduate you can start going to bars". This sort of work ethic is definitely changing more and more as Chinese society becomes more liberal but it definitely still has a huge influence on the lifestyles of Chinese students. I'm still suprised that the American college work ethic of "work hard, play hard" that every American in my program essentially lives by hasn't managed to rub off on our Chinese roommates. More than a few Chinese roommates have never had a beer before. That's not to say they dont know how to have fun either though. A lot of them are really into sports. I've played a lot of ping pong and badminton (Chinese people love games with rackets) with the Chinese students and I just learned how to play Mah Jong, which some people take pretty seriously here. Basketball is also really popular and some people keep up with NBA teams pretty closeley.

What's also kind of strange to us Americans is that a good number of the brightest students are Communist party members. It seems really weird at first to think guys down the hall are members of THE PARTY but in reality there are huge benefits and opportunities that members get and you have to be a pretty exceptional student to become a member. I'll talk more about "The Party" later, but in general I think people's view and relationship with the communist party and Mao Zedong is very complicated. Despite all of the changes in economic and social policy since Cultural revolution, Mao Zedong's beliefs and hopes for China are still encouraging for many young Chinese people. In writing a speech about the current job crisis in China for his english class, the one quote my Chinese roommate used was from Mao Zedong.

The Rest of the Yunnan Trip

 So first let me finish up my Yunnan trip because that's way overdue. After leaving HeKou where I had a very eventful and interesting village homestay experience we went to another village called Bamei. Bamei is a village that had been completely cut off from the outside world until literally a few decades ago. When outsiders first discovered the village, people were still wearing clothes from dynasties that were long gone.

The reason the village is so isolated is because the only way to access it is through a river that runs through a very long cave. We got to the entrance at around 10PM and took a very dark ride in several canoes through the cave into the village. When you exit the cave you step out into a huge valley with a small river running through the middle of it and mountains on all sides. The next morning we were really able to appreciate how beautiful the village really was. The center of the village was filled with fields of different crops and flowers. The village was completely surrounded by huge mountains. Most of the people who live there belong to the Zhuang ethnic minority. A few of them explained the history of the village to us. Around 600 or 700 years ago there were wars going on and people were being conscripted to fight on one side or another. A few Zhuang people who didn't want to be involved in the fighting snuck away with their families and found the cave where they hid for a while before discovering the valley and setting up a village. Most of the housing and a lot of the structures in the village are still  very traditional but the village has slowly become a little more touristy. Now there are small stores and housing for guests. 

While we were there we hiked around one of the surrounding mountains.  As with most villages we saw, there were kids running around everywhere. One of the parents explained that the kids go to a boarding school during the week and come back for weekends and during the summer. Somebody asked a young girl if she wanted to come back to Bamei to live after she finished school and she replied with a very confident "of course". I cant blame her. Besides the fact that she would get to stay with her family and people of her common ethnic group, I think it would be hard to give up living in such a gorgeous place. 

After Bamei the last major stop we made before heading back to Kunming was Luoping. Luoping is famous for its honey. The first thing we did when we got to Luoping was visit a flower orchard that they use to make different types of honey. Everyone tried to get some pretty funny pictures of themselves running around the acres and acres of yellow flowers. That night we had our first meal in a real, clean, indoor restaurant in a while. The next day we visited an outdoor museum that displayed how water power was utilized by the Chinese throughout history. 

When we got to Kunming, we checked into a really nice hotel and rested. That night we got to explore Kunming a little more which was a lot of fun. It's a really vibrant city with a lot of international influence and a growing population of international students. That night we had dinner at an Indian restaurant and experience a little bit of the nightlife in Kunming. The next day we had a great American-style breakfast at a really cool cafe and went to check out the famous jade market. I think everyone from my trip really fell in love with Kunming. Four or five people in my program have already made plans to move there next year to work and study Chinese. 

That evening we met up with all of the other trip groups at our hotel. It was great to hear everyone else's trip stories. After making a stop at a huge tea market, we went to the airport and headed back to Beijing.