A Dream of Red Mansions

Send Me on My Way

2009-06-22T04:30:00.000-07:00

So I wrote an epically long post a week ago and then it was all mangled by East China money. Obviously I'm still learning how to use it but I'm hoping I can cross post this entry and then figure out how to save long long entries without needing to crop them. Oh and Kay had a great question about how to comment. I'll make a little cheat sheet over there to show what the characters required to navigate are

I leave for Beijing tomorrow!! I'm pretty much in total denial about it. It just seems like I can't possibly be leaving for the airport in a few hours. A week, maybe, but a day? This is not to say that I'm not psyched out of my mind!! I'm also really nervous which is ridiculous considering that I spent a whole month traveling 100% on my own last year... but I'm just planning on embracing and enjoying that feeling.

So, what will I be doing in the capital of China for 7 weeks? The answer is, a variety of classes, trips, and research opportunities.

Living:

I'll be in a homestay with the Zhang family in Zhong guan cun, the Silicon Valley of China or what Mike has dubbed the less authentic 'Cancun of China.' More importantly, the apartment should be around a 10 minute walk to campus. The family has a two year old girl and I will have my own private room so it seems like a pretty ideal situation

But because of SARs, Avian flu, etc Swine flu has sent almost all of Asia into a panic so I need to be in China for a week before I move into a private residence. During that week of a non-government observed quarantine of sorts I will return to my all time favorite hostel, Sitting on the City Walls! It's in a beautiful Chinese courtyard house and I enjoyed my time there immensely last year. Once school starts I'm moving into a hotel for three days outside the gates of campus so I can have a shorter commute and get more acquainted with the collegiate area of the city.

College Classes!

As my aunt keeps telling my amazed cousins I'm basically going to summer school and they're stunned when I tell them that I am indeed going to BEijing to take classes from Beida professors and I'm thrilled about it.

1) Discovering Chinese History in Beijing

From the Syllabus "This course offers a general introduction to Chinese history from 1840 to the 1970s with a

focus on Beijing as China’s political, economic and cultural center."

I'm most interested in this part of the syllabus through the professor of a Chinese teacher. "Week 9: Two Men and a City: the Destruction and Construction of Beijing

 Young Mao Zedong’s short stay in Beijing

 Liang Sicheng before 1949: an excellent son of a great farther & the father of the

Chinese architectural history

 The old Capital City Wall vs. the modernization of Beijing and China

 The changing face of Beijing

Basically it will be an informative class because of the material itself and how it is taught.

2) Chinese Music

This class looks amazing! I'm taking it so I can better understand the Chinese operas I so often have to write about but judging from the syllabus it will be quite the experience!

This course is a journey of Chinese music and culture. The main feature of this course, 12

hours per week, finished in 3 weeks, 2 marks, is that it will be an interaction by enjoying many

soloists on Chinese music in classroom, and you will be involved at the atmosphere with

performing and interpreting by teacher. We ensure that it is unique experience on Chinese

music in China.

1. Pay your attention to Chinese music and enjoy it by your heart.

2. Just forget the feeling of mother tongue for while and chase a sort of understanding to

Chinese music with passion.

AMAZING! I wonder... if I'll even be able to speak English with this professor.

3) Chinese Language.

I have no idea what to expect or where I will place but I'm extremely excited. I'm also going to have an advantage living in my homestay where I'll literally eat, sleep, and breath Mandarin. I sincerely hope my language skills will get a huge boost.

Research:

I hope to be seeing and researching a number of productions (Shakespearian adaptations, traditional Chinese operas, avant-garde spoken dramas) and I've made a lot of progress so far.

* I want to see Jane Erye at the National Theater. How cool will that be? The answer is SO COOL! I hope they haven't sold out of cheap tickets...

* If I can, I want to go see pop tours. Jay Chou and LangLang in the bird's nest anyone? Unfortunately Wang LeeHom and S.H.E are coming to Beijing a few weeks after I leave!!

* I'm meeting with the Executive Director of the Beijing Playhouse for coffee and primary resources, emailing with the tour director of TNT theater company, and hopefully getting a response from the Cheeky Monkey theatre. I feel pretty confident with that.

* I'm going to try to attend a Peking Opera at the Chinese Cultural Center... and maybe also learn to make jiaozi? Fun!

The Great Firewall of China

2009-06-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

So it does indeed look like Blogspot has an especially spotty reliability in China right now so this blog may not be accessed at all.

So I waded through the excess of confusing characters and fonts on a bunch of Chinese blog sites, eliminated those that asked for my password or made me verify that I was a human with Chinese characters (really not fun), and finally created my very own Chinese blog!

http://blog.eastmoney.com/meammi

Other than it's refusal to show capital letters on the home page it's pretty perfect and I'm 90% sure it's not going to be blocked! So if I'm not posting here, you'll know the CCP is still blocking Blogger and I'll be over at East China Money.

The Colors of my Landscape have all Become Dull

2009-06-01T14:12:00.000-07:00

I am happy to announce that this summer I will be spending 7 weeks in Beijing (and perhaps some other parts of China) My time will be spent taking history, music, and language classes at Peking University, researching Chinese Shakespeare, and enjoying myself immensely!

The title of my blog comes from China's most famous work of literature but it also comes from one of my favorite singer's songs.

The translated lyrics of Wang Lee Hom's 花田錯 (Mistake in the flower field) say...

"It was only a chance meeting,
the dream of a red Mansion,
the colors of my landscape have all become dull,
as if washed by a fierce rain"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSNVCPkNl4U

What could be more perfect than a song that blends past and present for a trip that will attempt to do the same thing for me? I'm traveling to China to understand the past of the country, but also my own past and the past of my parents.

My parents met when they studied at Peking University (hereby called Beida because that's the only name I know it by) in 1981. They were part of the first group of international students to study in the country for many years. I hope to upload pictures of the campus covered in Communist paraphernalia and inhabited by a curly-haired Timothy Geitner before I leave.

My parents moved back to Beijing and started a family in 1987. In July 1988 I was born in Hong Kong because at the time the hospitals in China's capital were not reputable. Then, almost a year later, we were evacuated when our apartment building was held hostage, tanks rolled down our streets, and our complex was riddled with bullets that are only barely hidden today. Many of the students my parents had taken pictures of protesting previously were killed. This was June 4th, 1989, the Tiananmen Square Massacre whose 20th anniversary will fall in only three days.

When I returned to Beijing last summer for research I had a number of conflicting images of the city in my head. I've seen the glittering, cloudy, Olympic city, that is bursting with activity and brand new buildings with the world's premier technology. Then there's the Beijing I know from pictures that features the quiet parks and weather-worn architecture my mother liked to photograph. Finally there's the city that I only know from my parents' stories. The Beijing that was immersed in the hum of hundreds of bicycles, not cars. A city where the big excursion was to the Friendship Hotel to buy the only available cheeseburger in the city.

This trip will be an incredible opportunity for me. I hope I will be able to continue my research, study Chinese culture and history, and increase my language capabilities. I also think I'm going to have an amazing time!

More updates to come when I leave for the Middle Kingdom in 3 weeks!