Sports Day, museums and poetry competitions

After practising for a couple of weeks in April, it was finally time for Sports Day. Those participating were up at 5am to be at the event by 7am. Most people were signed up to do a walking display in which they marched around the sports track, stopped in front of the spectators and shouted a chant in Chinese. There was about 10 different walking groups but most of the scholars were in the same one. Robin and I were asked to instead participate in the 武术 (martial arts) performance which involved wearing baggy tai chi clothes and performing a very simple 太极 in front of everyone.

Afterwards the races began. Robin had managed to qualify for the 100m race and relay so we got to cheer him on at the side. We were then given a free lunch and taken back to campus where everyone went back to bed.

When I return to Scotland I’ll be studying Geology so once I found out there was a natural history museum in Tianjin I couldn’t wait to go! Even then I was expecting an old and neglected museum but I was delighted to find a very modern new building filled with up to date exhibits. The only issue was that my Chinese hasn’t quite reached a level in which I can read names of prehistoric animals yet!

There was two main exhibits; a prehistory exhibit and a natural world exhibit. The prehistory exhibit showed us the evolution of the living world from the first single celled organisms to modern humans. I probably took wayyyy too long in this exhibit but it was good to refresh my memory to prepare for going to uni in Scotland. The natural world exhibit was divided up into continents and reminded me somewhat of Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh.

One night whilst reminiscing about our frisbee which had been stolen along with our phones, money and a passport in Thailand, we decided it would be a good idea to take a spontaneous bike ride toDecathlon to buy ourselves a new frisbee. It took about a half hour to get to Decathlon but once we arrived we spent ages there messing around with all the sporting equipment. The shop itself is huge and it even has lots of mini try-out areas for equipment, so we ended up spending around an hour in the shop playing football, badminton and even doing archery. We luckily managed to find ourselves a frisbee and cycled back with it ready to play with it the next day.

Frisbee has now become a daily sport for a few of us for about an hour a day. Robin and Sam even went as far as to decorate it with shiny tape and glow sticks so we can play in the dark. They taught me how to play ultimate frisbee.

In terms of Chinese learning it’s been pretty good, we got our HSK4 results back and I passed! I’m so happy! Also it was midterms this month. Not all of them went as well as I wish they did but our conversation exam was really fun. We had to get into groups of two, three or four and do a play for ten minutes in front of the class so Robin and I didn’t have a clue what to do so decided to make ours a debate about which brand of Chinese water is better.

Another thing we did this month was go to a lot of English corners. An English corner is like a gathering where a bunch of Chinese people get together and invite foreigners to come and play games in English with them. It’s sort of like a mixture of team building and party games except everyone speaks in broken English to each other. I went to one at a café near the edge of Tianjin and one in an aviation uni. The aviation uni was amazing! It was massive, almost like a little town with lakes and gardens everywhere. Our Korean friend even came with us so she had a chance to practise her English.

Having foreign friends who are studying Chinese is very useful. My Korean friend Sophie, can understand, read and write English (even better than she can Chinese) but because she hasn’t practised speaking it in a while, she struggles to speak it, so we usually speak to each other in Chinese. However because she can also speak English if I forget a word in Chinese I can tell her in English and she will understand. This is useful for me because I get speaking practise but if I can’t quite remember a word or I don’t know how to explain I can fill in the gaps and be understood.

A couple weeks later we were invited to a cooking party by the English Corner people. The cooking party was in a type of play house. It’s really hard to explain exactly what it is but in China there’s lots of houses or flats that are renovated into a party house that can be rented out. The one we were at had a kitchen, an xbox Kinect, a KTV (karaoke), a computer room, a pool table, majiang table and even a dog! We got to spend the day cooking and having fun at the house together. I was exhausted by the time I got back to the uni!

Recently I’ve been in contact with my old Chinese teacher, Miss Sun, she works at a school right outside Tianjin Foreign Studies University so she invited myself and a couple of others to go to the school and teach the kids about Scottish culture. On the day Robin, Kirsty and I all dressed up in kilts and tartan hats and made our way to the school. The presentation itself went well, we even taught some of the children some Scottish words (it’s such a surreal sight when you have a room of 50 Chinese children shouting ‘aye!’ at you). After the presentation ended we had a short Q&A and got pictures with the kids. That afternoon we were invited back to tour the schools cultural classes which included calligraphy, costume making, Chinese chess and football (which Robin and Kirsty ended up joining in with). A couple weeks later we did the same again for the school but with a different class of kids.

This month there was a reading 朗读 contest. Owen, Robin and I along with some of our Chinese friends decided to enter and somehow we got through to the next round. The last few days of the month were then spent rehearsing the 'to be or not to be' scene Hamlet in Chinese which of course turned out extremely difficult. We were shocked to find on the night of the final performance that we were the only students from 中级 classes (intermediate), the others were all from 高级一 or 高级二 meaning they had not only been studying Chinese for years but they were also completely fluent! Our performance was fun and we tried our best but sadly we didn’t win. We did however get a USB for participation.

Now that May is over it’s onto the final month of the scholarship. I’m lucky enough to be staying in China in July to travel some more but it’ll be so strange not having everyone there.

再见Alex