We had a Ball!
你们好！
As always, the last month has been incredibly busy! November started with a visit to our professor’s house, something, which has almost become a weekly event that we always look forward to. It is very special experience to be invited into a Chinese person’s home; Chinese people are incredibly generous and it is customary to be welcoming and hospitable towards guests. Whenever Abi, Kayleigh and I go together, we feel part of their family, so much so that our teacher’s son, Bob, who is eight years old, is now almost a younger brother away from home to us, calling us 姐姐 (jiě jie, meaning older sister).
We spend our evenings there cooking lots of vegetarian and vegan dishes with fresh ingredients that are common in China but virtually impossible to find in the UK such as lotus root and bitter melon, and more varieties of mushroom than you could ever imagine, our favourite being 木耳(mù’ ěr, which translates as tree ear). After dinner, we play games and practise calligraphy. Of course we speak predominantly Chinese, so we always leave with our heads hurting from the new vocabulary we have learned and from all the concentration. Fortunately, having lived in America for a year, Bob’s English is almost impeccable so he is able to translate for us if there are any words we don’t know how to say yet!
Bob with his friends, tofu, making noodles and calligraphy lessons!
The weekend after, about half of us travelled for four hours by bus to visit a mountain called 白石山 (bái shí shān). The mountain rock is mostly marble, hence the translation which is ‘white stone mountain.’ The day trip began with more excitement than I had expected when my roommate Emelie and I woke up five minutes before the buses left because the four alarms we had set hadn’t gone off!
We were met with the sight of a frozen stream when we got out of the bus at the mountain, which confirmed that winter has arrived for us in northern China. I don’t think my hands have ever been so cold – I didn’t wake up in time to pack any gloves. In any case, it was a unique place, and made for a very peaceful day being up in the clouds and looking down at seemingly endless valleys – we were so high up that it was difficult to have a perception of how far down the ground actually was! It was certainly quite a different landscape from that of Tianjin which we have become so accustomed to, and the sparse, jagged peaks were also very different from the lushness of Scottish hills!
白石山的照片 Baishishan Photos
Every day we learn something new about Mandarin, and finding out little nuggets and idiosyncrasies of the language is interesting; Chinese seems to me to be a more logical language than English. Chinese has many words and phrases which make better sense when comparing the overall meaning and the literal direct word-for-word translation. Some examples include:
Mandarin Pinyin Translation Meaning
多少 duō shāo more less how much
开心 kāi xīn open heart joyful, cheerful
时钟 shí zhōng hour minute clock
爱国 aì guó love country patriotism
手机 shŏu jī hand machine mobile phone
电脑 diàn năo electric brain computer
I turned 18 a week ago; I woke up to thirty multi-coloured balloons scattered all over my floor (which are still floating around the room and corridor as I haven’t yet got round to doing anything with them). I decided to celebrate my birthday with three friends at 山海关 (shān hăi guān), which is the eastern terminus of the Great Wall of China, and is the only place in the world that it meets the sea. It is only about an hour and a half away from Tianjin on the high speed train, and a place I have wanted to visit it for a long time! As it was outside of the tourist season in the middle of chilly November we had the place virtually to ourselves – a rarity back in the UK let alone in China which is home to almost 1.4 billion people. We spent all afternoon walking around the Great Wall, enjoying the tranquillity and smelling the sea air. It was a very serene place, and we watched the sun set before heading back into town for dinner and to catch the train back to Tianjin.
长城在山海关 the Great Wall at Shanhaiguan
To end what has already been a brilliant month, we travelled to Beijing to attend the Beijing Scottish Society’s annual St Andrews Charity Ball. It was a wonderful evening of ceilidh dancing and fun; we were piped in and even served haggis as part of our delicious five-course meal. Amongst the chatter and laughter, it was rather surreal to hear broad Scottish accents from other expats. For a second I felt almost as though I could have been back in Scotland!
The next day, we stayed in Beijing, visiting 天安门广场 (tiān’ānmén guăngchăng, Tian’anmen Square) and 北海公园 (běihăi gōngyuán, Beihai Park), which was a great end to a wonderful weekend.
圣安德鲁的晚会St Andrews Ball
再见！