Students and Teachers

  Beijing, China
Friday, July 11, 2008

I woke up at 9am to get ready to travel across the city to Tsinghua University and meet a couple of my future MIT classmates.  After the night before, it was a slow morning.  I listened to some music from The Hollow Sound as I puttered about the hotel room, and I wondered if I was the first person to ever listen to that music in Beijing.  I wonder if anyone ever took 3Spoon anywhere with them. 

Hotel

On my way out the door, one of the fuwuyuan (clerk?) told me "man zou." It had been a few years since I heard that phrase - "walk slow" a common way to say bye to someone - and it made me very happy especially since that was all I could do. 


I made my way through the hutong out to the main road to get on the subway at Beijing Train Station, which is relatively close to the hotel.  I pushed my way through the crowds around the station only to find that the subway stop is closed.  I had to walk another 10 minutes to the next stop, and I had what could be the greatest marketing idea of the year - the personal horn.  Buses honk at everyone to get out of the way.  Cars honk at scattering pedestrians.  Even mopeds and bikes have little horns and bells to honk at you all the time.  But what is the pedestrian who wants people to get the hell out of his way to do?  Someone should fancy up some air horns and sell them at a ridiculous price - ensuring that it is a luxury good and only the finest pedestrians get to honk at you.  No?  Ok, bad idea. 

I finally made it to the subway and its massive confusion and crowds.  Beijing just implemented a new faircard system very much like the one in DC and close to Boston or New York's.  Remember how confused everyone on the T was when they started the Charlie Card?  Scale that up by 100.  (One of the explanations I've heard for my subway stop's closure is that it might not have the cards yet.)

I finally made it to Tsinghua around 11:30 and met Yang Liu and Huang Yuxuan. 

MIT

They just finished masters degrees in architecture at Tsinghua and will be joining me at MIT in the fall.  They gave me a very quick campus tour.  It's a little like Stanford, too big and impossible to walk anywhere so the tour consisted of a walk up a main lawn to the city planning and architecture building before going to lunch.  We went to a Sichuan style restaurant that had amazing food.  I'd missed the food so much and almost held my own against them eating some of my favorite dishes.  We talked a lot about Beijing and Boston.  They had a lot of questions about America and about the city they will be moving to for two years - and of course I love to babble on about it.  Then Yuxuan asked me, "I am trying to choose an English name.  How do you pronounce S - E - A - N?"  I nearly fell out of my chair, "That's my brother's name! Sean! Great choice!"

That evening I met up with one of my Chinese teachers from when I studied here. 

Wang Ying

We went to a Thai restaurant in Wangfujin - essentially Beijing's Downtown Crossing or Times Square.  It was great to see Wang Ying again.  She was my favorite tutor.  We had some great discussions in the one-on-one sessions, and she is just a genuinely nice person.  Also, she was the first friend I met up with in Beijing who speaks no English.  It forced me deeper into Chinese and helped my language really start coming back.  Wang Ying only taught for one year at ACC and is now working for a design company.  Her commute is an hour and a half, and she works almost 60 hours a week  leaving her without much of a social life.  We talked a lot about our respecitve hopes and caught up with the last few years.  She ranted about the Olympics and how troublesome daily life has become.  (That was another one of the explanations I've been told for my subway stop's closure.)  Everything, EVERYTHING, is Olympics here now.  Every sign, every commercial, every development, every TV program.  "The Olympics make me want to vomit," she said.