Loving Beijing
July 10th, 2006 by MarkDespite it’s annoyances, I’m finding myself loving Beijing like no other place I’ve been. Not even that great weekend I had rollerblading around Vancouver when I was 20 compares to this. It’s as if I were born to come here. For years, I’ve been fascinated with all things Chinese, and now I’m here. Beijing is not only the seat of the government and a cultural capitol, it’s the epicenter of all things Chinese, both ancient and modern.
The food is amazing and it’s a bicycler’s paradise, but the thing I probably like most, is the people. I can’t believe how many locals have have happily chatted away with me about just about everything, once they realized I could speak Chinese. Today, the tour guide I met last night called me up and offered to show me the Forbidden City. We met up and ate lunch at a pretty decent Japanese place, after which she mortified me by snagging the check and paying for everything! I tried to insist, but she’d carefully planned it out in advance. It’s a really weird feeling being treated by someone five years younger who couldn’t be earning as much as I am, but I can’t complain.
As soon as we headed outside, it started to rain. Considering that touring the Forbidden City would have entailed at least a couple of kilometers of walking, we decided to go to the mall at 王府井. I had a huge book store. I browsed around a bit and found a couple of interesting sections. First, were the kids books. Since nobody on the mainland uses zhuyin, they all had pinyin with tone marks under every word! Wow. I’ve never seen anything like that before. The other thing that struck me about the bookstore is how much they had in terms of books for foreigners learning Chinese. In the town I live in, in Taiwan, there aren’t any books for teaching Chinese to foreigners. Even in Taibei, the large bookstores grudgingly devote one or two rows on a single shelf to books for CSL. This book store must have had about 50 shelves devoted to learning Chinese for foreigners. There were text books for English speakers, text books for German Speakers, text books for Korean speakers, text books for speakers of half a dozen other languages, books full of idioms and slang, hundreds of HSK prep books, books on various Chinese dialects, video collections… the resources seemed endless. I can only fantasize about living somewhere with such a cornucopia of Chinese learning materials.
After leaving the mall, we hit the night market right next to it. It was big, the varieties of food were endless, and interestingly, it was packed full of tourists from other parts of China. After that, it was time for me to head back to the hostel.
Yummy Fish StomachHosted on ZooomrI went out to eat with the English guys, Shawn, Martin, and Peter; Zhanqiang the guitarist; and the Aussie girls whose names seem to resist memorization. I called one of them Jeanie, but it wasn’t right… they both end in -ie, though. Anyway, we all went to this Chinese restaurant across the the street. We got 宮保雞丁, 芥蘭牛肉, some other stuff I couldn’t put a name to, and a truly absurd amount of beer. The food was tasty beyond belief, and the meal came out to about $20USD for the seven of us. It was a bargain beyond belief. Also, I had a pretty central role in the conversation since they relied on my language skills to talk to the laoban about his photography and soccer interests. It was a rowdy group; at one point Shawn was even standing on his chair belting out something that sounded like Italian opera, only to be joined by the laoban, who pulled up a chair next to him. It was fun.
After that, I headed out to pick up my clothes from the girl at one of the convenience stores. Her mom or somebody ran the only laundromat that didn’t try to rip me off. Basically, I had to drop off and pick up my clothes inside a convenience store, which was weird, but it cost less than half what anybody else on the street wanted to charge me. She sent someone out to get my stuff, chatted with me a bit about her plans to go to college in Xi’an this fall, gave me my clothes, and I was off! On my way back, a couple of the girls running a convenience store called, “小馬!” Intrigued that any strangers would know my name, I went up to their shop and said hi.
They said they’d heard about me from the old 羊肉串兒 lady and asked if I wanted to a conversation exchange. After explaining that I’d only be in Beijing for a week, they suggested that I buy a North Face jacket. Not being too interested in that, I just chatted with them a bit about my own language learning experiences and stuff like that. One thing they told me that surprised me was that the whole street I’d been living on and enjoying (except for the damned rickshaw drivers) was slated for destruction! They said that the food stands in the area were considered to be “dirty” and that the government wanted to get rid of them before the 2008 Olympics! Oh no! I love nightmarkets…
:
July 19th, 2006 at 6:38 am
Beijing rens still have a curiosity about foreigners that many of the cities in the south no longer have. Quite sweet. Still people there taking the foreigner’s photo or asking naive questions about you or the world. This I expect won’t last much longer. Here’s a difference I found. In BJ many pairs of female students still ask to practice English with you, whereas in Shanghai, girls that come up to you will mostly be prostitutes.
July 19th, 2006 at 7:44 am
One day, people in China are going to wake up and realized how much they’ve destroyed in their mad dash to modernization. I’m not saying that there should be no progress. But they currently do not see the value and the irreplacable nature of much that they are destroying. Some things from the past should be saved or a city becomes soulless…deficient in character.
Much of the old hutong system in Beijing is gone. The olympics will hasten the end of the rest. When are they going to realize that the foreigners they’re working so hard to impress are not going to come to Beijing to see a bunch of mirrored glass towers, no matter how tall or shiny?
July 19th, 2006 at 9:20 am
I fell in love with that bookstore in 王府井 the first time I went to Beijing in 2001, having spent the previous four months in Changchun (which, in 2001, had a bookstore situation that sounds a lot like yours in Taiwan). I had a bunch of RMB I couldn’t exchange, and as a result my luggage barely cleared the weight limits for the flight back home :).
July 19th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Battlepanda, maybe that’s why I enjoyed Beijing so much. I’ve been used to living in Taiwan, where it’s already nearly impossible to get around by bicycle, where Chinese food has already largely yielded to Japanese junk food, movie theaters have almost nothing but Hollywood films, and where people are not only English-crazed, but often irritated when foreigners use Chinese with them.
I don’t really think the “Chinese-ness” of Beijing will be destroyed like it was in Taiwan or like it might be in Shanghai. Yeah, life is changing fast, but at least from my week-long view, it appears that Beijing is modernizing far more quickly than it’s westernizing or copying Japan. They’ve got huge new movie theaters, but they’re filled with movies from all over, including a large number of domestic ones. People are are interested in English, but they’re also proud of their own language and happy to meet foreigners learning it. You might also be relieved to know that skyscraper development is restricted inside the third ring of the city. The old core is being preserved.
July 19th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
Beijing is also my own all-time favorite Chinese city. (Well, Chengdu is a close runner-up). Brendan is doing what I would have wanted to do had Beijing been the same place when I was at his point in life. You’re right, that is one great bookstore for the Chinese learner in 王府井 and Taipei has nothing like it. I actually think that for learning how to read Chinese though, zhuyin is better, b/c it is less intrusive. It also permits one to read in a more natural flow, b/c it can go right beside the characters.
I also agree that Beijingers (and Mainlanders) are very receptive to foreigners and especially Mandarin speaking ones. Unlike Taiwan, it’s like they expect you to speak Mandarin. Quite refreshing.
You are simply full of beans, though, when you assert that Taiwanese get irritated when we use Chinese with them. I use Chinese with everyone I interact with here, and no one hsa expressed ‘irritation’. What I have noticed, though, is that some staff at expat bars insist on using English (though not all). But I’ve only been to one expat bar here, and only once. There is another type of Taiwanese that likes to insist on using English–those who spent significant periods in the US, usually for grad school. Then it becomes a status symbol for them to show off to their colleagues and friends. The solution? There are many Taiwanese who have no interest in English and couldn’t care less about it. Make friends with them. When you get back we can talk more about this.
In the meantime, enjoy Beijing. It truly is a fabulous, unique place.
July 19th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
Some do! Just this week I went out to eat with my old co-worker Nathan (who speaks better Chinese than do) and the staff continually kept answering our Chinese with English with increasing awkwardness. By the time we went up to the counter with the check, they’d stopped talking and were just using hand gestures and grunting. This sort of thing happens about half the times I go to a nice western restaurant. The staff was Taiwanese. The most extreme time, a waiter at Chili’s got ticked off and refused to take my order when I wouldn’t talk to him in English. The bozo just wandered around ignoring us for 25 minutes until my buddy hunted down the manager.
Even people I meet here in Guishan regularly test their (nearly incomprehensible) English on me after it’s already clear I can speak Chinese. There have been other times in Taiwan when people at bars have introduced themselves to me in English, I’ve answered in Chinese and they’ve walked away. I shit you not. Maybe the difference in our experiences in Taiwan is that you’re hanging out with older people?
This isn’t to say that I can’t find people who don’t speak to me in English. It’s just that it’s much more difficult to do so in Taiwan than in Beijing. Many of the people in Taiwan who would normally be just the sorts I’d want to hang out are eliminated due to the whole language issue. In Beijing on the other hand, many people who were very open, very interesting, and could speak great English, such as the bartender and the tour guide I met, had no interest in doing so.
I totally agree about the zhuyin. As much as I despise Taiwan’s totally unstandardized mess of a stab at romanization, the kid’s books in Taiwan win hands down. Zhuyin is equivalent to pinyin, and it’s less distracting. I can use kid’s books with pinyin next to every character, but it takes a lot of discipline not to let my eyes get drawn to the familiar roman characters.
BTW, I’m already back. I’m just copying my journal into my blog.
July 19th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
I don’t know; I’ve never had the problem here you seem to be having. I doubt it’s an age issue so much, because I didn’t experience it when I did my junior year abroad here. Maybe you just like to go places Taiwanese who want to practice English are going to frequent precisely b/c they think they can find a Westerner there. For instance, you mention ‘decent Western restuarants’ and ‘Chilis’. Also the bars. Could it be you’re going to expat places? Have you tried Chinese teahouses? Temples? What kinds of people are the sorts you’d want to hang out with? If they’re to be found at expat hangouts, you’re just begging to be disappointed.
Also, I think it requires give and take. If you always absolutely insist on no one speaking English to you at all, people might perceive you in a negative way, like you’re looking down on them. Maybe you could accomodate a bit of English; sooner or later they’ll reach an impasse due to their limited abilities and that’s when you turn on the Mandarin. Once they realize your Mandarin is way better than their English, they’ll speak to you in Chinese.
July 20th, 2006 at 12:31 am
Hmm… it is true that I tend to like the more liberal types. I can’t say I have a huge interest in old temples or teahouses, but even the “western” places I go to, such as Starbucks, have mostly Taiwanese customers. That said, I already spend all day teaching English at work, and I don’t really feel like using English at the demand of strangers. For all they know, I don’t even speak English. In fact, many of my old classmates at Shida who left hating Taiwan were speakers of Spanish, German, or other languages.
The problem seems to stem from an obsession with English, combined with some stereotypes. Chinese-Americans who go to Chili’s in Taiwan don’t have to deal with the whole “I’m going to speak English regardless of whether if you do or not” style of service. Americans in Latin-style restaurants and bars don’t pressure Mexican-looking customers to speak Spanish, either. Taiwanese people have a particular knack for annoying me when it comes to language issues, and I know I’m not the only one. In any case, I like mainlanders’, especially Beijingers’ attitudes toward language issues far, far more than Taiwanese people’s. I spent over half my vacation in the most touristy area in the country and in my experience it was still a Chinese learner’s paradise compared to Taiwan.
July 20th, 2006 at 7:07 am
No doubt Mainlanders’ attitudes towards language issues are different than people in Taiwan. There are many reasons for it. I think alot of it has to do with pyschology. Taiwanese feel themselves in a precarious situation, I think. But I have to say, I have been able to use Chinese here everywhere I’ve gone so far. Maybe I’ll sing a different tune in a few months. But I have to admit I studiously avoid the expat ghettos.
I think part of the problem is your own choices that you make. And your own attitude is showing through: you don’t want to use English ‘at the demand of strangers’, yet you expect them to do so in Chinese for you, at places where management often hire them and evaluate them according to their English abilities. I mean, you are an English teacher here. If you were a student in one of the unis taking courses with other Chinese, I think you’d find plenty of people who would interact with you in Chinese only. And you keep bringing up Western expat places. Stay away from them. Or if you do go, just say you don’t speak English to the waiters.
I would tend to agree that Mainland is better for Chinese learning outside the classroom, which is more than half the battle. It’s also just an inherently more interesing place, with a far broader range of people within the Chinese diaspora.
July 20th, 2006 at 7:51 am
actually, this would be an extremely interesting topic to pursue at forumosa. Maybe we should get a thread going?
July 20th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Well, I guess I should amend what I just said. I don’t want to use English at the demand of strangers in a Chinese speaking country. I used to gladly use English, even with people who sucked at it, in the US. If a restaurant’s staff spoke English to everybody it wouldn’t bug me much. I might not go often, but it wouldn’t bug me. It only really bugs me when they have a policy of deciding what language to speak based on the skin color of the customer. Also, is it fair to call chains such as McDonalds and Starbucks “western expat places”, when they do well over 90% of their business with locals?
July 20th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
I like your idea of a Forumosa thread, but I think they’d be a self selected group of those who’ve decided to stay in Taiwan. Maybe a thread on Chinese-forums.com asking how people think Taiwan compares to the mainland when it comes to this issue would draw replies from a broader group of people.
More than anything I’d rather not have the thread here. I meant this post to be about what I love about Beijing, not about how I should be living my life in Taiwan.
July 20th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
OK, done and done (at chinese-forums I posted it in the Society Forum and it awaits moderator approval). Hope it gets a good run.
Sorry if you feel this has gotten off topic. You brought up the comparison with Taiwan, and I thought it was only fair to respond. No one is telling you how to live your life in Taiwan, either, just trying to help. No offense intended.
July 20th, 2006 at 8:54 pm
Thread’s up here at Chinese-forums.com, and have also bumped you out of the ‘new’ member group so you can post to your heart’s content.
July 21st, 2006 at 2:13 am
I think you overstated my position a bit on Forumosa, but no problem. I like Taiwan in general. There are a few frustrations, but I’m used to them, and I do have some idea of how to avoid them. I just felt like it was especially nice in Beijing.
August 12th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
The food stall in the photo had a halal (qingzhen) certification,in both Chinese and Arabic. Muslim food is an integral part of the Beijing snack scene, from lamb kebabs to sweets like wandouhuang. Many old well known restaurants such as Donglaishun, famous for its shuanyangrou charcoal fired copper hotpots, are halal establishments.
August 27th, 2006 at 9:45 am
[...] There is also the issue of learning materials. Most schools in Taiwan use the same textbook and the amount of textbooks and other supplementary learning materials available in Taiwan is quite limited. Mark of the blog Doubting to shuo recently visited Beijing. He commented about availability of a large range Chinese learning materials in China. The other thing that struck me about the bookstore is how much they had in terms of books for foreigners learning Chinese. In the town I live in, in Taiwan, there aren’t any books for teaching Chinese to foreigners. Even in Taibei, the large bookstores grudgingly devote one or two rows on a single shelf to books for foreigners CSL. This book store must have had about 50 shelves devoted to learning Chinese for foreigners. There were text books for English speakers, text books for German Speakers, text books for Korean speakers, text books for speakers of half a dozen other languages, books full of idioms and slang, hundreds of HSK prep books, books on various Chinese dialects, video collections… the resources seemed endless. I can only fantasize about living somewhere with such a cornucopia of Chinese learning materials. [...]
October 9th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
You’re talking about Beijing and Taiwan but I think you’re really talking about Beijing and Taipei and hello…Taipei is not Taiwan. I am a Taiwanese-Canadian, I can speak the Taiwanese dialect but not much Mandarin. When I speak Taiwanese people will always answer in Mandarin which was frustrating. However, I’ve watch my Aunt speak Taiwanese to strangers and they will answer in Taiwanese. I think it’s b/c people have a sense that I’m not from there.
October 9th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Hello, Jeanne. At the time I wrote that, I was living in Guishan (龜山), which is in Taoyuan county. I’d also lived in Jiayi (嘉義). I just recently moved back to Taibei (台北). I really was comparing Beijing with everywhere I’ve lived in Taiwan, not just the capitol city. For issues such as resources for Chinese students, cultural events, and internationalization, the rest of Taiwan is even further behind Beijing than Taibei is. Jiayi has some really good biking, though. I wrote a bit about that on my Chinese blog, if you’re interested.
One of my good friends in the states was a Taiwanese guy who moved there in grade school. We went to the same middle school and high school. Anyway, he speaks Taiwanese fluently, but his Mandarin is pretty weak. When he and I went out last time he visited, I’d talk to people in Mandarin and he’d talk to them in Taiwanese and they just kept trying to use Mandarin with him. I don’t think it’s because he seemed foreign, though. I think it’s mostly about age. People here just assume that you MUST speak Mandarin if you’re in your twenties (as long as you look Asian). Oh, yeah. We were in the north, too. I’ll bet if you went to Tainan, people would gladly answer you in Taiwanese.
October 27th, 2006 at 9:15 am
Actually, I was born in Tainan and went to Toronto,Canada when I was five years old. I was fluent in Mandarin at that time but not anymore. When I’m in Taiwan I’m usually in Tainan and it happens(people using Mandarin with me when I speak Taiwanese to them)there too. I also think Taipei is so different from other cities in Taiwan. If I have to live in Taiwan it would not be Taipei..I think Taipei is crazy. I like Tainan and I wish Taiwanese people would speak more Taiwanese…it’s a very nice language I like it better than Mandarin.
December 5th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
Hi! When I left my first comment on your website, I was wrong thinking that you have never been in Beijing. Well, I’m in Beijing. So happy that you liked our city. It is fascinating. Once you are here, you might not want to go live in another Chinese city. BTW, I’m a Chinese girl. I love English. But I’m equally crazy about our Chinese. Very proud of our own language and culture! Wish you success in learning Chinese! Welcome to Beijing again!
It’s the second time that I have come across your blog totally by accident. Like your casual writing style! Keep up your good work for your website!