Will Farner China 2018

Arrival

After an exhausting fourteen hour flight from Detroit, Peter, Kiran, and I finally landed in Beijing Capital International Airport. The first thing I noticed was that every sign in the airport had not only Chinese but also the English translation below it. As this was my first trip outside of the western world, I was not expecting eastern culture to be so tolerant. The customs and passport control were uneventful except that everyone entering the country, citizens and foreigners alike, were required to have their fingerprints scanned into a database. Once through customs, a WLSA spokesman picked us up and took us to where we were residing for the next week or so, Beijing No. 8 High School. When we arrived at the school, we got ourselves situated in our three-person dormitory and then headed out to dinner at a local restaurant with some of the school’s staff. They made sure to order us a variety of dishes and were extremely hospitable. When we arrived back at the dormitories, which were empty of all other students except us because it was the weekend, we immediately crashed because of the thirteen hour time difference.

Our dorm door

First Week in School

We spent the first of three weeks going to three of Beijing No. 8 High School’s seven campuses across the city and seeing the Great Wall and Summer Palace. The day after our arrival, we visited the Ba Da Ling section of the Great Wall of China and the Bird’s Nest, a former Olympic stadium. During our day trip, nine different groups of people greeted us and asked for pictures because they thought we were white American internet celebrities. Typically they were from rural parts of China also sight-seeing in Beijing. The rest of the week was spent attending school on other campuses. The campus we were residing was the international campus, meant for students who intend to go to university in America. We also visited the main campus, which is the biggest campus by number of students, and the Arts campus which focused on music, calligraphy, culture, and painting. On the Friday of the first week, the Dragon Boat Festival began. The Dragon Boat Festival is a national holiday in which all schools and businesses close for a three day weekend. At school, we celebrated by making zong zi, sticky rice with dates wrapped in seaweed, painting eggs, and making decorative paper zong zi. At the end of the week, it was time to say our goodbyes to the school staff and start our next week in a hotel in central Beijing.

Leaving campus for hotel

Visiting the Great Wall

Making paper zong zi at Dragon Boat festival celebration

Second Week in Hotel

The second week was spent with WLSA and a tour guide seeing sights that are in Beijing proper like Tiananmen Square, Temples of Heaven and Earth, Capital Museum, Beijing Zoo, and Natural Sciences Museum. In Tiananmen Square, we were able to see former chairman Mao Ze Dong’s body and the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is a huge plaza in the middle of Beijing which receives around 80,000 visitors on a normal workday. Our third party tour guide for the week named Frank performed his job excellently and intelligently. He seemed to know more than a textbook or Wikipedia even. He told us about all the ancient Chinese lore in the Temples of Heaven and Earth and a Buddhist Temple we visited. Every morning for that week we were escorted by a WLSA staff member to a local restaurant for breakfast and Frank would take us to lunch and to dinner. After each day, we would usually go to the 7/11 by our hotel to buy snacks and then watch the World Cup in our hotel room. One of the cultural differences between China and America is the reliance in washing machines. In our hotel, it was 20 Yuan (about $3) per article of clothing. So instead of paying around $100, we opted to buy detergent and wash them in the sink ourselves. Overall, my favorite week was the second week because it was the most culturally immersive and Frank became our close friend.

Me and our tour guide Frank at McDonalds

Largest wooden Buddha Statue in the world (28 ft)

Third Week in ShanghaiAt the end of the second week, we met up with Zhang Laoshi and her daughter and traveled on a high speed train to Shanghai. On a normal train, the trip is around ten hours but on our train it was a mere five. At the train station, we were greeted by our host families. My host’s name was Terry. I stayed with him, his mother, their nanny, and their dog Chocolate. The mom was the CEO of her own startup tech company. Terry and his mother are some of the smartest people I have ever conversed with. During our dinner time conversations we would discuss varying topics such as the dynamics of Chinese politics, the validity of religion, feminism in China, and the lack of freedom of speech in China. These conversations really let me see inside the mind of a Chinese citizen and vastly improved my language skills. Shanghai was much more modern than Beijing was. We went on top of Shanghai tower, took a river cruise, went inside the Gucci store, but unable to purchase anything, and even saw Incredibles 2 in theaters. During our time, we explored the downtown area, and visited a school in the suburb of Jiading. Jiading School is where the immigrant farmers’ children go to school because they do not have an expensive special license that allows them to send their kids to Shanghai metro schools. We taught the kids how to play duck-duck-goose and I even got interviewed by a Chinese news station.

Writing our Chinese names at the Summer Palace

From the top of Shanghai Tower

Recreating The Titanic scene on a river cruise in Shanghai

ThanksI would like to thank the Wilson family for funding my language grant and allowing me to more fully understand the Chinese language and culture. I am very grateful for this opportunity and without the Wilson family’s help it would not have been possible. I would also like to thank WLSA and Zhang Laoshi coordinating the wonderful trip of a lifetime.