First month in Tianjin

Hello to all the pupils at Stirling High School, and to everyone else reading our scholar blogs this year! I'm Amy - I'm from an area just north of Glasgow, but this year I'm spending ten months in the city of Tianjin in China, learning Mandarin Chinese with a group of twenty other wonderful scholars. Here in my blog I'm going to share some stories and talk about the interesting things that happen while we're staying here - and there's already plenty to say about our first four weeks here!

I'll address first why I wanted to come to China - I had been on the immersion course in July 2018 which was my first real experience of China, Chinese culture, and learning about the language in a way that isn't just curious self-study. I didn't know what things could follow on from the immersion course, other than having a great experience and something to write on your CV, and so when I came back to Scotland I carried on with my original plan to apply to university to study German & Linguistics, as this is what I had my mind set on. Sometime in Autumn, however, all the S6 pupils in my school were brought in for an assembly, and we were told about a scholarship programme that was being offered to us - my ears pricked up as soon as I heard them say 'the Confucius Institute', and I was delighted to hear about the Tianjin Scholarship for the first time! That very day I took home the forms and showed them to my family, and although we did take time to make a final decision, I was pretty quick to decide that this year abroad was something I definitely wanted to do. And now here I am, grateful every day for the chance to be where I am right now.

JOURNEY AND ARRIVAL

Today as I'm writing this marks three weeks since we arrived in China - and as I'm sure most of the other scholars would agree, this has been a time in which we've done so much, and yet the weeks have flown by at the same time, when you consider that we're almost a tenth of the way through our time here already!

We set off from Edinburgh on September the 2nd, with an hour-long flight down to London and then a ten-hour (!) flight to Beijing. We managed to fly over here largely without incident (although I did almost leave all of my documents on the first plane and had to wait for everyone else to get off before running back to find them!) and after our ten-hour flight from the UK to China, during which I got a whole five minutes of actual sleep, we finally arrived at Beijing airport and were very happy to see two of last year's scholars waiting for us. Because I'd been in China before, all I could think about when I first got off the plane into the terminal, feeling the heat and the air around me, was how happy I was to be back here. And that feeling has not faded since! Following our arrival in the airport at around 10am local time on Tuesday (three in the morning back at home), we took some group photos before heading out into the heat and getting the coach to Tianjin, a journey of around 2-3 hours in which I finally got my first real sleep since Sunday night.

We arrived at our accommodation not too long after entering the city area of Tianjin, and after having a small meeting we were sent off up to our rooms, to see where we'd be staying for the next year. Our room has a great view of the city, including the massive tower right in the middle of our cityscape- I've attached a picture, so you can see what my roommate and I get to see every day! One thing I will note about when we arrived in our room, however, was that we forgot how hard the mattresses in China are - I was reminded of this fact after I dumped my bags and decided to fall face-first onto it after being tired from the journey - the impact definitely woke me up! That evening, we were taken out to a nearby food court for dinner by Kayleigh, one of last year's scholars, before heading back to unpack a few more things and get ready for bed - and so ended our first day in Tianjin.

The view from outside our window - it's certainly something!

EXPERIENCING TIANJIN

Tianjin is a big city- with a population of 14 million (over double of the entire population of Scotland) and an area of 4541 square miles (about half the size of Wales, if my maths is correct?) there's certainly a lot to see and explore. The subway is quite intuitive, and by now most of us have managed to set up our bike sharing apps, meaning we can unlock almost any of the public bikes dotted around the streets, and cycle to our destination. I hadn't cycled in about five years before finally managing to unlock one of the bikes, but thankfully the transition from trying to remember how to pedal to cycling along Chinese roads for the first time only took a minute or two. It's true what they say about never forgetting how to ride a bike - thankfully, or I might have a few scrapes and bruises by now!

A small intersection I cycled to, a few streets away from YingKouDao Subway Station.

We haven't yet explored too far throughout the city, but we have been to lots of different places, and found quite a few regular spots for food, shopping, or just hanging about. One of the days in which we did a lot of new exploring was September 9th, which was also my birthday! The other scholars were so nice to have organised a surprise cake, a lovely card, and some great presents in the morning, and in the early afternoon my roommate and I set off for the Cat Cafe around the corner, a place which has been frequented by a lot of our group. We aww-ed over the cats and paid 15RMB to feed them (as soon as you open the can they all flock around your feet!), and then in the evening we set off to visit the Italian Style Street, an area of Tianjin with some lovely buildings and statues and things to see, and lots and lots of restaurants. Following on from this, we walked along to the riverside, where we met a group of Chinese ladies dancing to music they were playing on a speaker, and some of us joined in with them. Just thirty steps from there was the river that runs through Tianjin; and as you'll see in the pictures I've attached, it's an absolutely lovely sight at night, with the waves lapping near your feet and the lights of the city shimmering and spilling over the water. We then joined in with the dancing group again and learned the routine to one of their songs, before continuing to walk along and finding a small group of performing musicians! We listened to them and applauded when they were done, before finally walking back along to the subway and buying our tickets (which are small, green tokens made of plastic, re-used among commuters) and heading home. We've also visited Ancient Culture Street where we bought some postcards, pieces of art, and various other things, and have been to several different malls and other fun places, including an arcade with a Dance Mat machine, where a group of four of us spent quite a long time one afternoon!

There's still so many things to see in Tianjin, like the Tianjin Eye and the Binhai Library (which I'm looking forward to visiting, because I remembered being stunned by pictures of it many years ago, way before I knew I'd be coming to China one day). But now, we're preparing to go beyond Tianjin, as the October week holiday is coming up fast and we finally managed to book all our travel and accommodation for our upcoming trip away - I'm very excited for this, but you'll have to wait until next month to find out where we went and hear all about it!

Sitting by the river, and then at the Cat Cafe for the first time! My t-shirt says, "Sorry I can't - I have plans with my cat". It's a pretty fitting t-shirt to have worn that day.

To the pupils at Stirling High School - Are there any places in China that you think look interesting, or would like to visit one day? China is such a beautiful country; maybe in class or in your free time you can look at some specific regions of China and find out about their geography and culture.

In what I've written above, I mentioned many different things that I've managed to find in China. Can you find the Chinese words for the following? Try to make up some sentences with them - which words would you use if you were to visit China one day?

-Bicycle

-Cake

-Restaurant

-River (Do you know the name of the river that runs through Tianjin?)

-Subway

-Postcard

and finally...

-to dance!

CLASSES SO FAR

Of course, it's not all fun and games and exploring here, as the real reason we're here is to learn to speak, read, and understand Mandarin Chinese. A few weeks ago we were all given a test which we were told to work through, answering as much of it as possible; and in the case of myself and possibly many others, it was a fiasco, as the test was around HSK 4 level and the instructions were written in Chinese! So we decided at first for me to go into F class, which is the class where you are taught the very basics; however, as I'd already done a year or so of self-study, much of what we went over was things I already knew; and so in order to challenge myself and make more progress in a more difficult class, myself and a few others moved up to E class a few days ago - we are now taught almost completely in Chinese, and the work is definitely more challenging already! But having difficult work to do pushes your brain to work harder, and so once we get into the swing of things we should start to see real improvement - which would be a great thing, as I constantly feel sorry for all the cashiers and restaurant workers who have to put up with the Chinese that we're speaking to them now!

你们学习汉语多久了？ 你们喜欢学习汉语吗？我很喜欢学习汉语。除了学校以为，你们还可以在哪儿说汉语？比如，你们可以看中国的电视，也可以跟中国朋友说！

While it's often frustrating not being able to fully express myself in coherent sentences just yet, I'm greatly enjoying the small bits of progress that I see myself making already. Often, it's simply not necessary to speak in long, full sentences - I went to the stationary shop today, and communicated with the shopkeeper about the prices of the notebooks I was buying and my surprise at how cheap they were with just fragments of sentences, and yet this was enough to have a natural conversation. Forming full sentences in the classroom is an important skill, yes, but being able to just speak with people in a way that's natural sounding and understandable, albeit not in fancy, well-constructed sentences, is just as important if not more important in day-to-day life; and especially so when you consider what really matters about learning a new language - communication and human connection. This doesn't mean I'm not going to try my best in the classroom, but it's important to go out and use what you know and the words that seem right to improve your language skills!

This was my desk when I laid out all my notebooks, textbooks (from classes E and F), and study materials... Intimidating, or motivating? You decide!

UPS AND DOWNS

Most days here have at least one interesting story to tell, so I'll share some of the good, the bad, and the interesting things that have happened so far. Of course, there was the dancing class we joined by the river - that was not the only dance we had though, as we joined in with a salsa dancing group the week before, which was lively and loud and a lot of fun! I've been to the Cat Cafe three times now, played the Interstellar soundtrack on the piano in one of the shopping areas we like to go to, drank homemade rose tea with other scholars, cycled along a busy highway at night keeping pace with the cars speeding along beside me (quite exhilarating although often a bit scary when one of the cars suddenly decides to turn and cut you off!), had a panic about not being able to find a building I was looking for without knowing I was standing in the first floor of it all along, and (most important of all!) had my first proper ice cream cone! Somehow I'd made it to eighteen without ever having had the experience of a classic vanilla ice cream cone - and now that I've tried the 4 yuan ice cream from McDonald's, I'm never looking back.

My ice cream, and our homemade rose tea <3

My experiences of buying food in China have also been very varied, although I've liked almost everything I've tried so far. Just the other day a few of us found a place with fantastic dumplings - we ordered them through the window, and then found out that we were expected to climb through the window to enter the shop and eat them - there was a footstool, but it was definitely one of the more unorthodox ways I've ever entered a food establishment. We had a nice time there, watching TV with the chef sitting at a table near us laughing as we shouted out all the characters we recognised in the subtitles; then we climbed back out through the window, after informing the woman working there that they were “最好吃的饺子” (the tastiest dumplings!). I've also had quite a few ‘煎饼’ (jianbing), which are very delicious; you can search them up on YouTube to see how they're made! But ordering food in Chinese can be difficult at our current level; one morning I went to order a 煎饼, and the seller started asking me questions about where I was from. Upon hearing how poor my Mandarin was, he tried to ask me something about my level of Chinese before giving up and writing something on his phone and showing it to me; he'd used Google Translate to ask, "How do you communicate with others?". My answer to this was to point around at various places and signs in his shop and laugh to indicate that it was mostly sign language and smiles at that point in the game, but unfortunately (and ironically) this didn't really get the point across, and I ended up looking rather silly. It was a tasty jianbing, but I'm not sure I want to show my face there again any time soon! For now, I recently discovered the bread section of the local supermarket, and am now obsessed with the cheap, delicious bread they sell there. I also found big pot noodles at the supermarket for around 3 yuan, so for the days when I don't feel like branching out into some more varied Chinese foods, I've got enough bread, noodles, and fruit to keep me going for quite a while!

What kind of foods do you know of that are popular in China? What about the Chinese names for some of the fruit that you can buy here, like durian, dragon fruit, and watermelon? I still always say that the watermelons in China are the best watermelons I've ever tasted!

DEUTSCH - HALLO, STIRLING HIGH SCHOOL!

In diesem Blog habe ich schon Englisch und ein bisschen Chinesisch gesprochen - und jetzt, hier ist etwas für euch! Während ich dieses jahr in China lebe, spreche ich Englisch mit meinen Freundinnen und Chinesisch im Klassenzimmer und auf den Straßen. Leider gibt es sehr wenige Möglichkeiten, hier Deutsch zu sprechen. Deshalb haben wir gedacht, dass es eine gute Idee wäre, mit euch ein bisschen auf Deutsch zu sprechen. Auf diese Weise kann ich mein Deutsch nutzen, und ihr könnt euer Deutsch verbessern. In China ist es wichtig, mindestens ein bisschen Chinesisch sprechen zu können. Was sind einige Gründe, eine Fremdsprache in Schottland zu lernen? Was sind die Fremdsprachen, die euch am meisten interessieren? Ihr könnt diese Themen mit Klassenkamaraden diskutieren, oder ein bisschen darüber schreiben.

In der Zukunft, werde ich mehr auf Deutsch schreiben - z.B. könnte ich mein Alltagsleben hier in China beschreiben, oder euch ein bisschen Chinesisch beibringen! Wenn ihr Fragen zu mein Leben in China habt, könnt ihr mir mit Hilfe eures Lehrers eine E-Mail schicken – ich freue mich sehr darauf, eure Fragen zu beantworten und zu diskutieren!

Bis bald!

So, that's finally the end of my blog post for this month! To the pupils in the Chinese and German classes at Stirling High School, if you have any questions feel free to get in touch and I'll do my best to answer them for you.

Until next time, 再见！