Bicycles and Books

I signed up for a Chinese class in Beijing! For the next two weeks, I will spend two hours a day in a classroom in Wudaokou being taught a Chinese. The program first came to my attention by way of one of the married couples in the program. They have participated in the two week classes off and on for the past year or so. With their guidance, I decided to do the same. Unsure of what to expect, I brought my 300 RMB to the small school located in the heart of our district. Since I was a first time guest of the school, I got to experience my first class for free. They didn't have to do that, I would have paid for it right then but the workers at the school insisted that I try it first. So I showed up today with my notepad and a pen ready to absorb the Chinese language. The class has only 7 people in it, ideal for student teacher interaction. I was primed and ready to slowly work my way through the English language. Sadly, that was not how this class worked! Our teacher, a woman in her mid to late twenties, walks in and greets the class. After a short period of arranging her things, she starts blasting through vocabulary and phrases that I had never heard before. (Point of information: I have come into the class a couple days late and it seems that those few days have made all of the difference) I was encouraged by the knowledge that, although I did not thrive in the class, I was not sinking miserably. The Mandarin knowledge that I have acquired over the past 3.5 months has served me well enough to absorb other lessons in Chinese. My biggest shortcoming became apparent when our teacher began writing on the board, about 3 minutes into class. She writes completely in Chinese characters with a smattering of Pinyin. The problem is that I, Akil Thomas (self-study Chinese student of 3.5 months) do not know more than 5 common characters in Chinese. Here this woman was, writing complete essays on the board and expecting us to read them. Mainly, I just smirked and continued scribbling furiously into my notebook. There was a point during the 2 hours where I decided that I wanted to learn the characters too, so I endeavored to copy them down as she had written them. By the time I finished, painstakingly drawing the two characters at the beginning of the sentence, the teacher had finished writing, explaining and was moving onto questions! Needless to say that I abandoned any other such pursuit during class time. I did however learn a great deal of vocabulary and sentence structure that I believe will GREATLY improve my oral Chinese. I do want to learn to write a little; or at least to recognize written characters. We will see how long that lasts. So I will spend some time on that after I spend some time CATCHING UP to where the rest of the class is. Oh, I forgot to mention...those few days that I missed allowed them to make it all the way to chapter 13!! Yes, crazy!!! Chapter 13!! On the other hand, I was keeping up with a class that was already on Chapter 13. Kudos to me, eh? Yes, I think so.

Okay, so in order to get to my lessons I decided to borrow my friend's bike and take on one of the most harrowing journeys that I have tried to do. I am not sure how familiar with the Beijing bicyclists, and their system of transport, that you are, so I will venture to inform you. First let me say, people are crazy no matter where you are. It turns out that motorists hate pedestrians, pedestrians hate motorists, and everyone hates cyclists. The problem arises when, 55% of the population finds it necessary to ride their bicycle and the other part of the population that drives finds it necessary to completely ignore cyclists. They also ignore all of the regular rules of the road. It is quite scary! Not to mention the wind. It was very refreshing to be back on a bike, though it was incredibly disheartening to have crazy drivers zooming by weaving in and out of traffic. Since I normally ride in GA, I was not used to any of the elements that I was going to face while I was riding. Aside from the crazy drivers, was the wind, which always seemed to be against me! I have no idea how it was possible. I was only in class for 2 hours. It should not have changed that quickly. Anyway, it was only a 14 mile day. But it was 14 miles further than I have ridden since my arrival in China.