Ending ceremonies
We finished up HBA on Friday with our final exam (I was thrilled to be done with that exam, to be honest), our graduation ceremony immediately after and then our finishing lunch banquet.
Although I know this is cliched, the lunch banquet was extremely bittersweet. Sweet, because the grind of HBA was wearing us down -- this much is obvious. But bitter, mostly because of our teachers. Before coming to HBA, I never thought I could be so attached to any group of teachers. They're funny and people just like you. During the entire meal, a lot of the teachers didn't seem too thrilled to be there, as opposed to the students, who were basically thrilled to be finished with HBA and being able to speak English finally. I didn't get it at first until I asked one of them (the teachers) and they said that they were sad because the program was ending and we would probably not be able to see them again.
I'm really going to miss my teachers. I've never really had this sort of experience, in which the teachers are only a couple of years older than the students, they're willing to go out with them and they're fun people outside of the classroom. I mean, on Thursday, the day before the file, I went to the final office hours 答疑時間 even though I didn't really have anything to ask them just in order to chat. When they were leaving the Conference Center 會議中心, it was really hard to say goodbye as I realized that it was really likely that I would never be able to see them again (as it turns out, I saw some of them the next morning when I was getting on the HBA shuttle to the airport) but it was actually really hard to take. Apart from the students, the teachers were the part of the program that I'm going to miss the most. I don't know the next time that I'm going to be back in China, or if there is even going to be a next time, so it was really hard.
With 古老師 at office hours on the last day.
駱老師!
Um, yeah.Of course, this doesn't mean that I'm not going to miss my friends at HBA -- but knowing that most of them are going to be in Cambridge in the fall, as opposed to Beijing or Hebei or Sichuan, makes a big difference. I'm going to see everyone in the fall, in November, and I'm really excited. I can't really say the same for Beijing.
HBA/Beijing: a recap
Academics
Intense? Yeah. Of course, it depends on how you're approaching it -- if you're a Yale student and you're only looking at this pass/fail, the intensity is definitely reduced. There's a steady stream of work to do, and no matter how much you love Chinese, at some point you will inevitably wonder why in the world you chose this experience.
But I definitely feel as if I learned so much from this experience, despite how useless I initially thought formal language 書面語 was. My aunt, who lives in Taiwan, toured the States, ironically while I was in Beijing; she gave me their itinerary. Reading one sentence, I was able to find several words and a sentence structure that I learned in 5th year HBA. It was such a gratifying feeling. As for spoken Chinese 口語, this is a little harder to assess, but I'm going to bank on the fact that I was speaking Chinese most of the time (see Language Pledge, below) and hearing Chinese almost all of the time, and hope that I improve. The ultimate test is when I get back home and talk to my parents and see what they think.
So yeah in summary I'd say the academics at HBA, although super-rigorous, are definitely worth it.
Language Pledge
Basically I have two conflicting thoughts about this: (1) the language pledge is definitely an integral part of the experience. Even for 5th years, because even though our spoken Chinese is at a fairly high level, there are still a lot of words (for me, anyway) that I don't know in Chinese, and if we didn't have the language pledge and I spoke in Chinglish all the time then I'd never learn these words. Plus it just makes sense -- you're here to learn Chinese, so speak Chinese. However, (2) it's really hard to get to know your classmates at a deeper level if you're always struggling to express your thoughts in Chinese. Honestly, I didn't get to know a lot of people until I spoke English with them and realized that we both actually had a lot to say. Particularly with such an intense program when you're spending time together with so many people, it's a little strange not to get to know everyone that well. Basically, I'd say it's basically up to you to decide how you want to balance these two important factors in assessing the language pledge.
Weekend excursions/exploring Beijing
I realized I didn't go on a single HBA excursion after coming back from Inner Mongolia. This year, they took us to the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs/798 Art District, Longqing Gorge, Beijing opera, acrobatics and organized Beijing Night and would have helped to organize the speech contest. I went to the Great Wall and Beijing opera. I'd recommend not going to all the weekend excursions, just because you already have limited time to explore Beijing and not being able to fully explore this city would really be a shame. Plus public transportation isn't even that expensive, so it's not even as if that's an excuse.
The real Beijing Night 北京之夜
Enough about HBA. The reason I slept 10 and a half hours last night was because I didn't sleep on my last night in Beijing. Half of the fifth years went out and Shan, Diana and I stayed up the entire night:
Dinner
We had Vietnamese pho (SO good) and watched the American women's volleyball team beat China (and of course, were the only people in the entire restaurant cheering when they won).
Dessert
Hungry much?After going clubbing, we were exhausted at around 2 and went to a dessert place, where Shan and I ordered an exorbitantly priced red bean shaved ice.
Flag-raising
We cabbed over to Tian'anmen Square around 4 and discovered that there was already a line. We sat in front of the National Congress or whatever it's called until they finally let us into the square. We managed to get "front-row" seats, so to speak, but people were continually pressing us from the back since they were trying to squeeze to the front, and at that point having not slept for 24 hours I was more than a little irritated at that. People have said that watching the flag-raising is kind of anticlimactic, but I don't really think so -- I mean, it's kind of short, but the experience itself was great. Seeing how many people line up to go watch the flag-raising, watching the soldiers march out from under Tian'anmen (the gate) with the flag, listening to the Chinese national anthem blare out from the loudspeakers and the absolutely 人滿為患 crowds was such a great way to spend my last -- night? morning? -- in Beijing.
Yeah. 人滿為患 for sure.
Soldiers marching out from Tian'anmen. This is at about 5:20.
The actual flag-raising.
Shan and I.All done
So those were my nine weeks in Beijing -- good times, fun people, sleepless nights. I'm glad I did it.
I'm now looking forward to getting some sleep, having great fruits, food and dessert in Taiwan, hanging out with the family and generally getting some rest before heading back to Yale, in less than two weeks. Wow
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