Harbin: Three Days of Real Life(ish?) in China

The past few days have been a slightly awkward limbo between adapting to life in Harbin/Chinese culture and waiting for classes and the language pledge to begin. We have toured the 哈工大 campus, downtown Harbin, met our roommates, and explored the area around the campus. As I said in my previous post, the campus is HUGE and constantly filled with people. The cafeterias, classrooms, streets, and ball courts are always busy. In my state of zombied jet-laggedness, I was awake at 4:30AM and saw countless people playing basketball across the street. Maybe it's dedication to become the next 姚明 (Yao Ming), but it also might just be that with so many people on this campus, someone is always out and about.

The second full day in the city we took a bus to downtown Harbin to tour around. The city has a bizarre mix of Russian architecture and Chinese signs. Several official buildings have plaques in Chinese, Russian, AND English, but most signs are only in Chinese.

Some of the architecture in downtown Harbin.

In fact, very few buildings have any sort of English. Without key landmarks like 肯德基, KFC, and 必胜客, Pizza Hut, to remind me of home, I might not have even recognized that I was on the same planet! Our RA, Eric, also gave us time to explore Fendou Food Store, 奋斗副食，a supermarket-esque place downtown. The market was AMAZING, with fruits, nuts, meats, fish, etc...The stand with the overflowing piles of dried fruits were across from the pyramids of steaming bāozi, which in turn were next to the chicken feet and goose heads.

A few other CET Harbin students exploring the Fendou Market.

Beautiful mounds of dried fruit. I was only able to resist because I had just seen a fried duck head.

I'm not sure what "Tourismy Bread" is, but look at those loaves of bread!

The counter with baozi and jiaozi...NOM NOM NOM.

Nuts, chocolates, fruits...NOM NOM NOM TAKE 2!

The upper levels of the store had the requisite KFC, but also several clothing stores. Ever since arriving to China, I have noticed that young Chinese people seem to wear a lot of clothes with English words--but the words don't always make sense. The clothing stores as the shopping center specialized in this type of Chinglish fashion, with bright colors, large fonts, and total nonsense.

Want T-shirt--Do you like?

Have no fear: in China DREMS do come true!

Later that day we met our new roommates, who then took us out for dinner. A small group of CET students and their roommates headed to dinner at a Szechuan restaurant. Szechuan food has a reputation for being spicy even in the US, but the spice there pales in comparison to the heat in China! One of the most famous Szechuan dishes is Mapodoufu, in which the ma means "to numb." So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when the dishes that had tiny peppercorns literally numbed my mouth.

Sunday we finally met our 1-on-1 course teachers. My topic--Chinese food culture--is pretty broad and my teacher and I began to figure out a way to focus on more specific subjects. But most of the lunch we had together was spent discussing differences between American food culture and Chinese food culture. My teacher was shocked when I said: 1) I rarely, if ever, go to McDonalds or KFC; 2) fast food restaurants are not considered "nice" American restaurants; 3) I don't fry all of the food I eat at home; 4) I don't eat soup everyday; and most shocking of all: 5) I like coffee (weishenme? she begged in response, tai ku le!)

Sunday morning was bittersweet since the language pledge began at 2PM. We all wanted to keep speaking in English, knowing that the pledge would be frustrating and exhausting. Yet, at the same time we all came for the pledge. Hopefully it will all be worth it.