While I am abroad in a really cool place, I'm here not just to eat, sight see and have fun. I do take classes at East China Normal University in Shanghai through an abroad program called CIEE. I have classes Monday through Thursday (all Fridays off!) and take four classes.
Monday- 10-12 Modern Chinese History with Andrew Field, a Boston guy who first visited China in '88 and has been living in China on and off for about 6 or 7 years, speaks fluent Chinese (jealous). He did his undergraduate at Dartmouth and graduate work at Columbia (smart guy).
1-3 Chinese: Beginning 1 with Shao Laoshi, (Shao is her last name and Laoshi means teacher, this how we address all of the language teachers and some others as well.) Shao Laoshi is very young (24) but has been teaching Chinese as a second language for two years with CIEE. Shao Laoshi is orginally from Xinjiang province which is in the upper left hand coner all the way on the other side of China, where the Islamic ethnic minority Uyghurs live, Xinjiang is also known for their hand made noodles.
3-6 Cultural Currencies- A literature class where we compare western and Chinese texts with Amy Goldman. Amy did her undergrad at Princeton and graduate work at UC Davis (smart gal). She's lived in not only China but France and also frequents India. She has a lot of energy. She also comes from a renowned movie making family apparently.
Tuesday- Chinese 1-3
Wednesday- 10-11 Modern Chinese History
1-3 Chinese
Thursday- 1-3 Chinese 3-6 International Relations with professor Teijun. He is my only Chinese professor who doesn't teach Chinese. While he is Chinese he studied in Stockholm and seems to be as well traveled as any Chinese person (it's difficult to get a passport to leave the country). Speaks good English but his teaching style is very different from what happens in our other classes and from the US (good and bad differences).
So that's my class schedule, combined with Chinese homework, stuff for my other classes and lifting I don't see much outside of 'my' little corner of Shanghai Monday thru Thursday. But we do have long weekends so I try to take advantage of that and go explore the city.
-AL
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Well, my bad, I'd say you have a very full schedule Monday-Thursday. You must have a lot of your mom in you.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: You mentioned that it's difficult to get a passport out of there. Why is that??? You'd think with all those people, the gov't would like to have some leave every so often. Is that why they have a facination with blondes and English speaking people?? They can't travel so you are alien to them? And last one, if it's so hard to leave China, how is it your professors can come in and stay for years? Green Cards, work Visas, etc.?
Ok, that's it for your "ant" tonight. Enjoy your weekend.
ly..ala
For your first questing ala, the reason why (I'm assuming) it's so hard to get a passport has to do with the amount of outside information that the Chinese government can't control while people are abroad. China has only state operated media, so you'll never find anything bad about the Chinese government written in a paper or on TV. Also information on issues such as Tibet are not readily availible, so when people are outside of Mainland China they have accsess to all of this information that the Chinese government doesn't want them to have.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to your second question, I don't have a good/ right answer. I do know that there is a large Expat (short for expatriot reffering to Americans and other nationalities that are living here) community in China, many of them working here for the various industries that have relocated here. So long story short.... there's been a lot of economic reform in China since 1978 that involed opening up a lot, meaning allowing more western people in, so when they did that they made it easier for Western people to live here. Probably a kind of double edged sword for the CCP, they like the growth of their economy, but probably not wild about all of the Western influences that the economic reforms have brought (that's pure speculation).
-AL