Teaching, Research, and Running in Guangzhou

So!  After a 12-hour flight I arrived at Bejing’s shiny airport.   Warnings of overzealous H1N1 screening were largely unfounded, as the only screening I experienced was having to walk through a gate that recorded my temperature.  I was wondering how accurate this gate would be, since I was hauling 5 months of luggage in 4 heavy suitcases at that moment.

No worries.   I exited the customs area to see a wall of people with signs with names printed on them.  At last — my first airport sign, just like a celeb!  I scanned the crowd….and found it…there I was, “Lrvin Renee”.  

Nice to meet you, I’m Lrvin. 

My contact escorted me out to a parking area, where the hotel limo driver pulled up…in a big Buick!  It was spotless and featured a screen shade that lowered with a push of a button when the sun streamed in the back window.   The driver was clearly, clearly proud of his car.  I figured he would drive carefully, as he wouldn’t want to wreck his car — and I was right!  Compared to the psycho cab drivers whom I observed in the following 4 days, Mr. Buick Driver was a superb and careful driver.

Orientation, organized by the U.S. Embassy staff in Beijing, was held in the magnificently designed Hotel Rennaissance Beijing Capital (a Marriott hotel, one of several in Beijing).   The interior decorators went nuts on this beautiful place.  Here’s a picture of the room interior, complete with glass bathroom:

The following is a hotel staircase close to our lunch room (i.e. the Fat Duck, scene of too many banquets):

Following is the view from my room on floor 18 (the view from the palatial fitness center on floor 27 was amazing).  The air quality the first two days was pretty good:

I managed to stay awake until 7pm — not bad!  Jet lag was not too rough; only a couple of nights I woke up bright-eyed at midnight.

Welcome to China!

For those of you who would like to start learning Chinese, get to a class. Mastering the weird pronunciations and how they (sort of) relate to the romanized pinyin is hard for beginners, and you need guidance early on. “Chi”, “qi”, “che” and whatnot are real puzzlers at first. 

The tones are easy to master if you aren’t tone deaf — it’s the strange pinyin spellings that defy explanation.  That’s why Americans sometimes pronounce “thank you” in the dippiest manner possible…”shay shay.”  Gah!  “Thank you” is supposed to sound like “shiyeh-shiyeh” (in pinyin, it is written as “xie xie”). 

And don’t get me started about Americans pronouncing “Beijing” as “Beizzhing.”  (insert pulling-out-hair smilie)  It is supposed to sound like “Bay-jing.”  Jing as in Jingle Bells, not Zzhingle Bells.

Luckily, I’m over that hurdle. I studied Chinese for a couple of years (though decades ago), so I’m actually just reviewing, but….I have a lot to say about the Pimsleur language series. I’m listening to their Beginner’s series right now (in the car, on CDs).

Mr. Voice of Pimsleur has an astonishing voice. He never speaks a word of Chinese, yet wags his finger reproachfully and asks if I pronounced a word with the correct tones.

The main conversations are between Mr. Li and Miss Wang. Mr. Li is earnest, polite, and caring (always concerned about whether I would like to eat or drink something). Miss Wang is a bit of a princess, and at the end of Lesson 9 she repeatedly turns down Mr. Li’s requests to go for dinner. “Bu xing” (“impossible”), she repeats, again and again, as Mr. Li pleads for a date. It is terribly depressing.

Fortunately, in Lesson 10, Miss Wang has relented during the 5 second break and they are once again on friendly terms.

The entire Beginners language set seems to be devoted entirely to teaching me to ask someone over to “my place” for a drink. Over and over and over again, Mr. Pimsleur drills this. I am wondering what the Intermediate Pimsleur language CDs will teach.