Well, this weekend has been one of the most eventful of my recent history. I'll probably write everything that happened this week into one enormous post, since I'm too lazy to split them up. Unfortunately, I hardly managed to take any pictures, although there are a few that I'm not entirely willing to put online - which of course are the ones of me in a dress and makeup. That was Saturday, when half of the guys in our huayi 3rd year class got dressed in drag for PIB's Beijing Evening, which is a huge performance put on by members of all language levels, including quite a few teachers. As our male-teacher-in-a-wig said that evening (in an exaggerated Taiwanese accent), gu4 si4 si4 ze4 yang4: "the story goes like this."
This gong1fu4 performance was pretty amazing
Beijing Evening:
We performed a mock dating show in which all of the contestants were guys dressed as girls: wig, makeup, lipstick, and in some cases even eyeliner. (Incidentally, the actual girls in our class were busy doing a live Backstreet Boys music video). Us guys, performing guy-type things, included a fitness demonstration, a Chinese rap, and a translated version of Marvin Gaye's song, "Sexual Healing."
As for myself, I did a guitar cover of American Pie with made-up lyrics in Mandarin, with a Derek-Zoolander-esque runway pout thrown in there at some point. This I considered a success considering I've never actually played guitar, or sang on stage. I would recommend that likewise-shy individuals consider putting on a performance, either alone or in a group. Funny is good, and there really aren't any standards considering how low linguistic expectations are. (Although if you're a 5th year student, please try to make your performance understandable by people other than the teachers, even if it means using fewer than 4 chengyus per sentence).
Beijing Evening ran up until 10:30PM. Afterward, the dorm was full of students scrambling to beat the increased post-12AM cover charges at various clubs around Beijing, myself included. A few students here had connections (guanxi) with the Spark club in Sanlitun, which I didn't find out until after paying. Although for others, there might be opportunities to get into places for free. A short comparison between the clubs (ye4dian4) of Wudaokou and Sanlitun: Wudaokou is cheaper and more student-friendly, though the places are not as fancy as those in Sanlitun. That Saturday, a friend and I visited a Sanlitun club for the first time, which I do count as a cultural experience. It's pretty jarring to see the modernity of these places, how well people are dressed, the DJs imported from other countries, and compare that to just about everywhere else in China.
Apparently Kobe Bryant was there in the VIP section right behind where I'm standing. I had no idea oh well.
Despite the rapid pace of development in China, there are still longstanding problems that don't get addressed in tourist locations or foreigner-filled dance clubs.
A Massage Parlor Story about Healthcare:
One such issue regards the uneven distribution of healthcare resources here. Under China's current houkou system, a family register system which has been around in some form for thousands of years, where you can go to receive healthcare depends on where you were born, or more properly, where you're registered under the system. Though my understanding is obviously limited, it seems that receiving care in Beijing or Shanghai, whose hospitals are the best by a huge degree, is made much more difficult (in terms of insurance/cost/other factors) if you don't have a hukou for the city. This results in cases where people receive sub-standard care, and is one of the few problems that Beijinger's will opening complain about in public.
There's a story to go along with this abstracted rant. This past Friday, after our test, I went to get a massage with some friends, at a local place with blind masseuses. An old Beijing resident was getting a massage across the room, and was talking to his masseuse about a friend (or relative) who had developed a serious illness. He commented on how "the resources at other hospitals are behind Beijing and Shanghai by 50 years," and about how his friend was unable to get a room at these hospitals because of his hukou. Instead, he was admitted to another facility, which the Beijing resident compared to "waiting to die." Sure enough, twenty days after the 50-something friend was admitted, he died. Western accounts (including mine) of issues in China are frequently obscenely biased, according to a teacher here (who teaches at a college in the states during the year). There's no telling whether the guy in the story would have fared much better at a top-tier hospital, but it does highlight the perception of inequality between places like Beijing and Shanghai, and everywhere else.
The people here aren't as dedicated to complaining about their government as we are in America, but healthcare is one exception to that rule. (The perception that Chinese people don't involve themselves in politics very much was explained to me by a couple of college students here: it's not out of a lack of interest, but rather because there's not very much you can do in a one-party system where nobody votes).
I recalled this story at the Princeton-Harvard Alumni Association event, as there was a student there who had attended a Public Health language program in Nanjing who had witnessed hospital conditions firsthand. The event had recent alumni from various consulting, banking, start-up, and government positions. As a prospective BME major, I don't think it was a very good opportunity to find internships or whatever, but it was certainly informative and not-so-awkward with other students there.
There was someone from the Gates Foundation at the event with a straightforwardness that was almost unsettling. Of what little he said to me, one thing stuck out as particularly memorable. I had asked him something along the lines of "how do you help people?" To which he answered, something along the lines of, "it's not enough to want to help people, you have to be able to help people - you yourself have to be phenomenal." It's not a groundbreaking statement (and not the whole of our short conversation), but I thought it was meaningful nonetheless.
Karaoke:
A small left-out section of this weekend ran from 11PM to 5AM on Friday. The karaoke place near the university (called bao4mi3hua1, or popcorn) cost 580RMB (split between the 15 people that went that day) and comes with 630RMB worth of (expensive) non-Chinese drinks. There was a pretty decent selection of English and Chinese songs, and the language pledge may or may not have been put on standby for the duration of the night.
Apparently Karaoke is a pretty popular activity in China, and at the very least it's a lot less expensive here than in the US. I would recommend it especially if you want to sing "Time to Say Goodbye" at 4AM in the morning, or even if your tastes are more normal.
When we finally left, the sun had just begun to rise, and the streets were unusually empty but for a few elderly folks walking around. I'm going to miss this place.
孔令鑫
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