Articles by alec

This is the first installment of translations from the facebook notes of a Taiwanese exchange student in Beijing. Read my preface of sorts to these translations, here.

What I find interesting in this note is Yi-jung’s expectation that Beijing will be a world apart from Tainan, not to mention a romanticisation of pre-liberation Beijing.

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Before going to Beijing (18.2.2010)

Travelling to Beijing, I don’t know what kind of people I will meet or what will happen. I don’t know whether I will like these people and things or not. Maybe some of them I won’t like, but I’ll just have to learn to accept them. After reading my Mainland friend’s writing, I was overwhelmed and surprised that she still remembers me. In fact, the biggest reason that motivated me to apply for exchange study in Beijing was that I wanted to meet my old friends in Mainland China again. If I just fly over there, I can certainly meet up with them again. But I really want to know what the city and society they grew up in is like.

So I think if I can stay in Beijing for a short time, maybe I’ll have the opportunity to better understand their culture. Even though we speak the same language, there are still differences between us.* I want to go and see Beijing, and see how different after all it is to the book I read once, Memories of Peking: South Side Stories, by Lin Hai-yin. I know new Beijing will not be like the book’s description of old Peking anymore; things have changed over many decades.** I’ve already mentally prepared myself, Beijing may be just like other big cities I’ve been to, with so many skyscrapers. Maybe I can only like that Beijing of my imagination, and not the real Beijing. I simply don’t know.

If you go for a stay in a city you’ve never been to before, wouldn’t you be afraid?

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And here’s the original note (in 繁体字, of course, her being Taiwanese):

行前 2010-02-18

此行去北京，其實我無法預知會遇到什麼人，發生什麼事。我不知道那些人事物會不會讓我喜歡，還是也會有我不喜歡的人事物，但是我也得學會去接受。看到我的大陸朋友寫的文章，有點讓我受寵若驚，因為她還記得我。因為其實讓我有最大動力申請去北京大學交換，是想再去中國大陸看看以前認識的朋友; 如果我只是專飛過去，我確實也可以見到我的朋友。但是我更想知道他們成長的城市和社會是什麼樣子。

所以我覺得我若可以在這個城市待一短暫的時間，也許我有機會更了解他們的文化。我想去看看北京，到底和我以前讀過林海音寫的城南舊事中的北平，差別在哪裡? 其實我已經做好心理準備了，北京也許就像我曾經去過的那些大城市一樣有許多高樓大廈。也許我只喜歡那個想像中的北京，而不是真正的北京。我真的不知道。

若你得去一個你從沒有去過的城市待一陣子，你難道都不會感到害怕嗎?

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* this sentence isn’t in the Chinese above, but Yi-jung had written it in another draft.
** ditto. Yi-jung also mentions she first read the book (which is set in the 1930s) as a teenager.

Last summer, on a train in California, I eavesdropped shamelessly on the Chinese conversation of some summer students in my carriage. Waiting for the ripe moment to reveal I could understand them – which is as fun as it is smug – I struck up a friendship with one of the girls, Wu Yi-jung 吳宜蓉*. (Who kindly let me publish her summer research project on stereotypes of Asians in the US.)

Shortly after the Chinese new year, I got an email from Yi-jung saying she was in Beijing for five months, on an exchange program from her university in Tainan – taking psychology classes at Beida (Peking University). This was her first trip to Beijing, and my curiosity was instantly piqued: what were her first impressions? What were her expectations before? How did Beida students react to her? And her reactions in turn?

We met up, then and over the following months, and I bugged Yi-jung with these questions and more. She also pointed me towards her facebook profile, where she had been posting notes from Beijing (using a VPN – facebook is blocked in mainland China, unlike in Taiwan). I’ll be translating three of four of these notes and posting them here – starting with one right away. But as a preface, here are a few of Yi-jung’s impressions of the city which emerged during our conversations. I resisted schoolboy bullet points.

First up: Beijing’s so cold! (This in early March; I’ll back her up here.) And her second impression? Taking a shower in Beida isn’t like back home in Taiwan. “Many student dorms in Beida don’t have a shower, students have to use communal shower rooms, and there’s one shower tap. When I found out that everyone showers together in this way, I was so surprised, there’s no right to privacy (隐私权).”

What about the food, then? “Much too oily.” The second time we met, Yi-jung had just had a Subway sandwich for dinner (Beida has a joint on campus).

How about reactions from Beida students, when they hear where she’s from? One of the first, she tells me is: “Oh, you’re from Taiwan? You speak Mandarin really well!”** After this, most people ask about the pop stars and chat shows Taiwan is famous for. But sooner or later (especially over meals, for some reason), many get onto politics. Here, the phrase she hears most is “Taiwan is part of China”, offered as a sound-bite, often without prelude or context. Yi-jung couldn’t agree less, but she never rises to the bait.

But what I found most interesting was how Yi-jung’s reactions changed two months later. In March, shortly after her arrival, she considered Taiwanese students like her completely unlike their Beida counterparts – for all of the reasons above, and more. Now, the food is still oily, the students still nationalistic – but Yi-jung has become “无所谓”. That’s an essential phrase to know in China, equivalent to “I couldn’t care less”.

In California, Yi-jung had had a culture shock too: after a month there, she told me, it became clear to her that American students weren’t anything like her or her friends. But here in Beijing, she’s realised that the differences she’d complained of between herself and young mainland Chinese were quibbles. “Now I think they are just like me”.

The first of Yi-jung’s facebook notes is up, here. The second, here. Third, too.

Next, this is what happened when Yi-jung met Marie, and here is my other Taiwanese friend’s two cents.

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* that third character doesn’t sound like the English because it’s the Wade-Giles system of romanisation, still used on Taiwan. In pinyin, her name would read ‘Wu Yirong’.

** standard Mandarin or putonghua is spoken in Taiwan with a heavy accent. As it is in pretty much every mainland province, of course … so this is seriously patronising.