Since the spring of my sophomore year in college, I was set on studying abroad in Beijing, China. The Chinese language and culture courses I'd taken during my underclass years at Hamilton really made me view China and the Chinese language in a different light. I studied Chinese all throughout high school, but never genuinely loved learning it. There was a strong focus on learning as many characters are possible, and the closest I came to learning about Chinese history and culture was a required class called "Asian Studies"... yeah.
I needed to be in China by January 7 for my program, so that meant I had roughly a four-week winter vacation back home in Hawaii. There were some problems with my student visa application that seriously stressed me out through most of the winter break. I'd never been to China before so of course, I watched a ton of travel vlogs and informational videos of Beijing. I was crazy excited just thinking about China and starting my program, but felt myself getting SO nervous in the days before departing. Spending time with my family and hanging out with friends put me in a better headspace before embarking on what I thought would be a four-month study abroad experience of a lifetime. Oh man, who would've thought... Coronavirus - a big middle finger to you. xoxo, Nikki
I had one layover in Tokyo Narita before landing in Beijing Capital and flew with Japan Airlines (JAL) the whole way. Believe me, I HATE flying. Weirdly, I don't hate flying when it comes to Japanese airlines. In my opinion, it's just a totally different experience in terms of service, food, and cleanliness. My flight to Tokyo was packed, but luckily I got assigned a seat closer to the front with lots of leg space. The Japanese guy next to me must've worked for a tour company in Japan because he spent almost the whole 9-hour flight editing promotional videos of Hawaii, haha.
Things got more real once I boarded my almost empty flight to Beijing. Pretty sure I
was the only non-native Chinese passenger on board. Looking at the flight map, I saw that our plane was gonna pass RIGHT ABOVE North Korea. Like, damn. Although it was only a four-hour flight, I still felt a little nauseous towards the end. The nice flight attendants let me move back a couple of rows so I could lie down. Sadly I had to move back to my seat, but once I looked out my window and saw the distant city lights, it was like all my nausea disappeared and was replaced by unbounded energy.
By the time I got through customs, secured my luggage, and finally hopped in a taxi after waiting 20 minutes in the line, it was around 10 pm. Good thing I bought a little musubi during my layover in Tokyo, as I did not have my WeChat Pay set up yet. As my taxi pulled into Minzu University's east gate, I thanked my driver and headed into Minda Guest House. It was all a blur up until standing outside my 6th-floor dorm room. "Dorm room" is an understatement because Minda was actually converted from a hotel into an international student dorm, so the rooms were really big and nice.
My roommate (a Japanese international student) greeted me and explained some of the things in the room as well as how to use the shower. She was so nice and a great roommate. At that point, it was like 11:30 pm and I was so ready to hop into bed (which was like twice the size of a Hamilton dorm room bed!). The next day I connected with my friend and fellow Chinese major, Emma, and two new ACC friends, Isabella and Tryne! We grabbed breakfast at this random hole in the wall across the street from Minzu. First meal in China baby! And it was GOOD. I mean, I hadn't eaten anything in like 14 hours so that was probably also it.
It's crazy to think that I was only in Beijing for exactly 3 WEEKS. I arrived on January 7 and departed on January 28... It felt like we were there for a month at least. Our program was pretty intense- we learned around 50-100 characters A DAY. For reference, we'd learn 50-100 characters a week at Hamilton. Despite our demanding academic schedule, the ACC China professors were all so accomodating and happy to help not only with our school work but even gave us ideas on what to do in our free time. My program had around 18 students, and the friendships we made was one of the most important things I got out of my China experience. When things felt tough and I'd go through small bouts of homesickness, just knowing that we were there for each other was a great feeling. Grabbing group lunches or dinners at the various on-campus cafeterias after classes, however simple it sounds, was something I always looked forward to. Also- our cafeteria food was the bomb. There were like five different ones, but my favorite was Cafeteria #1 because of the spicy noodles!!
Our program had scheduled field trips every week to places of interest around Beijing. We hit up Tiananmen Square and Jingshan Park during the first orientation week if I remember correctly. A cool moment was when we trekked to the top of Jingshan Park and got views of both the Forbidden City and Beijing's crowded skyline. The next week, we went to the National Museum- a looming, modern building housing some of China's oldest historical artifacts. Beijing is such an interesting Chinese city because of the juxtaposition of old and new throughout the city. Despite the country's rapid transformation into one of the world's top economies, there is still much of an "old China" atmosphere to be found, especially in the famous hutongs (alleyways).
The left-side photo makes me smile because there were a lot of great memories made at Loca Loca, the bar on the street right behind Minzu. It was a great place to hang out and let loose after a long week of rapid-fire classes and schoolwork. The staff was funny and cool, and the drinks were good! They also had hookah, which I tried for the first time (thanks Isabella, Emma, and Rosendo).
After the second week of classes, we made our way down to Sanlitun, a posh district known for shopping and nightlife. We took the subway and everything. It was quite the experience. First, we made our way down this street with a couple of bars and saw one super big bar. Except, we looked closer inside and saw STRIP POLES and STRIPPERS. Promotion guys were also standing outside heckling us to go in. So that was a hard no. The one bar on that street looking somewhat promising had a pretty nice vibe, but drinks were unreasonably overpriced. So another hard no. We might not have gotten our booze intake for the night, but we did feast at Burger King :)
Another memory I'll never forget was going to eat hot pot at a restaurant that was just a couple of doors down from Loca Loca. It was kind of funny because the staff told us it'd be a 45-minute wait or so, but we actually got seated much quicker than that and in a nice little private room on the 2nd floor! We had a lot of fun making our dipping sauces. There were so many different sauces that I think I just dumped a bunch of random ones into my bowl. We ordered two different broths- spicy and regular. Ingredients for the spicy one are pictured below. Yep, those are dried chili peppers, peppercorn, and other spicy stuff. I was SO excited, cause if you know me, you know I LIVE for spicy food. But dude, that spice was REAL. When we were only halfway done with our meat, my mouth was on fire like I had never experienced before. Did I keep eating? OF COURSE. I'm pretty sure all but one of us were sweating buckets and feeling numb in our mouths by the end of the meal.
Spring Festival Holiday is a big multi-week holiday in China and people all across the country travel back home to be with their families. By the time we headed into the holiday, we were hearing about the early underpinnings of coronavirus in the country. This was around January 21, and the virus was still largely plaguing Wuhan, with a handful of cases in Beijing. We were advised by our professors to stay in Beijing and to always wear masks and sanitize when heading out. Luckily, our gracious host families let us spend January 24 with them to celebrate the start of Lunar New Year. We made dumplings (of course) and watched the popular Spring Festival Gala on CCTV. Other highlights from that night include meeting Fifi the cat and consuming like 5 lbs. of kumquats.
After January 24, I swear everything started to unravel. Wuhan had gone into lockdown the day before and the streets of Beijing began looking like a ghost town. My dorm room overlooked a normally bustling main street, and at that point, I was lucky enough to spot one or two people walking out there. One of our professors, Shi Laoshi, came to Minda to meet with us and talk us through/calm us down despite the worsening circumstances. There was no word yet about canceling the program, but there was a note from the Dean of International Students advising all students to return to their home countries, which you could imagine, shook us. That night, a bunch of us decided we did not want to stay
cooped up in our rooms alone, so we went out to the nearest 7-11, bought alcohol, and stocked up on food and drinks (only one or two dining halls remained open). We went back to the triple housing three of our friends and just hung out and had a good time, playing intense ninja rounds and this game involving a pizza box, among other things. One of the funniest nights, for sure.
The virus was slowly spreading in parts of Beijing, but the next morning, a few of us were still determined to explore while we could. So, we hopped on an empty subway to historic Beihai Park. There was still a good amount of people visiting the park, all likely sharing the same mindset as us. After trekking through Beihai, we ate lunch and made our way to one of the countless hutongs in the city. We got kind of lost at first, but successfully and randomly found the Heizhima hutong, which is apparently one of the more popular Beijing hutongs. It was pretty bustling with a good mix of locals and tourists; I can't imagine what it's like on a normal, pre-corona day. As expected, most of the shops were closed. But, the
food stalls were open! Way more important, right? I spotted a stall selling tanghulu (candied hawthorn berries)! I'd always wanted to try one. It was pretty sweet, but oh so good. Spending the day out in Beijing was much needed from the stress of potentially getting sent home.
That night, the news came (unexpectedly): our program was going to be canceled and we needed to leave the country by at least January 30. Looking back, I can label this a "funny thing" but in the moment, it was absolutely not. Emma's iPad was connected to the TV in the room we were hanging out in, and an email from our registrar popped up saying "we are sorry your program got canceled...". LIKE WHAT. Our REGISTRAR. We got the official email from the study abroad office a couple of hours later. During that time, we were all frantically calling our parents, trying to arrange our flights back to the US. I had never been more overwhelmed in my life. At the same time, I couldn't even process everything because my sole focus at that time was securing my flight back to Hawaii. Pretty sure I was up until 5 am, and spent the next day packing and hanging out with friends.
As you can see, I could spend hours talking about my study abroad experience down to the nitty-gritty. Although we were in Beijing for barely a month, I am so thankful for the opportunity to have even gone to China in the first place, and most importantly, meet some amazing people who I know I'll keep in touch with for the years to come.
ACC 的朋友门：那么爱你们！
コメント