On the Road with Julie

Time to Read:

As I was walking through the Beijing airport on my way out of the Middle Kingdom, I was humming to myself, “All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go…”. So sang, John Denver in one of my favorite songs, perfectly capturing the mixed feelings that accompany an approaching flight to lands far away. While the plane’s engines started humming in preparation to take me to my final destination country on this incredible world tour, departing China after two truly amazing weeks, the song’s chorus never rang more true, “I’m leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again. Oh [how] I hate to go”.

A full two weeks out from having gotten on that jet plane, I’m still not so fond of having left. It irks me to no end that it has taken me two weeks to finish the first of my posts describing my fortnight in the land of silk. And, even after this overview, there are more posts to write because there is so much to attempt to capture. It’s hard for me to fully be in the next place until I write about the prior one and wrangling all of these experiences into words has been like trying to stuff a cloud into a stuffsac. But I refuse to rob my future self of a written account of all of these memories, so I will get my hands around this bubble of experience no matter how long it takes!

Here’s the one sentence summary about my 2 weeks in China.

I had the absolute time of my life!

This whole trip is me having the time of my life – but, in China, I had the time of my life having the time of my life!

It’s strange, but even the things I didn’t love about my time in China, I kind of loved. That is a luxury of being a traveler moving through a place – there is an opportunity to reap enjoyment even from a mild unpleasantness just because it satisfies a curiosity, provides a bit of edification or tickles a fascination, all resting in the comfort of knowing it is not something you will need to contend with for the rest of your days.

I didn’t love not being able to drink the tap water in China, but, for 2 weeks, it added a little fun and adventure to the situation. I enjoyed that it made me walk outside to the little hole-in-the-wall convenience shop across the street from my school to grab a liter or two of bottled water and, in the process, do my best to have a conversation with the store’s owner that became accustomed to my visits. Our conversations advanced from “Nihao”s to more advanced versions of such courtesies as the days ticked by. So, I kind of loved it.

In Southern China, where I was, it can get pretty hot and humid. The men would handle that problem by turning their t-shirts into makeshift halter tops, rolling up the bottom of their shirts to allow their weathered bellies to hang free and loose to catch some much-needed air. It wasn’t the most stunningly beautiful China sight upon which my eyes would feast over the course of my visit, but if I’m being honest, it was also hard not to love it too.

I didn’t love the smell of durian, but I LOVED laughing my head off getting to smell the durian.

I’m not big on the idea of living in a surveillance state, but, I’ve got to say, love it or judge it, it was pretty nice to be in a country where it was so safe to walk around the streets alone as a woman, thanks to said surveillance. It was so safe that when I asked my teachers and school staff at various moments if it was “safe to go there alone”, wherever that particular where happened to be, they were kind of thrown by the question. Of course it’s safe. Why wouldn’t it be safe? What does that question even mean? So, in principle, I’m not a fan. In practice, at least for 2 weeks, being constantly watched somewhere from afar had some benefits.

And that’s how much I enjoyed the things that I DIDN’T like. And I liked most of the things.

I loved the feeling of being in the country, I loved the challenge and the beauty of the language, I loved the look of the Karst mountains that grace the landscape in striking form. It is difficult not to understate the profound beauty to be found in Guilin and the surrounding areas thanks to the landscape. The city streets are city streets and they look like any city street you might find in a Chinatown in any major US city (my original reference point, of course). But these Chinese streets are set against the backdrop of almost unthinkably stunning scenery, especially when you travel from Guilin to neighboring Yangshuo (a place about which I will dedicate an entirely separate post). These gorgeous regional rock formations pop up like permanent, yet stunning “whack-a-moles” making for a striking horizon to take in from any vantage point high enough to see far and wide. These mountains cover 60% of the Guangxi region, peppering the landscapes with steep, undulating green peaks. There was one that sat right outside my bedroom window that I got to stare at every morning upon waking.

I loved the everpresent ache in my stomach from eating so much spice everywhere. I loved that “mild spice” could still set your mouth ablaze. I loved how much the simple and delicious food filled me up so much that I lost almost 5 pounds without even trying and never felt hungry for a second (a few of those pounds of which I have since, annoyingly, gained back 2 weeks hence – Oh, China, my vanity misses you so!).

I loved my morning breakfast and the fact that, by the end of the week, I could actually order it in Chinese.

I loved the reams of people on scooters barreling down the streets in accordance to a set of rules unbeknownst to me, but clear as day to all of them.

I love the traffic lights and crosswalk signs that put that extra effort in to give you all sorts of information – not just the color-coded pictures to which I am accustomed. Here, you also get a stop clock. Oh, the clarity! Ever wonder how long you are going to have to wait at that red light? Or how long you have until you lose that green one? In Guilin, you need wonder not! Here’s how much time you have – plan accordingly.

I loved the little hole-in-the-wall juice joint just outside the entrance to my school (right next store to the aforementioned hole-in-the-wall convenience store) where I could get a tall fresh glass of mango juice anytime I pleased. I loved the enthusiastic welcome of the shop’s proprietor that would greet me with an enthusiastic “Nihao” anytime I showed up to grab one. I loved how she wanted to help me learn Chinese at the same time as talking to me effervescently in full sentences as if I could understand her. As the time progressed, I became able to more and more, and she even took it upon herself to teach me a little.

I loved the prices. Oh, how I loved the prices. Right around the corner from the school I attended, I could grab a big bowl of rice noodles with all sorts of delicious toppings and a pile of beef or pork thrown in the mix and then pay a whopping 5 yuan. If 5 yuan meant 5 dollars, it would still have been a great deal. But, that price actually translates to about 75 cents. Yes, you read that correctly. That means point seven five dollars, $0.75. Not bad.

I loved the Chinese people, friendly, kind and welcoming to a foreigner like me doing my best to wield the massive task of learning the Chinese language. Some of them were more than nice. For some people, a white person like myself, is an anomoly. Sometimes, that would elicit celebrity like treatment – running up to request a picture with me or my fellow outsiders. More than once a call of a loud “Hello!” enthusiastically floating in the air where a person on a scooter had once been while passing by, was thrown my way. I could imagine that, for some, it might be intrusive. I loved the idea that I could somehow bring joy and happiness just by my mere proximity – needing to do nothing else but be what I am – even if that meant being treated a little bit like a circus freak. It wasn’t all the time, but it was consistent enough to be a fun part of the experience for me. I was all for it.

I just loved it all.

I could write an entire post about each one of these things. Every experience I had was a rich experience where I found myself enjoying a different flavor of the world, seeing something from a new angle or enjoying a different nuance of life lived in a land so far from my home. Even though it was short, relatively speaking, I relished every second of my time in this country.

But, even more than all that the country had to offer, I absolutely loved the school I attended, the Chinese Language Institute (CLI).

While I loved where I was, in Guilin, China, it’s hard to know how much my fondness for the place is shaped by the country, landscape, language and culture solely, or by the fact that I was in a particular part of that country in a particular school that just suited me so dang well.

I loved studying at CLI!

Having spent the bulk of my formative childhood years at summer camp, this was the closest experience to adult summer camp that I could imagine. And, add onto that, that is was basically adult summer camp for language lovers (or at least lovers of the Chinese langauge) and you can begin to imagine why I was so happy there.

CLI is entirely peopled with those crazy enough, excuse me, I mean, determined and motivated enough, to find a way to carve some amount of time out of their adult lives to make the journey to China. If that, in and of itself is not enough, they are all also the type of people that might refuse one opportunity to hang out or another because they WANTED to go back to their room to study…on purpose – with no one cracking any whip other than their own commitment and desire to learn the language. These are my type of people! I’ve had the pleasure to be surrounded by such people throughout this trip, but, there was no place where that drive was more crystallized than here in this intensive learning environment of a language that is generally not the easiest to grasp for non-native speakers.

And, it wasn’t just study, study all the time. Absolutely not! Nothing whets the appetite for fun and laughter and good times more than spending hours trying to contort your brain into an entirely different linguistic reality, especially one as contorting as Chinese (depending on which native language you are coming from).

So, I had delicious, cheap food right out my doorstep (and provided right inside the school every weekday at lunch time), good friends always a few steps down the hall or up or down one flight of stairs, three guitars and a piano all to play to my hearts content, a 33 meter swimming pool we found just a few blocks from the school, plenty of room to go for a run (or even enjoy an outdoor public stairmaster!), striking scenery with mountains to climb and amazing teachers teaching me Chinese four hours a day only one flight of stairs outside my bedroom door.

I had to keep reminding myself that this little fantasy world wasn’t custom built just for me.

As far as I’m concerned, CLI set the bar pretty high for language learning institutions. I’ve been to a lot of them on this trip and I’ve enjoyed every single one that I’ve participated in. But, learning a language at CLI was kind of like watching the 100 yard dash when Usain Bolt is competing. Sure, all of the runners on the field are world class, the best of the best. But Bolt just makes them all look like casual joggers while he barrels past them with effervescent ease and the occasional grin for the cameras.

CLI checked boxes for me that I didn’t even know existed.

They found so many ways to go above and beyond in ways that I never realized were lacking at the other places I went until CLI rolled out the red carpet.

Firstly, they send a taxi to pick you up at the airport. Not every school does that, but some do. Still, its a classy move and a box to check if you are going to sit at the top of the language school pile. Well, after that, CLI takes the lead pretty quickly. When you walk in the door of the school, there is a little sandwich board with the names of those students arriving that week and the names of those students departing. It’s not the biggest deal, but it gives a lovely sense of a beginning and an ending. It’s a personal touch that lends an extra sense of welcome and introduction. I, personally, am a big fan of honoring beginnings and endings, so I probably appreciated it more than most.

You are then greeted by an intern there to hand you a packet with a notebook, a fantastic little gel pen and a clear, printed schedule for your week of classes. I know that sounds so simple and basic. It has not been a rarity on this trip to arrive at a language school unclear of exactly when I need to be where and what I’ll be doing with whom when I arrive wherever it is that I eventually figure out that I need to be. Not so at CLI. Crystal clear. I received a color coded, weekly schedule telling me when and where and with whom I would be meeting for my studies. The only challenge was that the room names were written in Chinese, so, I may have spent a few minutes of class each day wondering the halls trying to match the shapes on the page to the shapes over the various doorways – but that was all part of the fun and learning.

Then your intern gives you a tour of the building. The fact that there is a building to tour deserves it’s own paragraph all together, as it is a huge part of what I loved about the school. If you are living in the school’s dormitory rooms that take up floors 3 through 6, you are then shown to your room. THEN, you get a walking tour out into the neighborhood OUTSIDE of the school. There is so much in the last 4 sentences that is above and beyond what I’ve gotten at any other school. My intern pointed out the good rice noodle spots, the best supermarkets and her recommended bubble tea establishment. I have never gotten such royal treatment anywhere else.

These may seem like little things, but they actually make a big difference. Learning a language is a feat of orienteering. You don’t necessarily realize it in your everyday life, but language is a huge part of what makes you feel oriented in your world. Why do you think babies druel so much?! They are constantly like, “Wait, what in the HECK is going on?!” So, learning a new language is like willful disorientation. You are tearing yourself out of any sense of bearings you may have had previously in your world in the hopes that, with time, the room will stop spinning. Any disorientation you need to tackle in your environment borrows energy and brain space away from the task at hand. CLI did everything to clear the decks of all sensations of spinning walls so that any blazes of searing confusion and dizziness would be solely linguistically sourced and focused.

I am convinced that all of these cumulative “little things” added tremendously to the speed of my progress at the school.

But, it didn’t stop there.

Never mind the line of free washers and dryers on the top floor that also opens up onto a roof terrace where you can catch a lovely view of those undulating Karst mountains sitting just behind the fog at the edge of the horizon.

The rooms are exactly just right. They aren’t any kind of knock-your-socks-off rooms, but they were exatly just right, for me at least. I had everything I needed in a clean and basic way. A desk to sit and work at. Two closets to store my things. A shower with great pressure and hot water, a very comfortable western toilet, hooks to hang my jackets on and a super comfy bed. Also, a remote control air conditioning unit to manage when the night air got too hot to sleep comfortably.

Also, I never did a single thing to coordinate my accommodations. And, no emails even had to be exchanged. I just signed up for the program and when I later inquired, “Hey, what about my accommodations? What do I need to do?” they just responded, “You are all set. Just show up.” That was an absolute first.

Even the harder parts of being in China, like the tech and the impacts of the Great Firewall, CLI was there to help us navigate. In China, everything operates off of 2 apps. There is WeChat and Alipay. This could go in the “love it or hate it” category. In some ways, it is incredibly convenient. Pretty much everything you ever need to do in China can be handled on one of these two apps. There are some places that don’t even accept cash anymore. You can only pay with the app. Other places accept it, but they barely know how to handle it. That’s where the potential for the “hate it” portion goes in. It was a PAIN IN THE NECK to navigate whatever technical difficulties seemed to accompany getting myself up and running with these apps. One of the CLI interns, however, was right there to help me do it. She sat with me for 2 hours while we navigated one technical issue after another to get me up and running.

This is another way that CLI rises heads and shoulders above the rest – their amazing interns!

They sit in the lobby or the activity room, pretty much all of the time, just there, hanging out in case you need them. Maybe you need help finding a particular restaurant. Maybe you need to head out on the town but your Chinese isn’t good enough to successfully run whatever errand you are trying to run. Maybe you need to learn how to call a Didi (the Chinese version of Uber). Maybe you just want to hang out and practice your Chinese with a native speaker. They are just there for you if you need them.

Wow.

This is not only a first, but a never before imagined possibility for a language school for me. There have always been helpful staff available (to varying degrees of helpfulness), but not in the sense that, if you need someone to take you out into the world to tackle a task or help you navigate the language, they are there for you. Wow, CLI. Wow.

There are a list of fun cultural activities listed every week that you can sign up for. This is actually pretty standard fare at most language schools. But, CLI, of course, found a way to raise the bar. There is also a list where you can write down any requested activities. Or, you can message the staff member that is in charge of organizing the activities and ask her to arrange one for you. With a few messages back and forth, she will have a guide, an itinerary and pricing all laid out for you, possibly within minutes, to head out on whatever excursion you have just requested.

And, everyday at 12:30, there is a bountiful and delicious lunch laid out for the taking. All (or most) of the school’s students gather in a burst of bubbling conversation, some in English, some in Chinese while we devour whatever freshly made Chinese feast has been created in the kitchen right there on the second floor that we are welcome to use on our own time if we so choose. Oh, and it is worth mentioning, Chinese food in China is way more delicious than Chinese food at a restaurant back home in America. This is not to knock Chinese food in America. It’s great, I practically grew up on it. But, Chinese food in China is at a whole other level.

After lunch, you may want to retire to your room for a rest, squeeze in a little studying before afternoon classes or go hang out in the activity room to play a game of Mahjong, take on a friendly opponent for a fierce game of ping pong, or lay down on one of the couches for an afternoon rest outside of the isolation of your dorm room. I often opted to grab one of the guitars and strum my way through digestion. Or, I’d head downstairs to the room with the piano in it and play a tune or two to ease any tensions that come with pushing yourself daily out of your comfort zone to learn a new language.

On top of all of this wonderfulness, there is the actual language education. If the rest wasn’t enough, to me CLI is heads and shoulders above the rest when it comes to their actual purpose, teaching you the foreign-to-you-language of Chinese. Every student gets 20 hours of classes per week. That’s not so abnormal, as far as language schools go. It’s a pretty standard amount. No – the important part is, every single minute of those lessons are private lessons. I have NEVER seen something like this at any school I’ve been to – not even close. Some people actually prefer group lessons, so this might not be a bonus for them. If that is you, then CLI is not for you. There are no group lessons. I don’t dislike a group lesson, but, for me, private lessons are where it is at.

But, the value of the lessons doesn’t end there. Each student receives 3 teachers, specifically for them. One is your comprehensive teacher, in charge of managing your overall learning and education. The next is focused on speaking practice. The last is focused on reading and writing. So, you get to interact with three different teachers with three different personalities, ways of speaking, teaching styles and three different angles of focus on the language. And, because we were all studying and, for the most part, living, in the same building, despite not having shared lessons, there was a sense of being in one big shared learning experience with everyone. In the breaks in between classes, you are mixing and mingling, maybe even practicing Chinese. I didn’t meet a single person that wasn’t thrilled with each of their teachers. Maybe there were some. If so, I didn’t meet them, or they didn’t tell me. I know I was absolutely head over heels for mine.

And, the best part about the teachers, cause, yes, it keeps getting better…the classes don’t have to stay in the classroom. One day, I was really tired in my lesson, my comprehensive teacher, Annie suggested, “Would it be helpful if we took a walk and got some fresh air?” So, the lesson continued on a walk. This is when Annie showed me the baozi place (a baozi is a dumpling like delicacy that many in Guilin enjoy as a breakfast) and we found out there was one thing they sold that had no gluten…this would become my treasured China breakfast – a Gui Hua Fa Gao.

When I mentioned to my speaking practice teacher, Jin, that I loved hiking, not only did she pull out a map and start showing me all of the places worth hiking, we made plans that our next lesson would be a hiking lesson! Our next two lessons were out in the rain and the sun climbing the steps of the mountains in Chuan Shan park to gather some of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen in my life. Not to mention, we got visited by some primate friends.

Friends told me stories of their teachers taking them for tea tastings or giving them a homework assignment to go to a vintage record store and have a conversation with the proprietor. The Chinese lessons at CLI aren’t stuck inside the classroom – they put you right out into Chinese life. For me, personally, there is no better way I could DREAM of to learn a language than while climbing up a mountain in the rain.

Then there was Ruza, my reading and writing teacher. We spent all of our time together analyzing Hanzi, which are the written characters of Chinese. As a native English speaker, to look at Chinese characters, it just looks like a confusing mess of lines. Ruza had me riveted, hour after hour, unlocking the hidden-to-me meaning behind each character, the stories and profound human insight that were locked inside these lines. It was amazing to have all of this invisible history revealed to me, piece by piece. I hope to find time to write about it, especially before I forget it! I was at the edge of my seat with each new character she would put on the table for us to next understand. With time, this mess of lines that had intimidated me so much started to look more like a beautiful puzzle, a picture book for the history of an entire culture and people.

Yes, I was pretty excited about my trio team of teachers. I learned so much so quickly and it was in no small part thanks to my teachers and thanks to all of the added little and big things that CLI created in the environment. My excitement and hunger to get over my profound intimidation from the language probably helped too.

And, my favorite part about my private lessons was how much there was room to really customize the learning to my learning style. I have, I suppose, a fairly particular learning style. I can learn from pretty much any teacher, but not every teacher is capable to really hone in and understand exactly how I best absorb a language. My teacher, Annie, was amazing at it. She took the time to observe how I learned, to listen to me and she was game for any request or suggestion I had. Before long, we had built a rhythm and a process for getting me over the hump of being pretty close to a total beginner in Chinese. We were both amazed at the seemingly miraculous pace with which the padlocks on the door to Chinese cracked open for me as a result. I think I was going to make progress in my two weeks in China no matter what because I just wanted it so badly, but I have no doubt that the quality of the teachers had a tremendous influence on just how much I was able to breakthrough the walls that I arrived with.

Then, of course, no picture of my time at CLI and in Guilin, China would be complete without talking about the people.Good experiences are made great by the people you connect with along the way. And there is no question that that’s what made my time in China so absolutely fantastic.

I’ve already mentioned the wonderful interns, my fantastic teachers, the woman that talked my ear off and sold me my mango juice. Then, there were my fellow travelers. All those crazy folks that had some kind of dream or goal to learn Chinese and had done the work to make their way to China, whether on a maiden voyage or a return trip, to do so. And, we were all floating in the same boat. A boat of travel and learning and study. It was that much more fun, at the end of a day filled with hours of brain twisting to then say, “Who wants to go to dinner?!” The evenings would be spent eating food that was way too spicy, swapping stories, raising glasses and laughing the evening away. It was a good life. As is the case in so many of my stops on this journey, I made friends in China that I hope will be friends for life. [Emoji faces for those that didn’t want to have their pics on the internet.]

And, as if CLI hadn’t already done enough to shine brightly, they had one more thing that really made the difference. For each week’s incoming students, there is a welcome dinner. You get taken to a private dining room in a nearby restaurant and served an absolute feast. I was lucky that my incoming group was a truly fantastic international crew, 2 Germans, a Frenchwoman, a Spaniard and an American, each with a fascinating story of what brought them to China and each that I would share laughter and adventures with over the course of the 2 weeks that followed. On the final Thursday night before departure, CLI does it again and ushers you off in style with a farewell dinner. Another feast. This one, anyone from the school can join for. It is also a time when you are supposed to give a farewell speech, in Chinese of course, or whatever amount of Chinese you managed to gather in your time there.

The morning of the farewell dinner I finally started working on my speech. I had learned enough Chinese in the prior 12 days to pull at least something together. That, in itself, felt like an absolute miracle to me. I was already elated that I even felt it was possible to say anything in Chinese. That feeling that I could do it, would have been enough for me.

Then, I went out for a morning run in the rain. The two places where I am most likely to experience a strike of inspiration are in the shower or on a run. Well, that morning it was pouring rain, so my radar for creative inspiration was ablaze. As I was running through the downpour, each raindrop that hit me shook loose another memory from the prior two weeks and they all started soaking into me while the puddles were busy soaking into my sneakers with every splash of my next footstrike.

All week, during my break times when I had gone to amuse myself with picking at the guitar, I had always played “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by John Denver. It’s one of the few songs I know on the guitar and I had just been wanting to practice it, so, day after day, that’s what I did. While I was running on the morning of the farewell dinner, the tune that had, by that point, become my own personal theme song for this whole trip, and especially for my time in China popped into my head. This time though, the lyrics were morphing. And they were in Chinese! Each memory from my two weeks started filling up the lines. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is perrrrfect! I raced home, took a quick post-run shower and then, just in time for the beginning of my lesson, walked into my morning class with my teacher, Annie with the guitar in my hand.

“I’d like to do something a little different today.” I said to her with a smile. At this point, I knew Annie was going to be game.

“I need your help to write some lyrics for this song…in Chinese.”

Though some Chinese lyrics had popped into my head, I definitely didn’t know enough Chinese to finish the job and I wasn’t sure if the ones that did pop in were actually grammatically correct.

The flow of lyrics to trace the lines of 2 wonderful weeks poured out and Annie helped me make the sentences correct in Chinese. Sometimes, we’d be in need of a next line and Annie would look up a list of Chinese words that rhymed with the last one we used. We popped back and forth over the course of the 2 hour lesson until, somehow, we had it. I left a lot of memories of the two weeks on the cutting room floor to keep the song to only four verses.

I don’t really have words to describe the feeling of sharing that creative process in a cross-linguistic scenario. It was pretty neat. Annie was the perfect writing partner. You can watch the video she recorded here of the first go at the completed song…or, you can wait for the video of the final performance!

I am happiest in life when I find a way to combine all of the things I love into one thing. Going for a run in the rain, combined with writing, combined with playing music, combined with learning a language, combined with good food and good times with good friends. I couldn’t have been happier.

This week’s farewell dinner was for me and one of my new friends from my incoming cohort, Cornelius.

Cornelius, whose Chinese was already pretty fantastic to begin with, got up and gave a beautiful and eloquent speech in pretty dang good Chinese.

Then I sang my song. For each country, I have written a post in that language to close up my time there. For China, my Chinese post is my song. You can click here to read the lyrics in Chinese and the English translation too. To those that actually speak Chinese – I apologize for what I’m positive is NOT great pronunciation…but, it’s a start! That’s what I was looking for during my trip and that is definitely what I got.

I am happiest when I can take what I’m feeling and put it to music. So, for me, this was a pretty satsifying way to close up a wonderful 2 weeks.

After I played my song, my teacher, Jin, came to me in tears, touched by the music (that’s John Denver’s genius melody writing at work!) and I don’t know that I could have asked for anything more special than that!

For me, the whole experience was pretty tremendous.

Most of my moments in China were pretty special ones. There is so much more worth saying than I’ve even begun to touch on here, but I’ve at least covered a lot of the highlights.

The only moment I didn’t like so much in my time in China, was the one when it was time to leave. Though, “all my bags were packed”, I wasn’t really ready to go. I did leave on a jet plane. I don’t know when I will be back again. And, boy, did I hate to go.