I had a friend who, perhaps some time in 2005, had the opportunity to go with a delegation of what I understood to be Korean diplomats to Korea for a week after showing them around Washington, DC for a week. During this visit, he had the opportunity to go to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, including the Joint Security Area (JSA) where the accord establishing the zone was signed and where visitors can actually cross into North Korea.
Until my arrival in Seoul, I did not know that this was something that any tourist can actually do. But I also did not know that it requires more advanced planning than the five days or so that my friend and I had when we arrived. Although visits to the DMZ are pretty easy to arrange through various companies – not only heading up to the zone but also visiting one of the underground tunnels built apparently to effect a surprise attack upon Seoul by the North – but arranging a visit to include the JSA is a bit more difficult. The main reason seems to be that this part of the border can only accept a certain number of visitors on any one day, and once it reaches the limit for visitors the area is shut down for further visitors until another day where the quota is not reached. This is true for any booking agency because it is a top-down decision, so it does not matter which agency you call or harass: once the number is reached, no one else can book travel up there.
Although the tunnel and rest of the DMZ certainly would have made for an interesting visit, my friend and I decided to forego the visit if we would be unable to also go to the JSA.
As for what we learned which will make you all the wiser about visiting the JSA: The USO runs tours to the region which can probably be booked online. We met a Canadian national who’d booked a tour through the USO which included the JSA, and he had booked about a month or two months earlier. So if planning a trip to Seoul, be sure to build this booking into your pre-trip planning to ensure that you have a chance to head up to the JSA. Also, the USO tour seems to be the best one in terms of price: with a cost around US$ 44 (or about 70,000 won at this point) this is a great deal. Other tours than run to the JSA cost about 80,000 won just for the JSA, and then to do a full-day combined tour (including one of the surprise attack tunnels) the cost jumps to around 130,000 won (about US$ 100). The USO tour does all of these at the lower price.
Besides the DMZ, I’ll probably also say a few words here about the whole situation between North and South Korea. Arriving in Korea I really did not have any idea about the nature of the North/South conflict, what caused it, what resulted, and how the relationship was between the two countries. But having visited the memorials and museums, a pretty clear picture has emerged. My overarching comment is that the Korean War, taking place mostly in the early 1950s, is really a product of a combination of economic, military, international relations, historical, wartime (WWII) and political forces. All of these together seemed to create, exacerbate and abate the conflict at various points, which underscores for me the importance of really having a good knowledge of all of these fields and their interaction when studying this conflict and probably any conflict. I was not aware of this previously. In a nutshell from what I can remember, Japan occupied Korea prior to the Korean War and I think during the time of World War II. After the Japanese were defeated, Korea was split between the USSR and the United States in order to maintain order and prepare the country for self-governance after its liberation. One question that I had when learning this and the aftermath is, how could the large powers have ever thought that, by developing such different systems between North and South Korea by the division, they could have easily unified Korea in the end rather than causing two Koreas to come about at the end of the occupations? Hopefully we will learn from history and try to avoid this situation in the future. During the Soviet and US occupations, very different systems of government arose: communism in the North and capitalism in the South (roughly). When election were eventually due, the North and South and the occupying countries could not agree to terms, and I think it was the South which first held democratic elections for its leaders, followed by the North. At this point, there were effectively two governments, and the country was effectively divided into two at the 37th parallel. After the occupying countries pulled out, the North one morning broke through the 37th parallel and attacked the South. Seeing the pre-war statistics, the North truly had most of the infrastructure (energy, development, industry, military capacity) needed to carry out and sustain a war, while I had the impression that the South was much more agriculturally-oriented and did not have the self-capacity to wage a war. Partially as a result of this I think, the North was able to quickly gain control of most of the country within a couple months of fighting, until the UN forces were dispatched and fought back. Beyond regaining control through the 37th parallel, the UN forces were pushing the North into an equally small part of land way up near Russia, when the Chinese decided to act and to join forces with the North Koreans. At this point, the conflict centered mostly back around the 37th parallel, and the bodycount kept increasing with both sides more or less at a stalemate. After one failed negotiation, another negotiation resulted in the creation of the DMZ in order to stop the war. However, since then, North Korea is suspected – or proven? – to have made attempts at the lives of the South Korean leaders both within the country and also during trips abroad. Such events have continued as recently as a major incident in 1997 which is recorded in the war museum.
It would be interesting to hear the North Korean side of the story. We gleaned a small part of it from the aforementioned Canadian, as he had been to North Korea twice before this visit to South Korea. He noted several things. One, that going to the JSA from the North Korean side is not nearly as strict as it is from the South Korean side (where there is a dress code and strict passport controls before going there). Second, he said that the North Korean war museums mostly recount the progress of the war in the same way as the South (he visited the same war museum that we’d gone to), with the difference being that the North claims that it was the South which first crossed over the 37th parallel in an attack on the North.
I’m not sure how I would feel about living in South Korea or in Seoul, a city in a country where the northern counterpart clearly still would like to lay claims on your life and lands and makes attempts every once in a while to make this happen. And recent history proves even more terrifying, that the North Koreans claim that they have developed nuclear weapons capability. Having just visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this is a terrifying prospect. What more effective way to bring a country to its knees, causing a massive number of people to burn in a fire probably comparable to that of Hell and forcing a country to come under your control? The prospect is truly horrifying and this makes me understand why the United States and the international community have taken such a hard line against allowing North Korea to develop its nuclear capability. With a “rogue” nation which arguably – and historically – has had very few scruples when confronting obstacles to its goals, and no exercisable popular controls on its political decisions, the prospect of using those nuclear weapons against South Korea is terrifying indeed. I do think that I would like to go to North Korea some day to see the differences with the South.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
再见 Shanghai!
November 14, 2008 was my last day studying in Shanghai and I hope to offer a quick word or two on how the experience ended, my thoughts on progress in Mandarin, and also some thoughts inspired by my visits to date of Beijing, Korea, and Japan and thoughts on whether my strategy of learning Mandarin prior to travel in Asia was a good one.
First, words on language acquisition. After seven weeks of intensively studying Mandarin in Shanghai, I think that I have reached a solid understanding of basic Mandarin and that I have the tools to both remember and build upon what I know about the language. I’m trying to figure out how to best go about not forgetting what I’ve learned, and I feel that a very important tool will be all of the notes that I took down while in Shanghai. Not only are they filled with new words, but idiomatic phrases that offer further insights into the language and which are best “internally” understood – i.e. to be understood as being within the Mandarin language and not just through translation. In addition, my notebooks are also filled with Chinese characters and musings upon the characters: playing around with them, repeatedly writing them, “studying” the different parts and proportions, and taking notes on similar characters. All of this work being encoded in written form gives me hope that even just a simple review of the notes will, in the future, quickly bring me up to speed to where I was in learning the language if I am ever able to take up further formal studies of Mandarin.
After leaving Shanghai, I went first to Beijing by train (in a hard-seater carriage, where I sat for thirteen hours without getting up until we had arrived at the capital!). On the train I tried to pull out my notes for continued studying, particulary of characters, but I quickly found that the limited space around me was not too suitable to take the notes that I wished to take, and also I saw that as soon as I brought out the materials several people around me were interested in conversation. Some of the conversation I could follow and other parts were very difficult. As in any country, the manner in which Mandarin is spoken varies widely by geographic location, education and class, and situation, among other factors. Whereas I had grown very accustomed to my Mandarin teachers’ spoken variety, the streets of Shanghai were filled both with Shanghainese and also the Shanghai accent of the Mandarin language. On the train, I was suddenly exposed to the Beijing accent where, to be bluntly honest, it sounds as if every spoken word is immediately eaten up somewhere in the middle to the back of the mouth of the speaker, making it quite difficult to understand what is spoken. It is this Mandarin that you will come across mostly with cab drivers, on the street with food sellers, with shopkeepers, etc. As such, therefore, it is necessary to become accustomed to it, although outside those very interactions it is difficult to come across these types of difficult accents because both on television and in the classroom, it is standard Mandarin which you hear and study.
In any case, arriving in Korea I realized just how much of Mandarin I had learned. I had immediate and instinctive responses as to what to say in most or all situations – be it in interactions with shopkeepers, in restaurants, on the street – where anywhere in China I could have easily used Mandarin but in Korea we were mainly left quite … silent. It was both frustrating and encouraging at the same time – frustrating because I suddenly could not communicate with those around me, but encouraging because it left me to realize exactly how much I had learned while in China. In addition, in Korea there are some Chinese-derived characters in use, although mostly in historical or very official contexts it seemed.
Having now arrived in Japan, there are many more Chinese-derived characters in use (kanji) but they are difficult to decipher for several reasons: (1) they are often or always intermixed with phonetic Japanese characters; (2) they appear to often or always be of the traditional Chinese variety; and (3) it seems that the meaning of some of the characters is not exactly that as used within Chinese. But despite these, my eye does tend to be drawn to them and sometimes it helps to recognize some of the characters on products or menus to at least begin to get a sense of what’s there. As a result, I’m again happy with my choice of studying Mandarin first – and spending time with the characters – and then traveling through East Asia.
The remaining tests will be Taiwan and Singapore. In Taiwan, Mandarin is spoken but traditional characters are used, so I will be very happy to be able to use my Mandarin once again. I will probably also resume studying my notebook of words and some phrases to continue increasing my spoken vocabulary, and hopefully I will remember the structures that I learned while studying in Shanghai.
And to finish off this entry, just a couple words on what I did my last day or two. On Friday, November 14, one of my classmates from France, Brigitte, had the idea to head to Shanghai’s art district (sort of like Beijing’s 798) and have a look around and grab some lunch. This turned out pretty great – the area is rather compact, free to get in everywhere, and the café we chose had food that was great and well-priced. The sculptures – contemporary for the most part – were stimulating and interesting. There were several studios we stepped in as well. I posted photos from this visit onto my Facebook account.
That same Friday evening we also did our traditional meal at the hotpot restaurant, returning to the Nanjing Lu location. Armed again with our translations and also memories of the previous week’s successful and not-so-successful orderings, we had a great time for even less money than before, or about 35 RMB per person (or under US $6). With plenty of left over, a smaller group then continued on to one of what seemed to be a popular ex-pat bar, not far from Nanjing Xi Lu but the name escapes me. We were able to get in a couple beers and also Sebastian, one of my classmates, and Ben, a roommate, encouraged us to try flaming up some Sambuca shots in our mouths.
Here’s a brief explanation of that process: You buy a shot of Sambuca. Don’t light it in the shotglass too much or the alcohol may be burned away and not leave enough for the cool part. Then, in a quick succession of movements, do the following: (1) dip a finger into the shot, (2) pour the shot into your mouth as someone simultaneously lights your finger on fire, (3) poke your finger into your Sambuca-filled mouth (as your head is tipped backwards so that the flames don’t burn your upper lip or nose), lighting the Sambuca inside, (4) put out the fire on your finger, which will begin to burn a little by this point and has probably singed off any hair you had on your finger. (Doing this on your own might be hard, so just have a friend “spot” you and help you put out your finger-fire.) Having done all of this, you don’t really feel the flame rising out of your mouth, and you can hold it there for a while I think.
* A serious word of caution, though: Do NOT blow the Sambuca out of your mouth, because everything it hits might potentially catch on fire. All you need to do to put out the flame is close your mouth – which shuts off the oxygen supply to the flame and promptly and safely puts it out. If you spit anything out, you might burn your face and have anything else onto which the alcohol lands catch on fire. Just to illustrate an angle of this, when I had one of my Sambuca shots lit on fire, as I picked it up, it spilled a little bit onto the table and my jeans – spilling not only the sticky liquid but also a blue flame. Quick action put it all out, though.
So that was my last night in Shanghai. The next morning and throughout the day I was able to post my belongings out back home which saved on space and weight in my suitcase to prepare for my next phases of travel. I also had a bunch of errands to run, including setting up finances and all of that to last the rest of my trip. This being done, I bought some snacks for the long train to Beijing, and headed off in the early evening after enjoying some dumplings with my flatmates.
First, words on language acquisition. After seven weeks of intensively studying Mandarin in Shanghai, I think that I have reached a solid understanding of basic Mandarin and that I have the tools to both remember and build upon what I know about the language. I’m trying to figure out how to best go about not forgetting what I’ve learned, and I feel that a very important tool will be all of the notes that I took down while in Shanghai. Not only are they filled with new words, but idiomatic phrases that offer further insights into the language and which are best “internally” understood – i.e. to be understood as being within the Mandarin language and not just through translation. In addition, my notebooks are also filled with Chinese characters and musings upon the characters: playing around with them, repeatedly writing them, “studying” the different parts and proportions, and taking notes on similar characters. All of this work being encoded in written form gives me hope that even just a simple review of the notes will, in the future, quickly bring me up to speed to where I was in learning the language if I am ever able to take up further formal studies of Mandarin.
After leaving Shanghai, I went first to Beijing by train (in a hard-seater carriage, where I sat for thirteen hours without getting up until we had arrived at the capital!). On the train I tried to pull out my notes for continued studying, particulary of characters, but I quickly found that the limited space around me was not too suitable to take the notes that I wished to take, and also I saw that as soon as I brought out the materials several people around me were interested in conversation. Some of the conversation I could follow and other parts were very difficult. As in any country, the manner in which Mandarin is spoken varies widely by geographic location, education and class, and situation, among other factors. Whereas I had grown very accustomed to my Mandarin teachers’ spoken variety, the streets of Shanghai were filled both with Shanghainese and also the Shanghai accent of the Mandarin language. On the train, I was suddenly exposed to the Beijing accent where, to be bluntly honest, it sounds as if every spoken word is immediately eaten up somewhere in the middle to the back of the mouth of the speaker, making it quite difficult to understand what is spoken. It is this Mandarin that you will come across mostly with cab drivers, on the street with food sellers, with shopkeepers, etc. As such, therefore, it is necessary to become accustomed to it, although outside those very interactions it is difficult to come across these types of difficult accents because both on television and in the classroom, it is standard Mandarin which you hear and study.
In any case, arriving in Korea I realized just how much of Mandarin I had learned. I had immediate and instinctive responses as to what to say in most or all situations – be it in interactions with shopkeepers, in restaurants, on the street – where anywhere in China I could have easily used Mandarin but in Korea we were mainly left quite … silent. It was both frustrating and encouraging at the same time – frustrating because I suddenly could not communicate with those around me, but encouraging because it left me to realize exactly how much I had learned while in China. In addition, in Korea there are some Chinese-derived characters in use, although mostly in historical or very official contexts it seemed.
Having now arrived in Japan, there are many more Chinese-derived characters in use (kanji) but they are difficult to decipher for several reasons: (1) they are often or always intermixed with phonetic Japanese characters; (2) they appear to often or always be of the traditional Chinese variety; and (3) it seems that the meaning of some of the characters is not exactly that as used within Chinese. But despite these, my eye does tend to be drawn to them and sometimes it helps to recognize some of the characters on products or menus to at least begin to get a sense of what’s there. As a result, I’m again happy with my choice of studying Mandarin first – and spending time with the characters – and then traveling through East Asia.
The remaining tests will be Taiwan and Singapore. In Taiwan, Mandarin is spoken but traditional characters are used, so I will be very happy to be able to use my Mandarin once again. I will probably also resume studying my notebook of words and some phrases to continue increasing my spoken vocabulary, and hopefully I will remember the structures that I learned while studying in Shanghai.
And to finish off this entry, just a couple words on what I did my last day or two. On Friday, November 14, one of my classmates from France, Brigitte, had the idea to head to Shanghai’s art district (sort of like Beijing’s 798) and have a look around and grab some lunch. This turned out pretty great – the area is rather compact, free to get in everywhere, and the café we chose had food that was great and well-priced. The sculptures – contemporary for the most part – were stimulating and interesting. There were several studios we stepped in as well. I posted photos from this visit onto my Facebook account.
That same Friday evening we also did our traditional meal at the hotpot restaurant, returning to the Nanjing Lu location. Armed again with our translations and also memories of the previous week’s successful and not-so-successful orderings, we had a great time for even less money than before, or about 35 RMB per person (or under US $6). With plenty of left over, a smaller group then continued on to one of what seemed to be a popular ex-pat bar, not far from Nanjing Xi Lu but the name escapes me. We were able to get in a couple beers and also Sebastian, one of my classmates, and Ben, a roommate, encouraged us to try flaming up some Sambuca shots in our mouths.
Here’s a brief explanation of that process: You buy a shot of Sambuca. Don’t light it in the shotglass too much or the alcohol may be burned away and not leave enough for the cool part. Then, in a quick succession of movements, do the following: (1) dip a finger into the shot, (2) pour the shot into your mouth as someone simultaneously lights your finger on fire, (3) poke your finger into your Sambuca-filled mouth (as your head is tipped backwards so that the flames don’t burn your upper lip or nose), lighting the Sambuca inside, (4) put out the fire on your finger, which will begin to burn a little by this point and has probably singed off any hair you had on your finger. (Doing this on your own might be hard, so just have a friend “spot” you and help you put out your finger-fire.) Having done all of this, you don’t really feel the flame rising out of your mouth, and you can hold it there for a while I think.
* A serious word of caution, though: Do NOT blow the Sambuca out of your mouth, because everything it hits might potentially catch on fire. All you need to do to put out the flame is close your mouth – which shuts off the oxygen supply to the flame and promptly and safely puts it out. If you spit anything out, you might burn your face and have anything else onto which the alcohol lands catch on fire. Just to illustrate an angle of this, when I had one of my Sambuca shots lit on fire, as I picked it up, it spilled a little bit onto the table and my jeans – spilling not only the sticky liquid but also a blue flame. Quick action put it all out, though.
So that was my last night in Shanghai. The next morning and throughout the day I was able to post my belongings out back home which saved on space and weight in my suitcase to prepare for my next phases of travel. I also had a bunch of errands to run, including setting up finances and all of that to last the rest of my trip. This being done, I bought some snacks for the long train to Beijing, and headed off in the early evening after enjoying some dumplings with my flatmates.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Mandarin House Shanghai Program - Accommodations Comments
This is for anyone who is Googling the Mandarin House Shanghai program in an effort to get current student reviews and comments. While I do have a rather glowing review for the program as a whole -- which I intend to write a full entry for later -- I feel that it would be helpful to provide would-be Mandarin House attendees with the following information.
If you are going for the language program plus accommodation, find out where exactly they plan on putting you up during your stay. If it's at the GuangXi Bei Lu address, then ask what floor. If the 20th floor, then be adamant about not being put into Room C of that apartment. Apparently there is some problem with the plumbing within the bathroom in Room C, and as a consequence the entire room stinks. Opening the door will at times also lead the rest of the apartment to stink.
The school has known about the problem for at least two weeks now, but the problem has not yet been fixed. The current resident in the room indicates that he will be put up at a nearby hotel (although the school wanted to put him up at a hotel 30 minutes away) for perhaps three days while the school arranges for someone to fix the problem.
Again, this is not reflective of my general opinion regarding the Mandarin House program in Shanghai, but it is only a caveat emptor warning for future students so that no one has to be stuck in a smelly room during their stay in Shanghai.
I hope that in the near future I can post an update to say that the problem in the room has been fixed.
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(Коротке слово по-український: Курс китайської мови, який я слухаю в Шанґгай, під назвою схожу на "Мандаринська Хата". Чомусь, одна з наших кімнат смердить. Я про це тут говор'ю, щоб майбутні студенти пізнали ситуацію і щоб Школа щось нам зробила за сморід.)
If you are going for the language program plus accommodation, find out where exactly they plan on putting you up during your stay. If it's at the GuangXi Bei Lu address, then ask what floor. If the 20th floor, then be adamant about not being put into Room C of that apartment. Apparently there is some problem with the plumbing within the bathroom in Room C, and as a consequence the entire room stinks. Opening the door will at times also lead the rest of the apartment to stink.
The school has known about the problem for at least two weeks now, but the problem has not yet been fixed. The current resident in the room indicates that he will be put up at a nearby hotel (although the school wanted to put him up at a hotel 30 minutes away) for perhaps three days while the school arranges for someone to fix the problem.
Again, this is not reflective of my general opinion regarding the Mandarin House program in Shanghai, but it is only a caveat emptor warning for future students so that no one has to be stuck in a smelly room during their stay in Shanghai.
I hope that in the near future I can post an update to say that the problem in the room has been fixed.
------
(Коротке слово по-український: Курс китайської мови, який я слухаю в Шанґгай, під назвою схожу на "Мандаринська Хата". Чомусь, одна з наших кімнат смердить. Я про це тут говор'ю, щоб майбутні студенти пізнали ситуацію і щоб Школа щось нам зробила за сморід.)
Monday, October 13, 2008
Defenses Against Foreigner-Targeters
In China, it’s all about “saving face.” While you may want to tell off the persistent salespeople and foreigner-targeting beggars in the street, or perhaps ignore those university students in the park, this might backfire in that the Chinese people around you when it happens may just deepen any disdain they already had for foreigners, and so you’re doing damage both to yourself and also to any future tourists.
Best to avoid that situation. Here’s how I figure that from now on I will handle all these people in the street that I don’t want to talk to:
For the guy on the street who persistently tries to sell you “watches, DVDs, lady massage”:
••• O, nǐ hǎo! Nǐ yǒu shǒuzhuābǐng ma? [He looks bewildered and confused.] Nǐ méi yòu? O, wǒ biéde dōngxi bú mǎi. Xièxie, zàijiàn.
[Hello! Do you have any “shouzhuabing”? (This is basically a Chinese street-crêpe.) Oh, you don’t have any? Well, I don’t buy other things. Thanks, see you later!]
I’m positive that the above will work, but if you prefer being less cutesy and more to the point, you can try the following, which worked very well for me this afternoon. It also puts into practice a very useful grammatical construction:
••• Nǐ hǎo. Wǒ shénme dōngxi dōu bú mǎi. Xièxie.
[Hello. Whatever things you have, I’m not going to buy them. Thanks.]
For the beggar who asks money only from you even when four well-off businesspersons just passed her by on the street:
••• O, nǐ hǎo! Wǒ shì xuésheng, suǒyǐ wǒ méiyǒu qián. Duìbuqǐ, zàijiàn!
[Oh, hello! I’m a student, so I don’t have any money. Sorry about that, see you later!]
And if they look and point at the food you just bought in the street, clearly using cash, I would probably say:
Xìnyòng kǎ. Zàijiàn!
[Credit card. Bye!]
For the university students in the park who invariably call out “Hihellowhereyoufrom?” when you’re walking through the park (but only if you don’t want to talk to them, as this might be a good way for you to practice your Chinese):
••• O, nǐ hǎo! Wǒ shì [insert real or made-up nationality here]-rén. Dànshì, wǒ xiànzài méiyǒu kòng (or “kòngr” if in Beijing). Duìbuqǐ, zàijiàn!
[Hello! I’m a/n (insert real or fake nationality here). However, I don’t have any free time right now. Sorry, see you later!]
-----
В Китаю, легко бачити, хто іноземний або турист. Якщо маєш "золоте волосся" і "великий ніс", тяжко часом позбутися тих людей, які питають гроші, або продають речі на вулиці, або студентів які кажуть, що вічно хочуть "практикувати" англійську мову. Ось я написав кілька слів про кілька непоганих речень, що можна вживати/говорити, позбутися тих людей.
Best to avoid that situation. Here’s how I figure that from now on I will handle all these people in the street that I don’t want to talk to:
For the guy on the street who persistently tries to sell you “watches, DVDs, lady massage”:
••• O, nǐ hǎo! Nǐ yǒu shǒuzhuābǐng ma? [He looks bewildered and confused.] Nǐ méi yòu? O, wǒ biéde dōngxi bú mǎi. Xièxie, zàijiàn.
[Hello! Do you have any “shouzhuabing”? (This is basically a Chinese street-crêpe.) Oh, you don’t have any? Well, I don’t buy other things. Thanks, see you later!]
I’m positive that the above will work, but if you prefer being less cutesy and more to the point, you can try the following, which worked very well for me this afternoon. It also puts into practice a very useful grammatical construction:
••• Nǐ hǎo. Wǒ shénme dōngxi dōu bú mǎi. Xièxie.
[Hello. Whatever things you have, I’m not going to buy them. Thanks.]
For the beggar who asks money only from you even when four well-off businesspersons just passed her by on the street:
••• O, nǐ hǎo! Wǒ shì xuésheng, suǒyǐ wǒ méiyǒu qián. Duìbuqǐ, zàijiàn!
[Oh, hello! I’m a student, so I don’t have any money. Sorry about that, see you later!]
And if they look and point at the food you just bought in the street, clearly using cash, I would probably say:
Xìnyòng kǎ. Zàijiàn!
[Credit card. Bye!]
For the university students in the park who invariably call out “Hihellowhereyoufrom?” when you’re walking through the park (but only if you don’t want to talk to them, as this might be a good way for you to practice your Chinese):
••• O, nǐ hǎo! Wǒ shì [insert real or made-up nationality here]-rén. Dànshì, wǒ xiànzài méiyǒu kòng (or “kòngr” if in Beijing). Duìbuqǐ, zàijiàn!
[Hello! I’m a/n (insert real or fake nationality here). However, I don’t have any free time right now. Sorry, see you later!]
-----
В Китаю, легко бачити, хто іноземний або турист. Якщо маєш "золоте волосся" і "великий ніс", тяжко часом позбутися тих людей, які питають гроші, або продають речі на вулиці, або студентів які кажуть, що вічно хочуть "практикувати" англійську мову. Ось я написав кілька слів про кілька непоганих речень, що можна вживати/говорити, позбутися тих людей.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
"Big-nosed, Golden-haired Foreigners": Photos of Shanghai
Most of these shots were taken over the past week.
First up is a photo of an impromptu singing session in the park. But first some cultural commentary. The guy in the back came off as somewhat pushy, approaching me mainly to get me to shake the things he's holding. I politely had to decline ... about five times. Funny though, he didn't approach anyone else from the crowd gathered to watch, and my friends and I were the only foreigners. Very often do I find that, as a non-Chinese person, I'm often singled out for both the good and the bad attention. Beggars always go for the lao wai first, and it's hard for a foreigner to shake these people. Those selling fake Rolexes, bootlegged DVDs, and "lady massage" in the street rarely if ever approach Asians, but I literally cannot cross the street to the food mart without hearing "Hi Hello, Lady Massage?". Both my Mandarin profs and also students in the street confirm that everyone learns about the "big-nosed, golden-haired foreigner", and it seems as though the Chinese are strongly encouraged to approach random foreigners in order to practice their English. It is somewhat annoying to think that the locals are literally taught from youth to think of you as a big-nosed, golden-haired English-speaking automaton, but if you have a little free time it also makes it quite easy to have some random Mandarin practice in the park or at a tourist site. Back to the picture of the singers:
The Happy Lemon:
A neat shot of the evil-looking building with a bright moon behind it. This is actually the JW Marriott Hotel Shanghai at Tomorrow Square:
The lights atop the building on the right rotate colors through the evening:
A neatly-lit building:
Ancient design in the foreground, modernity behind it:
View from a pedestrian overpass:
A park south of People's Park, and very close to where you have the best shou zhua bing that I've found so far in Shanghai. The blue guy is the mascot for the upcoming Shanghai World Expo 2010:
Here I am in front of the Pu Dong skyline:
Pu Dong skyline catching some of the last moments of sunlight of that day:
... and I leave you with a neat macro shot of Donald Duck:
First up is a photo of an impromptu singing session in the park. But first some cultural commentary. The guy in the back came off as somewhat pushy, approaching me mainly to get me to shake the things he's holding. I politely had to decline ... about five times. Funny though, he didn't approach anyone else from the crowd gathered to watch, and my friends and I were the only foreigners. Very often do I find that, as a non-Chinese person, I'm often singled out for both the good and the bad attention. Beggars always go for the lao wai first, and it's hard for a foreigner to shake these people. Those selling fake Rolexes, bootlegged DVDs, and "lady massage" in the street rarely if ever approach Asians, but I literally cannot cross the street to the food mart without hearing "Hi Hello, Lady Massage?". Both my Mandarin profs and also students in the street confirm that everyone learns about the "big-nosed, golden-haired foreigner", and it seems as though the Chinese are strongly encouraged to approach random foreigners in order to practice their English. It is somewhat annoying to think that the locals are literally taught from youth to think of you as a big-nosed, golden-haired English-speaking automaton, but if you have a little free time it also makes it quite easy to have some random Mandarin practice in the park or at a tourist site. Back to the picture of the singers:
The Happy Lemon:
A neat shot of the evil-looking building with a bright moon behind it. This is actually the JW Marriott Hotel Shanghai at Tomorrow Square:
The lights atop the building on the right rotate colors through the evening:
A neatly-lit building:
Ancient design in the foreground, modernity behind it:
View from a pedestrian overpass:
A park south of People's Park, and very close to where you have the best shou zhua bing that I've found so far in Shanghai. The blue guy is the mascot for the upcoming Shanghai World Expo 2010:
Here I am in front of the Pu Dong skyline:
Pu Dong skyline catching some of the last moments of sunlight of that day:
... and I leave you with a neat macro shot of Donald Duck:
Insect Market, Shanghai
Over the weekend, while strolling around Shanghai, after hunting down the elusive shou zhua bing for brunch, two of my flatmates and I headed into Shanghai's Insect Market. They don't only sell insects: there are also quite a few turtles for sale, birds, and some fish. Here are some photos.
This is my favorite little buddy from the Insect Market. A couple of shots:
Some worms struggling to exit what I assume to be cocoons (but if it's a cocoon, why are they still coming out as worms rather than moths or butterflies or some other fun creature?):
These guys are 5 RMB apiece. That's less than a buck. A friend of mine had a couple of these in college. Apparently they never actually grew much larger than 6 or 7 centimeters:
And some smaller turtles for sale. Not sure of the price on these:
Now, the question remains, why is there an entire marketplace where the Chinese can buy insects? One of my flatmates suggested that they are given to other families as good luck. I did see potential buyers for types of insects not pictured above poking and prodding the insects as if to test them out and see if they were good enough to purchase.
Beyond asking why these may be given as gifts, the next question is, what does the recipient do with a monstrously huge grasshopper or cricket?
This is my favorite little buddy from the Insect Market. A couple of shots:
Some worms struggling to exit what I assume to be cocoons (but if it's a cocoon, why are they still coming out as worms rather than moths or butterflies or some other fun creature?):
These guys are 5 RMB apiece. That's less than a buck. A friend of mine had a couple of these in college. Apparently they never actually grew much larger than 6 or 7 centimeters:
And some smaller turtles for sale. Not sure of the price on these:
Now, the question remains, why is there an entire marketplace where the Chinese can buy insects? One of my flatmates suggested that they are given to other families as good luck. I did see potential buyers for types of insects not pictured above poking and prodding the insects as if to test them out and see if they were good enough to purchase.
Beyond asking why these may be given as gifts, the next question is, what does the recipient do with a monstrously huge grasshopper or cricket?
Street Food in Shanghai
Below, find a tribute to a tiny selection of the type of street food available in Shanghai. I will likely update this post with more food as I come across new tasty creations:
Jiaozi, or Shui Jiao I think. Dumplings filled with meat and then cooked over either oil or some sort of broth. As you may know, you have to be very careful eating these because while cooking, I think that the fat from the meat gets very hot and melts inside, and you have to carefully draw the hot liquid out of a small hole bitten into the jiaozi before you chomp into the whole thing. Otherwise, you squirt either yourself or your neighbor with hot fat. Not cool.
The making of the jiaozi at the Shanghai First Food Store on Nanjing Xi Lu, which runs east of People's Park:
Here is how the jiaozi are cooked:
Prepared dumplings that were bought frozen in a supermarket. Very similar to the pierogies my mom makes:
A steamed dumpling from Dong Jia Du Lu, not far from St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church:
Amazingly, three of these things cost me only 2.40 RMB. Can anyone tell what kind of meat this is? When I was asking the lady if she had pork, beef, or chicken dumplings, she replied by saying that she had meat-filled ones but without specifying the type of meat ... "rou de" ... although I suppose that the default meat in China is pork?
I bought this from a street bakery not knowing that there was a tasty surprise inside:
Jiaozi, or Shui Jiao I think. Dumplings filled with meat and then cooked over either oil or some sort of broth. As you may know, you have to be very careful eating these because while cooking, I think that the fat from the meat gets very hot and melts inside, and you have to carefully draw the hot liquid out of a small hole bitten into the jiaozi before you chomp into the whole thing. Otherwise, you squirt either yourself or your neighbor with hot fat. Not cool.
The making of the jiaozi at the Shanghai First Food Store on Nanjing Xi Lu, which runs east of People's Park:
Here is how the jiaozi are cooked:
Prepared dumplings that were bought frozen in a supermarket. Very similar to the pierogies my mom makes:
A steamed dumpling from Dong Jia Du Lu, not far from St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church:
Amazingly, three of these things cost me only 2.40 RMB. Can anyone tell what kind of meat this is? When I was asking the lady if she had pork, beef, or chicken dumplings, she replied by saying that she had meat-filled ones but without specifying the type of meat ... "rou de" ... although I suppose that the default meat in China is pork?
I bought this from a street bakery not knowing that there was a tasty surprise inside:
Hot Pot at Xiao Fei Yang
This past weekend my fellow Mandarin House classmates/apartment-mates gathered together to go for Hot Pot in Shanghai. The restaurant is called "Xiao Fei Yang" -- translated by the restaurant as "Little Sheep". Check out the location by clicking here and going to Google Maps.
Here are some photos of the experience.
Greetings from the Little Sheep! (Who is about to get eaten!)
Some peanuts to hold us over until the main food came:
The guy who brought the peanuts and cherry tomatoes:
Ordering the hot pot:
Further negotiation:
Here's the centerpiece, and half-hot and half-not hot pot. This may be more precisely a "Mongolian Hot Pot". Order it by saying yi ban la, yi ban bu-la. Then grab the menu and point at whatever else you want to throw into the hot pot ...
Check out the piles of meat that arrived. And there was more on a cart next to the table:
That evening, we learned the striking difference between an uncooked and a cooked shrimp:
In addition to all the food, we probably ordered 15 or more large bottles of Tsingtao beer. Price tag: 65 RMB/person for the entire meal. Not bad at all ... enjoy!
Here are some photos of the experience.
Greetings from the Little Sheep! (Who is about to get eaten!)
Some peanuts to hold us over until the main food came:
The guy who brought the peanuts and cherry tomatoes:
Ordering the hot pot:
Further negotiation:
Here's the centerpiece, and half-hot and half-not hot pot. This may be more precisely a "Mongolian Hot Pot". Order it by saying yi ban la, yi ban bu-la. Then grab the menu and point at whatever else you want to throw into the hot pot ...
Check out the piles of meat that arrived. And there was more on a cart next to the table:
That evening, we learned the striking difference between an uncooked and a cooked shrimp:
In addition to all the food, we probably ordered 15 or more large bottles of Tsingtao beer. Price tag: 65 RMB/person for the entire meal. Not bad at all ... enjoy!
Shanghai Apartment
For anyone who's curious, here are some photos of my shared apartment in Shanghai.
Where I sleep:
Where I study, and the balcony:
Since we don't have a dryer to go with the washing machine, the office workers across the street can watch my clothes dry, if they want:
The above-mentioned washing machine. Only Chinese characters allowed!
Our "range". Also, Chinese characters only! But someone was nice enough to tape translations onto the controls:
The TV. Most channels are Chinese-only, and there's often some sort of variety show available to watch. Once in a while there's an English transmission, usually the news. Also, everything has Chinese characters to go along with any narration:
Kitchen area:
Our ai-yi:
The entrance to the apartment:
Relaxing on the couches:
Yes, even my toilet:
... and finally, the water heater and shower:
Thanks for visiting!
Where I sleep:
Where I study, and the balcony:
Since we don't have a dryer to go with the washing machine, the office workers across the street can watch my clothes dry, if they want:
The above-mentioned washing machine. Only Chinese characters allowed!
Our "range". Also, Chinese characters only! But someone was nice enough to tape translations onto the controls:
The TV. Most channels are Chinese-only, and there's often some sort of variety show available to watch. Once in a while there's an English transmission, usually the news. Also, everything has Chinese characters to go along with any narration:
Kitchen area:
Our ai-yi:
The entrance to the apartment:
Relaxing on the couches:
Yes, even my toilet:
... and finally, the water heater and shower:
Thanks for visiting!
So What Am I Doing This Year, Anyway?
Short Outline
1. Legal Assistant with Skadden, Arps in New York City
2. Option to Work Abroad with Skadden
3. Law School Applications
4. Thoughts About a Probable Timeline of Education, Work, and Living
5. Further Thoughts on Options for a Year Off
6. Request for Deferment from UC Berkeley School of Law
* 7. The Plan for the Deferment Year
a. Parents’ New House
b. Mandarin and Arabic: Substantive Study Experiences
c. International Travel
8. Unexpected Returns
1. Legal Assistant with Skadden, Arps in New York City
After graduating from Cornell in May 2006, I decided to take a job as a Legal Assistant with the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York City. The experience opened my eyes to the world of practicing law, particularly corporate law. But it also opened my eyes to the possibilities available to those who have earned a J.D. degree, most notably the ability to perform pro bono work, seek work as in-house counsel, be able to pursue international work with issues such as human rights, and notably to use the skills of critical thought, analysis, and argument to make the world a better place.
And so I decided to forge ahead with my plans to attend law school.
2. Option to Work Abroad with Skadden
About a year into my employment with Skadden, I began to think back to some of the goals that I’d had around the time of graduation. Back in early 2006, while I did want to pursue work abroad as soon as possible, discussions with my parents convinced me to stay within the domestic workforce.
By January 2008, I’d already received acceptances to several law schools and was planning visits. My first school visit would have been Georgetown Law, and I knew that one of my attorneys in Skadden’s Antitrust group was a graduate. And so, after dropping off some binders like any other day, I asked him for a couple quick words about Georgetown and what he thought about law practice, as he was a new associate. The conversation headed to what he had done prior to going to Georgetown: he had worked in Paris for a couple of years, including some experience at investment banks abroad.
This single conversation was probably the seed that has grown to lead me to the point where I am now. I soon began to think about what I was doing and questioning whether, by going immediately to law school, I was missing a chance to do … something spectacular, at least from my point of view. Something for me, something that I had wanted to do for as long as I can remember. I thought back to what I wanted to do after school – move abroad and have some fun while in my mid-twenties – and then I thought about how I had been somewhat limited to explore myself personally and socially given the demands of the work at Skadden.
Before continuing, I do want to plainly state that I did greatly enjoy my work. I do, however, think that I was lucky both with the practice group and the attorneys to whom I had been assigned. Because of the luck of the draw, I do not necessarily think that everyone at Skadden ends up having as rewarding a time as I did, and I speak only for myself when I say that I leave Skadden feeling very fulfilled, at least professionally. However, truth be told, work did in some sense consume my life. And I have admitted for quite some time now that that state of affairs is a result of the atmosphere of Skadden’s New York office, combined with my own personality and the way in which I have a tendency to focus fully on my main task, whatever that may be. With so much to focus on at Skadden, I do feel I was constrained in my ability to simply enjoy living in New York City. That was also a main non-academic reason why I chose a law school outside of New York, because (whether warranted or not) I felt that given my personality and tendencies, mixed with the general culture of New York, would have made it somewhat frustrating to study law there.
In any event, thinking back to my somewhat-neglected core interests of languages and travel and exotic new experiences, I had a couple of weeks of distress and mental turmoil. Depression set in to some degree as I also began to think negatively about some personal issues. “Where have I gone off track?” I repeatedly thought to myself. This turned into somewhat of a personal crisis, which in hindsight was probably a necessary but difficult step in the path that followed.
At this point, my first thoughts turned to trying to arrange for a year-long job abroad with a bank or hedge fund or consultancy firm. I FedEx’d some cover letters and resumes to firms in Paris and London, only to receive polite replies that declined hiring me for an entry-level position abroad. I saw that many banking job applications had already expired about a month earlier, particularly for domestic positions, but I knew that I needed to keep my eye on my main goal of international experience.
In the end, I returned my thoughts to Skadden, an international firm with over twenty offices all over the world, and asked my managers what types of opportunities there might be within the Firm. In a contrast to the negative replies from financial firms, Skadden’s reply was that I would most likely be able to move to an office either in Asia or perhaps in Paris, if I switched from litigation to corporate practice. This sounded great to me, and I began to research the Hong Kong, Singapore, and Paris offices.
But after a little bit of time, my mind turned to the possible downsides of staying as a Legal Assistant at Skadden, even if going abroad. I would have chosen to work at the Hong Kong office, and after some correspondence with one of the office’s Legal Assistants it seemed like there was a real risk that my life would continue somewhat as it had been in New York: real possibility of very long hours, daily overtime, weekend work depending on deals, and the like. I initially thought that perhaps I could enroll in a language course and take long weekends to explore parts of Asia, but I was concerned that neither of those plans would come to fruition if the work was anywhere near as demanding as it had been in New York.
And so I eased off the idea of working for a third year with Skadden as a Legal Assistant in an office abroad.
3. Law School Applications
Around the same time in early 2008, I started to look closer at the admissions materials from various schools. In particular, I read as much as I could about the financial aid packages and the loans process for law school. I knew that I had gradually been growing my savings account, by what came to be both the blessing and the curse of working so much at Skadden: while I was earning at an overtime rate at work, I was not out spending my earnings by going out all the time in New York. Back to the student loans, it looked like the most sensible option, were I to enter law school in the fall of 2008, would have been to pay off as much of the first year’s tuition as I could with my savings so as to avoid paying much more in accrued interest after graduation. Indeed, all the financial aid packages assumed this to be the case, and it disheartened me greatly to think about those savings completely dissipating without really having enjoyed them.
4. Thoughts About a Probable Timeline of Education, Work, and Living
Perhaps around March or April 2008, when I was thinking about my core interests and also thinking about the imminent dissipation of my savings, my friends started to ask me for how long I would be away from New York after leaving for school. This signaled the beginning of my thoughts on a realistic timeline for the coming years. By this point I had chosen Berkeley as the law school I would most likely attend, and so I thought about the three years I would spend in California as a law student. During the summers, I would hope to first work abroad for specialized legal projects involving human rights, and then work at a law firm as a summer associate. During the shorter breaks and holidays I would most likely return to spend time with my parents in upstate New York, leaving limited time to spend with friends, in New York and elsewhere. Soon after graduating and taking the bar exam, I would most likely choose to continue living in the San Francisco area and work with a Bay Area law firm. The reason for this, related to my main reason for choosing Berkeley over another school to study law, was that my target law practice would involve a mix of high-technology Silicon Valley companies, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs in science and technology. I would expect to work at least three years in the Bay Area, for the two main reasons of gaining necessary experience and also significantly paying down my loans. With a tight financial situation, I would also have limited time to take substantive breaks from work and pursue my core interests full-time.
My thoughts also turned to my parents, who have been building a house in upstate New York since July 2006. By early 2008 I knew of the types of problems that they were encountering – mainly some very troubling contractor issues, such as poor workmanship and inability to bring tasks to completion on schedule. The consistently poor quality of contractors in the Southern Tier and northern Pennsylvania left me anxious to help my parents with building the house as much as I could so that they could move into the new house and begin to enjoy it and its beautiful surroundings as soon as possible.
5. Further Thoughts on Options for a Year Off
And so I thought more about my options after completing my two years at Skadden. Very helpful to me was focusing on the precise, and somewhat subtle, reasons why continuing with Skadden for another year would have been inadequate for me personally: inability to focus on language study, unclear and possibly limited opportunity for international travel, and a tight timeframe between work and school where I would have been unable to help my parents with their house.
In taking a Mandarin course at NYU in the spring of 2007, I had found that for whatever reason I do simply enjoy studying foreign languages. I found both the Chinese spoken language and the characters fascinating, but I always felt constrained in my ability to really gain an in-depth knowledge of the language. For example, I often came across characters with multiple parts that usually had some interesting history. Discovering this history usually involved looking up the characters on a Chinese-language-learning website such as http://www.zhongwen.com, where one has the opportunity to “regress” into the character’s history by looking closer at its parts. Unfortunately I felt as though I did not have enough time to both master new vocabulary but also pursue these auxiliary avenues of interest, because of the demands of my work as a legal assistant. I often thought to myself how great it would be to have an opportunity to study a language full-time, and further how much better it would be to do so within a country where the target language is used.
And so I did a little math, thought about my savings and my two-year bonus, considered that I would have plenty of opportunity to work overtime until my resignation date in July 2008, and decided that it would be best to request a year of deferment from law school and put together a plan where I could truly pursue some of these core interests of mine.
In particular, the idea of deepening my knowledge of Mandarin while spending time in Asia was very appealing. I had also never been to a country where Arabic is spoken. With both the Iraq war and rapid Middle East development, Arabic appealed to me as a language that I could simply enjoy studying while also opening new professional opportunities for the future. Notwithstanding the professional aspects, I also had the thought that any international traveling that I would do would be greatly enhanced if I had the opportunity to study both Mandarin and Arabic before traveling in a region where each language is used widely.
And so my plan slowly started to materialize: I would spend eight to ten weeks at a time studying Mandarin and then later Arabic, and after familiarizing myself with the language to an elementary level of spoken and written proficiency, I would travel in the region where knowledge of those languages was widespread.
It seemed that with this plan, I had really solved all of the issues that had constrained me previously. I could build in the time to assist my parents with their house. I could then devote my full attention for significant periods of time to the study of foreign languages. Finally I could travel wherever I wanted, with the added bonus of better appreciating foreign cultures through direct communication and participation.
And of course, I am very grateful that the two years I spent at Skadden in several ways went a long way to bring this plan both through conception and to fruition.
6. Request for Deferment from UC Berkeley School of Law
While some schools – Columbia Law School in particular comes to mind – have very liberal deferment policies, it seemed like UC Berkeley required a more concrete plan when requesting deferment. I was initially worried since when I was requesting deferment I did not know precise details about what I would be doing, although I had a very good idea of my motivations. Perhaps this showed through, or perhaps my general ideas were precise enough. In any case, the Law School admissions office granted my deferment request.
7. The Plan for the Deferment Year
As intimated above, in a nutshell my plan for the deferment year is to (a) help my parents build their new home; (b) study Mandarin and Arabic full-time; and (c) travel.
a. Parents’ New House
From early August through mid-September, I was able to help my parents with their house. While I wish I could have stayed longer in upstate New York to have helped and done more, I think that this part of my plan worked out rather successfully. In particular:
We were able to complete significant landscaping work, starting from scratch in early August and seeing a fledgling lawn grow by mid-September. I hear that it’s even been recently mowed. The plot of land where the house is being built, though mostly flat, was still in need of a significant amount of work. We wanted to shape the land so that water would consistently flow away from and around the house and not form large puddles. We also wanted to extend the yard and decrease the slope of the land nearer the house by using dirt from another part of the plot. To do this, we rented a bulldozer for about two weeks and bulldozed away.
[Picture of me operating the bulldozer.]
We also completed a significant portion of the wood framing and molding work. This involved a great deal of time and labor in steel-wooling and sanding; filling nail holes with putty; re-staining parts of the molding that had previously been done improperly by the contractor; and applying a final coat of varnish to all of the woodwork as necessary. By the time I left, we had managed to complete the inside of my bedroom, the office, and the guestroom. Nearing completion were my sister’s bedroom and the hallways. I also managed to stain the staircase leading into the attic mostly on my own, from the sanding phase to pre-treatment conditioning, staining, sealing, re-sanding, and applying two coats of varnish.
On the day before my flight to Shanghai, we also managed to move the computer desk and computer with accessories into the office of the new house.
b. Mandarin and Arabic: Substantive Study Experiences
From mid-September to mid-November, I will be living in Shanghai and studying Mandarin full-time. One of the weeks, there will be no classes due to the National Day holiday, so I am left with seven weeks of full-time language work.
From early March to early May 2009, I plan to study Arabic in Cairo full-time for ten weeks.
c. International Travel
Following my time in Shanghai, in mid-November I will travel to Seoul, then tour Japan with a group, and finally I will spend a week in Taiwan before returning to the United States for my birthday and Christmas.
I will return to Asia at the end of December. Between the New Year and early March, I will be taking an organized tour of Southeast Asia and also of Indonesia – from Jakarta to Bali – before flying to the Middle East. Between the tours I will have time to explore Malaysia and Singapore. From Bali I will fly to the United Arab Emirates to visit Abu Dhabi and Dubai for about a week, and I am particularly excited to see the Burj Dubai skyscraper currently under construction.
Following the study experience in Cairo, I hope to travel within the Middle East, take a tour in Morocco, explore Brazil and Ecuador, and finally do an organized tour from Peru, through Bolivia, and into Argentina with some time in the Amazon and at Machu Picchu.
At the very end of July I will return to the United States to prepare for the mid-August move to Berkeley.
8. Unexpected Returns
Beyond the excitement of seeing these plans start to come to life, I have also been pleasantly surprised by some unexpected returns of this year-long experience.
Being free to devote as much or as little time per day as I need to language study, I have found it very liberating and enlightening to be able to spend time reading and researching topics such as politics, economics, science and technology, social issues, and other areas. Of particular interest have been the November Presidential election and also the unfolding of the financial crisis around the globe.
I am also happy to finally join the blogging world. Not only is it a great way to keep a type of journal throughout this experience, but I have finally found a suitable outlet for my own opinions on issues that are important to me that where I can now have an informed opinion following the ability to read and research the news.
More than just keeping a personal blog, a larger unexpected profit of this deferment year is that I am able to contribute to the organized and accessible collection of human knowledge. With a blog that is searchable by Google, not only can others find a journal of someone’s travels but perhaps they will also hit upon information that is useful to them. For instance, before I left the U.S., I was able to find information about the new Vietnamese Consulate in Shanghai by reading discussion boards of expats in Shanghai. I took that information and put a point indicating the approximate consulate location on Google Maps which anyone can find by doing a simple search of Google Maps. After going to the consulate for a visa, I updated that Google Map point with a more precise, experience-based description of the consulate location, and I also added a photo so that future visitors can have that helpful reference. More generally, I am very happy to think that, once I have done the legwork in finding something – be it a physical place or perhaps a new argument or thought – then others have an opportunity to take that discovery for their own use without having to duplicate work already done.
- - -
Thank you for reading through, and be sure to leave any questions, tips, or any other reactions as Comments.
1. Legal Assistant with Skadden, Arps in New York City
2. Option to Work Abroad with Skadden
3. Law School Applications
4. Thoughts About a Probable Timeline of Education, Work, and Living
5. Further Thoughts on Options for a Year Off
6. Request for Deferment from UC Berkeley School of Law
* 7. The Plan for the Deferment Year
a. Parents’ New House
b. Mandarin and Arabic: Substantive Study Experiences
c. International Travel
8. Unexpected Returns
1. Legal Assistant with Skadden, Arps in New York City
After graduating from Cornell in May 2006, I decided to take a job as a Legal Assistant with the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York City. The experience opened my eyes to the world of practicing law, particularly corporate law. But it also opened my eyes to the possibilities available to those who have earned a J.D. degree, most notably the ability to perform pro bono work, seek work as in-house counsel, be able to pursue international work with issues such as human rights, and notably to use the skills of critical thought, analysis, and argument to make the world a better place.
And so I decided to forge ahead with my plans to attend law school.
2. Option to Work Abroad with Skadden
About a year into my employment with Skadden, I began to think back to some of the goals that I’d had around the time of graduation. Back in early 2006, while I did want to pursue work abroad as soon as possible, discussions with my parents convinced me to stay within the domestic workforce.
By January 2008, I’d already received acceptances to several law schools and was planning visits. My first school visit would have been Georgetown Law, and I knew that one of my attorneys in Skadden’s Antitrust group was a graduate. And so, after dropping off some binders like any other day, I asked him for a couple quick words about Georgetown and what he thought about law practice, as he was a new associate. The conversation headed to what he had done prior to going to Georgetown: he had worked in Paris for a couple of years, including some experience at investment banks abroad.
This single conversation was probably the seed that has grown to lead me to the point where I am now. I soon began to think about what I was doing and questioning whether, by going immediately to law school, I was missing a chance to do … something spectacular, at least from my point of view. Something for me, something that I had wanted to do for as long as I can remember. I thought back to what I wanted to do after school – move abroad and have some fun while in my mid-twenties – and then I thought about how I had been somewhat limited to explore myself personally and socially given the demands of the work at Skadden.
Before continuing, I do want to plainly state that I did greatly enjoy my work. I do, however, think that I was lucky both with the practice group and the attorneys to whom I had been assigned. Because of the luck of the draw, I do not necessarily think that everyone at Skadden ends up having as rewarding a time as I did, and I speak only for myself when I say that I leave Skadden feeling very fulfilled, at least professionally. However, truth be told, work did in some sense consume my life. And I have admitted for quite some time now that that state of affairs is a result of the atmosphere of Skadden’s New York office, combined with my own personality and the way in which I have a tendency to focus fully on my main task, whatever that may be. With so much to focus on at Skadden, I do feel I was constrained in my ability to simply enjoy living in New York City. That was also a main non-academic reason why I chose a law school outside of New York, because (whether warranted or not) I felt that given my personality and tendencies, mixed with the general culture of New York, would have made it somewhat frustrating to study law there.
In any event, thinking back to my somewhat-neglected core interests of languages and travel and exotic new experiences, I had a couple of weeks of distress and mental turmoil. Depression set in to some degree as I also began to think negatively about some personal issues. “Where have I gone off track?” I repeatedly thought to myself. This turned into somewhat of a personal crisis, which in hindsight was probably a necessary but difficult step in the path that followed.
At this point, my first thoughts turned to trying to arrange for a year-long job abroad with a bank or hedge fund or consultancy firm. I FedEx’d some cover letters and resumes to firms in Paris and London, only to receive polite replies that declined hiring me for an entry-level position abroad. I saw that many banking job applications had already expired about a month earlier, particularly for domestic positions, but I knew that I needed to keep my eye on my main goal of international experience.
In the end, I returned my thoughts to Skadden, an international firm with over twenty offices all over the world, and asked my managers what types of opportunities there might be within the Firm. In a contrast to the negative replies from financial firms, Skadden’s reply was that I would most likely be able to move to an office either in Asia or perhaps in Paris, if I switched from litigation to corporate practice. This sounded great to me, and I began to research the Hong Kong, Singapore, and Paris offices.
But after a little bit of time, my mind turned to the possible downsides of staying as a Legal Assistant at Skadden, even if going abroad. I would have chosen to work at the Hong Kong office, and after some correspondence with one of the office’s Legal Assistants it seemed like there was a real risk that my life would continue somewhat as it had been in New York: real possibility of very long hours, daily overtime, weekend work depending on deals, and the like. I initially thought that perhaps I could enroll in a language course and take long weekends to explore parts of Asia, but I was concerned that neither of those plans would come to fruition if the work was anywhere near as demanding as it had been in New York.
And so I eased off the idea of working for a third year with Skadden as a Legal Assistant in an office abroad.
3. Law School Applications
Around the same time in early 2008, I started to look closer at the admissions materials from various schools. In particular, I read as much as I could about the financial aid packages and the loans process for law school. I knew that I had gradually been growing my savings account, by what came to be both the blessing and the curse of working so much at Skadden: while I was earning at an overtime rate at work, I was not out spending my earnings by going out all the time in New York. Back to the student loans, it looked like the most sensible option, were I to enter law school in the fall of 2008, would have been to pay off as much of the first year’s tuition as I could with my savings so as to avoid paying much more in accrued interest after graduation. Indeed, all the financial aid packages assumed this to be the case, and it disheartened me greatly to think about those savings completely dissipating without really having enjoyed them.
4. Thoughts About a Probable Timeline of Education, Work, and Living
Perhaps around March or April 2008, when I was thinking about my core interests and also thinking about the imminent dissipation of my savings, my friends started to ask me for how long I would be away from New York after leaving for school. This signaled the beginning of my thoughts on a realistic timeline for the coming years. By this point I had chosen Berkeley as the law school I would most likely attend, and so I thought about the three years I would spend in California as a law student. During the summers, I would hope to first work abroad for specialized legal projects involving human rights, and then work at a law firm as a summer associate. During the shorter breaks and holidays I would most likely return to spend time with my parents in upstate New York, leaving limited time to spend with friends, in New York and elsewhere. Soon after graduating and taking the bar exam, I would most likely choose to continue living in the San Francisco area and work with a Bay Area law firm. The reason for this, related to my main reason for choosing Berkeley over another school to study law, was that my target law practice would involve a mix of high-technology Silicon Valley companies, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs in science and technology. I would expect to work at least three years in the Bay Area, for the two main reasons of gaining necessary experience and also significantly paying down my loans. With a tight financial situation, I would also have limited time to take substantive breaks from work and pursue my core interests full-time.
My thoughts also turned to my parents, who have been building a house in upstate New York since July 2006. By early 2008 I knew of the types of problems that they were encountering – mainly some very troubling contractor issues, such as poor workmanship and inability to bring tasks to completion on schedule. The consistently poor quality of contractors in the Southern Tier and northern Pennsylvania left me anxious to help my parents with building the house as much as I could so that they could move into the new house and begin to enjoy it and its beautiful surroundings as soon as possible.
5. Further Thoughts on Options for a Year Off
And so I thought more about my options after completing my two years at Skadden. Very helpful to me was focusing on the precise, and somewhat subtle, reasons why continuing with Skadden for another year would have been inadequate for me personally: inability to focus on language study, unclear and possibly limited opportunity for international travel, and a tight timeframe between work and school where I would have been unable to help my parents with their house.
In taking a Mandarin course at NYU in the spring of 2007, I had found that for whatever reason I do simply enjoy studying foreign languages. I found both the Chinese spoken language and the characters fascinating, but I always felt constrained in my ability to really gain an in-depth knowledge of the language. For example, I often came across characters with multiple parts that usually had some interesting history. Discovering this history usually involved looking up the characters on a Chinese-language-learning website such as http://www.zhongwen.com, where one has the opportunity to “regress” into the character’s history by looking closer at its parts. Unfortunately I felt as though I did not have enough time to both master new vocabulary but also pursue these auxiliary avenues of interest, because of the demands of my work as a legal assistant. I often thought to myself how great it would be to have an opportunity to study a language full-time, and further how much better it would be to do so within a country where the target language is used.
And so I did a little math, thought about my savings and my two-year bonus, considered that I would have plenty of opportunity to work overtime until my resignation date in July 2008, and decided that it would be best to request a year of deferment from law school and put together a plan where I could truly pursue some of these core interests of mine.
In particular, the idea of deepening my knowledge of Mandarin while spending time in Asia was very appealing. I had also never been to a country where Arabic is spoken. With both the Iraq war and rapid Middle East development, Arabic appealed to me as a language that I could simply enjoy studying while also opening new professional opportunities for the future. Notwithstanding the professional aspects, I also had the thought that any international traveling that I would do would be greatly enhanced if I had the opportunity to study both Mandarin and Arabic before traveling in a region where each language is used widely.
And so my plan slowly started to materialize: I would spend eight to ten weeks at a time studying Mandarin and then later Arabic, and after familiarizing myself with the language to an elementary level of spoken and written proficiency, I would travel in the region where knowledge of those languages was widespread.
It seemed that with this plan, I had really solved all of the issues that had constrained me previously. I could build in the time to assist my parents with their house. I could then devote my full attention for significant periods of time to the study of foreign languages. Finally I could travel wherever I wanted, with the added bonus of better appreciating foreign cultures through direct communication and participation.
And of course, I am very grateful that the two years I spent at Skadden in several ways went a long way to bring this plan both through conception and to fruition.
6. Request for Deferment from UC Berkeley School of Law
While some schools – Columbia Law School in particular comes to mind – have very liberal deferment policies, it seemed like UC Berkeley required a more concrete plan when requesting deferment. I was initially worried since when I was requesting deferment I did not know precise details about what I would be doing, although I had a very good idea of my motivations. Perhaps this showed through, or perhaps my general ideas were precise enough. In any case, the Law School admissions office granted my deferment request.
7. The Plan for the Deferment Year
As intimated above, in a nutshell my plan for the deferment year is to (a) help my parents build their new home; (b) study Mandarin and Arabic full-time; and (c) travel.
a. Parents’ New House
From early August through mid-September, I was able to help my parents with their house. While I wish I could have stayed longer in upstate New York to have helped and done more, I think that this part of my plan worked out rather successfully. In particular:
We were able to complete significant landscaping work, starting from scratch in early August and seeing a fledgling lawn grow by mid-September. I hear that it’s even been recently mowed. The plot of land where the house is being built, though mostly flat, was still in need of a significant amount of work. We wanted to shape the land so that water would consistently flow away from and around the house and not form large puddles. We also wanted to extend the yard and decrease the slope of the land nearer the house by using dirt from another part of the plot. To do this, we rented a bulldozer for about two weeks and bulldozed away.
[Picture of me operating the bulldozer.]
We also completed a significant portion of the wood framing and molding work. This involved a great deal of time and labor in steel-wooling and sanding; filling nail holes with putty; re-staining parts of the molding that had previously been done improperly by the contractor; and applying a final coat of varnish to all of the woodwork as necessary. By the time I left, we had managed to complete the inside of my bedroom, the office, and the guestroom. Nearing completion were my sister’s bedroom and the hallways. I also managed to stain the staircase leading into the attic mostly on my own, from the sanding phase to pre-treatment conditioning, staining, sealing, re-sanding, and applying two coats of varnish.
On the day before my flight to Shanghai, we also managed to move the computer desk and computer with accessories into the office of the new house.
b. Mandarin and Arabic: Substantive Study Experiences
From mid-September to mid-November, I will be living in Shanghai and studying Mandarin full-time. One of the weeks, there will be no classes due to the National Day holiday, so I am left with seven weeks of full-time language work.
From early March to early May 2009, I plan to study Arabic in Cairo full-time for ten weeks.
c. International Travel
Following my time in Shanghai, in mid-November I will travel to Seoul, then tour Japan with a group, and finally I will spend a week in Taiwan before returning to the United States for my birthday and Christmas.
I will return to Asia at the end of December. Between the New Year and early March, I will be taking an organized tour of Southeast Asia and also of Indonesia – from Jakarta to Bali – before flying to the Middle East. Between the tours I will have time to explore Malaysia and Singapore. From Bali I will fly to the United Arab Emirates to visit Abu Dhabi and Dubai for about a week, and I am particularly excited to see the Burj Dubai skyscraper currently under construction.
Following the study experience in Cairo, I hope to travel within the Middle East, take a tour in Morocco, explore Brazil and Ecuador, and finally do an organized tour from Peru, through Bolivia, and into Argentina with some time in the Amazon and at Machu Picchu.
At the very end of July I will return to the United States to prepare for the mid-August move to Berkeley.
8. Unexpected Returns
Beyond the excitement of seeing these plans start to come to life, I have also been pleasantly surprised by some unexpected returns of this year-long experience.
Being free to devote as much or as little time per day as I need to language study, I have found it very liberating and enlightening to be able to spend time reading and researching topics such as politics, economics, science and technology, social issues, and other areas. Of particular interest have been the November Presidential election and also the unfolding of the financial crisis around the globe.
I am also happy to finally join the blogging world. Not only is it a great way to keep a type of journal throughout this experience, but I have finally found a suitable outlet for my own opinions on issues that are important to me that where I can now have an informed opinion following the ability to read and research the news.
More than just keeping a personal blog, a larger unexpected profit of this deferment year is that I am able to contribute to the organized and accessible collection of human knowledge. With a blog that is searchable by Google, not only can others find a journal of someone’s travels but perhaps they will also hit upon information that is useful to them. For instance, before I left the U.S., I was able to find information about the new Vietnamese Consulate in Shanghai by reading discussion boards of expats in Shanghai. I took that information and put a point indicating the approximate consulate location on Google Maps which anyone can find by doing a simple search of Google Maps. After going to the consulate for a visa, I updated that Google Map point with a more precise, experience-based description of the consulate location, and I also added a photo so that future visitors can have that helpful reference. More generally, I am very happy to think that, once I have done the legwork in finding something – be it a physical place or perhaps a new argument or thought – then others have an opportunity to take that discovery for their own use without having to duplicate work already done.
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Thank you for reading through, and be sure to leave any questions, tips, or any other reactions as Comments.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Shanghai Dream Food: The Egg McMao / 手抓饼 / Shǒu Zhuā Bǐng
In my search for a good "jian bing" in Shanghai (these are much more popular in Beijing, I gather) I had a classmate describe for me something that she calls the Egg McMao. A Google search reveals that this term has been in use for quite some time, and so I became obsessed with finding the Shanghai Egg McMao. And find it I did.
Describing what the Egg McMao exactly is is a little difficult, but here's a go. Basically, there is a dough-pancake acting as a wrap for the inside ingredients which ends up deliciously tasting as though it's been deep-fried in butter. On top of this is an egg, and you can add things like meat slices, cheese, chopped up green things, and some sauce that reminded me of ketchup. I paid 7 RMB for mine -- a premium over the Beijing Jian Bings that I've had in the past, but worth every bit of it.
I've posted the location of the place on one of my Google Maps. When you go to http://maps.google.com, type in the search "shanghai egg mcmao" and you should get one result. This will show you the location of the Egg McMao that's the tastiest one I've come across so far. (Or click here.)
Otherwise, follow these directions. Coming from the east, anywhere east of People's Square, get onto Huai Hai Lu and continue walking west. Turn left at Song Shan Lu, which is located just before you see the above-road passageway between buildings on opposite sides of the street. Continue down this road, probably past a good number of parked bicycles, until you reach the corner. Just a couple of steps from the corner is a small hole-in-the-wall place which makes the Egg McMao.
And of course the name of the thing isn't "Egg McMao." A day or two after I made my trek, my Mandarin teacher was able to figure out what we were talking about. It's a "手抓饼 / Shǒu Zhuā Bǐng". I suppose that means it's a relative of the Jian Bing but it isn't exactly the same thing.
Here are some photos that should tickle your tastebuds:
Here's the place at the corner of Song Shan Lu and Tai Cang Lu which serves these things up.
The beginnings of a shou zhua bing:
Filling choices at this place. This guy had a very impressive assortment. I've found one shou zhua bing place that's much closer to my apartment, but they don't have any of the green items (although they apparently serve up "Hawaiian" and "Banana/Cheese" shou zhua bing):
Shou Zhua Bing in-progress:
And even more progress:
Looks like a beautiful, tasty rose, doesn't it?
Enjoy!
Describing what the Egg McMao exactly is is a little difficult, but here's a go. Basically, there is a dough-pancake acting as a wrap for the inside ingredients which ends up deliciously tasting as though it's been deep-fried in butter. On top of this is an egg, and you can add things like meat slices, cheese, chopped up green things, and some sauce that reminded me of ketchup. I paid 7 RMB for mine -- a premium over the Beijing Jian Bings that I've had in the past, but worth every bit of it.
I've posted the location of the place on one of my Google Maps. When you go to http://maps.google.com, type in the search "shanghai egg mcmao" and you should get one result. This will show you the location of the Egg McMao that's the tastiest one I've come across so far. (Or click here.)
Otherwise, follow these directions. Coming from the east, anywhere east of People's Square, get onto Huai Hai Lu and continue walking west. Turn left at Song Shan Lu, which is located just before you see the above-road passageway between buildings on opposite sides of the street. Continue down this road, probably past a good number of parked bicycles, until you reach the corner. Just a couple of steps from the corner is a small hole-in-the-wall place which makes the Egg McMao.
And of course the name of the thing isn't "Egg McMao." A day or two after I made my trek, my Mandarin teacher was able to figure out what we were talking about. It's a "手抓饼 / Shǒu Zhuā Bǐng". I suppose that means it's a relative of the Jian Bing but it isn't exactly the same thing.
Here are some photos that should tickle your tastebuds:
Here's the place at the corner of Song Shan Lu and Tai Cang Lu which serves these things up.
The beginnings of a shou zhua bing:
Filling choices at this place. This guy had a very impressive assortment. I've found one shou zhua bing place that's much closer to my apartment, but they don't have any of the green items (although they apparently serve up "Hawaiian" and "Banana/Cheese" shou zhua bing):
Shou Zhua Bing in-progress:
And even more progress:
Looks like a beautiful, tasty rose, doesn't it?
Enjoy!
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