I feel like I’ve had it happen before, the clock running down, the last classes approaching, the impending arrival of summer and the freedom that it brings.  Yet this year is different, as I will be leaving China now.  I’m still in the process of sorting all of that out.  Walking home the other day and entering campus at the east gate, I couldn’t help but peer into the guard booth.  China has this weird thing with placing these 17 year old boys as guards in oversized clothes everywhere.  The kid at the computer was playing solitaire.  The other guard on duty was sitting behind him, giving advice about the game.  Few other things I could think of better encapsulate the Chinese need to have another around….always.  It was all very oddly appropriate.

At the university of a friend of mine is the above food, the wrinkly white stuff being changfen, a breakfast staple of Guangdong province made of a rice/water mix that is steamed with meat or veggies.  I love it, yet it was only with great disappointment that I found that it is near impossible to locate in the north.  At this point, when I can find it in Beijing, few things make me happier.  Later on that same day on the same campus was an outdoor book sale going on, cheap prices, so I picked up a book recommended to me.  They had a Chinese copy of “How to Win Friends and Influence Others”.  The more comic aspect of it is that the Chinese title translates roughly to “Humanity’s Weaknesses” and I think it covers the gap in cultures between the two countries rather well.  This is one of the reasons that it is great to be able to read again.

Good news too here.  My friend Matt introduced to me a northern specialty of which I was previously unaware.  It is a shredded meat mixed with some peppers in a warm fresh cooked flatbread or bing in Chinese.  Oh yes, and the meat is donkey.  Despite this odd origin, it tastes pretty awesome.  There are small shops all over Beijing and other northern cities, as I’ve finally noticed, that sell this snack food.  The menus are a bit horrifying though…nearly every part of the donkey is available, from the liver to the skin, the eyes to the pen…nether regions.  I guess I’m not as adventurous as I’d thought.  I mused with a friend that it would be fascinating to track the supply chain of the donkeys from restaurant back to their source.  I imagine some ruddy farmer in Inner Mongolia with a dreary grassland full of ornery donkeys.

Last of the more recent events in my life in Beijing has been the HSK, the standardized Chinese proficiency test used to gauge us foreigners and our ability with the local language.  I’ll not say too much about the ironies of this test except that the listening portion features speakers who are straight of the textbook and I’ve never, not once, heard an actual Chinese speaker talk in such a way.  It was almost harder because of that.  Within a month’s time I hope to have a little certificate with my name on it as proof that I am at level 4 on the 6 rung ascending ladder.  Far more work for Chinese than I ever did for German.

Indeed i am hoping to continue that work, and have been on a bit of a shopping spree, which for any of you who know me, can guess that this is quite unusual behavior.  I picked up 3 tv series on dvd from the street, a few novels (also from the street), and even more exciting yesterday was the trip to the bookstore yesterday where I bought not one but two city planning books in Chinese.  More materials will be picked up along the way and hopefully I’ll be able to keep up my work with this language and keep pressing forward in it.  The good news about going to Vancouver is that the city is roughly 20% Chinese.  Yes.  Not just Asian.  But Chinese.  Quite exciting for me as a venue to keep continuing on in the language.  Now if I could just find a venue to practice German at.