18 June, 2011 (later)
I did it. Everything on my "To Do List" has a check next to it. I have packed my life for the next two weeks into one suitcase with roller wheels and a smallish day pack. The weird thing is not actually taking the instrument I am going to play. Yang qins are heavy mothers, so I am grateful that one will be waiting for me in Shanghai. Did I mention how I had wanted to play a nice light, easy to play bamboo flute? I have paid $11.00 to Delta Airlines for a 24 hour subscription to their on-board WiFi service, so it looks like I will be able to blog en route! Stay tuned!
18 June, 2011
I just returned yesterday from a family trip to Michigan. We camped on the north shore of Lake Michigan not far from Manistique. It was good to have some family time before my long trip.
This morning I awoke with the dawn (5:ish?) with thoughts of packing and preparing fluttering around my brain like a cage full of nervous birds. I have spent the morning with all of the mundane preparations before a long trip: laundry, computer chores, packing, repacking, etc.
Professor Meng sent an itinerary while I was away. You can see it at the bottom of this posting. It looks like we will be pleasantly busy, but not too busy to adventure out on our own occasionally. I'm looking forward to the side trips and the museums, but disappointed that Hangzhou is not on the list. Everyone says it is beautiful there.
Notice the Chinese characters for Morning, Afternoon and Evening. 上 (shang) and 下 (xia) which are opposites of each other. 上 means above, over, or before and 下 means below, under or after. The repeated character in words for morning and afternoon is 午 (wu) which means noon, so in the Chinese mind, time and gravity flow in the same direction. The word for morning translates to before (or above) noon and the word from afternoon could translate to below noon. (See Deborah Tannen's book Dreaming in Chinese for more on this.) On a lighter note, another word for afternoon is pronounced wu hou (as in Woo Hoo!).
Shanghai Conservatory of Music (SCOM)
Workshop for Foreign Students of Traditional Chinese Instruments
Itinerary (tentative)
| 日期Date | 星期 Week | 上午 Morning | 下午 Afternoon | 晚上 Evening |
| 6/19 | 日 | 11：50 AM / Delta 6274T Leave Chicago O’Hare Airport |
|
|
| 6/20 | 一 |
|
| 6:40PM Arrive at Shanghai Pudong Airport |
| 6/21 | 二 | 8:00-9:30 Registration/Opening Ceremony 10 a.m. to 11:30 am Chinese course | 14:00-15:30 Group Tutoring | Free Time |
| 6/22 | 三 | 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Master Class | 14:00-15:30 Lecture No.1 | 7:00-8:30 Group Practice |
| 6/23 | 四 | 10 a.m. to 11:30 am Chinese course | 14:00-15:30 Group Tutoring | 7:00-8:30 Group Practice |
| 6/24 | 五 | 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Master Class | 14:00-15:30 Group Tutoring | Free Time |
| 6/25 | 六 | Visit Museum of Oriental Musical | Instruments etc. |
|
| 6/26 | 日 | Free Time | Sightseeing: Old Town of Shanghai |
Sightseeing: The Bund
|
| 6/27 | 一 | 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Master Class | 14:00-15:30 Group Tutoring | 7:00-8:30 Group Practice |
| 6/28 | 二 | 10 a.m. to 11:30 am Chinese course | 14:00-15:30 Lecture No.2 | 7:00-8:30 Group Practice |
| 6/29 | 三 | 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Master Class | 14:00-15:30 Group Tutoring | 7:00-8:30 Group Practice |
| 6/30 | 四 | 10 a.m. to 11:30 am Chinese course | 14:00-15:30 Group Tutoring | 7:00-8:30 Group Practice |
| 7/1 | 五 | 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Master Class | 14:00-15:30 Group Tutoring | 结业式 Graduation ceremony |
| 7/2 | 六 | Visit Pudong New Area, Oriental TV Tower, Nanjing Road, Yu Garden | ||
| 7/3 | 日 | Early Morning Train to Nanjing | Sightseeing: Nanjing Museum/ Zhongshan Park | Sleeper Train to Beijing |
| 7/4 | 一 | Check in the Guest House at China Conservatory | Visit the Great Wall | Beijing Duck Meal |
| 7/5 | 二 |
Visit the Forbidden City | Visit Qianmen Shopping District | Free Time |
| 7/6 | 三 | 7：25 AM /Delta 181T Leave Beijing Airport | 12:34 PM Arrive at Chicago O’Hare Airport |
|
[12 June, 2011
My sister posted a comment that I am going to try. Thanks, Sarah!
I hate gum (for awhile I would chew gum once a year, just to make sure, but now I have moved to the ten year plan), but I could try mints or green tea or something like that.
11 June, 2011
I have spent the evening inviting people like you to read this blog. Then, I started finding all of my type-os, poor wording and rambling sentences. The pressure is on!
I have spent significant amounts of time trying to cram a few more words of Chinese into my skull, then this afternoon, I played music for a wedding ceremony that included a Chinese bride and several Chinese guests. I sat at a table with the guests during the reception and tried to follow the conversation... yeah... right. Possibly one word in ten, but I think I might be flattering myself.
Deborah Fallows wrote a worthy book, called Dreaming in Chinese, in which she chronicles "Mandarin lessons in Life, Love, and Language." In the last chapter, entitled "A Little Goes a Long Way, she recounts a moment when, after having lived in China for two years, she watches a TV show that is partly in Mandarin and partly in Spanish. She goes on, "I watched for a while and then realized, a bit heartsick, that . . . I could understand more Spanish than Chinese--and the closest I had ever come to studying Spanish was French!" She goes on to report that linguists agree that Chinese is one of the hardest languages for English speakers to learn and that one of the hardest things is to just retain what you have learned.
When I read this, I started to feel a little better about what I have learned and remembered, but after my wedding, I'm feeling rattled and shy and I haven't even left the country yet. There is no doubt about it: this trip is going to call on some inner reserves... along with the Chinese people's knowledge of English!
1 June, 2011
My passport with my visa inside it arrived in the mail today! The visa sticker is really quite lovely, but since the US government is fussy about copying passports, I think that it might also be a mistake to post a copy of the visa. I'll be happy to show it to you in person.
This brings to mind a part of my life that I have always been secretly disappointed in. When I was in college, I imagined that I would be a world traveler. I though that my music would take me all over the world. It did a fairly good job of taking me places in the British Isles, but then I went home again, think as I did so that I would get a job, make some money, and be traveling again in a year's time. As John Lennon famously said, "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans." Having a visa to travel to the People's Republic of China is helping me to become the world traveler that I always wanted to be.