I’ve been here a month. I’d been here before — not just to Beijing but this exact area. I taught a month at Beijing University, right next to Tsinghua, met lots of PKU students, who are similar to Tsinghua students. So many aspects of life here don’t surprise me. But here are four things that have surprised me.
- The beauty of the Tsinghua campus. It’s huge, more like a village than a campus, and it has an unusual Jane-Jacobsian beauty. Lots of new building, lots of old buildings, vast diversity of uses (elementary school, high school, big natatorium, little corner shops that repair bikes, barbers, tailors), lots of paths of different sizes through lots of greenery. Few cars, lots of bikes. It isn’t pedestrian friendly because things are so far apart but it is very bike-friendly. Basically quiet.
- How much time I spend bike riding. Perhaps an hour in a typical day. It is still a little scary to ride outside campus but I have seen a vast amount of bike riding and no accidents. There are big bike lanes — very different from Japan.
- How slowly I am learning Chinese. I thought I would learn in some conventional way — hire a tutor, go through a textbook — but the one tutor I tried was boring and the conversational textbooks teach stuff people never say (just as my Chinese friends reply to “thank you” with “not at all”). But I do have a burning desire to learn, it is connecting that desire with the right knowledge that is the problem. Ideally I would have someone with me all the time and when I wanted to say something or understand something I would be told the answer.
- How rarely I leave my neighborhood. I’ve gone downtown once. I went somewhere else once. Just getting internet access has taken a significant amount of time.
Basically I’ve been turned into a child. Learning the language, bike riding, not going far from home. Fortunately without school to attend.