Current sophomore

Heritage student, took CHNS 132 and 142 at Yale

Shanghainese family, an originally stronger background in Shanghainese than Mandarin

I’m going to try not to do the boring stuff like going through class schedule and giving you HBA logistics. Maybe that’s why you’re here, and I think that’s a very valid reason–I was also curious about what HBA lifestyle would be like while scouring through these–but I’m sure you will find many other students writing about that. I will be writing more emotionally rather than technically about my experiences and thoughts going to China.

Definitely the number one reason I did Light was for language study and immersion. I used to always feel ashamed of speaking Mandarin (before Light). My parents raised me speaking Shanghainese (not Mandarin), and so naturally I learned Shanghainese along with English. Mandarin is something I feel blessed to have somewhat picked up at all. I wouldn’t say my Shanghainese is great, but there’s at least no accent, the tones come naturally to me, and I’m actually better than a lot of Shanghai kids nowadays because they only learn Mandarin growing up, so that’s some nice mother tongue language pride right there! Yay, because growing up, I mostly felt shame regarding my language skills, both Shanghainese and Mandarin, but especially Mandarin. Maybe I was being too self conscious and giving myself too much of a burden, but I really was ashamed. I think that a lot of Chinese Chinese people (so mainland Chinese, or the older Chinese generation that immigrated to the US) automatically assume that because you are Chinese (not quite, we’re Chinese American!) and experience life in a Chinese family, you should know the language and that it’s easy to pick up the language under these circumstances. I have to say that is completely false. If you’re heritage and pretty fluent, awesome! I think that’s great, respect you, and am honestly kind of jealous. But if you aren’t fluent, don’t worry! While you may have been immersed in the Chinese language because of your family life, your whole life is also happening in the U.S! Like I don’t know about you, but I watched Caillou as a three-year-old and began picking up English from there. As soon as I entered pre-school at the age of four, I began learning in English. All my time spent outside the home used English. And when your parents aren’t strict with you about speaking proper Chinese, you don’t just learn it like you would a native Chinese speaker. And then speaking a dialect is a whole other story. Dialects can be quite different from Mandarin!

The teachers at HBA truly are a gem. They are all around grad student age. Mine ranged from age 23-29. But our teachers were are cute, and generally smaller than the American population, so they really don’t seem that old. One regret I have is that I wish I went to office hours more instead of doing work by myself most nights in my room. Honestly you will probably be more productive during office hours because your bedroom is where work goes to die. And even if you end up not being homework productive at office hours, you’ll at least probably be social productive with your classmates and teachers. They’re seriously all so cute and loveable and heartwarming people. SANHUA (3rd year heritage). We got pride;)

Why did I do so well on our daily tingxies (dictation quizzes), tests, and oral presentations? Grade inflation? Yea. The tests at HBA felt easier than the ones at Yale? Yea. Teacher’s were super nice and seemed to not want to give our oral presentations a score below 90? Yea. But that’s not to say the work isn’t a lot. It’s manageable certainly but still significant enough. If when you come back to Yale and continue taking Chinese, you will suddenly find Yale Chinese moving a lot slower. 

Why choose HBA? I think if you’re a heritage student, preferably just having taken 132/142, or maybe 112/122 if you’re bold and place up, I’d recommend HBA. I don’t know about other programs and whether they also have heritage tracks, but I can at least say that in HBA, the 130x, 3rd year heritage class was the bomb. I don’t think any other class makes a bond as tight as the only heritage class in all of HBA’s class levels. If you’re not heritage, HBA is still a great choice if you want to make friends w people from a bunch of other schools, go on the social studies trip to a different part of China, and get to know the amazing teachers. 

Something crazy I have to comment on is that after coming back from China, I realized how American ABCs in America were. As in, before I studied in Chin, every time I saw an ABC in America, their different news from white America, their Chinese-ness would stick out to me. But right after coming back from China, all I could notice was their western ness. This isn’t a bad observation or change. For myself, I realize now that I am Asian American. I don’t think of it as a middle, in between identity, but as its own identity in itself. And instead of feeling like you are lacking in either culture, instead you are a beautiful mix of both cultures. You are your own person.

I really wanted to blog in order to capture all these important thoughts and moments in real time! But sadly life got away with me. I will say, however, that the positive side about not blogging is that I had more time to live in the moment instead of sitting in my room typing away and working on my blog, along with hours studying vocab. So there are pros and cons to blogging. While I didn’t get to cover everything, I hope this report is helpful to some people. Feel free to reach out to me via email if you want to talk more. 

The below was written by me during my flight from Toronto to Beijing. I arrived in Beijing yesterday (Fri. 6/7 afternoon). I’m currently starting this post at 7 am (Sat. 6/8). I’ve been up since 3 am, having only slept 3 hours. I really played myself thinking since I was so tired jet lag wouldn’t be a big problem and that I’d sleep a straight 10 hours since midnight, but boy I was wrong. The jet lag is so real. Here is what I wrote on the plane from Toronto to Beijing:

So this was supposed to be predeparture thoughts and even though I had a 5+ layover in Toronto I didn’t have time to write that out XD. I was too busy trying to finalize and post my first blog haha. So instead this will be more of an In-Departure thought bubble.

I’m currently writing this on the plane from Toronto to Beijing and it still hasn’t really kicked in that I’m doing this! By this, I mean the fact that I’m going to surround myself with Chinese speaking people and need to get used to speaking Chinese. My brain is going to be constipated for at least this first week.

I am slowly starting to regret not looking at any Chinese this past month… the few new words that I learned and still can recall, I cannot recall the writing. Please let me not place down in my placement test. Is that even possible?? I didn’t even download my last year Chinese textbook for this flight. Dumb Jane! I’m wide awake and have all this time to kill. But I guess since it is what it is, I should just try to relax on this flight. A lot of alone time I got going on here. That’s something I wasn’t able to get any of these past two weeks at home with family. Maybe I’ll review a bit when I get to the hotel, but I have a feeling I won’t get to that just due to the business of trying to settle in physically and mentally into a new environment. Wish me luck!

One thing I realize I haven’t thought about are my goals for this summer! Aha.. that’s pretty important!

I’ve heard the teachers are all on the younger side and quite nice, so I’d like to try to become close to my teachers. Since HBA is already naturally such an intimate environment with small class sizes and a daily one on one class, i don’t think it should be too hard. Certainly easier than doing so at Yale in a lecture of 50+ people. I think teachers will also be teaching some extracurricular stuff like calligraphy or other Chinese cultural activities, so I will try to participate in those as much as possible.

I really want to interact more with locals. I have a sense that HBA may be a bit of a bubble with mostly Yale Harvard kids. Still, I hope to sometimes get out of the bubble by trying to strike conversation with a stranger at least once a week and have that develop into some kind of fruitful interaction. This includes talking to people my age, kids, the elderly, you name it. I’m excited. I really like kids so my dream would be to befriend a Chinese family w a little kid or even a cute pudgy baby, haha. We’ll see how that fantasy pans out.

My next post will hopefully be about my first impressions here during week one! It’ll have a lot more interesting stories and cool photos! Let’s just say I’ve taken many L’s.

Side note, I’ve decided to call all my blog viewers with the endearing name “dumplings,” inspired by my blog photo. Special shoutout to a certain someone who took the pic for the inspiration. Dumplings, see you next time.