Tag: china

A Warm Welcome and Intro to Me

Hi and welcome to my blog! My name is Jane Li and I’m a rising sophomore at Yale College who will be attending Harvard Beijing Academy this summer. Thank you to Yale’s Light Fellowship for making my trip possible! I hope that through this blog you will not only learn about what being a student at HBA is like, but also get a good sense of who I am and what it’s like for a person of Chinese heritage born and raised in America to spend time in China for the culture and language immersion. Enjoy the ride!

To start, here are some details about myself. My hobbies include cooking (mostly asian food), playing pool, and sports like table tennis, softball, and volleyball. I list these sports but that doesn’t mean I’m any good at them, hah! I’m still undeclared, but my main interests are environmental studies and potentially east asian studies; we’ll see how I feel about that after this summer! I love to be in nature and spend time in the outdoors. There I’m most happy and at peace. I’m generally a pretty happy person. The number one thing I ask for from life to be happy/feel fulfilled is to have good relationships–a good network of friends and family I can count on.

I know I said I like cooking mostly Asian food but here is a pic of me making naan pizza.. This doesn’t really count as cooking cuz it’s easy to make, but still 😛

A bit about my family and heritage: I’m a part of a family of four, so me, my mom, dad, and older sister. My parents immigrated from Shanghai to NYC in the 90s. I was born and raised in Queens, NY. My parents raised me speaking Shanghai dialect, so I grew up learning English of course and also Shanghainese from them. Along the way, I also had my interactions with Mandarin through my parents’ interactions with other Mandarin speakers and possibly through Chinese TV. However, I never actually spoke Mandarin at home, only a mix of Shanghainese and English. In that sense, even though I’ve always been ashamed of my inability to speak Mandarin, I guess I should actually be proud of myself having picked up Mandarin in a family that doesn’t use Mandarin! That ABC lack of language/culture shame is real ya’ll…

Shout out to my ABC-ness. 4-year-old Jane sitting in Central Park with a dinosaur nugget wonder bread sandwich in one hand and a Capri Sun in the other. I was a cool kid, okay?

I didn’t have any formal Mandarin education growing up. I took Latin in high school. In college I thought, okay, it’s finally time to learn a modern language and it’s about high time I learn Mandarin before I get old, my brain stops functioning as optimally, and it’s too late to actually become at least somewhat fluent. So here I am, having taken a year of Mandarin at Yale (3rd year heritage track, 132 and 142). Let’s hope my minimal Chinese speaking practice in class will do me some justice in Beijing.

(For any Yale student and prospective light fellowship awardee): Please do feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about HBA! In the week leading up to HBA I was trying to read up on as many blogs as possible to see what the experience would be like, curious about things from the workload to even how the dorms/hotel living space looked. Ask me anything and if it’s within my scope of knowledge I’ll answer!

I’ve never blogged before, but I recently started journaling, which I’ve really enjoyed, so I’m excited to be writing this and especially excited to share my journey and thought process with you all! Entries should come out at least once a week!

Special shout out to Yale’s Light Fellowship which funded all the costs for my summer 2019! I bet it’ll be a summer I won’t forget!

(Up Next: Pre-Departure, Mental and Physical Prep)