Beijing Blog Part 14: The Final Entry

August 10, 2009-(O’Hare International Airport – Chicago, Illinois)

I think that it was about two weeks before today when it finally hit me that I’d be leaving Beijing soon. It finally occurred to me that this great adventure, which started out with a simple blog entry from Tokyo and took me to, quite literally, the tops of mountains and the foot of mansions, would finally come to an end.

The altar at Zhongshan Park, located adjacent to the Forbidden City, has 5 different colored soils each representing a different aspect of feng shui.

Perhaps that’s why I made it my mission in the last two weeks in China to visit the five major temples of Beijing, 天坛 (Temple of Heaven), 地坛 (Temple of the Earth), 日坛 (Temple of the Sun), 月坛 (Temple of the Moon), and 中山公园. These temples resembled the base of Chinese worship, and thus, were natural places to go on an adventure.

And what an adventure it was. With the exception of the Temple of Heaven, the most popular of the five, and a tourist haven and trap at the same time, the other parks seldom had many people, and were often much cheaper. The Temple of Heaven cost 40 RMB ($7 US) for a ticket to visit all of the locations; the other areas often had tickets of no more than 2 RMB ($0.30 US). And these locations were much quieter too, providing for the perfect place to study and practice flute.

But even today, while sitting during my 4 hour wait in O’Hare, surrounded by dozens of people, waiting to go to their respective families, jobs, destinations, it really is a final conclusion to a phenomenal trip.

I feel like the William and Mary program was more than just a language program, it was a full on immersion in the culture and environment of China. The teachers may have just taught words, vocabulary and phrases, but the program urged you, no forced you to live in their life, speak their language, and finally, and perhaps the most difficult, become part of their world.

You really don’t notice just how different the United States is from the rest of the world until you actually go to visit the rest of the world, until you live their life, until you attempt to step into their shoes and walk in their footsteps.

I think the biggest proof of what exactly I accomplished there occurred when I stayed over in Japan for a night. In more than one instance, instead of speaking my native tongue, Japanese, I ended up speaking Chinese just on an impulse. Perhaps even worse, I ended up having a reverse culture shock, of sorts, at how different Japan was from China in general.

As I sit here in O’Hare, I feel the same reverse culture shock between Asia and the United States. It really is a different country here, a different atmosphere that you just can’t copy in any other place. And it really is unique and truly “western”.

And I felt like this program taught me one big lesson throughout the two months in the foreign country. It was that my Chinese level wasn’t the issue when considering my level before and after the trip. All of my problems in Chinese, was simply a matter of confidence. All the vocabulary (minus a couple key words), were already in my brain. I guess it just took a little bit of urging and a foreign environment to bring out the Chinese within.

Perhaps my biggest fear now is losing this newfound confidence in my Chinese. My Chinese excelled, only because it was

The West Gate of Tsinghua University. That day, it was teeming with tourists that wanted to see the MIT of China.

the only thing that I was facing for the greater part of 2 months. Now that I’m here in America, in an English-dominant environment, I guess the program is simply urging me to take initiative to speak Chinese on my own terms, to seek out conversations.

Regardless, to say that this program did not teach me anything, would not only be an understatement, it would be completely and utterly false. Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned on this trip was quite simply, to go to new places, learn new things, and always seek out new experiences. For only then can you call yourself a true “world traveler”.