Looking Back: First Arrival in Beijing回首往事之初到北京

In preparation for a Twitter chat with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Ann Stock about living abroad, I’ve been reviewing the journals I kept during my first trip to China. It was only four years – or 1/6 of my life – but it seems like forever. I felt like a completely different person, with ever-changing views about my own identity and perspectives on the United States, China, and the world. It was an existentially tumultuous time. But also a fun time, where everything was an exploration and an adventure. I would like to share my first entry, and one of my earliest struggles trying (and failing) to speak Chinese.

I will shortly arrive in Beijing. After twenty-some hours of traveling, I can rest my weary, jet-lagged head.

It goes like this:

The flight to Hong Kong went north from New York, around the Arctic, and south over Russia, Mongolia, and China. The sights were incredible. I got to see the vastness of enormous parts of the world that very few people ever get to see – places like Siberia and the Gobi Desert. I also got to see a good amount of China from above. I could make out step farms that reached all the way up to the tops of mountains. They must be thousands of years old. I could make out tons of suburbs, each with visibly organized housing, farming, and industrial areas. It was strikingly different than when flying over the United States, where golf courses, lone houses, and random factories often look interlaced from above.

Also on the way, I found out that the flight to Hong Kong would fly directly over Beijing. Hong Kong is a three-hour flight from Beijing. I was at the Hong Kong airport for an hour. So, that’s an extra seven hours of unnecessary travel. But I probably saved about $500 dollars by doing it that way. Oh well.

One of the many things I didn’t prepare for was my own fear of using Chinese. I just assumed that I’d speak as much Chinese as I possibly could all the time. But when I was actually faced with the opportunity/ challenge to do so, I realized it takes much more audacity than I expected.

When I arrived at the Hong Kong International Airport, I had no idea where I needed to go next. There was only an hour before my connecting flight to Beijing, and I was just going wherever the moving walkways led me. Eventually, I found the transfer check-in area. I approached the desk, where two young attendants were chatting in Mandarin. I had a burning desire to speak to them in Chinese, but I didn’t say anything. I was afraid that I wouldn’t understand them or they wouldn’t understand me – and that would just be a total mess. So I looked at them, and they looked at me. And they looked at me, and I looked at them. That went on to the point of being awkward, until they spoke to me in English. After that, it was just an English conversation. They told me where to go and then I was on my way.

I doubt they had any idea of the epic struggle that had gone on in my head. I know my proactive side will start to win, as I get more comfortable speaking. But the more I think about it, the more trivial that struggle seems anyway. The flight attendants, shop owners, and whoever else don’t really care what language I use, they just want to complete whatever transaction is at hand as smoothly as possible. I’m the one with the trans-cultural dilemma, not them.

It’s just a matter of pushing myself into that uncomfortable zone until it becomes a bit more comfortable. It will probably take months, but that’s what I came here for! Regardless, I’ll be learning and loving it every minute no matter how much of a hopeless 老外 I seem at first.

This is one of my first failed attempts at applying the Chinese I learned in the classroom to the real world. Little did I know at the time there’d be many more to come. But I stuck through the discomfort and letdowns. As you’ll see in later posts, I forced myself to stay in and study, to hang out only with Chinese friends, and to speak or read Chinese at every opportunity. It was rough. Yet, to my own surprise, I was fluent just one year later.

在准备与美国副国务卿Ann Stock关于旅居海外的推特聊天时，我开始翻看自己第一次到中国时的日记记录。虽然只有短短的四年（我目前人生的六分之一），但好像一辈子那么长。我觉得自己完全像另外一个人，对于自己的身份和对美国，中国乃至世界的认识在不停地变化着。那是我人生中世界观极为混乱的时段，但同时也是非常有趣的一段经历。我探索着身边的一切事物，犹如一场冒险。我想要分享一下我初到中国的经历，也是我第一次尝试讲中文（失败）的经历。