4.5 Months - A Retrospective

(NB: Posted retroactively because I'm occasionally pretty lazy. Most of this comes from January 15th)


It's -18 degrees C outside, the 'no smoking' signs are about as honest and useful as the 'no bargaining' signs in Chinese department stores, and I've just eaten a caviar crepe for breakfast. I'm in Moscow, or, more accurately, the international part of Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport (protip: don't fly Aeroflot unless you *absolutely* have to, like for an intra-Russian connection that S7 doesn't operate on. If you're flying China - Europe on a tight budget, do yourself the favor and fly LOT Polish instead... I didn't know I could even *have* cramps in some of these muscles), and I've just left China for my winter break. This seems as good as any to (at least in an abridged form) list some things I learned from my first 4.5 months in YCA and living in Beijing.


1) It turns out that bad air quality actually affects your concentration and productivity. This is *definitely* noticeable if you forget to turn on your air purifier during essay-writing season.
2) PKU has mastered the art of late-night college food. Starting at around 10pm and until later than I've ever been up, there's chuar (any sorts of meat on a stick), malatang (boiled meat and vegetables served with peanut sauce), the best fried noodles I have ever had in my life (my Chinese teacher passed on a rumor that street noodles occasionally are spiked so you get addicted and come back often, but if you can afford to spike noodles for less than the 10RMB price, there are probably some more pressing drug problems that should be looked into...), and cheap beer at stands all around and just outside of my part of campus.

3) If the air is clean, Beijing is absolutely gorgeous. You can see the mountains in 2+ directions, you can go hiking, you can go to one of the many beautiful parks (Yuanmingyuan being my favorite), you can go for long walks to explore random neighborhoods, and it's more or less always sunny...

4) ... but the air is only clean around 1/3 of the time. This usually happens when the wind shifts and powerful gusts come through the mountain passes to the Northwest of Beijing from more sparsely populated Inner Mongolia. In the spring, so I'm told and will likely find out soon enough, these winds bring sandstorms (in the words of a frustrated Soviet planning advisor in the 50s, "Beijing lacks sufficient water resources, and is plagued by wind and sand [and jesus, why would you build a city here, why?]"). Otherwise, the air runs the gamut from 'eh, this sucks, but I can go outside', to 'I can literally not see the next block over'. The airport gets shut down in the latter case sometimes because jets literally can't see the next jet ahead of them on the taxiway.

5) The Beijing accent is instantly recognizable, and almost universally vilified outside of Beijing. It primarily consists of changing any -ng, -n, -uan, and similar syllabic endings to words to a guttural 'arrr' sound, though depending on how BeijingRen someone is, they might even change -ou and other vowel-ish endings as well. You get used to it pretty quickly, and it's fun to use (actually a necessity on occasion, I've had several cab drivers not understand "Xizhimen" as a destination but understand "Xizhimarr" instead). Non-Beijingers will however make fun of you when you call a gate a 'marr' instead of a 'men' or a bottle a 'piaarrrrr' instead of a 'ping'.

6) Taobao access is crucial. My life pre-Taobao was filled with frustration. My life post-Taobao includes a fluffy red rug in my room (~$10), my air purifier (~$18), a sound system coming in next week... In short, much of modern life in Beijing requires online banking and an Alipay or at least a WeChat Wallet account.


7) I honestly love this place. I'm incredibly excited for my second semester, in which I will hopefully start digging deeper and really start to get to know the incredible number of unique neighborhoods this city has and will continue to develop in the future. I have some really cool research opportunities coming up (I'll likely dig much deeper into Beijing's urban development and infrastructure planning in my master's thesis, and there might be some posts on here about a certain trip to the Russian Far East in June.....), and I'm incredibly thankful to the Academy and to the people I've met here for giving me this opportunity to get to know, at least a little bit, this fascinating city and country.