Mental Preparations

So I'm sort of obsessed with reading everything I can about China right now. I've been interested all summer, of course, reading memoirs and such, but lately I've been trolling the Chinese English-speaking blogs on overload. There are many more that I check daily than what I have listed on this site. It's become an OCD thing, but I'm telling myself that it's for my own good. Only a couple more weeks and I will be in Beijing, dealing with all the things I have been reading about.

It's funny but I can't remember having such enthusiasm/anxiety when I was preparing to go to London. I guess I figured, it's not that different there... we all speak English. And in truth the culture shock was not noticeable, until, of course, I returned to the States. Then it was: what are these huge cars? Why are the eggs white? Why is the American Deal or No Deal so bad? And most importantly: Why can't I drink???

China, understandably, causes more worry as I prepare to depart and leave the relative ease with which I live my everyday life here. Not to say that NYC is by any means a stress-free living environment, but at least I know that going to the bank, or buy groceries, and taking the subway is an easy affair. Most particularly because of the language thing. I've been wringing my hands the past couple years about how terrible my spoken Chinese is. Right now I'm pretty confident in my reading ability, since that's what we focused on most last semester in class (thanks, Laoshi?). But when it comes to listening comprehension, I more often than not fail. FAIL.

Anyway, from what I've been reading, apparently the Chinese language is not all that difficult to pick up when you're forced to use it. In terms of grammar I suppose it's less complicated than English; the tones are what usually trip me up, and that ties in to the vocab. Which is probably why I'm so dependent on characters: I need to be able to visualize words when I hear/speak them, so if there's a word I don't know, simply saying it slowly with the correct tones probably won't help much.

And the second concern after language difficulties: air pollution! I really, really don't want to wear a mask while I walk or bike around the city. I'm used to walking everywhere and love going to parks when I get the chance. NYC is perhaps not the cleanest city, but it's nowhere near as smoggy as Beijing or even LA. So I'll be home for a week in Ohio, sucking up as much fresh Midwestern air as possible, and then resign myself to four months of foulness, unfortunately. I'm crossing my fingers that Olympic pollution precautions will remain in effect. It seems rational to me that if you have to take measures to make air clean for world healthy standards you would want to keep it clean so that the natives can enjoy that, too. Indefinitely. But perhaps hoping for rationality is too much...

Anyway, everyone's eyes are on China now, and I will be watching closely to see how the Olympics pan out. The interesting thing will be to compare the media's coverage with the blogs' and see if they match up. Funny that I somehow trust the blogged opinions of people living in Beijing over what the NYTimes or other "reputable" sources have to say on matters. Just the crazy world we live in today, I guess.