{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-article-tsx","path":"/primesummerinbeijing","webpackCompilationHash":"e5e838ea24a94317ab29","result":{"data":{"primeArticle":{"headline":"Connecting Across Characters","author":"TULIN CHANG MALTEPE","authorbio":"","authoremail":"","authortwitter":"","coverimg":"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/prime.summerinbeijing/croppedaart-afa3892321c8b858e12c5fb3560ab986.JPEG","covercred":"Tulin Change Maltepe and David Dai","coveralt":"Photo of an alleyway lit up with lanterns at night with bikes and scooters in the foreground.","articleType":"article","updated":"","content":[{"type":"text","value":"I  had never fallen in love with a place in this way."},{"type":"text","value":"The city is a mix of old and new. In its center, the Forbidden City is surrounded by both modern malls and single-story sìhéyuàn-style (四合院) homes that make up the small hútòng (胡同) alleyway. These sìhéyuàn-style homes are a type of traditional Chinese architecture, designed to respect the five elements and Confucian values – key facets of Chinese culture. Inside the hútòng is another layer of juxtaposition: Some sìhéyuàn homes have been converted into modern homes and hotels while others remain inhabited by families who have been there for generations."},{"type":"text","value":"No matter how busy the main streets were, there was always a moment of stillness strolling through the hútòngs in the summer rain, stumbling upon street art, calligraphy stores and even live-music bars."},{"type":"text","value":"The crowds were fierce."},{"type":"text","value":"On the side of Zhōngguāncūn road – the main road separating my dormitory from Peking University’s campus – cars, mopeds, buses, bicycles and swarms of people zoomed past. Even when I was on my way back from a night of eating meat skewers or noodles, people were always present and in motion. The crowds moved through intersections, down tunnels and through stations. People were moving in every direction but still got where they were going."},{"type":"text","value":"My grandfather, who was a civil engineer, had a hand in the infrastructure development that made it possible for me to travel so seamlessly. When the United States established relations with China in 1979, my grandfather, like some of his colleagues who had eventually settled in the U.S., returned to China to build. I got to see the developments that came out of the sacrifices that accompanied those choices."},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"An image of a painting on the wall with a moped in the foreground.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/prime.summerinbeijing/IMG_2900-ef3e6bd1b6c1ee64fc98e6ce9a8e8816.JPEG\",\"credit\":\"Courtesy of Tulin Chang Maltepe\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"Compared to the cities I grew up in, I could zip seamlessly through the city streets on a shared bike – accessible through many of the payment apps that are used daily in China. These bikes are safe to use in a city where protected bike lanes are the norm. Every metro station I walked into was air-conditioned and nearly spotless. The buses connected the areas that weren’t as reachable by train, and, if you needed a car, a driver from DiDi – a rideshare service – would pick you up in minutes."},{"type":"text","value":"The convenience of the city mixed with the buzz of possibility felt fresh in a way my life in Los Angeles and San Francisco did not – these infrastructure elements do not exist at the same scale in the cities I call home."},{"type":"text","value":"I was at Peking University in Beijing, China, to continue learning hànzì (汉字) – Chinese characters – and the dialect pǔtōnghuà (普通话) also known as Mandarin. While I’ve spent my entire life learning pǔtōnghuà, in Beijing, I had to use that skill every day to navigate a place filled with people I had never met. What stuck with me the most during my time in China was how – even in the face of language barriers and cultural differences – the people I met from across the world pushed through them to communicate."},{"type":"text","value":"To forge those connections, I often had to break through other peoples’ perceptions of me. I frequently received prolonged stares and double takes from strangers in the security line at metro stations, while strolling through the hútòngs, at art museums and at the Great Wall."},{"type":"text","value":"Although I am half Chinese, I stood out from the crowd."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"Her mother whispered to the girl, ‘Tell the older sister, welcome to Beijing!’\\\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"On one occasion, I noticed the little girl I was sitting next to look inquisitively at my friends. Against the hush of the subway, I heard her ask her mother in a whispered voice why one of my friends had blonde hair. Once her mother answered, I leaned over and asked the girl if she could guess where we were from. After we exchanged a few words, her mother whispered to the girl, \"Tell the older sister, ‘Welcome to Beijing!’\""},{"type":"text","value":"Often, my friends and I were praised by strangers on the street for our ability to speak in pǔtōnghuà. Even an off-handed \"Excuse me\" or \"Thank you\" was met with a slightly shocked, \"Your Chinese is so good.\" I always found it mildly amusing that whispering a few words brought so many compliments. I hadn’t experienced it before. Even when I was meeting other Peking University students who were from China, they repeatedly praised my pǔtōnghuà, impressed I could keep up with their discussions about politics and their doctoral research."},{"type":"text","value":"After too much praise, I embarrassed myself by saying, \"Your Chinese is so good, too!\""},{"type":"text","value":"One of my professors explained that Chinese people in China praised us not out of politeness but rather out of encouragement. They knew firsthand how difficult learning pǔtōnghuà was, so they encouraged foreigners to learn for the sake of passing down the language, she added."},{"type":"text","value":"I found this to be true in pockets across the city. Toward the end of my trip, I was strolling the small streets of the 798 Art Zone, a district full of art museums, galleries, thrift stores and artisanal goods. As I shopped for handmade leather goods, the store’s shopkeeper praised me for continuing my language education. He said, \"We need more people who can act as bridges between our cultures.\""},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"An image of tall buildings in the city lit up at night, with cyclists and cars in the foreground.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/prime.summerinbeijing/401bae7484388759dec3cad413ec01d3-6559f27f24d81a25ad4e91688c98930b.jpg\",\"credit\":\"Courtesy of Tulin Chang Maltepe\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"After returning from Beijing, I developed a greater appreciation for the way language can be used to communicate cultural nuances. Given this encouragement, I was all the more motivated to learn."},{"type":"text","value":"As someone who has grown up juggling three very different languages at home, learning another language is a matter of trial and error, picking yourself up when you make mistakes and pushing through despite stumbling. Fluency waxes and wanes with your surroundings and the amount of effort you put into practicing. When I don’t have an immersive environment now like I did in Beijing, I find fluency quickly slipping through my fingers."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"To my professor, everything that came out of our mouths sounded like dà báihuà (大白话).\\\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"Understanding pǔtōnghuà and reading, and writing in hànzì all work different skills. Pronunciation is not always obviously tied to the way individual characters are written. Because there are so many heteronyms in pǔtōnghuà, reading, speaking and listening have additional layers of difficulty. Even mastering more than a 1,000 characters ceases to be effective when you’re confronted with more abstract idioms, colloquialisms and lines of poetry – yet these subtleties are central to mastering the language. To my professor, everything that came out of our mouths sounded like dà báihuà (大白话), words that are easy to understand but lack depth and meaning. Teachers and parents often use dà báihuà to critique the overly simplistic language of their students and children."},{"type":"text","value":"During this discussion, the issue of using the restroom came up. In pǔtōnghuà, there are multiple ways to announce going to use the restroom. \"我去上厕所,\" \"我去上洗手间\" and \"我去上卫生间\" are, colloquially, the most common. After a month of using these phrases somewhat interchangeably, our professor informed us that, outside of our close social circles and casual settings, our announcements were too direct. Instead, she said that in some contexts it would be better to use \"我要去方便一下,\" which directly translates to, \"I am going to take a moment to relieve myself.\" To my American English ear, this phrase feels just as direct as the others."},{"type":"text","value":"That’s the thing about learning other languages. Translation sometimes fails you."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"Rehearsing my words before I said them felt more difficult than just saying them.\\\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"While the bathroom example is a more light-hearted one, English words cannot always concisely express a saying in pǔtōnghuà, as the words are wrapped in cultural and historical significance. A key hallmark of becoming proficient in another language is when you stop rehearsing and translating words in one language into your mother tongue. Once in Beijing, rehearsing my words before I said them felt more difficult than just saying them. It felt so rewarding to have a conversation with someone, later realizing that I was actually thinking in pǔtōnghuà. Even if my sentences lacked idioms and lines of poetry, they flowed more seamlessly."},{"type":"text","value":"However, not everyone on my program had the same prior exposure to pǔtōnghuà or hànzì. One of my friends on the program did not know a lick of pǔtōnghuà before landing in Beijing. It was only on his first day in the city that he learned the greeting nǐ hǎo (你好) — meaning \"Hello.\" When I first found this out, I was appalled. I could not imagine going to China without knowing at least a few basic phrases to get by, but he found his way quickly, navigating the transportation system, ordering food and making friends."},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"An image of a table of food.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/prime.summerinbeijing/IMG_3619-dee3fede898a1bfff055b3f9bc2f49e6.JPEG\",\"credit\":\"Courtesy of Tulin Chang Maltepe\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"In his beginner hànzì and pǔtōnghuà courses, students from all over the world had to communicate with each other despite not always speaking the same language. One of his classmates did not speak English, but, between their limited pǔtōnghuà, translation apps and hand gestures, they were able to understand one another."},{"type":"text","value":"While my friends and I struggled to battle the seemingly never-ending complexity of pǔtōnghuà, I learned that the struggle worked the other way too. Over beef noodle soup in the Zhōng-guāncūn plaza shopping mall, my language partner told me how she found English difficult to learn. For her, the way hànzì are strung together feels more intuitive."},{"type":"text","value":"In hànzì, many individual characters are composed of semantic elements that indicate the meaning of the word while the phonetic component provides a hint for the pronunciation of the word. When strung together with another character, words are organized into more explicit categories. For example, words such as liver (肝脏), heart (心脏), kidney (肾脏) and lungs (肺脏) all share the character for organ, zàng (脏). That being said, some characters also falsely hint at pronunciation – there are not always cut and dry rules in any language, let alone pǔtōnghuà."},{"type":"text","value":"At least we were in the confusion together."},{"type":"text","value":"It was valuable to push through that common struggle. Otherwise, I would not have been able to share the moments that made this trip stand out to me so much. I would not have spent an afternoon eating Húběi cuisine’s famous lotus root soup while discussing the differences between Chinese and American politics and values. I would not have discovered hole-in-the-wall local restaurants around Niú Jiē, the Muslim quarter of Beijing or spent countless hours overlooking the lakes of Shíchàhǎi exchanging life stories. I would not have spent so many nights watching Chinese indie bands perform in beautiful bars and speakeasies in the Gǔlóu area. I would not have made friends with people from all around the world who I look forward to reconnecting with when I travel next – had all of us not pushed ourselves to genuinely connect."},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"An image of the writer, Tulin Chang Maltepe, and her friend eating ice cream.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/prime.summerinbeijing/1b3d2ceba78202e15a580c908ed86ee6-958662359d43a9a6d62f600c92f7580b.jpg\",\"credit\":\"Courtesy of David Dai\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"On the final night of the trip, my friends from the UCEAP program and our new friends from Beijing had one last meal together. Inside a private dining room, around a giant Lazy Susan table, the room was filled with the smell of steamed fish, sauteed vegetables, sizzling meats, fragrant noodles and báijiǔ, a type of liquor made from fermented sorghum typically served with food. Since we could not drink báijiǔ without raising a toast, we each took a turn to say a few words, thanking each other for the friendship and memories that had shaped the last two months."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"Idioms and lines of poetry flowed out of their mouths like running water.\\\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"When it came time for our friends from Beijing to raise a glass, idioms and lines of poetry flowed out of their mouths like running water. Poetry is an essential part of Chinese language and culture, and the nuggets of wisdom offered by Chinese poets are often used regularly in conversation or to toast new friends and old. One of them used a line from a poem by a Tang dynasty poet named Wáng Bó (王勃), which states, \"For friends who intimately know your heart, even across long distances, we’ll still feel like neighbors (海内存知己，天涯若比邻).\""},{"type":"text","value":"Wáng Bó’s wise words ring true, but I never would have heard them if I let the discomfort and initial awkwardness swallow me into paralysis."},{"type":"text","value":"In a world where it feels like we’re more consumed by the information on our screens instead of our present environments, making new connections feels more daunting than ever – but all we can do is be brave and try. Being in a place I had never been to and surrounded by no one I had ever met pushed me to swim through the minor discomforts of forging new bonds. Braving these waters has shown me just how rewarding doing so can be. Every time I took the small risk of interacting with a stranger on the street or chatting with a DiDi driver or museum docent, I felt fulfilled for at least attempting to connect."},{"type":"text","value":"For me, one of life’s most beautiful gifts can be our connections with other people, no matter how long or profound – even if stumbling through foreign language is part of the process."}]}},"pageContext":{"isCreatedByStatefulCreatePages":false,"term":"fall25","slug":"prime.summerinbeijing"}}}