What did CET Chinese Studies & Internship program do for you and what did you need to do on your own?
Maddy: CET gave us a thousand things to do every day. Even on the weekend, there were overnight trips, dumpling-making parties, maybe a festival... It was easy to feel overwhelmed or micro-managed. We weren’t responsible for much (outside of mountains of schoolwork) because we had our friends at hand, our living situation secure and our weekdays mapped out. When and where to get food was the biggest question on my mind. But we also had plenty of opportunities to strike out on our own. For example, we organized our spring breaks entirely independently. That sweet freedom after so many weeks of work was the highlight of my trip.
What was the best place you visited outside of your study abroad city?
Maddy: The trip CET organized to Wenzhou and the Nine Pools was incredible. After seven hours of train and buses, we finally arrived at a gorgeous park in the mountain forests. We climbed up a steep path alongside cascading waterfalls and were all very ready to jump in when we reached a huge, deep pool big enough for all of us. Battling the current to sit underneath a waterfall and diving in from a scary-tall boulder made the trek worthwhile. Not to mention sliding down waterfalls like slip-and-slides. Then we piled on the bus again, but it couldn’t reach the top of the mountain where our hosts at the Daoist temple were waiting for us. So we had to climb yet another mountain, in the dark, looking down (yes, down) at the lightning as a storm rolled in. The nuns made some phenomenal vegetarian food that we could not stop eating. I definitely slept like the dead that night.
Describe your favorite must-have food that you tried abroad.
Maddy: Let’s talk about the magic of baozi. These are steamed bread buns about as big as you can fit in your hand. They are filled with every kind of delicious thing on the planet. Readily available at the popular convenience store Family Mart, you can find ones stuffed with BBQ meat, tofu and greens, mushrooms, or a funky sauerkraut-like thing, just to name a few. My personal favorite, that I walked fifteen minutes one-way for every weekend was naihuangbao, or a baozi filled with a sweetened, yellow milk. Sounds strange, tastes like heaven. If you want to give them a try, I must insist that you get Family Mart’s baozi first, as not only are they the best in my experience, but all the Chinese roommates say so too.
Do you feel you got a chance to see the city from a local's perspective?
Maddy: Seeing anywhere in China from a local’s perspective is almost impossible, I’d say. Not only is there a language barrier, but as a foreigner, there are countless cultural barriers as well. In Shanghai particularly, life is hurtling forward faster than can be believed, and there is a wider variety of people packed in than anyone can keep track of, so I’d doubt that even the Shanghainese can claim a solid perspective for very long. I did however grow to know the city certainly better than most visitors. I have my Chinese language skills and my native coworkers to thank for that. Going out to dinner or karaoke with my Chinese friends and holding successful conversations with them are some of my proudest and most informative experiences.
Did you run into a language barrier?
Maddy: There was always a language barrier, and there was almost always a way to get around it. Chinese is an extremely difficult language to master from a native English’s speaker’s perspective. I had to accept from the start that I was going to make a lot of mistakes and sound foolish most of the time, so I might as well get over myself and not waste time and energy on being embarrassed. It helped that I’m a blonde white girl who no one was expecting to speak Chinese at all. But then there came the opposite problem, where I got cocky and resented it when people got excited that I could say “Ni hao.” Keeping your sanity in the face of language barriers is mostly about managing expectations.