北京欢迎你 / Welcome to Beijing

I just got into Beijing yesterday and had a very busy day today, so I don't have time to write much. However, I have two things to note right now.

Firstly, Chinese food is delicious and I have missed it so much.

 This was the dinner on our first night here, right after we got back from the airport. That's four people's worth of food, and we ended up finishing pretty much all of it. It was delicious. 西红柿炒蛋 （tomatoes with scrambled eggs) is in the middle, surrounded by 老醋花生 (peanuts in vinegar), 鱼香茄子（fish-flavored eggplant in a delicious garlicky sauce), 宫保鸡丁（kung pao chicken, pretty solid over here), and three dishes whose names I can't remember. The most interesting of these is the one in the bottom right, the grayish dish with peppers on top. Apparently it's very Beijing-y and is a type of tofu, served with hot chili oil. It has a very soft texture, putting up no resistance whatsoever, and has a flavor reminiscent of cheese. Not really sure how that works, but I'm not going to complain. It was great.

Secondly, Beijing pollution is terrifying and I'm very glad I'm not going to be in this city all year.

Those buildings way off in the distance disappearing into the fog are maybe a block or so away. Granted, Beijing blocks are huge, but still. They're not that far away. And that's not fog or mist or rain. That's pure smog. It was the worst it's been in like 6 months today, with the air quality index measured by the US embassy reaching about 500. For reference, up to 100 is considered fine and anything above 300 is considered hazardous to your health. So there's that. On the plus side, I had a mask, which lessened the effects somewhat, though at the cost of being uncomfortable and distinctly unfashionable. Ah well.

北京欢迎你！

再见，
Billy

So before I leave...

I am about to leave for China. Which I still find really hard to believe. In less than 12 hours I get on the plane.

I've spent the past week with the other Luce Scholars, getting a chance to know them and having a grand time at orientation in New York and San Francisco. We've learned a lot about the various countries we'll be going to and even more about Burma/Myanmar, where we'll be wrapping up our adventures in about three weeks and a year. We've had a fantastic time, with far too little sleep, but all in all it was an absolutely incredible week with a group of wonderful people.

And now I am about to leave. We're all heading off. The first batch will be getting on their plane in less than an hour, heading to Taipei, Taiwan and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. So it's finally starting to sink in I guess... Thursday afternoon I will land in Beijing, where I'll spend the summer taking Mandarin classes and living in the Wangfujing district of the city with Ben and Martin. In late August, the three China Scholars will go their separate ways, with Martin remaining in Beijing to do economics-type research at Peking University, Ben heading to Shanghai to do demographics-type research at East China Normal University, and me heading to Guangzhou to do neuroscience-type research at South China Normal University.

The lab I'm working in does Mandarin language processing, using EEGs, fMRI, and eye-tracking methods to examine the brains of native Mandarin speakers while they read, listen, and speak Chinese. I know next to nothing about this subfield and have no experience with neither linguistics nor these experimental methods. So I have a lot of professional experience to gain. I hope to get some background reading from the lab before I join them in the fall, so I can get some kind of a feel for the field so far. Is Mandarin processing significantly different from English? How do first-language Mandarin speakers compare to second- (or third- or fourth-) speakers? I have no clue, but hope to learn much.

And of course, I have a hell of a lot of cultural learning to do. I've spent some time in China, about 10 weeks all told now, but I've always either been a tourist or a student studying with other Americans. Now I'm going to be working at a Chinese university, probably one of few Americans there and the only one in the lab. I've never worked a real job before, let alone one in a foreign country, so there will be many changes to get accustomed to. If I'm lucky, everyone will speak mostly Mandarin. If I'm unlucky, Cantonese will be the language of the city; in that case, I'm going to have a hell of a lot of learning to do.

In addition to the time I'll have working at the university, I'll get to travel greatly. There will be the 17 other Luce Scholars to visit, scattered throughout Asia. The handful of Obies I know throughout the region. And the solitary high school classmate in Japan. I will be crashing on the couch of as many of them as possible. And of course I'll be traveling through other locales as well. Xinjiang, Yunnan, and Sichuan top the list of Chinese places to visit, along with Harbin and the Qingdao (Tsingtao) Beer Festival. Of the countries that lack people I know, Nepal and Mongolia will be hard to pass up as well. Too much ground to cover, too little time to see it all!

Now, I must to sleep. I end this with an open invitation. If you're traveling through Asia sometime this next year, especially if you find yourself in China, let me know. We should meet up, eat something delicious, drink something strange, and see something cool.

再见，
Billy