Stepping out into the unknown

It's surprising how fast the summer goes by every year. One minute you're trying hard not to die of a heat stroke in the middle of a final spring exam held in McCosh Hall, by keeping yourself alive with hazy thoughts of the summer barely ahead of you. The next minute, you're sitting in McCosh Hall once again, hoping the autumn heat induced sweat isn't washing away the poised and concentrated look on your face you've perfected for class.

Summer passes by in an instant, but to me, the season still represents a long eternity of twinkling fireflies at night, sprinklers munificently spreading water droplets onto the tips of grass stalks and sidewalks and sticky popsicles slowly dripping onto tanned and sunburned faces. These past months, however, I learned that summer includes so much more than those suburban American existences.

In Beijing, Chinese children, like American kids, run out in the summer heat, heavily intensified by the heavy city smog and pollution, to buy taro, green bean, red bean or corn flavored popsicles. But unlike most American kids, they don't necessarily get driven to the mall by their parents. They either ride on the back of their mother's bicycle, or squeeze onto a bus so full of people you can no longer tell if the sweat dripping down your arm is yours or the persons standing next to you.

Older people are up at 6 a.m. in large groups practicing tai chi, dancing the fan dance, or walking to the local street market to buy breakfast. Nobody worries about the black clouds of flies hovering over the cooked sticks of meat, piles of cool noodles or sweet red bean buns; food is food. In some cases, the cheaper it is, the better tasting it'll be because of that extra tang of human sweat and dirt mixed in.

This summer, I was given the incredible opportunity to go learn Chinese in Beijing. Before leaving, I worried a bit about the heavy workload, if my stomach could handle "real Chinese food," and the likely possibility of being robbed of most of my money. But not once did I even imagine that learning Chinese in one of the language's native settings would give me the opportunity to not just be a foreign exchange student but also actually live in Beijing.

While taxi drivers always questioned my native country and language, and storekeepers cheerily let me pay thrice the original price for various items knowing full well that I was a foreigner in Beijing, I still felt a tiny part of me sometimes understood the Chinese people, lifestyle, and culture. While that may be too bold and far too presumptuous of a statement for me to ever make, I at least had the rare chance to observe bits and pieces of the lives of the Chinese.

While I most certainly would not have suffered any obvious or tremendous losses had I not gone to a foreign country, encountering an entirely new and different culture forced me to actually open my eyes for a long enough time to begin comprehending new ideas and thoughts. Vacationing and attending group tours are fun and safe but rarely do they allow the vacationer to explore the area's actual lifestyle and culture. With a friend, I wandered around for two hours in poor neighborhoods where wet clothes dried on rusted window bars, because I had no strict time limit or form of reliable transportation to get from Tiennanmen to Prince Gong's Residence. But with the help and directions of various Chinese people, we managed to find our way through a small piece of Beijing and explore a different lifestyle, well hidden behind all the tourist attractions and famous universities.

Professors, older students and administrators always "strongly encourage" other students to study abroad because "it's an experience you'll never forget!" While I cannot refute such a statement, I believe that even more importantly, studying, teaching or interning abroad allows you the valuable opportunity of encountering and exploring a unique lifestyle and peoples. Signing up for the program doesn't automatically grant you that opportunity, but forcing yourself to step out into the unknown can.