Old Harbin

Boxing

Two years ago, I studied Chinese at Beijing's Capital Normal University through Duke University's program. While there, I took an extracurricular class on Wushu (Chinese martial arts) offered through the program. I enjoy physical exercise, finding it both a relaxing break from rigorous study and a good way to stay healthy and energetic. Therefore, when I found out the local gym I'd joined here in Harbin offered boxing classes, I jumped at the opportunity. It would prove to be even more enjoyable and worthwhile than I expected.

Teacher Zhang is a 75 year old Harbin native, who has been boxing and teaching boxing for over 55 years. He learned from the Soviets back in the 50's before China's relationship with the Soviet Union grew cold. Although he's 75, he has the muscular build of a young man. He's a fantastic teacher, and has advice on everything from healthy living to getting out of a street fight. Some of my favorite quotes of his include "Tobacco and liquor are the enemies of the athlete," and "You'll learn fast because you're American, like Mohammad Ali." Within a few months, he taught me all the basics of the sport, including stances, defense, various strikes and rules. Not only is it fun, but I've been learning a lot of unique Chinese vocabulary, including everything from jab, cross, and roundhouse, to footwork and mouth-guard.
Sparring with the other students has also been a fun way to meet other college students and have fun.

My boxing class also encouraged me to see more of Harbin. My trip to Dacheng Street, which has a lot of sporting goods stores was an enjoyable excursion. I got to take a bus to a different part of Harbin and I was able to buy the things I needed such as boxing gloves, ankle supports, and fist wraps.

I often find Western travelers to other parts of the world are fascinated with what's different about a culture, and overlook obvious similarities. I guess this is true of all people who live outside of the culture they were born in, but usually looking a little deeper reveals similarities. In rural northern China people sleep on a large heated brick bed known as a Kang. This sure seems different from anything we have in the West, until one looks a little deeper and realizes the Kang is found throughout the world, including Eastern Europe. In Yiddish its known as a "pripichick". According to my father, my grandmother sang "On the Pripichick" to my dad, who played the song on the piano. Similar misunderstandings surround the martial arts. Kung Fu with its exotic kicks and moves and Taiji with its slow movement seem about as different from boxing as can be. Once while on a train in China, I chatted with an American who had been living here for a few months, teaching English. He talked about the Taiji class he was taking and how fascinating it was that the Chinese saw power as coming from the center of the body, a point just below the belly button, unlike Western boxing which uses the strength of the arms. Fortunately, when I first started taking boxing lessons in Harbin, I was also taking Taiji classes at the same gym.

Although, I eventually dropped the Taiji classes because of the time constraints of being a full time student, I was able to get some insight into Taiji, and from what I could tell the foundations were the same as boxing, only the ways in which that foundation manifested itself were different. In boxing, powerful punches also come from the center of the body and punches are delivered by twisting the core and shifting weight from one leg to another, motions practiced repeatedly in Taiji. When practicing the motions, the two arts really seemed to blend together in my mind. Then again, is it any surprise that there are similarities between Chinese and Western martial arts? Humans everywhere have two arms and two legs.

One of the most important lessons I've learned in boxing class was how to handle fear. Ironically, says my teacher, the more you fear getting hit in the face, the more you get hit. If you are calm, focused, and don't fear, then you can block, duck, make eye contact, and predict your opponents motions. It reminds me of the Roosevelt quote, "All we have to fear is fear itself." It's a lesson that applies to all aspects of life. Sometimes when studying Chinese, I get discouraged and fear I won't be able to learn a plethora of new vocabulary or new sentence patterns. But if I vanquish my fear and work hard, then I can learn it.

Yagou

March 12th,
Went on a great class trip today: a five hour hike through the hills around Yagou, a small country town about an hour and a half from Harbin. The scenery was lovely. Rolling hills, fallow cornfields, Heilongjiang's rich black soil peeking through the melting snow, and frost covered pine trees. Some of the highlights: a rock wall covered with prehistoric carvings, a World War 2 bunker, and a fire tower with great views but a hair-raising ascent. Some of the harder parts of the hike included hiking in the snow, dealing with the cold (though after we started walking it warmed up and even felt a little hot under my sweater), and at one point we almost lost the trail but managed to spot faint footprints from a few days before. The farmland we drove past on the trip over was truly lovely. Unlike in Liaoning where the average family has about 6 mu or one acre per family, or ultra-crowded Sichuan where some families have as little as 1 mu (1/6th of an acre a family), families in Heilongjiang average 30 mu or about 5 acres. This meant farms seemed larger here than in other places I'd been in China. At one point on the hike we passed a pig farm and I noticed a large number of dead rats in front of the gate to the complex. Plague? The work of the cute though tough guard dogs? The cold? At one point we had fun resting along the side of the path, throwing snowballs and eating lunch. We finished the hike with dinner at a restaurant back near campus.

Evening Run in Harbin in February

The most unusual sensation I got from running in negative 18 degree weather was that of my sweat beads freezing to my beard. When sweat evaporates off of skin in the summer, it cools the body. When sweat freezes on the body in sub-zero weather, it warms the body. It was a strange feeling but I have to admit it felt pretty good. Once or twice a week, either in the early morning or at night, I head out for a run in Harbin. I have to go early in the morning or at night to avoid traffic. At night, the air is cool and clear while in the morning it has the faint scent of burning coal, a residual odor of the city's nightly ritual of burning coal for warmth. The path that I run leads from the campus straight north for about two miles until I reach the Songhua River. Then its another two miles east along the historic and beautiful riverside parks until I reach the flood memorial tower at the head of Main Street (Zhongyang Dajie). The first portion of the run takes me past much of the Nangang neighborhood, then on over an overpass which crosses the main stretch of railroad tracks. From there, I pass major shopping areas, office buildings, and eventually I get to the river. What the road to the banks of the river lacks in scenery is made up for by the breathtaking beauty of the second portion of the run. Several lovely parks, including Stalin Park line the river. In the mornings, couples can be seen strolling, elderly folks can be seen doing Taiji, and one time I was surprised to see a truly remarkable sight: two middle aged women emerging from a swimming hole carved into the frozen river. Swimming in negative 18 degree wheather! In the evenings I'm usually alone, except for the occasional passing middle aged jogger. The river appears tranquil in the moonlight and up above not only is the moon visible in all its glories, but so are stars. Not tens of thousands of stars like I remember seeing during my childhood family vacations to the New Hampshire hills, but at least hundreds of stars.

Truly a sharp countrast with Beijing, where often even the sun cannot be seen. The best part of the river portion of the run is the path. Unlike the icy and difficult road to the river, once in the park, soft powdery snow crunches under my shoes. This also helps to take some of the pressure off my knees, which is good because once I reach the flood memorial tower, I have to turn around and run the four miles back to campus!

Professor Ma

During the second week of school, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Professor Ma on the history and culture of Harbin. Professor Ma was born and raised in Harbin and has lived here for almost nine decades. He was a teacher at CET'S program for many years, was president of Harbin's Esperanto association, currently teachers an extra-curricular course at CET on Chinese cuisine, and was educated both during the Japanese occupation and after the Chinese Civil War. It was truly fascinating to hear about Harbin's history from someone who has lived here for so long.

A hundred years ago, Harbin was nothing more than a small Manchu fishing village on the Songhua river. At the time, China feared the rising power of Japan and lacked infrastructure in the northeast. Russia agreed to build railroads across the region using Russian capital and Chinese labor. Of course, Professor Ma emphasized, they did not do so out of great kindness, but rather because of the vast profits they knew they could make from the railroads. Heilongjiang is rich in coal, oil, wood, and fertile soils. With the tracks laid, Harbin grew into a major city with tens of thousands of foreigners immigrating from Russia, Poland, and other parts of Eastern Europe. In addition to these merchants, refugees, and soldiers, others came from other parts of Europe including England, Spain, France, and even less powerful nations such as Turkey and Switzerland.

The Russian soldiers who guarded the railroads were known as the "railroad protection army" which sounds like "long mustached soldiers" in Chinese. Professor Ma related one story from his childhood where he and his brother were playing too close to the tracks and were yelled at and hit by the troops. He also related an interesting story about the British consulate. One day he and his brother were playing and accidentally stumbled onto the grounds of the British consulate whereupon the Indian guards kicked them out.

The influx of foreigners meant that Harbin was one of the first Chinese cities to have movie theaters, taxi cabs, and coffee houses. In Professor Ma's words, it was a truly global city and at the time rivaled Shanghai and Guangzhou.

One of the largest enclaves of foreigners in the city before the Second World War were the city's Jews. Coming as merchants or fleeing the chaos of revolution-era Russia, Jews immigrated by the thousands to the booming rail hub and made major contributions to the city's economy. A few of the old Synagogues are still standing and one is a museum now. Way out of town he spoke of a well-preserved Jewish cemetery where the father of one of Israel's former Prime Ministers is buried.

Of all of Professor Ma's anecdotes, one of the most interesting (for a college student at least) was his description of college life under Japanese rule, which was heavily influenced by the militarized and hierarchical society of 1930's Japan. "If you were a freshman and you saw a senior, you had to salute. If a senior saw you, he could insist on you shining his shoes. If you refused, he'd hit you. It was awful, but when you got to be a senior, you could do the same to the new freshmen."

Shoulder the Frost

One of the nice parts of coming and studying Chinese in Harbin is that I get to study many local colloquialisms and am able to better grasp both the culture of modern Manchuria and that of China as a whole. One such interesting phrase in Dongbei Hua (Northeastern Accented Mandarin) is 扛冻, meaning “to shoulder the frost”. The word refers to how people in this bitterly cold region see the cold weather. The cold, oppressive, heavy, and depressing as it is, is something that is bearable, and can be carried; much the way Chinese farmers and laborers carry loads on their shoulders. I found the term fascinating and mildly comforting in its own manner. Eventually, I hope to “truly able to shoulder the frost” as they say up here.

A Small World

On the first day of orientation, I arrived in the evening to our hotel in Beijing and met several of the other students. A group of about 8 of us ended up going out to eat dinner. We managed to find a Hui (Chinese Muslim) restaurant about a 10 minute walk from the hotel. As we were eating, we introduced ourselves and I found out to my surprise that one of the students was also from New York. Not only that, but she was also from Brooklyn. To my surprise, she also turned out to be an alumna of my high school and friends with my girlfriend, who is also a ’07 alumna. Even though we grew up in the same city and went to the same high school, we ended up meeting halfway around the world, on our way to study Chinese in Harbin. What a small world!

Adventures in Central China

After leaving Chengdu, I still had about a week until orientation in Beijing, so I decided to take it slow, rolling by train and bus from city to city in central China. From Chengdu, I took a train to Xi'an and from there I took a bus to Luoyang, then another bus to Kaifeng. Finally, I caught a train back to Beijing. All three cities are former capitals of China.

I found Xi'an pollution unbearable, its tourist attractions overpriced, and much of the city rather gritty, but it was interesting to see a city with so much history. I saw the Terracotta Warriors, the Muslim quarter and great Mosque, and the Famen Temple, which is reputed to have a famous relic: one of the finger bones of the Buddha. Unfortunately, the original old and beautiful temple is overshaddowed by a gigantic new complex reminiscent of Dysney World. Entrance to the temple complex now costs 90 yuan. I talked to some of the local monks who said they had originally vigilantly opposed the commercialization of the old temple, but in the end felt they had to go along with the changes in the times. Otherwise, it would have been difficult to maintain the temple and to bring people there. As I left, the monk gave me some books.

I took classes with a professor at Yale named Kang Zhengguo, who as it turns out is from Xi'an. While there, I visited his sister, a retired English professor, and chatted with her about the city, life in America, and her brother's career.

From Xi'an I headed to Luoyang. Though it gets far less tourists than Xi'an, Luoyang was also once a capital of China. The air seemed less polluted than Xi'an and I thoroughly enjoyed Luoyang's night market, snacks, old buildings, city wall, Muslim restaurants, ancient temples, and cigars (I bought 20 for only 3 yuan). Henan province, where Luoyang is located, is one of the most populous in China and it was overwhelming to see so many people. Still, I really enjoyed the city.

From there I took a bus to Kaifeng, another ancient capital. Once the greatest city in the world, Kaifeng has been through a millenium of urban decay and now has only half a million people. Majestic pagodas and palaces of the past lie next to block after block of abandoned bombed out buildings. Once the center of China's wealth, Kaifeng is now a minor city in one of China's poorest provinces. Still, the city has enough left of its former greatness to make the visit interesting. I visited the old pagodas and palaces, saw a hospital which lies on the spot where a Synagogue stood a millenium ago, and tried delicious food. At one point I stepped into a restaurant where I met the four sisters who run it. We started chatting and I ended up talking to them for almost 10 hours, eating both lunch and dinner there. They were curious about life in America and what brought me to China, Kaifeng of all places. I learned a lot about them. The oldest sister had been in Kaifeng the longest, and had started the restaurant. Two of the middle sisters were in college and working while on winter break, and the youngest sister had just come from the countryside, excited to work there and see life in the big city. They gave me a lift home in their vehicle (a three wheeled pickup truck like contraption with a scooter engine) and we passed a night market on the way.

From Kaifeng I headed back to Beijing and orientation.