I'm Carolyn Kadel, director of International Education at JCCC. And I work with students
studying abroad, with faculty participating in exchange programs, and with institutional
partnerships with colleges and universities overseas. As faculty members, we know that
travel and study abroad can lead to an international
perspective, new language acquisition, expanded career choices, and increased self-awareness.
The benefits are limitless and stay with students for a lifetime. Living and studying abroad
opens one's eyes to different points of view and helps
us to be creative problem solvers. Above all, we learn about ourselves and our culture.
There are many unexpected lessons.
Time to get ready for our flight, and the next email will come from Beijing.
We arrived safely in Beijing this afternoon... (voice fades)
My name is Shudong Chen. I teach humanities here at JCCC for almost 10 years. I have been
here in the United States for almost 20 years. I was born in Shanghai and grew up in Shanghai,
then I went to countryside to be 're-educated.' (laughs)
Chinese have such an appetite for food. Sometimes people assume that every Chinese eats rice.
Not the case at all. Not the case at all. Certain local areas, provinces, the people?
They just don't eat rice. And people also talk about,
they take for granted, dumpling is national food, all
the Chinese like dumpling. Not the case at all.
Lin: We went to a famous dumpling restaurant for lunch. We were given 16 different
dumplings, plus soup, a hot pot soup made with tiny dumplings, and fruit to eat. I ate
every single dumpling, but thank goodness they were
small. Shudong: Actually, when I was in China, for
17 years when I was in Shanghai, I never even tasted dumpling.
Last night we went to dinner with one of Mike's colleagues who is based here in Hong Kong.
If you really, you see, want to eat authentic Chinese food, it must be the food you don't
like. (laughs) She ordered our food, and the first thing
that was brought to the table was 1000-year-old eggs.
The egg, you see. I think most Americans don't like it.
Sorry to say that Mike and I did not try them - they looked gross! She was going to order
duck feet too, but we told her we wouldn't eat that either so she didn't. The rest of
the food was kind of weird, but we ate it. My stomach was
upset in the night. Oh, yes, sometimes you don't like it, but
you have to eat it. For instance, over here, pizza. Oh my God, I thought why do people
make so much fuss about pizza? It tastes like rubber. (laughs)
But right now I am getting fond of it, I understand it, and I can tell the differences. So if
you don't eat it, you don't appreciate it, you
don't really engage yourself with it, you don't
understand it. Lin: You will see the same cars on the streets
that we have, but also many, many bicycles and
motorscooters. All of the streets have special bike lanes.
Over here, of course a car is for convenience. For convenience. In China, especially in big
cities, driving a car is for inconvenience.
The Chinese drive like madmen, and disobey traffic signals like crazy. Plus, pedestrians
and bicycles walk or drive out in front of cars,
buses, trucks, whatever. During their rush hour, traffic
is a mess (like Dallas). It is amazing to me that we only saw one fender bender in Beijing.
Today in Xi'an I discovered that people drive even
worse! Our bus had several close calls with other
buses and cars today. You just have to shut your eyes and pray.
In China, traffic?..science becomes an art. Traffic should be a law of science, right,
but people they negotiate their way. (laughs) And we
run into driving from Wuhan to see the big dam, we
literally ran into an accident. The other car ran into our van. But Chinese have Chinese
way of solving the problem. Solve the problem in
5 minutes, no waiting for police officer. Exchange insurance. (laughs)
Lin: The way the Chinese translate English is a hoot. They call it Chinglish. Here is
an example we saw today: "No Louding" (meaning be quiet).
I wish I had written them all down because some of them are very funny and charming.
Here is another one we just found on a map in an
ad for a hotel: "Witness the bund glory; sniff the noble life" - we read these things and
just get the giggles because it is so funny. We drove
by a restaurant that had a sign that said "Food Taken Late at Night" - who knows what
that really means? Another restaurant was named
"Fungus and Seafood" - would you enjoy eating there?
Just Chinglish is funny. We have internet you see you have collections of Chinglish.
Always laugh you to tears. Very creative ways the
English word and the Chinese grammar. (laughs) No,
they are very serious. They painstakingly piece it together. (laughs) That's the most
interesting part. It's not that they don't care - they
care that much. They check the dictionary. So English
education needs to be really enforced. I really respect the Taiwanese poet, his name
is Yu Kwang-chung. When you are in China, you
are not Chinese. You don't become Chinese until you've left China. And you are China
all over. To a certain degree, this is like me.
At JCCC, students may study in China for a summer or a semester or in any one of 30 different
countries for academic credit. Faculty may apply for international education grants to
teach or conduct research abroad or to attend international
conferences. For more information on international opportunities
at JCCC, visit the International Education Office in the Student Center 200 or look on
the website at www.jccc.edu/internationaleducation.