Concluding Remarks

HBA was definitely a wonderful experience, as you can see from basically everything I've said or posted about this program.  In two short months, the amount of Chinese I learned is incredible, and the friendships formed are beautiful, and the experience obtained are unforgettable.

Believe it or not, I got so used to speaking Chinese, that even after I got back to United States, I'd have to think about speaking English before opening my mouth, otherwise I'd start inserting Chinese words into my sentences.  After studying Chinese, I realized that these two languages each have better ways of representing different thoughts and ideas, so I like to take the best of both worlds and speak a superior language: Chinglish.  However, this may or may not be my own fault, but most of my own thoughts are still in English, so most of my information processing is still done in English, which means that I didn't really have a single dream in Chinese.  I really wanted to be able to start thinking in Chinese, but the problem was, I could do some simple thinking in Chinese, but anything advanced, and I'd have to revert to English, otherwise I couldn't finish my thoughts or it would just be way too slow, and I'd run out of patience waiting for my Chinese skills to catch up to my thoughts.

高老师 thinking, probably in Chinese... I wish I could do that

Probably the most well-known rule of HBA is the Language Pledge, where we are not allowed to speak any languages other than Chinese for the entire duration of the program.  It is fantastic for allowing us to make friends through a common challenge, as well as getting us accustomed to speaking Chinese.  Although this is a wonderful idea in theory, I think that there are certain problems with it.  Sometimes it's really hard to express certain ideas, and circumlocution isn't really going to work, so just a quick word or two of English isn't going to hurt anyone.  If anything, I'd think it'd make learning Chinese more efficient, especially slang or informal spoken Chinese.  This is especially important, since most of the stuff we learn in class isn't really used in everyday life.  Like the teachers told me, nobody in China goes around trying to use 语法 (grammar patterns) or 生词 (new characters).

 杨老师 pondering this issue (but probably not really, though)

Another related issue is who we're speaking Chinese with.  Again, perhaps this is our own fault for not seeking out more native Chinese people, but the conversational exchanges we have with most people are great for getting used to speaking Chinese, but not exceptionally great for learning more Chinese.  The two main groups of people that we communicate with on a daily basis.  The first is our peers.  Since we're all students (most of my friends are also L3 with me), our Chinese has problems, so talking with our friends can reinforce the mistakes we make, teach our friends wrong ways to say stuff, learn from our friends wrong ways to say stuff, and such things.  Even though this view is extremely pessimistic, I found that speaking with my Chinese relatives for a few days caused me to be a lot more conversational in Chinese than a few weeks speaking with my friends.  However, the best thing that came out of this is the development of the HBA dialect of Chinese!

The second group are our teachers.  Even though they are probably some of the greatest people I've ever met in my life and their Chinese is probably the most accurate Chinese I've ever heard in my life, they took the huge effort to downgrade their Chinese to L3 levels, which means that they are not really speaking real Chinese to us.  Of course, this is entirely for our benefit, since it'll help reinforce the grammar patterns and new characters that we're supposed to be learning, but the side effect is that it not only a "fake" Chinese experience, but it also gets us used to speaking "weird" Chinese.  Some of my teachers have also told me that speaking at L3 levels is kind of strange for them -- when they speak to their Chinese friends, their friends say that the way that our teachers speak is really funny.  Another teacher told me that the reason it's impossible to get a 100 on an essay is that you have to use certain grammar patterns, which makes the essay sound awkward and thus undeserving of a 100.  Kind of paradoxical, but I guess that's just the way it is.

The only time 高老师 has ever frowned.  Ever.

A final thing is that we lived at a university.  As a Yale student, I know for a fact that living at Yale is not the same as living in the real world.  We call it the "Yale bubble," and in China I feel that there is a similar phenomenon.  Especially because 北京语言大学 (Beijing Language and Culture University) has a ton of foreign students that bring with them their own culture, the environment here had a kind of an international feel rather than a more Chinese feel.  In my opinion, staying with my relatives felt like a more legit China experience, but I'm not really sure how to describe that in words, or whether or not my feelings are right.

Nevertheless, HBA was a wonderful experience, and probably the best summer I've had in my life.  If the objectives of HBA were learning Chinese and having a fantastic time, then both ends were achieved to the fullest.

周老师 thought HBA was awesome

So does Jackie...

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Harvard for having this program.  I'd also like to thank Beijing Language and Culture University for letting us use their campus, and being wonderful hosts.  I also could not have done it without Yale's generous Light Fellowship, so many many many thanks to them.  Finally, I'd like to thank our fantastic teachers, who made the HBA experience the unforgettable one it was!