White Stupa Temple

At my school, everyone has language partners to practice English and Chinese with. Unfortunately for me, I usually end up speaking English the whole time with my language partner, Catherine. I don't know that many Chinese words yet, and we usually try to speak Chinese at first, but when we exhaust the subjects of pencils and books and teachers, we start speaking English. I consider her more of a cultural partner rather than a language partner. She asks me lots of questions about the US and California. She told me that she loves LA and that she wants to marry an American born Chinese and move to Los Angeles. She hasn't been to LA, so I am not sure how she knows she loves it, but I guess it is similar to Beijing in that both cities are very spread out, have lots of traffic, and are polluted! I love both places though, so I shouldn't be too hard on them!

We went to a temple and it was sort of interesting, and then she wanted to take me shopping. We went to a ridiculously expensive mall that was full of very ugly clothes. She goes there when she wants to look at things but not buy them. They had an Esprit there, that not only had very ugly clothes, but it was also super expensive, like 580 yuan for a shirt. That is like 60 US dollars for an Esprit T shirt that is plain white with a giant Esprit logo across the front. Gross! They also had a Levi's store, and the cheapest pair of Levis were 100 US dollars. Heinous! The rest of the stores I did not recognize, but they were equally expensive and did not have cute stuff. I guess I will have to wait for Hong Kong to go shopping, or better yet, the US.

My language partner is very nice, and very conservative. She told me that her previous language partner was from Texas and he offended her when he asked her if she had a boyfriend the first time they met. She said, "Do you do ask that in the US the first time you meet?" I said that it wouldn't be that weird if you were trying to make conversation, I mean, you are with your language partner for hours, you have to talk about a lot of subjects to pass the time. She seemed appalled by it, and said that in China you never ask that unless you know each other really well. Maybe the Texan was just creepy, and that is why she is disturbed, I don't know. I guess I will have to make more Chinese friends to see if this is a common feeling.


A Statue of a Lion guarding the White Stupa Temple 


Me and my language partner, Catherine