Chinese is obviously a very hard language to learn. Yet it is still amazing how much one can progress in just one semester in Beijing. One of the reasons students are able to progress so fast is because TBC gives every student a Chinese tutor. The tutors are all students at TBC’s host university, University of International Business and Economics.
Having a Chinese tutor was extremely helpful this past semester. Any questions I had with my Chinese language class or how to say anything in Chinese, my tutor, Luna, would help me immediately. Also, every time we messaged each other on WeChat, we would text in Chinese. Having a tutor made learning this complex language a lot easier.
Luna, like all TBC tutors, is also fluent in English so she was able to help me in other ways than just learning Chinese. For example, when I was brave enough to get my first haircut in China, she accompanied me so she could translate with the barber to tell them the style I wanted. I must say, it was a very good haircut.
But even more importantly, having a Chinese tutor allowed me to form a close relationship with a Chinese student. We would meet a few times a week for tutoring sessions, but before we started we would always catch up on how we were doing. We would get lunch and dinner together frequently as well. By the end of the semester we were very good friends and we will definitely stay in touch.
By Tommy Sullivan, Boston College, TBC Social Media and Communications Intern and Spring 2015 Student
Over this past weekend, some of our students enrolled at Minzu University of China took their annual Spring Outing – this year, to Gubei Water Town. Situated about a 2-hour drive northeast of Beijing, the April weather made it absolutely perfect to explore for a spring outing. It surrounds various canals and offshoots of Yuanyang lake.
If you ever want to get a taste of Old Beijing, by far one of the best ways is to visit the hutongs. They’ve conceptually been around all the way since the 1200s, and in their most modern forms exist as protected alleyways and streets surrounded by old traditional houses and neighborhoods in the heart of Beijing and are recognized in China to be an important part of cultural heritage in the city.