I should have done this post a long time ago, but I would like to talk about the Chinese New Year! I was really surprised that I didn’t see more events going on in State College for this festival, seeing as there are many, many international Chinese students here. My goal for next year is to go to China Town in New York to celebrate this festival with everyone.

So what exactly is the Chinese New Year? It’s the most important, and longest, holiday in China. It begins on the first day of the lunar calendar, which varies every year, and lasts for a total of 15 days. Other names to refer to this event are Lunar New Year and Spring Festival, for obvious reasons. During the Han Dynasty (206 BC – AD 25), at the end of the year farmers would celebrate the end of their harvests and offer thanks to the gods for good harvests and good crops in the following year. After that, it blossomed into something much bigger. Traditions started developing and it became a way to ensure that the next 12 months would bring fortune, luck, and prosperity.

During the 15 day long celebration, there are a many, many different rituals performed on each day. For example, it is extremely important to hang the character “Fu” on one’s front door. Fu means ‘blessing’ or ‘happiness’, but when pronounced in its inverted orientation it is the same as the Chinese word for ‘arrival’. Thus, taken altogether, the message conveyed is the arrival of blessing and happiness. One must also clean their house of filth and grime, which also sweeps out the bad luck in your home.

When the big day arrives, it is traditional to dress in a fresh set of red clothes, symbolic of a new start to the new year, and then to give a red envelope containing money, known as Hong Kao, to any children you might have. Again, this is not dissimilar to the tradition of giving a stocking at Christmas; in fact, depending on the style of red attire you’ve chosen, you might even look like Santa Claus too.

The theme of concealed money can also be found in the culinary feast that most Chinese families enjoy together the night before, on New Year’s Eve. Gold bar-shaped dumplings called jiaozi (learned that in my Chinese class, win) are traditionally served, of which one contains a coin. The person who finds the coin is believed to receive luck for the ensuing year, unless, of course, they chip their tooth on the coin in the process.

It wouldn’t be a celebration – and it certainly wouldn’t be Chinese – without a firework display, the origin of which can be traced back to ancient times when the abrupt explosions and violent flares of detonating gunpowder was believed to repel evil spirits. Indeed, they are an especially effective deterrent to the Nian, a beast that once appeared with a special taste for children in coincidence with New Year. Coincidentally, the Nian is also terrified of the color red.

The story of the Nian is portrayed by the lion dance that weaves energetically through the celebrations which mark Chinese New Year. Two performers manipulate the jiggling creature into a stream of entertaining moves to the delight of onlookers, demonstrating techniques and movements that can be very closely associated with martial arts.

I can’t wait to celebrate this holiday next year, even though I’m not Chinese (I won’t tell if you won’t). Xin Nian Kuaile~ (Literally, New Year Happy).

5. The Terracotta Army

I remember reading about this in history books when I was younger, but I had completely forgotten about it until recently. This faux-army is made entirely out of terracotta, which is a type of baked clay. It was discovered to the east of Xi’an on March 29, 1974 but was created when Qin Shi Huang, the first Chinese emperor  passed away in 210-209 BC. The purposes of this clay army was to protect the emperor in his afterlife. It is now estimated that there are 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 calvary horses. Other figures include officials, acrobats, strongmen and musicians. Neat isn’t it?

4.The Bund

The Bund is a waterfront area in Shanghai. It is home to dozens of historical buildings that overlook the Huangpu River. This view looks absolutely breathtaking to me and is one of Shanghai’s most popular tourist attractions.

3. Shigu Town

Shigu is an ancient town filled with rich traditions and history. The town was named after a stone tablet in the shape of a drum recording the merits of a headman in Lijiang during the Ming Dynasty. On the bank of the river there is a memorial hall of the Long March for the Red Army. Although the town itself doesn’t have much to offer because it is full of humble, hardworking citizens, simply the glorious architecture and nature are worth going to see.

2. The Forbidden City

This is another one of those things I learned about in history class that I never thought I would be remembering. This city, located in the middle of Beijing,  served as the Chinese imperial palace during the Ming and Qing Dynasties and housed 24 different emperors. Built in 1406-1420, this complex has 980 buildings and it 7,800,00 square feet. It now serves as the Palace Museum and holds thousands of valuable antique items. The name Forbidden City comes from the fact that no one was allowed to enter or leave the walled city without the emperor’s permission.

1. The Great Wall (duh)

I think it would be a horrid crime if anyone were to go to China and not visit the great wall. It truly is an amazing work of art. I won’t bore you with the history of the Great Wall since I’m sure you already know it, but I will throw out some interesting facts! You know the wall is huge, but how huge is it? Well it’s 13,171 miles long, but only 3,889 miles are actually wall. The other parts are made of trenches and natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers. There have been a few people who have actually walked the entire stretch of the wall itself. It took one man 15 months to do so. The wall is not continuous though, there are sections that go for hundreds of miles and then just end completely and most of it is in total ruins. The wall is also able to last so long because it’s foundation was mixed with sticky rice flour! I can’t wait to visit here and get my cliche picture on the wall.

Since I plan on going to China my fall semester Junior year, I have been doing a lot of research on which school I want to attend. I’ve also been fairly nervous about the culture shock I’m inevitably going to experience, so I’ve read tons and tons of articles about what to expect when I get there. A lot of things foreigners (especially Americans) should expect are pretty obvious, but others, well – may surprise you! (Sorry for all of these lists lately. It makes my life easier). I’ve obviously never been to China, so these are things that other people have warned! I can’t wait to see if they’re true or not.

1. You will be treated like a celebrity. Seeing as ~ 92% of the country is Han Chinese, there’s not much diversity. You will stick out like a sore thumb no matter what. I thought I would blend in a tiny bit because of my long dark hair, but I’m also 5’6″. The average Chinese girl is 5’3″ and the average male is 5’7″, so needless to say I’m going to seem a tad tall. People that live in more rural areas will also take your picture. Most are sneaky about it, but some will even come up and ask to pose with you.

2. You will be answering a lot of questions. It’s only natural to be curious about foreigners, but some of the most common questions I’ve found are hilarious. They include:

1. Does everyone in the US have a gun?

2. Do all Americans have tattoos?

3. Have you ever been to Disney World?

4. Is America just like on Friends?

5. Why aren’t you married yet?!

3. The air quality will make you very sad. Especially in larger cities, the air pollution in China is absolutely horrible. Take New York and times it by 20. Sometimes the pollution gets so bad that it looks like it’s constantly foggy and you can’t see 5 feet in front of you. Be prepared to not be able to take nice, full, deep breaths. I guess going for a run is out of the question then. A lot of foreigner’s also develop lung problems, get extremely bad sinus infections and a permanent cough until they leave.

4. The Chinese are not cleanly. You thought America was dirty? Think again. In restaurants if an employee is sick and is coughing all over the place or even vomiting, they’re expected to stay there and continue to serve you food. No one throws their trash in garbage cans. Actually, in a lot of towns there aren’t any public trash cans. They just toss it in the bushes or down the gutter. Apparently everyone spits a lot too. This is not just true in China, but a lot of Asian countries. I wonder why? The last thing that completely horrifies me is that they don’t have diapers. Most children go commando and when they have to go, they just do it right there on the ground in front of everyone with no shame. 

Now I know the last 2 points may make China seem like a terrible place, but it’s still very lovely. Once you get used to breathing and being a little dirty, you’ll have a lot of fun. There are a lot of beautiful and amazing buildings, gardens, parks, etc. On that note, next week my blog is going to be about the top 5 places to visit! Stay tuned~

你好！As many of you know, I am extremely passionate about foreign languages. However, if you want to travel to another country, you have to be aware of their customs to get the full experience and to not seem like a rude tourist. Obviously, most countries customs are a lot different from American customs since America is just one big blend of different beliefs.

Since I am going to China my junior year to study abroad, I thought it would be really interesting and helpful to research some of the traditions and etiquette of Chinese culture. I found myself extremely surprised at most of these traditions. I’m eventually going to try and memorize all of them so I don’t appear to be disrespectful, but it’s going to take me a while. There’s a lot!

Meeting Etiquette: 

1. When greeting a group of Chinese people, the eldest must be greeted first. Then it proceeds from oldest to youngest.

2. Most Chinese look towards the ground when greeting someone. This is a lot different from the American custom of looking someone directly in the eyes to establish a sense of trustworthiness.

3. Going along with number 2, it is actually disrespectful to stare directly into another person’s eyes.

Giving Gifts:

1. Gifts are given on Chinese New Years, weddings, and more recently birthdays.

2. Food baskets are good for gift giving.

3. Forks, knives, scissors, or other cutting utensils are never given. They indicate a severing of the relationship.

4. Clocks, handkerchiefs, straw sandals, and flowers are all associated with deaths and funerals, therefore they should not be given as gifts.

5. Gifts are not ever wrapped in white, black, or blue paper.

6. Four is an extremely unlucky number, so never give 4 of anything. 8 is better.

7. One should not open gifts directly after they are received.

8. When someone offers you something (anything, not just a give) you’re supposed to refuse it up to 3 times before accepting.

Dining: (These are the main ones I need to learn!)

1. When invited to a Chinese person’s home for dinner, be honored. The Chinese would rather entertain in a public place. When you do enter their home, arrive on time, take off your shoes and present a small gift. 

2. Always make sure to eat with CHOPSTICKS! I learned how to use chopsticks when I was little, but it’s quite amusing watching other American’s try to learn.

3. The guest of honor will always be seated facing the door, so wait to be seated.

4. The host begins eating first.

5. Eat everything on your plate.

6. Loud slurping and belching sounds are good. It indicates that one is really enjoying their food.

7. Hold the rice bowl close to your mouth when eating rice.

I hope you found these Chinese traditions and customs interesting. If any of you know any other silly customs in China or in any other countries, please tell us in the comments! 谢谢！

Since this is our last round of blogs, I wanted to make this one really special. Unfortunately, this is not about volunteering (I hope that’s okay), even though it’s one of my biggest passions. My actual #1 passion is languages. I didn’t use languages as my original topic because I was afraid that I couldn’t come up with enough material to actually write about. So, here’s my chance to rant about my love for all things language.

Writing about language is what actually got me accepted into the majority of colleges I applied to. It even got me plenty of scholarships. So what exactly is so special about languages? It’s something we use EVERY DAY! Nonstop! All the time! We take language for granted so tremendously. What would happen if we just weren’t able to communicate with each other? What then? And no, sign language doesn’t count as an answer because that’s considered a real standard language. Think about it!

Not only am I passionate about language in general, I’m passionate about foreign languages. All kinds! I kind-of-sorta taught myself Japanese through online lessons and friends, I took 4 years of German in High School, I’m MAJORING in Chinese here and I’m thinking of minoring in Arabic. So as you can see, I know a lot. And I want to know more! I want to learn as many languages as I can throughout my lifetime. But why?

I want to break the barrier of communication around the world. I want to be able to understand everyone. I want to be able to speak to all kinds of people, not just people that speak English. Do you know how much that limits who you can talk to? ONLY 914,398,325 people speak English. That’s right. I said only. 914,398,325 out of 7,056,664,791 people in the world! That’s not even close! I want to travel the world and talk to people in their native tongue. I want to experience the culture full on without the handicap of not being able to speak the language. It limits so many potential possibilities.

There are approximately 6,900 languages in the world. You maybe know 1 or 2. How insignificant does that make you feel? It makes me feel terrible! I also hate when simple minded Americans say they don’t “have” to learn a language because people that move here “should learn English”. That honestly makes me irate. How uncultured can you get? America was a melting pot country. The American Indians that lived here before us didn’t even speak English, so why does every one else have to? Your great great great grandparents most likely didn’t speak English either since everyone migrated from other countries. So, I wish people like that would stop freaking out about having to press #1 for English. Is it that hard? Does it really make them that mad that people speak a language different from theirs?

On another note, English isn’t even the most spoken language in the world. A lot of Americans tend to think that, which also makes me a little frustrated. We need to stop being so egotistical. Mandarin Chinese is the #1 most spoken language, which is the reason I would like to learn it so badly. Not only is it really interesting and ancient, it’s not that hard, despite common belief. The word order is Subject-Verb-Object, exactly like English. The grammar is pretty much the same, there’s no plurals, no tenses, and no articles. It takes the hard parts of languages and completely deletes them. The only challenge is the characters, which aren’t too bad with a little studying.

我会说英文和中文！

I speak English and Chinese

（I didn’t even need a translator for that)

Any who, I apologize for my rant and constant jumping around. I also apologize that this isn’t even about volunteering! But learning multiple languages can help you volunteer in needy countries, which is exactly what I would like to put my Chinese to use for! Yay! Get out there and be cultural!

Imagine yourself waking up on Christmas morning as a young child. You know Santa was supposed to come last night, so you immediately get excited. It’s 6 in the morning. You throw off your blankets, run downstairs, look under the Christmas tree… and there’s nothing there. Imagine the heartbreak the sadness you would feel. What happened? Did Santa forget about you? It turns out that your mommy and daddy just couldn’t afford to buy anything this year. Daddy lost his job at the factory and mommy was too worried about paying the bills and keeping a roof over your head. Disappointingly, you sulk back up upstairs and cry yourself back asleep to avoid the harsh reality of what just happened.

As tragic as this story is, it happens to thousands of children all across America. Too many children have never experienced the true joy of waking up to a pile of gifts on Christmas morning. Now, we all know that family and friends are the most important things on Christmas and we should appreciate what we have, but when you’re a child you don’t really grasp that concept as well. You just want something. Anything. As long as it comes with wrapping paper and a bow. The excitement of tearing off the paper and seeing what’s inside is good enough for you.

That’s why Toys for Tots was created. To help parents get presents for their children to open up on Christmas morning. I’m sure everyone has seen the Toys for Tots collection boxes all around. At home, in supermarkets, classrooms, around campus, etc. They’re everywhere. These boxes serve to collect any type of toy for the children. Fortunately, the boxes are usually filled to the brim with gifts. When I was at Wal-Mart on Thanksgiving vacation, I half expected to see the box completely empty due to the poverty of my county and town. To my surprise, the box was full of new, unopened presents. I was thrilled. People really do care about the children.

For the past 3 years I have worked at the Salvation Army in my home town. We partner up with Toys for Tots and we’re the ones that check, sort, and hand out the toys to needy families. It’s one of the most rewarded things I have ever done. The families start lining up outside of the door hours and hours before they open. They stand there in the cold and wait, some even without jackets. Once the doors open, they file in the building, which is an old church, and we direct them to where they need to go. Once they pick up their boxes full of gender-and-age-sorted toys, I’m the one that helps them carry everything out to their cars. Just seeing the joy on the parent’s faces makes my day instantly better. They’re always so grateful, thankful, and loving. Most have old beaten down cars or cars that they borrowed from friends, so I have to work my hardest and stuff the toys in there somehow.

One other amazing thing that Toys for Tots and the Salvation Army does for the families that day is give them an entire turkey, ham, and canned goods for a Christmas meal. Some of these people don’t eat for days at a time, so it’s a wonderful feeling to know that their entire family is going to be fed well on Christmas.

If you see Toys for Tots boxes around campus now, I strongly encourage you to donate a little something. It does not have to be expensive. As long as it’s something a child can play with, they’ll be happy. If you can’t afford to donate something, try participating in your local Toys for Tots giveaway. I promise that it’s one of the best things you’ll ever do. Thank you.

A decently long time ago back when I was a wee little sophomore, I was a part of my towns local Leo Club, which is a branch of the Lions Club for high schoolers. We did a ton of things to help our community, but my favorite service by far was when we did a homeless awareness project.

There is a tremendous amount of poverty, hunger, and homelessness in Schuylkill County, however, the higher ups refused to do anything about it. Food pantries were running out, especially after the past Christmas, and there are also no homeless shelters anywhere to be found. My Leo Club strongly wanted to do something about this. We wanted to make it known that there is, in fact, many homeless people in our county.

We decided to have a 48 hour “homeless sleep out” and do a boot drive to raise money. During the “homeless sleep out”, we slept outside in cardboard boxes that were donated by businesses for an entire weekend. The only food we were allowed to eat also had to be donated. The boot drive was similar to canning, but with less rules. We stood on every single street corner in town and also in the middle of the streets. At each stop light, when the cars were stopped, we’d knock on their windows and ask them if they’d like to donate to hunger and poverty. In the end, we got a better response than we thought, and ended up making over $4,000, which is really amazing considering how tiny my town is. We donated all the money to local food pantries around Schuylkill County, since there are no homeless shelters. My picture was even in the news paper c:

Here’s the link to the article, if you’d like to read it: http://republicanherald.com/news/leo-club-sleeps-out-to-fight-homelessness-1.865092

As some of you may know already, I’m majoring in Chinese Language and minoring in Japanese. I’ve always had a strong passion for languages, and I’m super good at them (especially Japanese). The main reason I picked Chinese (Mandarin) as my major, is because it’s the most spoken language in the world, and it’s necessary for my career choice (I’d like to work for the National Security Agency). Another reason I picked Chinese is because I want to work for the Peace Corps in China when I graduate college.

Mainland China has extremely impoverished areas. Due to the one child law, which is still active, many Chinese children are left in dumpsters, and on the streets on a daily basis for being disabled, deformed, or mentally challenged.  Also, many perfectly healthy little girls are left unattended because the Chinese generally want a male to carry on and bring honor to their family name. These children either die or are brought to orphanages. Orphanages all over China are completely full and barely have enough supplies to take care of the children there, let alone have enough money for medical care.

My goal when I join the Peace Corps is to go to mainland China, work in orphanages, and help Chinese children. Doing this through the Peace Corps is a large commitment, because you are required to be there for 2 years and 3 months. The benefits to being a part of the Peace Corps are while you’re overseas, they pay your student loans (yay), you receive more language training, a pay of $7,425 for completing your service, full medical and dental coverage, 48 paid vacation days, paid living expenses, and advantages in federal employment (which is awesome since I want to work for the NSA, as I mentioned before).

I’m extremely excited to join the Peace Corps and I hope you all at least look into it. It can be an amazing opportunity, depending on where you go and what you do. You can impact so many lives and give people a wonderful gift. Hope.

I’m sure you’re all familiar with this lovely red cross. Maybe flash backs of people harassing you to donate blood even come into mind. We all know this is a symbol for the American Red Cross. We all know they want to steal the blood out of us to give to other people. We know it’s a good thing to do, blah blah blah. But, do you really know how much of a good thing it is?

Thousands of people per day go through blood transfusions and operations from severe blood loss. Actually, every TWO seconds, someone in America needs blood. So as you probably guessed, a LOT of slimy red stuff needs to be donated. The American Red Cross has blood drives so often because donated blood only lasts a certain amount of time. Yes, blood expires. It only has a shelf life of SEVEN days. You read that correctly, SEVEN (7) days! That’s an impossibly short time. So obviously, the Red Cross and other blood banks are in constant need of new blood that is usable in blood transfusions.

Another reason they need new blood so often is because some blood types are virtually useless (such as B-) and end up going to waste. (No offense to anyone that has these blood types). These types can only be given to their identical twin, ex: B- can only go to someone with B- blood. This is less than ideal because not a lot of people have this type of blood, so the chances it’s needed in seven days are slim to none. As you probably know, O- is the golden uh… egg, I guess, of blood types. This blood type can be given to any patent no matter what their blood type is, which is why it is primarily needed in hospitals. Most hospitals do not get a chance to sit there and test a persons blood type in an emergency to see which one to give them, they just grab some O- and continue with saving lives.

Get out there, donate blood, SAVE lives (especially if you’re O-)! 🙂