Once again, I was the only white person there

Tonight I went to some sort of festival at the Tsinghua auditorium. Originally I thought it was a school wide festival, but in hindsight that seems blatantly wrong, I now believe it was a School of Economics and Management wide festival. It might have even been only the senior class but I’m not sure. It never was explained to me too well. Of course it was all in Chinese, so the fact that I got anything at all out of it was testament to my powers of empathy.

关系

Through my legendary 关系 I was able to get three different undergrads to scare up a ticket for me. I got there early and since I wasn’t part of a particular class, I sat up front. I quickly bumped into Catherine. I ended up sitting behind her class and right in front of the VIP section. This meant when they introduced the one or two famous alumni in attendance the spotlight came blaring down on my back. I’m undoubtedly in the background of a few official photographs.

This was very much an undergrad event. Though some graduate students and professors participated, I didn’t see anyone from any of my MBA classes there. As I mentioned in the title, I also didn’t see anyone else that wasn’t Asian. I think there was at least one Japanese person there and someone who was a quarter Korean.

The show

There were twenty different shows, each put on by a different ‘class‘. There was singing and dancing but not many live instruments were played. There was also a lot of audio/video including at least one movie that was very well done. Class 31 had the best video. Supposedly the graduates had a class, they sang songs. I’m not sure why the MBA students didn’t participate, I think because we had our own festival, which I backed out of going to at the last minute. I was even thinking of performing, but I got sick. The student athletes had their own performance, theirs was quite good, perhaps my favorite.

The fastest Chinese man in the university, or the city, or the country was there. He was even in drag. For the record he had very muscular calves, even covered up by spandex. There was one female athlete, she was not as famous or as popular with the audience. Her calves were covered up by bobby socks, but I have no doubt they were extremely toned.

The Pictures

I took a bunch of pictures, but my camera doesn’t excel in low light situations or taking pictures or moving people. Most of the photos I took are probably blurry. When I get my Mac back, I will add some to this posting.

Vikrant commented to me the other day, that although there are women in our MBA class, the class after ours has the cuter girls. He then went on to say of course the undergrads are cuter still. Needless to say I tried to take as many pictures of cute undergrads as I could. I also tried to take pictures of the people I actually knew.

There is no shortage of attractive women in China. Not that there is a shortage in Canada either.

Diversity and Inclusion

At Tsinghua there seems to be a better sense of camaraderie among the students. Although the Chinese rank every single person in the entire class, things just seem more inclusionary. Everyone, in every class took part in the presentations, even the fat kid and the guy from Japan. They’re doesn’t seem to be as many cliques and there is less rumormongering and bad mouthing people behind their backs.

Or maybe it is just the language barrier. I don’t think that is it though. Even back at Sauder, my lack of Chinese language ability didn’t prevent me from figuring out what was going on, at least partially. People lie with their eyes not just their mouths.

Blogging is Hard

Until I get my Mac back I’m not going to blog or email much. It is just too frustrating. Julia was just complaining about not being able to reach blogspot again. I explained the fact the Chinese government blocks access and pointed out I could update my WordPress blog.

Updating blog posts is harder

I haven’t read these old posts in years, but once again I am unemployed so I have time to continue to overhaul my WordPress blog. I wasn’t at my best in China or at any time during the last thirteen years so the fact that I maintained a blog says a lot about my stubbornness and my Quality control.

I wrote a longer post about another performance at Tsinghua. I often was the only non-Asian person to attend events while I was an MBA exchange student. If you want to read the best of my posts while living in China I collected them together. If you have any questions you can leave them below, because it is half a decade later and once again I’m updating old webpages because I value Quality and dislike broken links and domain squatters.

Even in 2024 I’m still editing this post

Also in 2024, I apparently need to update my CSS. These posts were written a long time ago and WordPress has changed a lot. I’m converting them to “blocks” because I’ve literally undertaken to edit seven hundred blog posts. I don’t know if I’ll make it, but I want to edit at least 80 more. I also think some will require two or three passes as mentioned above I have discovered way too many busted links and I have to hand check a lot of them because of pornographers. If you want to leave a comment after all these years they may still be open.

Alas because I put so many pictures which I want to float to the right I need to add another paragraph. I really am going to have to investigate why my CSS or browser doesn’t work the way I want it to, but it is quicker to ramble on for another paragraph. I really will have to cut some entire posts if I take two or three passes through my collection of blog posts. I don’t think I have it in me, just having this website up and these almost twenty year old posts online puts me way out in the left tail, I’m probably a one percenter.

Now I’ve added subheading, they supposedly help with search engine optimization, but they also help by adding white space which I can float images into. I remember when I was really good at CSS. If you have thoughts on Tsinghua University, studying abroad, diversity and inclusion, photography or cascading style sheets you can leave a comment below.

This entry was originaly posted on December 6th, 2005, it was last edited on May 9th, 2024 and is filed under: Rambles and tagged: Tsinghua, 健美, 关系.