This blog is moving

As you might have already noticed, in the last time it got quiet here....

One of the main reasons for that is that I have been working on a new and hopefully better blog!  There are some features that I am missing here on blogspot and I find it quite hard to interact with my readers, since it's not possible to comment without a google account. That's why I decided to move my blog to wordpress and I hope that it will make things more comfortable and easy for you!


From now on I will be posting on my new blog : 

http://gegenwind.me/


I am currently moving all my articles that I have published so far to this blog, so I already want to apologize that at the beginning there will be also some articles you might have already read.

I hope all of you are going to join me on my new blog too :)

Maria

semester beginning and life update

It's been almost two months that you've heard anything from me, but the last weeks just passed by in a blink of an eye and there were a lot of things that kept me really busy. Besides I had some problems with my internet connection what made it really difficult to upload content.
What have I been doing? Where have I been?
Well, let's start from the beginning: Due to the winter holidays in january and the fact that i felt like the only person left on the campus here, I decided that  I gotta get away...see something new, challenge myself and just make the best out of the time that I have here. Here in China I fell in love with cycling, so I thought it would be a nice and cheap way to travel by bike. I wanted to go to Kunming - the so called spring city - and do  most of the way by bike. Before leaving Guangzhou many people told me I was crazy and to be honest there were several times during my journey when I thought so too. But I made it and it was one of the best experiences in my life so far. I didn't take a lot of pictures, because I didn't have my camera with me due to it's weight and because I really needed a break from everything. I didn't want to think about how to show the amazing landscape to others or from how many different angles I should take pictures to make sure that the photo really represents what i was seeing, I wanted to enjoy every single moment of this journey, don't think about anything, just let go and make memories for myself.

Photo by Maria Hochleitner

Then in february I went back to Germany and spent two wonderful weeks with my friends and familiy. It's always nice to know that no matter how long you don't see each other you never lose that connection that you and your close friends have. What made me even happier, was that two of the most important persons in my life made the effort to come and visit me in Munich. I really enjoyed my holidays in Germany and was very grateful for all the big bowls of fresh salad and the possibilty to have hot showers in the morning :)

Now I am back in Guangzhou and the summer semester has already started. Compared to last semester things are quite different now: In the last weeks a lot of students left China cause they were missing their old lives in their home countries and didn't feel like staying here anymore. The number of international students shrank to less than 20 now and in my class I am the only western person. I am attending the advanced chinese classes and really  I don't compare myself to others and I know where I am standing, but sitting next to all those guys who already know most of the characters because they speak korean or japanese or who have chinese origins is kind of challenging. Nevertheless I am giving my best and I think I can improve my chinese a lot if I pull through.
Although it's a lot more quiet here now and almost no european students are left, I don't regret my decision to stay also for the summer semester. Spending a year abroad is a chance that you don't get every now and then so you should try to make the most out of this experience and a bit of smog, contaminated food or slow internet is definitely not gonna make me feel like going home and missing that chance.

Love letter to words and language

Photo + Artwork by Maria Hochleitner

 Why knowing why can be more important than knowing what

I love languages. And I love words. For most of you this is not a very surprising or shocking coming-out now, I mean I am learning 5 different languages, I am studying Sinology, I am living in China to improve my Chinese and I am constantly talking about my wish to learn Arabic…It’s just a logical conclusion that I love languages! But things are not always as they appear at first glance…

At school I always favored English over maths and I enjoy going to language classes. Sometimes. I mean just because I am good at learning languages and maybe don’t have to put as much effort into it as other people, doesn’t automatically mean that I love it. But that’s what people always thought and when I failed the qualifying examination for studying politics, most of them told me that it’s better for me to study linguistics anyway. I never regret my decision to study Sinology and Orientalism, but I have to admit that sometimes I was asking myself if I would have ended up learning all these languages without people telling each other “Maria loves languages”. I can tell you learning languages is hard work and requires a lot of discipline and continuity. Hours and hours of trying to memorize words and phrases and understand grammatical structures…and for what? For a little bit of small talk in China or Turkey?  

I didn’t know what it was but something still kept me going, something inside me was telling me that I need to speak those languages. 

While reading a book last week the scales fell from my eyes. 

Of course I love languages! But not just for the sake of being able to communicate with a lot of people from different countries (which is an amazing side effect)…

I love languages because understanding a language gives me the opportunity to understand other people’s thoughts and ideas. It enables me to feel all the emotions that a person put into his words. Of course anything can be translated, but we can only translate words, not meaning and that’s what in my eyes makes every translation a poor translation. No matter how much effort we put into a translation, in order to fully understand a person’s thoughts, you have to think in his language. By reading or hearing only translations we can maybe understand each other but we cannot feel each other. 

Speaking a language, that’s not only putting together words to form sentences, that’s knowing how to combine words correctly in order to make the ones listening to you, feel exactly the way that you feel or felt. That’s turning emotions into words and being able to express that you are happy in 999.999 different ways. It’s like discovering a whole new world which is only accessible for those who stop trying to translate but start to understand. Words are powerful and they can either feel like a knife held against your throat or a warm hug. 

I have always been one of those persons, who primarily pay attention to the lyrics whenever they are listening to a song. I guess words are playing a major role in my life and I don’t see them only as a tool to communicate with others. It's not only about the content, it's also about the form. I like books that are telling a nice story and I LOVE books that are written in a way that is touching my heart and making me want to absorb every single word. There are very few things in this world making me feel more satisfied than reading a perfect sentence, a perfect combination of some of the most beautiful words a language has to offer, with the perfect meaning behind it. I adore some of those perfect sentences so much that I want to read them again and again. I want to retain them, those perfect combinations of perfect words and keep them wherever I go. And yes it’s true: same words, different language, different feeling.

10 things I miss here in 广州

 1. Hot water 24/7

2. Radiators

3. Dates (the fruit)

4. Huge, fresh salads

5. Climbing gym

6. Drinking tap water

7. Cool, fresh air in the mornings

8. Empty buses and metros

9. Cozy atmosphere in the library at university

10. Being undercover

* 11. Mimmi

No I don't hate China and no I don't think living in Germany is so much better than living here. I love China and overall I am enjoying my life out here pretty much, but of course there also some things that i miss about Germany.


Stay tuned for "10 things about China that I will miss back in Germany"

Hong Kong Impressions (2)

Photo by Maria Hochleitner

Photo by Maria Hochleitner

Photo by Maria Hochleitner

The day when being allowed to enter China was the greatest gift I could have possibly got...

It was predictable that it's gonna happen: According to chinese law foreigners have to have their passports with them anywhere and anytime, so with carrying it around all day chances are very high that one day you accidently leave it somewhere or lose it. And yes you are right, of course that happened to me.

Some weeks ago Mimmi and me were trying to imagine what our reactions would be like, if we discovered that we had lost our passport. we both agreed that we would be totally upset and probably burst into tears. That my actual reaction was totally different is still surprising me.

It all happened on the day when after spending some days in Hong Kong my parents went back to Germany. Coming from Hong Kong I got off the train in Guangzhou, holding my passport in my hands, ready to pass the security check to enter China again. I followed the crowd of people and started to climb the stairs, but having reached the top, I suddenly realized that that my passport was not in my hands anymore. The first thing that came into my mind was: I have to go back to the train and check if i have left it there, before the doors are closing. So I got onto the train again and after having explained to the staff what had happened, more than 10 people were helping me to find my passport. I was pretty sure that when I got off the train the passport was in my hands, so it was not a suprise we didn't find it.

Of course I don't lose my passport like other people in a cafe or a metro station in China, so that you have time to at least think about the next steps and find out where the next german embassy is... No of course I have to lose my passport in nomansland, havingleft Hong Kong already,but not having entered China yet. So there I was, standing in a place that doesn'tbelong to any country, with my small backpack, no documents, no money and no idea what to do next.
At this point it would have been normal to start panicing, but somehow I managed to remain totally calm and relaxed. I decided to wait until all the people have passed the security check and then ask one of the police men what to do. I have no idea what I was doing or thinking in the following 30 minutes,I just remember that feeling full of joy and gratitude I had when seeing a police man waving with my passport in his hand.
10 minutes later i was back in China, with my passport and my wallet, waiting for the metro and asking myself wether I had been dreaming or all this actually had happened to me...
"All things come to those who wait", how true...

Hong Kong Impressions (1)

Photo by Maria Hochleitner

Photo by Maria Hochleitner

Photo by Maria Hochleitner

Photo by Maria Hochleitner

Photo by Maria Hochleitner