ICLP Class Schedule

The majority of the summer term students have classes in the morning. From the schedules that are posted up on the wall, I noticed that only a few students had class as late as 1pm. My classes are back to back from 8am-11am. This means that all my work has to be prepared the night before. Unfortunately for me, anything I review the night before tends to disappear into oblivion by the time I wake up the next morning. I end up barely squeaking by in my one-on-one class as a result of my hazy memory. Fortunately, a solution has arisen on its own. I wake up at 4 am. Yes, I wake up at 4 am. This ensures two things: 1) that I retain the information I study (and maybe even reinforce it during classes) and 2) that I don't end up being a lazy procrastinator, since I only have about 2.5 hours to complete my assignments during the pre-dawn hours.

Classes at ICLP are actually 50 minutes, but it seems that this is done so that students don't end up being late for their next class. My instructors regularly go overtime by 5 minutes. My one-on-one tutor is really putting a lot of effort on me by keeping me until the next bell rings. She doesn't have to do that, but she does. She also checks my Chinese language learning blog and makes comments, which I really appreciate. My classmate has told me that since her Chinese level is too high for her class, the professor uses 30 minutes of her lunch hour to review a higher level text with her.

On Fridays, the instructors have open office hours for ICLP students until about 1 pm. I haven't taken advantage of those yet. Sometimes, I really feel like I'm not taking advantage of the resources I have. I must keep reminding myself that after ICLP is over, I won't have all of this to take for granted anymore.

ICLP Fieldtrip to Wenshan Tea Farm and Wulai

Yesterday I participated in ICLP's first big fieldtrip to two places, the Wenshan Tea Farm and the merry hotspring town of Wulai. Both of these fantastic spots are south of Taipei and accessible from the Xindian MRT station.

The world's #2 Wulong tea

Our group of 25 students and 5 staff members (our lovely and dedicated secretaries and a young professor) spent the morning being guided about by our Chinese speaking tourguide around the farm. I probably understood about 15% of what he said.

trying our hand at being tea pickers

For lunch, everyone ate BBQ outside, while another girl and I went to the restaurant to share a very delicious vegetarian meal.

i was delighted by the deep-fried tea leaves

After lunch, we learned how tea leaves are processed. At this point, the heat was so pervasive that everything seemed like a haze and I felt the symptoms of heatstroke coming on. Everyone seemed to be on the verge of fainting. Our guide, rivers of sweat streaming down his face, did a great job amidst it all.

step #4 in the tea process

In the end, we finished our whole tour by learning the art of serving tea and sipping several cups of Wulong tea. Maybe someday I will be able to read our guide's notes.


Wulai is a hotspring town not far from the tea farm. It specializes in Atayal culture and of course, the hotspring experience. Many people were also cooling themselves off in the river. I had heard that the 明月 hotel was a great place for hotspring bathing, but I simply did not have enough time to go soak. The price was 450NT all you can bathe...hehe.


Aside from the intolerable heat, I had a great time meeting more of my ICLP classmates and getting closer to those I already knew. For future reference, I think this trip is really more appropriate for wintertime. Who goes to the hotsprings during the summer?

ICLP Lecture #4: Pu-Yi

Professor Huang (University of Hawaii, Honolulu, PhD in Psychology) discussed in Chinese to an audience of about 100 people, what exactly happened to Pu-Yi (1906-67), last emperor of China after his abdication of the throne. There were many Taiwanese from the Psychology department there, as well as many kids from the Berkeley Program. I couldn't 100% follow what he was saying, more like 20%, but I did catch words that I had just learned. Apparently, Pu-Yi had an intense fear of the Japanese. The professor recommended his autobiography, "From Emperor to Citizen", translated by W.J.F. Jenner, 1964-65.

ICLP Instructors

I've spent the past three weeks with 3 instructors and I'm positive they and the rest of the ICLP faculty are the reason why tuition is relatively steep at ICLP compared to other language schools. These instructors are simply the best at what they do. They are always prepared and they have a knowledge of the language that goes deeper than I could ever fathom. They are never perfunctory; it always seems as if the class I am in is the first and last class they'll ever teach. They don't need to prove their ability, you can see it in the way they carry themselves, it seems they are relaxed, smiling, and have a natural confidence. They welcome emails and all kinds of out-of-class activities that they think will enhance your learning of the Chinese language. Of course, this could only apply to my instructors, but I have a feeling this is not the case.

I have no complaints. A staff of this caliber justifies the cost. They are not wasting my time, and I hope I won't waste theirs.

ICLP Summer Student Body

I think a rough breakdown of the majority of students who are attending this program this summer are:

1. people recently graduated from university
2. college kids from upper-middle class to upper-class families
3. graduate students (on scholarships and fellowships)
4. employees whose companies have covered tuition

The first week of class, everyone is too busy adjusting to notice the others at school. I'd say it's the second week of classes where people are more relaxed about getting to know their classmates. By the third week, general cliques are formed.

ICLP Movie Time

Today ICLP has turned one of the large classrooms into a movie theater and is showing "A Battle of Wits" this afternoon. I hope they will host one of these every week; it's a great extra-curric activity.

ICLP Lecture #2 - Prof. Shelley Rigger

Professor Shelley Rigger from Davidson College gave us an overview, in English, of Taiwan's political parties, their position on the political "color" spectrum, and their background and evolution. Prof. Shelley also discussed the Taiwanese term "thiau-a-ka" and the underground workings of Taiwan politics, which shed a bit of light on why it is so prone to corruption and votebuying.

Interestingly enough, the professor pointed out that Taiwan's Legislative elections would be held on Jan. 12, 2008 under a completely new system which would shrink total seats in the Legislature down to 113 from over 200 something. According to Prof. Rigger, the move would raise the bar on the quality of the candidates. Another reform for the next Legislative elections is proportional representation, which would cut at the root of the thiau-ak-ka practices and other similarly corrupt practices.

The talk was extraordinarily engaging and broadened my understanding of Taiwan's political structure just that much more. ICLP is doing a great job at bringing in activities which are of interest to graduate students.

7th Day of Class at ICLP Completed - Stealth Vocabulary

By tomorrow I should be rather familiar with about 382 new vocabulary words. Tomorrow only being the 8th day of class, it sounds rather daunting doesn't it?

It's actually somehow not as bad as it sounds because we are always repeatedly encountering the new vocab in our texts and subsequent texts, in our classes, and our conversations (and I'm starting to notice them in my environment as well). The words are just kind of sneaking into my brain. And this is coming from someone who had trouble learning 30 new words every two weeks in a non-Chinese environment.

Now this is an indicator of a great language program.

Taiwan Culture Lecture at ICLP - 台灣文化演講

This morning, a flyer was posted on the bulletin board announcing a lecture about Taiwanese culture. Out of interest and wanting to post something on this blog, I attended.

Our speaker was a western scholar who spoke completely in Chinese with only the smallest hints of a North American accent. Since half of the 50 or so people who attended had never been to Taiwan before, he first provided a overview of Taiwan's demographics and recent history associated with each demographic. The main portion of his talk focused on a general overview of his research subject, Taiwanese authors from the 1950s to the present. Lastly, he spoke highly about the excellent poetry which has been and is being produced by Taiwanese.

Taiwanese authors and works he recommended included:

1950s - Jiang Gui - "The Whirlwind" and "Rival Suns"
1960s - Bai Xianyong - Taipei Residents (台北人）and Crystal Boys
1960s - Wang Wenxing - Family Catastrophe (家變) and Backed Against the Sea (背海的人)
1960s - Chen Ruoxi - The Execution of Mayer Yin
1970s - Huang Chunming - The Taste of Apples
1970s - Chen Yingzhen - Exiles at Home
1970s - Wang Zhenhe - Rose, Rose, I Love You　(玫瑰, 玫瑰, 我愛你)
1980s - Li Qiao - Wintry Nights
1980s - Zheng Qingwen - Three Legged Horse (三腳馬)
1990s - Zhu Tianwen - Notes of a Desolate Man
1990s - Zhu Tianxin - The Old Capital: A Novel of Taipei
1990s - Li Ang - The Mystery Garden

I really enjoy the research and academic focus of ICLP.

Calligraphy Class at ICLP

Last week, ICLP announced they would be offering free calligraphy classes during the summer and had a sign-up sheet up for anyone who was inerested. So many people were interested that they had to open up a second session. The classes are about four or five sessions for 2 hours at a time. This is a great opportunity to do something extra-curricular. I completely didn't expect this from the program. Kudos to them.

















EDIT:
The introduction went very well. During the first hour, our instructor told very humorous and entertaining stories about learning calligraphy. The one point I got (or at least understood) of all his points was that calligraphy was about beauty, translating the beauty of one's soul onto paper. During the second hour he wrote all of our Chinese names in calligraphy (shufa).

In our next class, we are to come prepared to actually write a little. If we don't bring our own brush, we can buy a very good one from him for 400 NT ($12 USD). I remember when I took a calligraphy class in Beijing, we bought our own brushes for about 80 RMB ($10 USD), which for China seemed pretty expensive!