A Typical Day At The Beijing Language and Culture University

A photo of the sun through the trees taken at BLCU

In this post I want to give readers a window into a day at the Beijing Language and Culture University. Of course, each day is different and so is each student, but I will nonetheless recount a typical day for me when I studied at BLCU. This is a fairly large task and I will attempt to go into as much depth as I feel necessary to convey a true sense of the experience.

You should also read the guest post by my friend Ray So on An Introduction To Life At BLCU for his perspective of things. In it, he does a brief outline of one of his "typical days". For the sake of this post, I have split the day into morning, afternoon and evening.

Mornings

We would wake up around 07:00 and prepare for the 4 hours of morning classes that start at 08:30 and finish at 12:30 (single semester students start and finish half an hour earlier). We would have breakfast and coffee at home in our apartment before setting off on the 10 minute or so bicycle ride into campus (see my Ultimate Guide To Bicycles At BLCU).

In the mornings the roads were very busy so we would take a route through the university just north of BLCU. This was the best way when coming from Hanting Jiayuan, our apartment complex at the time.

Entering BLCU through the east gate, we would park our bikes outside the north wing of Building 1 where our classroom was located. We always climbed the flights of stairs instead of taking the lifts as it saved time. Queues for the lifts were always busy at this time of morning and you could end up waiting a while to get in one. It was better not to be late.

If you are late for class it is disruptive to the lesson and disrespectful to the teacher. That's not to say we weren't late on our fair share of occasions, but we certainly made every effort not to be. As I mention in 5 Disadvantages Of Living Off-Campus At BLCU, our morning commute took longer than for those staying on campus.

4 hours of morning classes would be separated by a 5 minute break after the firs hour, then a 15 minute break after the second, and finally another 5 minute break after the third. Some mornings went quicker than others depending on the specific classes and teachers we had.

Actually, we only had two teachers at any one time. One was for speaking and listening and the other was for reading, writing and grammar. In the first term, our teacher for the former was very boring, however in our second term we got a much more interesting and experienced one. I never had any problems with our teacher for the latter subjects, who was also our main teacher in that we had her for the majority of the time in any given week.

Classes would usually start with a dictation of the previous day's words whereby students selected the previous day would come up to the board and write characters read out by the teacher. The rest of the class would also have to take part and write out the characters on sheets of paper.

People usually shied away from being chosen to come to the board for dictation, but it was a good way to test yourself under controlled conditions and with a bit of pressure to perform in front of the class. Of course, a lot of people did a horrible job because they hadn't learned the new vocabulary items the previous night (including myself on many occasions), but for those who took it seriously it was a good opportunity to see how much you could remember.

Revising for dictation was a time when using flashcards really helped me a lot (see my post on Building Good Study Habits At BLCU and 7 Study Tips For Success At BLCU to read more about using flashcards as a study aid).

Afternoons

After class, we would usually head to somewhere like LaVita Cafe for a coffee and sandwich or the Muslim restaurant on campus for some noodles and meat skewers. Alternatively, if we felt like cooking ourselves, we would go by the vegetable market on the north-west of campus, pick up some different things and head back to the apartment.

At home we would usually have some food in the fridge which we could also cook up with the vegetables to make a nice lunch. I talk about this as being a good option for vegetarians in my post Vegetarian Food At BLCU, as they might appreciate being able to cook their own fresh vegetables, whether it be in their apartment or in one of the kitchen areas provided at the on-campus accommodation.

With lunch taken care of, the afternoon is free. If you are doing the intensive course at BLCU you will have 2 more hours of classes starting at 14:00. Thankfully, that wasn't the case for us. 4 hours in the morning is honestly more than enough, no matter how hardcore you plan on studying Chinese.

In the afternoons I might head to the gym, we might watch a film bought from the DVD store under Redhouse in Wudaokou (I really should do a brief post on that) for only 9 RMB or so, we might go out into Beijing via the subway (see my post on How To Get A Transport Card At BLCU) to do some sightseeing or just to get out of the BLCU area for a while.

If we were really in a study mood or it was exam time, we might head to a Starbucks or another cafe around campus to get a bit of work done. The options were endless really and it's hard to say what a "typical afternoon" would consist of. It also very much depended on the time of year, as during winter when it's -20°C and windy you're certainly not going anywhere!

Of course, due to us living in an apartment, we would have to go grocery shopping on a regular basis. This would probably be done once or twice a week. So if we needed to make a trip out to the supermarket, such as the one under Wudaokou's U-Centre where Grandma's Kitchen is located (see my post on 5 Restaurants Near BLCU You Might Not Know About), the afternoons were the best time to do it.

Evenings

With the day coming to an end, dinner was a first priority. Again, we might go out to eat or cook in the apartment, but quite often we would go out due to how cheap food is in Beijing. Often eating out is just as cheap as cooking yourself, though possibly not as healthy, and it certainly saves on washing up!

The evening was really the time to start looking over the day's lesson and previewing the next one. Perhaps we would make up new flashcards for vocab items we would soon be learning or otherwise practice reading and translating the dialogues in the textbooks. This consistency towards our studies helped our Mandarin progress a lot in the long-term as I have already talked about in several other posts.

A lot of students choose to go out drinking and socialising at the various bars and clubs in the BLCU area (specifically Wudaokou) as the evening draws closer. I did this a lot too during the first semester but by the second time round I had began focusing more on my studies and as a result went out much less.

Instead I would see friends a bit during the day, maybe have a meal with some of them or chat at the gym (though I admittedly stopped going there as much too!). I'm not saying you have to become a social recluse to make strides in your Mandarin studies. In fact, the best way is to get out and talk with the locals as much as possible, whether that be in bars and clubs or anywhere else. This was just a lifestyle change I chose to make.

By 22:00 it was time to sleep and get stuff ready for the next day.

So has this given you an insight into a day at BLCU? Of course, this is just an example from my life, but nonetheless, I hope it's been of some interest. Can you sum up your typical day at BLCU? Please leave any comments or questions in the comments section below.

One last thing...

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