class notes
blogger
’06
Laowai Telegraph begins with Ms. Berg’s arrival in Beijing and her early days spent couch surfing and job searching. As Ms. Berg settles into her life in China, she presents to her readers lively accounts
CAROLINE Lessons BERG Learned by
a Laowai
of celebrating Chinese festivals; bargaining for such necessities as clothes, water, and rent; and eavesdropping on her co-workers’ conversations in order to learn new vocabulary. In a post titled “Beijing Welcomes You (Face Mask Not Included),” Ms. Berg describes maneuvering through the streets of Beijing on her newly-purchased bicycle: “Cycling around Beijing is like being in a ramped up version of Paper Chase combined with Frogger—obstacles spring out from every direction. What I have read, and what I have learned first-hand, is if the green light is luring you to cross the street with the promise of a right-of-way, as long as you don’t look at the stubborn vehicles trying to turn the corner ahead of you (or into you), they will stop. But if you
When Caroline Berg ’06 traveled to China in 2007,
acknowledge their presence, they will see it as submission and gun it
she attracted a lot of attention. “I could cause traf-
past the hesitant pedestrian.”
fic accidents with my white skin, brown hair and blue eyes,” she later wrote on her blog. “I felt like a celebrity to be gawked at everywhere I went. Hiking complete Chinese strangers. Walking down the city streets, random girls would run up by my side to ask me to be their friends and exchange phone numbers.” Now a college graduate living and working in Beijing, Ms. Berg has embraced her status as a laowai, or foreigner. In her aptly named blog, Laowai Telegraph, Ms. Berg takes on daily Beijing life from an American perspective, sharing her insights into Chinese culture, vibrant photographs of her culinary experiences, and humorous anecdotes of life as a laowai.
Ms. Berg and her blog recently gained the attention of ChinaTravel. net, which featured her in a Blogger Spotlight. In the interview, Ms. Berg shared her favorite travel experiences and discussed what has been a lifelong passion for Chinese language and culture. “The summer after my first year [at Deerfield Academy], I spent five weeks in China with my Deerfield classmates—two weeks in Beijing with a host family, one week in Yunnan province, one week in Sichuan and the last week in Shanghai,” she said. “Although most of my communication with the locals occurred while bargaining or ordering snacks, these simple connections were incredibly motivating for my studies.” Since this first trip to China, Ms. Berg returned twice during college before traveling to Beijing on June 2 with “no plans but to pursue an exciting post-grad life.”
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Winter 2011
You can read Ms. Berg’s blog from Beijing at blog.sina.com.cn/laowaidianbao.
Courtesy of Caroline Berg
up popular mountain trails, I would take pictures with