The Orphanage, The Magic Thing, and Others

There is ash on my mousepad and it's roughly ninety eight degrees in here, but at the end of the day, what's not to love about going to the internet cafe?

On Friday, we went to visit an orphanage called the Philip Hayden Foundation, near Tianjin. It was quite different from what I had expected - I had thought it would be miserable, but it was actually rather pleasant. This is probably because it is not affiliated with the Chinese government - it's run by Westerners and operates through donations, also mainly from Westerners. The children, almost all of whom had some form of special needs, ranged from infants to about seven years old. The place is called the "Children's Village" and it's designed to be as nurturing as possible - we were told there's about a 2-1 ratio of children to staff. They live in houses and the staff - mostly young women from the neighboring villages - call the kids "little brother" and "little sister" and the children call the staff "auntie" or occasionally "mama." There is a nursery school that they go to, and they even have English lessons, which is handy, since for the most part adoptive families are from the States.

We hung out a little bit with the toddlers and babies - nice because they can't yet talk and neither can we. The most common disability among the children is cleft lips and palates, which the organization arranges to have fixed. Virtually all the children are eventually adopted. Although I am aware that this particular orphanage is far from typical, I found it encouraging. It was one of the best experiences I have had in China to date.

Although I've made a lot of progress since January, my Chinese is still extremely cha and I do a lot of circumlocution. I have no problem calling the remote control "the magic thing" and I flinch only slightly when I have to describe Moby Dick as "a big white fish," but yesterday I ran out of deoderant and did not think to bring a dictionary to the grocery store. To ask one of the staff to direct me to "the thing you put under your arms to avoid smelliness" was unthinkable, so I simply wandered vaguely, sweating anxiously over the possibility of spending the whole summer without any deoderant. I finally came to the conclusion that they didn't have any, which as a matter of fact ACC warned us about before we came. I don't know how I neglected to bring sufficient deoderant - I brought literally every other imaginable toiletry in abundance. The clerk at CVS was shocked and horrified. Fortunately Lili, who is going home on Sunday, offered to give me her spare deoderant, so a disaster has been averted.

I need to stop buying clothing in Beijing. I just need to give up. I feel like Alice when she ate the mushroom or whatever it was that made her really big - I tower over my teachers, and I always expect to leave footprints in the sidewalk. Yesterday on a whim I bought a shirt that turned out to be much too small (they haven't really caught onto that whole "trying things on" concept here and it's tempting to just strip - NAKED LAOWAI CAUSES DEPARTMENT STORE CHAOS - and introduce the practice myself but perhaps not). I tried to take it back, but the fuwuyuan wouldn't let me, insisting that it was not too small - "People even fatter than you can still wear it! Even fatter!" She said "even fatter" at least three times. Finally I managed to exchange it, but the whole encounter left me rather discouraged.

Since everyone else is going home in less than a week's time, it is natural that subconsiously I keep thinking I am, too. I am so very, VERY excited about my flight - I am flying British Airways, and yes, it's expensive, and yes, I have an eight hour layover in London and the whole thing will take about three days and makes no sense, but last time they gave me a Flake bar and let me watch A Bit of Fry and Laurie, so it is all okay. But in point of fact my excitement is all for naught because I am NOT going home. My adventure has only just begun! (God help me.)

Night Life

Because we had a big presentation this morning, last night we decided the best thing to do would be to go out dancing, and so we did. Wednesdays are a good night for this - really! - because there's a restaurant with half-price pizza and drinks right down the block from a bar with free admission and drinks for women that night. I cannot tell you how excited I was about pizza, but let's just say my excitement was proportional to my disappointment when I realized I had accidentally ordered pizza with HAM. Still, it was pizza and it was half price, so I picked off all the ham and washed it down with some Tsingtao and all was well.

We went with my roommate and a few of her friends, as well as two other very nice second-semester girls. Bai Kunning, Zhu Meina, and Gai Wenwen go most weeks, but Lili and I hadn't been before. It was a lot of fun. The music wasn't bad, and although at first we were the only ones on the dance floor, by the end of the night there was quite a crowd. I think I may have even been hit on by a Chinese guy, although it was kind of noisy and I could be mistaken. I haven't been out in ages, so this was nice, and it was more or less our last chance to go out as a group, since everybody's leaving. I myself have to go to the train ticket stand and get my ticket for Chengdu.

Tomorrow we're going to an orphanage, so Lili and I went to the store to buy some little toys to give to the kids. We're informed that they will be mostly girls and handicapped kids who have been abandoned by their parents. I am excited but nervous. It's hard to go cheerfully into a situation that I know will make me feel sad and guilty. But I cannot feasibly adopt all of China's orphans myself.

Watched The Shining the other night - not actually the scariest movie I've ever seen, but I'm such a wimp I squeaked and covered my eyes for one or two bits, to the others' amusement. I had to watch Jeeves & Wooster afterwards and lock all the windows. To make matters worse, my roommate was out with her boyfriend, and so I lay in bed knowing the sound of the door opening would scare me to death. When Bai Kunning finally got home she was startled to find me sitting bolt upright in the dark. Serves her right for making me watch scary movies.

Sichuan again

Now that I'm paying four kuai an hour every time I want to go online, entries will be spread out a bit, but meatier. You have been warned.

Yesterday I went to a talk by one of the second-year teachers about her vacation to Sichuan and Yunnan. It turned out to be mostly photographs, but they were enough. I have a plan now, and although I'm not much of a lass for travel (hello and welcome to my travel blog) I am pretty excited.

I think I'm going to teach.

There's a school in Sichuan that has about fifty children and one teacher, and they really need help, especially with English, but with everything, really - math, even Mandarin, since this region has many ethnic minorities who speak their own languages, so their Mandarin isn't always the best. My teacher says I can go down and work with the kids there for a couple of weeks. How perfect is this? I've been worrying so much lately about whether joining the Peace Corps - my plan since I was in middle school - is really what I want to do, and here out of nowhere is this opportunity to actually give it a try! There are a couple of problems, however, mainly this: I have to give a Chinese person a phone call.

I hate using the phone even at home, where I can use English. Here, every time the phone rings I quake. Usually it's just my roommate's mom or something and I can speak English, but on the rare occasions it is a Chinese person I panic and mess up. My listening ability is not very good. The thought of calling a total stranger - who probably has a Sichuanese accent - is giving me a slight headache even as I'm typing this. (No wait, that's just the internet cafe's Avril Levine.)

Also intriguing: On my way to the school I will be stopping in Shangri-La, a place which I thought was made up, like Utopia or Reeva's house. Apparently not. It has crossed my mind that they might have given the place that name in order to attract tourists, but I choose not to believe that. Much more exciting to think it is The Real Thing. Free association test: for some reason, Shangri-La makes me think of Barca Loungers and Kubla Khan's stately pleasure dome. (I recently bought a DVD of Citizen Kane which, since it turns out to be dubbed into Chinese, will have to be returned. Very disappointing.)

I am very relieved to have some sort of plan - the teacher even recommended a hostel in Chengdu, which I would have already booked but I forgot my passport. After a couple of weeks at the school I can head south to Yunnan, then back to Beijing for a few more months of language boot camp. Lovely.

One way in which I take after my mother is in my fondness for both sales and free things. There are several opportunities to earn a couple kuai coming my way: on Saturday, ACC is having tryouts for some would-be teachers, and we can earn 30 kuai an hour attending review sessions with them. This is a no brainer. I signed up for two hours. Then there is a graduate student from Oxford coming to interview us on our language-learning experience: that's another 30 kuai, I think. Finally, and inexplicably, a survey on English shortbread will earn me 50 kuai and some free shortbread. That comes to 140 kuai, which is easily a week's food. Score.

Saturday was China Night, a very big deal. Lili somehow or other got me to do a performance with her: a game show featuring two teachers from each grade. We had questions like "Who was the first president of America?" "Which film won 'Best Picture' at this year's Acadamy Awards?" and "Who is this song by?" (It was "Thriller" and they all knew it immediately.) My favorite part was when little Hao laoshi, one of ACC's four male teachers, rose and sang a line each from a Backstreet Boys song, a Brittany Spears song, and a Ricky Martin song (we allowed him to count Ricky Martin as an American). I think Lili's reason for choosing this performance was as revenge for last week's "Chinese Carnival," a competition in which all the ACC students had to form characters with their bodies, answer questions in Chinese, and, for some reason, perform a relay race in which students paired up and raced holding balloons between their shoulders ("This is the sexiest contest," Yi Weida drawled). Incidentally, my team won and were presented a prize - Chinese bootleg DVDs!

When I return to the States and want to be reminded of the feeling of Beijing, I will watch Shower, today's movie lesson. Like Eat Drink Man Woman, Shower is a very sweet story about family. I strongly recommend it.

I am so tired of baozi that when I eat them I have a mantra: "You must eat food to live. You must eat food to live." So today I bought a small roll and a jar of Kewpie brand strawberry jam (why?) and made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I already had peanut butter, although there's rarely anything to put it on (although you can buy Ritz crackers here, and I've become slightly obsessed with them. You can even by them on the Great Wall). My sandwich was very delicious. I followed it with yogurt and an apple, washed in boiling water. It's important to have these breaks in routine, I find.

Italy Mian

I am my parents' daughter, and therefore it is natural that I should love food. My parents are both wonderful cooks, and they are always trying new recipes and perfecting old ones. It's funny to think that when I was a kid, my sisters and I generally ate dinner with the babysitter before our parents came home, because by the time I was in high school we had moved to having dinner together every night, even though everybody was so busy we often didn't eat until eight or nine.

Recently (and yes I am well aware of how lowbrow I've been lately, leave me alone) I was reading my friend Lili's copy of Cosmopolitan (and also The Scarlet Pimpernel! And also How to Be Really Defensive About Your Intellectual Capacity!) and it suggested that one write down all one's favorite restaurants and pick randomly when going out to dinner, to avoid the inevitable "Where do you want to go?" "Where do you want to go?" So I did.

There were nine.

We eat out at least once a day.

Also, we have a tofu dish every day. Yesterday we tried to come up with all the (non-meat) tofu dishes offered by the local restaurants. There's mapo dofu, riben dofu, jiachang dofu, gong bao dofu, and tieban dofu.

We eat one of these five tofus just about every day.

So although I love Chinese food, you can perhaps understand why sometimes it's an effort just to think about dinner. Perhaps it is also excusable that I went out for Italian Noodles this afternoon, just by myself, on a whim, all dressed up with earrings and lipstick and a skirt and smelling of my new ginger shampoo, which I keep in my desk so I can smell it from time to time. (This is not something I ought to do when other people are watching however because they do not understand.)

There's this place near the school called Casa Mia, run by probably the lonelist man in the world, a non-Chinese speaking Italian guy. I brought a book(a word book!), but when my food arrived I put it away so I could concentrate. There was bread, made with yeast, and I closed my eyes and focussed on the taste of rosemary and olive oil. Then there was spaghetti with tomato and basil - so simple - I would have taken such pasta completely for granted a few months ago - pasta, I would have sighed resignedly. But oh, such pasta! I will never take pasta for granted again.

When I go home I know I will long for egg and spinach dumplings and spicy gongbao dofu with peanuts and tiny numbing berries (called "ma"). Although the former, at least, I could probably make myself. In any case, that's the nice thing about being American, I think. You can have Italy noodles one night and jiaozi or paella or something the next. In China, it's just China. That's another reason to be excited for my Hobo Vacation in two weeks (riding the rails, stealing pies off windowsills) - I can find out what they eat in the south and get sick of that for awhile.

Sandstorm

Friday is our last day of gym membership. I am of two minds about this. Of course, it's the best ever excuse not to go to the gym - not belonging to it - and that's always handy, but on the other hand I hate the thought of my somewhat obsessive compulsive schedule being disrupted. Furthermore, that will be the end of my free internet access. I am such a first-world brat to be so put out about having to pay to go online. "It's good that you can't use the net," said one of my teachers today. "You can use that time for studying!" Clearly she has never spent seven months in a foreign country where she doesn't speak the language, thousands of miles from everyone she knows. If she had, she would understand the importance of Cat and Girl.

Sandstorm the other day, which is much less exciting than it sounds. I remember before I came to Beijing I checked the weather forcast and was warned of "smoke." "Smoke" is not weather, people. (You can tell because weather changes, but the smoke, or more accurately smog, is a constant fixture.) The sandstorm took place while we were sleeping, and now everything is covered in a thick layer of yellowish dust. It's pretty gross, but Beijing is a dirty city and that's all there is to it. The sand-sweeping women (mentioned in an earlier post) are nowhere to be seen.

Here's something you may have wondered: how do the Chinese type? No, they do not have enormous keyboards with thousands of keys. Instead, they just type the pinyin (Romanization) of each word and the computer suggests characters. The computers here at the gym do this all the time by default, and I have to remember to switch to English settings to use them. Here's my email address in Chinese: 欸流通热·厄脉络。粟米谈话。恶毒。 Isn't that neat?

My roommate has been watching a lot of Oprah lately. A friend in America sent Zhu Meina a 20th Anniversary box set and it's been very popular. Have you ever seen that show? It's strangely compelling. It makes me want to make a billion dollars so I can give people stuff. It also makes me want a makeover, but not an eighties makeover. The eighties are really big in China at the moment (because they were busy doing other things during the real 80s, I suppose) and everywhere you go you see people with big hair and neon pink cowboy boots and I don't know what-all. I'm terrified to try to get a haircut - I know a girl who got mulleted, and bad. That could have been me. I'm sticking with the ponytail.

Pang

"Why a women's college?" is a question I'm asked a lot, in the States as well as China. They don't have a lot of women's high schools or colleges over here. "Ou Aimei goes to a women's college," Xiao Lu laoshi once said to Sa Zhiang. (Remember him?) "This is why she is so ladylike." I found that slightly embarrassing at the time, I don't know why. Anyway, "Why a women's college?" is a difficult question for me to answer, despite the fact that I am 100% women's college, all the way - I am very satisfied with every aspect of my education. Wouldn't trade it for anything. It's easy enough to answer "Why Smith?" but "Why all women?" is so much more difficult. "Because it is such a comfortable environment" doesn't sit well with me - it sounds like an excellent reason not to go there. You don't learn things by being really comfortable. "There's less competition" isn't right either - who is more competitive than women with other women? But the competition is of a different sort, I find, and there I think we are getting warm.

"I'm so fat."
"That girl is really fat."
"Pang sile."
"Do people talk a lot about how fat they are at your school? Or call other girls fat?" I recently asked my friend Keting, who goes to Mt Holyoke.
"No way! You're supposed to love your body," Keting replied. "In fact we even have a special day -"
"I know! Love Your Body Day!" I cried excitedly. "And there are speakers and activities and there was even a photographer who took pictures of people's stomachs!"
"Yeah! That's so cool!" said Keting, and we high-fived. Lili, who goes to Williams, was looking at us like we were extraterrestrials.
"You guys don't have Love Your Body Day?" I asked her incredulously.
"Um, no. But we do have a day where we raise money for cancer research..."
But that is not the same thing. It's weird for me to hear people talking about how fat they are and how fat other girls - always girls, never boys - are. Of course, girls carried on like that at my high school, but they were full of all sorts of nonsense and I tended not to listen to them. I've never been on a diet in my life. I wouldn't even know how to begin. There's really no way to do it in China, anyway, as far as I can tell - practically everything is extremely greasy and there's nothing to be done about it. It's ironic - or maybe just irritating - that so many people think "American food" just means hamburgers and fries and so on, when Chinese food is all so greasy and there's so much less variety than in America.

The weird thing is, I think the Pang-fearing environment is starting to affect me, as well. I am spending altogether too much time thinking about the shape of my body. It's very annoying and I don't know what to do about it. Will somebody please send me some feminist magazines?

Easter

I travelled a lot this weekend. Not so much in China, though. Did the tourist thing on Saturday and went to the Forbidden City, but really the bulk of my travel was to other places - to England via Bridget Jones' Diary (I don't know why, so don't bother asking, but it was just as irritating and insipid as I expected it to be), to New York through Mad Hot Ballroom (which was delightful and reminded me of my sister, the dancer), to Wisconsin through Brokeback Mountain (just as good as I had heard and despite its crushing melancholy I want to watch it again and again). Also, The Simpsons, Thumbsucker (really nice coming-of-age movie reminiscent of Rushmore), The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Chinese title: "Jeans Summer"), and bit of Jeeves and Wooster (which is literally "a bit of Fry and Laurie" but not actually A Bit of Fry and Laurie. Never mind). Recently I have been an absolute movie addict because when I'm watching movies or reading books I am not in China and as much as I love China (and I really, really do) that is so refreshing sometimes.

Also left China this morning for Easter Sunday. A group of people went to my roommate's church, Beijing International Christian Fellowship. This was the first time I've ever spent Easter at a non-Catholic church, and I was interested to see what other types of Christians do on this holiday. For two hours.

The religious situation in China is complicated. I honestly have no idea how it works. I'm under the impression that, technically, religion is allowed in China, but this particular church is officially Laowai Only - you actually have to bring your passport to show you are not a Chinese national. Apart from China, many countries were represented, and the choir was decked out in all sorts of traditional outfits - from saris to qipao. My roommate said there were a lot of African people in the congregation, which was interesting. I'm so used to everyone being Chinese that this international church really did feel like we were in the States.

The service was nice, but so very, very different from what I'm used to. It was in an enormous auditorium with stadium seating and a stage in front where the choir stood, and there was a whole band including what the minister, an American, referred to as "electrified guitars" and a drum kit. The first hour, more or less, consisted of music, including a Hong Kong gospel singer (pretty famous, according to Zhu Meina) and the French Sunday school class's dance performance. Then there was a long sermon, followed by an interpretive dance and some more singing. There was applause after each segment, which I found odd, and the minister cracked a lot of little jokes. My father would have hated it. Me, I didn't mind, although I missed the Catholic mass - the smell of the incense, the familiar service. There was no communion, which I suppose makes sense - can Protestants take each others' communions? I don't see why not, really, since theirs is just bread, but who knows.

I can't say more about Bridget Jones' Diary than the Forbidden City - that's inexcusable.

Lili has less than a month left in China, so we're making sure she hasn't forgotten to do anything important. On Saturday, we took the subway to Tiananmen Square, which is next to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is where the emperor used to live with his wife and concubines and eunuchs during the Ming and Qing dynasties. It's very big - so big you forget you're in Beijing - and the buildings are all red, with gold roofs, including the Starbucks. Inside the buildings are many artifacts from that time period, and many tourists, mainly Chinese, but with a generous portion of laowai as well. Beforehand, when I heard that there was a Starbucks in the Forbidden City, I was picturing a normal looking, stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb sort of Starbucks, but actually it blends right in, apart from the big glass window that says Starbucks. I am still appalled but I am mollified ever so slightly.

Watch how fast this post disappears

Today during our one-on-one lesson, Jiang laoshi was helping me do a vocab exercise similar to the Sesame Street sketch "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other." I was doing all right, but this one was a little tricky:

receptionist minister janitor ghjhalhfduy construction worker

I dimly recalled that the fourth one was some sort of job, so I took a guess.
"'Minister' is not the same," I said, "because it is a white collar-job and the others are all blue-collar."
Jiang laoshi gave me a funny look. "I don't think 'human smuggler' counts as a blue collar job," she said. "But that is a good guess."

One of the interesting things about living in China is seeing how much the Chinese still love Chairman Mao. So much! I never studied Chinese history (isn't that shameful?) but I always had a vague idea that Chairman Mao was a totalitarian dictator and that Totalitarianism Is Bad. But every Chinese person I've talked to thinks he was the cat's pajamas, which would actually be a nifty pun in Chinese, since "mao" (second tone, like in Chairman Mao) means fur and "mao" (first tone) means cat. Anyway. In Xi'an, I came very close to purchasing a Chairman Mao alarm clock, and only didn't because I didn't have any money. I'm not all "Chairman Mao is dearer than Father and Mother," Cultural Revolution-style, but since I've been in China I actually find myself developing a soft spot for Mao Zhuxi. I find this somewhat disturbing.

I'm at the gym, where they play a lot of somewhat dated American pop. Their selections are very amusing, because they absolutely love the most vile and disgusting songs, like "My Neck My Back" and I don't even know what all. "If they realized what they were humming along to," said my roommate once, "they would actually die of buhao yisi [embarrassment]. They would buhao yisi sile." We ACC students love "sile" - it means "to death" and people add it to everything, including "pang sile" ("fat to death," popular among girls who are not fat at all) and "cha sile," which means "of inferior quality to death" and always makes me laugh.

Lately it's been lengsile (cold to death) in Beijing, and the constant shivering is not helping with my insomnia. Last night I slept in my woolen winter coat, but my legs were still freezing. I imagine that at any moment it will become unbearably hot, however, and I'd like to get to the Silk Market or something to buy some summer clothes. The thought makes me a bit tired. Also this weekend I believe Lili and I are going to go to the Forbidden City, since she has less than a month left in China and hasn't been yet. I am informed that there is a Starbucks there.

Gavagai!

Last night was our cooking class, and although I don't think the recipes are reproducible in America (can you buy lotus in Wegmans?), it was very enjoyable. Laoshi demonstrated a technique for us - I forget what exactly - and said that it was called something - good heavens, this is like an anecdote Bertie Wooster would tell - tao or something, some sort of verb. Anyway, I was reminded of that Quine example about the rabbit. I never used to like Quine all that much, but actually he has some very bright ideas and very snappy taste in hats. So there's this fellow traveling in a country where he doesn't speak the language, and he and his native guide are out in a meadow when a rabbit comes running out of the shrubbery. The native points at the rabbit and says "Gavagai!"

So what is the other guy supposed to think? He's going to naturally assume that "Gavagai" means "rabbit" - but why? Couldn't it just as easily mean "fur" or "running" or "Let's shoot it!"? This is called the Whole Object Assumption and it's used to explain how babies learn language, but it can also be applied to second language learning. Even though I have advantages babies don't - for instance, I knew the teacher was giving us a verb - there are always going to be several things the word could mean and when it comes to that more organic language learning, as opposed to rote memorization from the book, it's hard to map the word onto the appropriate concept.

Does this observation justify eight months in China, not having hot showers or internet access? I sure hope so.

Buffalonians will no doubt be familiar with the case of Malcolm Watson, and even though it was in the newspaper and everything I feel like a malicious gossip bringing it up. But the man was my teacher and it's been on my mind. My dad gets it partially right, I think, in the link above, especially the fact that we can't really understand it and we shouldn't really try. Yet I want to try, because even though I knew, even at fourteen or fifteen years old, that here was a man who shouldn't be given so much power over teenage girls, still his "I'm proud of you, Emily" meant so much to me - and here I'm not talking about five or six years ago when he had the power to reduce me to tears or send me out into the hallway just because he could - I'm talking about this past year, when I went back to Sem to say hello to my old teachers over Thanksgiving break. The fact that I had made him proud meant so much to me.

I couldn't sleep last night. I spent a rather frenzied hour writing more or less incoherently - poetry, heaven help me, as well as prose in my journal - and then lay awake for hours, fretting. This happens to me sometimes - I just can't slow my brain down enough to get to sleep. I was thinking about Mr Malcolm, and Jay, my main advisor at Smith, who is so similar to Malcolm and yet so fundamentally different. Since I started college, I've had a sort of theory that the difference between Malcolm and Jay is the difference between high school and college - it's the difference between being treated like a prisoner - okay, a kid, let's say - and being treated like a future colleague. Because that's what Jay and Jill and my other professors at Smith have treated me like since I began.

But I trusted Malcolm Watson, and I trust Jay - I trust him when he says I will get into grad school, I will be a logician. Last night as my brain was spinning at a million miles a minute and insisting that I'll never get anywhere, I'm a phony and any minute now I'll be found out, I told myself "Jay says you'll get in, and he says there's never been a Smith student who all the faculty thought would get into a top-knotch school for philosophy and who didn't - Jay says you'll be fine and you can bet your life he'd tell you if it were otherwise. Jay doesn't suffer fools, and he's not going to waste his time if you don't actually have a shot." That's what I told myself, but I barely slept all night and when I did I had deeply disturbing, parent-issue dreams, which makes sense when you consider the weird parent-issues Malcolm always inspired in me. I'll never forget the dream I had when I was maybe fifteen in which my father died and my mom immediately married Mr Malcolm, rebuking me "Stop crying for your father! Mr Malcolm is your father now!"

"I'm proud of you, Emily."
"You have written a perfect poem."
"I want to write your college recommendation."

And I want to look him in the face and say, "I am so disappointed in you."

I have Mr Malcolm stories, but I can't kick him when he's down. I'll leave it with this: every student at Sem had a nickname, given freshman year by Mr Malcolm. I didn't care for mine especially - my name is Emily, it was chosen by my parents with love, it was a gift - and so my junior year, every time Malcolm called me by the nickname, I corrected him - "Emily." Until, finally, he stopped using the nickname and I got to be Emily. I'd won my name back. I think that the ability to stand up to this brilliant man who frightened me so much might just be the most important of the many things I learned from him.



Wow, that came out of nowhere, sorry. I'd better go eat weird things, so that next time I'm at a computer I'll have something a little less intense for you. Who's up for some more scorpions?

Back from the X-Men Planet (2)

The next day was Friday. We went to the Muslim mosque, which was interesting - I'm fond of these Chinese religious places - and a history museum, which was boring. After the museum we went to a western-style cafe for refreshments and then split up. The Y.R.s went back to the hotel for a nap, and Lili, Miaolan and I went for a walk along the busy city-like streets, looking in stores and trying to find a movie theater that had anything non-American (to no avail). We had dinner at a buffet recommended by the hotel's front desk staff. There, I had a rather pleasant experience - a western tourist approached me and asked if I spoke Chinese. I told him I did, and he asked me to help him and his friends talk to the waitress.
"Hello," I said to the waitress.
"Oh, can you help? My English is terrible, I can't understand them," she said, plainly relieved. It turned out that the Westerners had taken a bunch of food, not realizing how hot it was, and then taken more without finishing. The waitress wanted them to buy another ticket. I wasn't really able to resolve their conflict, but I was pleased to be of some use. After dinner we walked back to the area near the hotel, where we found a very nice, European-style cafe with outdoor tables. We drank cold Tsingtao and ate roasted pumpkin seeds and enjoyed the mild spring weather. That was one of my favorite moments in Xi'an.

On Saturday, our last day in Xi'an, we went to the city wall, where we rented bicycles and rode all the way around the city limits up on the bumpy wall, designed to protect the city from invaders, I suppose. Despite the bumpiness, it felt marvelous to be on a bike again, and I thought about my family and our summertime "big bike" trips. Afterwards Lili, Miaolan and I went to an incredibly busy park where the air was full of the smell of flowers - there were millions of tulips of every color. There, we had a long conversation with a five year old girl, who insisted on sharing her snack with us and sang a song about playing in the sunshine.

Three more weeks of classes, a week of testing, and this semester will be over. The one-semester students (which is almost everybody) will return to America, and I will have a six-week vacation, followed by another, shorter semester. We are in the home stretch, but I have a whole other race waiting for me when it's over.

Back from the X-Men Planet

Returned this morning from Xi'an, which was lovely - ever so much nicer than I had expected it to be. "Going to Xi'an?" Yi Weida asked before we left. "Zao gao." Which means, roughly "what a disaster" - it's one of those expressions ACC students in general and Yi Weida in particular use all the time.
"I know, zao gao," I agreed. But it wasn't zao gao at all. We left on Tuesday evening - we had hard sleepers, which I love: they are actually very comfortable. I was on the top bunk, where I read Anna Karenina and chatted with the Chinese businessman in the adjacent bunk until it was time for bed. When I woke up we were almost there - night trains are like magic that way, although I for one wouldn't have minded a bit more looking-out-the-window time. I really do love trains - I'm thinking of spending my six week vacation between semesters just riding the train all the way south and then riding back north again.

At the train station a very eager-to-help man showed us to the ticket booth to buy our return tickets (you can't buy round-trip train tickets in China, nor can you purchase tickets more than a couple of days in advance) and then to the taxi area to get a taxi. He made me nervous - I expected him to charge us hundreds of yuan in fees or something, but he didn't. The five of us and our luggage in the cab was a pretty tight fit but we managed. Our driver was extremely garrolous and told us all about Xi'an - how our hotel was no good, how Xi'an people love Clinton but hate Bush - much to the chagrin of the two Republicans present. He told us that the terra-cotta warriors were half price that day, so after a quick stop at the hotel to drop off our things and shower, he came back to the hotel to take us there.

The terra cotta soldiers, which you've no doubt seen pictures of, are very old, and very broken, and very terra cotta. And that was that. (This is my new methodology for describing my visits to wonders of the world, and I'm not apologizing for it.) Then, on the suggestion of the man who sold us some ice cream bars (chocolate coating, a layer of vanilla ice cream, and a chocolate center containing crispy bits, and I've just spent as much effort describing an ice cream bar as the aforementioned eighth wonder of the world - what is wrong with me? And why so meta today?) we went to an ancient bathhouse. It was very pretty and parklike, but for some reason that now seems stupid, I chose not to bathe with my friends. It wasn't even a naked thing - I have no huge naked issues - it was a money thing. I'm having this problem lately: I see, for instance, a shirt for 40 kuai, and I don't think "$5! That is not expensive at all!"; I think "Y40? That's a week of food! A sad week with a lot of baozi in it, but you know, it could be done!" So I never buy anything. I'm really going to regret not loading up on the 40 kuai shirts when I had the chance.

So I waited outside and enjoyed the lovely weather and the smell of flowers while my traveling companions did the bathhouse thing, and it was actually very pleasant although I should have had a bath.

Then we returned to the hotel, which was situated near the famous Muslim area of town. Did you know China has Muslims? It does. According to our cab driver ("our Xi'an daddy" as my companions called him) the Chinese government frequently executes them, which is why they have no terrorism here. The two Republicans said, "That makes a lot of sense. You can't do that in America unfortunately. Americans are too polite - too many human rights." I was disturbed by this. Politeness and human rights seem rather tenuously related, if that, and "too many human rights" is not something I generally hear complaints about. But anyway. Xi'an's Muslim quarter was a bit touristy (as in, we weren't the only Westerners visible), but fun. We had dinner in a very noisy chuanr restaurant (chuanr = stuff on sticks). Lili and I, the vegetarians, had a soup with rice noodles, vegetables, and tofu, and the meat-eaters had chuanr. We also had a warmish local beer. Afterwards we strolled the busy streets, looking at the vendors' wares and eating corn ice cream bars and hot spinach pancakes.

The next day, Lili, Miaolan and I had lunch on a little street with no other Westerners to be seen - generally a sign of authenticity. After lunch we met up with the Young Republicans and all went to a big park which featured a tall pagoda, which we climbed. The park had a huge number of vendors selling trinkets and snacks. We had crab chuanr, fruit, scorpions, and hard pretzel-like things. I say "scorpions," but actually I only had half of a scorpion, not wanting to buy my own. It was crisp and salty, not much different from the crab. I am going to say that when it comes to scorpions, the fact that I have eaten one at all trumps the fact that I didn't have very much. The Y.R.s spotted some portrait-painters, and after some coaxing we all had our portraits done - a very narcissistic exercise, I know, but I've kind of wanted to ever since I was a kid. No one but me was very satisfied with their portrait, but I was pleased. I'm pretty easy to draw though.

Xi'an (in brief)

Not much time at the moment, as I'm in a 600 degree internet cafe in Xi'an and my companions are waiting for me, but here are some hints of the past few days:

Eaten: sorghum noodles, scorpions, eggplant, french toast, ice cream (corn and otherwise)

Ridden: bicycle, train, rickshaw, taxi, bus

Read: the end of Anna Karenina and the beginning of I Am Charlotte Simmons

Talked to: five year old little girl, very talkative cab driver, Russian-speaking Chinese tour guide

Hopefully I'll have time to hit the wang ba (internet cafe) when I get back to Beijing tomorrow and fill in the details, such as the taste of scorpions. You might be surprised.

Lao Beijing

The other day Lili and I decided to go to Pretty Cup, but as always it was full and we were waved off without a word. Sick of most of the other restaurants in the area (sick of everything, actually, but maybe that's just me), we decided to go to Lao Beijing - hadn't been there in a while.

"Two for dinner," said Lili to the fuwuyuan in his silk pajamas and beanie with fake braid attached.
"Are you American?"
"Yes."
He nodded and disappeared behind a sliding door. Lili and I looked at each other, then at one of the other fuwuyuan, who nodded and motioned for us to follow. We stepped through the door and found we were in a small room. There was a high platform with a very low table and two round wicker stools.
"Can't we have a normal table?" I asked.
"Normal tables are all full. We're very busy. This is a special room for important people. Take off your shoes."
After determining that the special room did not include a special fee and proving ourselves not important people by requesting free (i.e. used) chopsticks and free boiling water to drink instead of tea, Lili and I enjoyed our novel surroundings. There were two silk jackets hanging from a hook on the wall, old photographs of Chinese people lounging about luxuriously, and a shelf of vases and small sculptures. We ordered what looked kind of like biscuits ("Is it sweet?" Lili asked the fuwuyuan. "A little," he replied), eggs and tofu, sauteed rapeweed, and a bowl of rice. The "biscuits," when they arrived, turned out to be two lightly cooked onions, smothered in mustard. We each took a bite, rather nervously, and found that the flavor was overpowering - not spicy, exactly, we can handle spicy; we graduated from Sichuan Street Vendor Tofu Kebob University, after all, but this was just dreadful. My sinuses felt as though I'd taken in a lungful of smoke; my eyes filled with tears. One bite was enough.

Next came our rapeweed, which was greasy but all right, and our tofu, which tasted like an ashtray. I could barely swallow. Lili did a little bit better and managed a whole piece, but no more. We decided to try and pull off the American Celebrities act: I would be Jenna Bush and Lili would be Barbara. She's black, but they're Chinese, so we figured maybe they wouldn't notice. When you want the waiter's attention in Beijing you have to yell FUWUYUAN! really loudly. I once woke myself up doing this in a dream. "FUWUYUAN!" Lili cried. "We don't like this dish," indicating the onions with mustard. "May we see a menu and order something else?"

"We're having terrible luck tonight," I said when he left. "We should have known those wouldn't be biscuits. You can pick the next thing."
She chose well. We ended up with delightful balls of crisp dough rolled in sesame seeds and filled with red bean paste. EVERYTHING should be filled with red bean paste, it is so delicious.

"We should steal one of these things," said Lili, indicating the vases on the wall. "Because that onion thing was so disgusting."
"Okay," I said. "How about that small jade Buddha, that'd fit in your purse."
"I can't steal a Buddha! That's like stealing Jesus."
"Yeah, you're probably right, he'd probably haunt your dreams - 'return me! retuuurrrnnn meee!'"

They didn't buy the Bush twins act - we had to pay for the mustard. But though the food was terrible, the ambiance was terrific.

Yang Yang

Friday was our field trip to the rural village of Cuandixia, famous for the fact that its name is impossible to write: the character "Cuan" has 30 strokes, which is so many even the Chinese can't be bothered. In order to promote tourism, the government changed the name to something a bit easier to write, but everywhere you go in that town (roughly the size of our block) you see the character written in beautiful script.

I fell asleep on the bus and when I woke up we were surrounded by stark, red-brown mountains dotted with what at first appeared to be sheep but which turned out to be plum trees in full bloom. I'm fond of plum trees because they're my namesake (my father points out that both P.G. Wodehouse and I are known as Plum, which is silly but pleases me anyway). I can never get over the incredible beauty and variety of the Chinese countryside. We were only three hours outside of Beijing but it was an entirely different world.

When we got to the village we split up into groups, each group occupying a different house. Because the farming's pretty lousy and the young folks have all split for the big city, the people of Cuandixia apparently make their living letting tourists stay in their houses. If you've seen the movie To Live (as I keep telling you to), the houses were kind of like that - the two sleeping quarters divided by an open air courtyard with a cooking area off to the side. We slept on traditional peasant beds called kang which are made of brick, with a flue running underneath for warmth. There were five of us on one kang - you really get to know your classmates in a country where you're really lucky when the public bathrooms have doors on the stalls and you have to sleep five or six to a bed.

Once we'd gotten settled we went for a walk. We wandered around the village, taking in the faded 1960s-era slogans on the walls ("Read Chairman Mao's book. Listen to what Chairman Mao says"), talked to an amateur painter and his wife, then climbed to the highest point of one of the mountains for a spectacular view. When we climbed down again it was time for dinner, which we ate in the courtyard. There were about thirty dishes, hot and cold, including hard little cornbread loaves, tiny, salty fish, red beans and rice, and soft, mild tofu.

After dinner we wandered about some more until the party. There was a big stage set up for karaoke ("Chinese Harmonica Song" again, of course) and two huge bonfires onto which the men sloshed a generous amount of gasoline. ACC provided a wealth of snacks, including chocolate, cookies, and marshmallows, so we rounded up some sticks and set about making s'mores, Chinese-style (i.e., somewhat off, but good all the same). Alcohol turned up as it always does and since I wasn't drinking I eventually started to have the eerie feeling that everyone was going mad. People I don't normally interact with were touching me. Boys were leaping over the flames because boys are morons. Presently I decided I wanted to be back on the kang reading Anna Karenina so I excused myself and went to bed. Beds made of bricks ... you can sort of see why that's a good idea, but it was COLD (I was on the edge, far away from both the stove and the flue under the bed) and my limbs fell asleep much more willingly than the rest of me.

I woke to our professors telling us it was time for breakfast. After corn porrige, steamed buns, cabbage, and hard boiled eggs we went out for a walk. We greeted peasants on the road and stopped to chat with a very friendly goat herd (a person who yangs yang, if you will). When we got back it was time for lunch and then we got back on the bus to go home.

Tomorrow we leave for Xi'an. With a name like that, it's got to be exciting, right? I'll try to find an internet cafe, but if I'm not in touch, that will be why. Xi'an is known for its terra cotta warriors, which is not as exciting as wild monkeys but I suppose we can't have wild monkeys all the time or we'd get sick of them.