laowai days

Endings

2006-08-19T00:07:00.000-07:00

And it's over. Yesterday was our exam, which I finished in record time (I was, as always, the first out of the room) and then went to get a haircut.

One thing that I will kind of miss is the exchange rate. In America, I would never get my hair cut in a place where they give you a beverage, but in China, I was able to enjoy my coffee and chat with the guy cutting my hair about Chinese and American standards of beauty and it was only about $15. When he had finished, he held up the mirror and I saw that, horror of horrors, I'd been mulletted.

"Um ... oh," I said. "Actually, could you go shorter in the back? The back should definitely not be longer than the front."

He was dubious, but complied, and the final result makes me very happy.

That afternoon was our graduation ceremony, where, among other things, the fourth year teachers described the students and people were supposed to guess who they were. Mine was "This student brilliantly rebutts others' arguments in debate class. Her dream is to discover a new logical proposition and go insane."

After the ceremony, the language pledge ended. My haircut was complimented and I was called "sassy" twice in an hour, which is a new record. We went to Paul and Anders' room and hung around for a bit before the big end-of-semester Beijing Roast Duck dinner, where my roommate and another last-semester student and I chatted quite easily. After dinner, we went back to Anders' room, where we talked for a very long time. It was especially nice to be able to make jokes effortlessly and to hear people's real voices - not to mention our real names. This was especially true because the boys, with the exception of Paul, all had rather odd names: Cedric, Anders, and Bennett.

At one point, a second-year guy I don't know came and proposed a drinking contest with Paul - not something I would recommend, as Paul is built like a linebacker. The other guy threw 3 kuai on the floor and said, "All right, that's 3 mao, 3 mao on the floor." Bennett, Cedric and I exchanged looks - this guy has been in China for two months and has yet to master the monetary system. I watched, fascinated and appalled, as they chugged enormous bottles of Yanjing beer. Paul won, of course, which is good since it was his beer anyway.

After awhile, we managed to get up and go to Houhai, where we bought more cheap beer and wandered around the lake. We found some other classmates, none of whom I knew, sitting on sofas outside a bar and decided to camp out for a bit.

(A person came around selling flowers and tried to get Bennett to buy some. He said no - "Unless you'd like one?" he added, turning to me. I said no thank you and my roommate and I did some possibly-not-too-subtle nudging.)

For everything I'm leaving, I'm getting something new.

Here are lists.

Lost or losing:
Cedric, Anders, Paul, Emily, Ben.
Wang Cheng, Luo Wei, Zao Zao, Namu, Xiaoxue.
Teachers: Xu, Zhu, Li, Li, Mao, Wang, Fan, etc.
Noodles for breakfast, the red hills of Sichuan, corn-flavored ice-cream, beautiful Chinese men, ginkgo trees, zongzi, ridiculous twee pop.

And getting back:
Kep, Jim, Jay, Jill, Kate, Katie Rose, Lisa.
My mum and dad, Caroline, Lillian, my grandparents, and cousins, and aunts and uncles.
Quaker meeting.
Peach pie on my grandparents' deck
Singing along with Lucinda Williams or Paolo Conte or West Side Story
My thesis
My cats
The gravity couch

For everything I lose, I gain something else, I know that. I keep telling myself that. I gave Ben my copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel to read on the plane; on the title page, I wrote one of my favorite parts of They Might Be Giants:

"What's wrong with being Sherlock Holmes? Why, I sometimes wish I were the Scarlet Pimpernel. A fop by day, but in the night, I ride. Is he in Heaven or is he in Hell, that damned elusive Pimpernel? What's that? You want to see the face behind the mask?

"... this is the face."

I no longer have my book, but I have something better - the knowledge that now he has something of mine.

This is the end of this story. On Monday I will go back to America, where I belong. It isn't easy, but it's right.

One Week

2006-08-13T03:19:00.000-07:00

I realized last night that I may have become a formalist.

But you in all likelihood do not care about that, so let's move along. I'm running out of time here! (Oh God!)

We will move backwards in time (forward is going quickly enough) unless I forget things and have to skip around.

Lunch today at the Chinese Host Family's house. My Chinese brother Daxin came to the dorm to pick us up. I didn't recognize him, because last time he had hair like a member of an 80's hair band (the 80s are big here) and seemed about eight feet tall. Now, somehow, he's my height, and lovely. I will be frank: I do not know how I am going to readjust to life in a country where beautiful Chinese men are so scarce. Before college, I think I had only ever met three Chinese people, one of whom was my first ever crush, when I was eight (I told you we'd be going back in time).

Daxin got us a cab and we went to his house. The last time I was there was Chinese New Year, in February, but I knew we were close when we passed the enormous rainbow adorning their street.

Conversation was awkward, but it always is, and considering how dreadfully things could have gone, I'd say the afternoon was a success. My Chinese father did not talk about how bad my Chinese used to be; we had a nice lunch, I understood everything they said, and when the silence grew to awkward Daxin turned on the TV. We watched part of my favorite Chinese show, Family Has Children, which is basically the Chinese Brady Bunch, except that there are only three children. But this is China and that's SO MANY CHILDREN - the first time I watched it I was baffled at how they came to have so many children. I assumed they were Taiwanese until I saw the one where the ex-spouses come over for Chinese New Year and there's a mild-mannered custody battle.

Family Has Children is one of the things I'm going to miss.

Last night, one of our teachers, Zhu laoshi, invited all the 4th years over for dinner. Unfortunately only four of us could make it. As we entered her apartment building, I was amazed at how fancy it was - how could she afford a place like this on a teacher's salary, I wondered. We took the elevator up to the 14th floor and it became clear: Zhu laoshi lives in an office.

Their living room is full of cubicles. The dining room contains over thirty plastic-wrapped chairs and a whiteboard. "Where do you sleep?" I asked. "On the sofa," she replied.

The office belongs to her brother's company, and since they're "too busy" to find a house at the moment, they are living there: Zhu laoshi, her brother, and her brother's girlfriend. The latter two prepared a million dishes for us while Zhu laoshi showed us pictures of when she was younger. She is extremely beautiful, but doesn't quite fit the Chinese standard: she's got to be at least 5'10" and therefore often has to wear men's clothing.

She mentioned that when she was younger she always wished she were a boy (and who doesn't?) and showed us pictures of herself with a crew cut. She told us about her grandmother, who had bound feet, and how she met her husband through a matchmaker. Her brother told us about the first time they saw a foreigner, and how their grandmother had shielded her eyes. Could China have come any further in two generations?

We stayed at Zhu laoshi's until almost midnight, being pressed to eat things, and were finally sent home with peaches and sunflower seeds and, in my case, a new understanding of a teacher with whom I have had some issues.

To the orphanage on Friday (see an earlier post), where I was simultaneously delightened and saddened to see several familiar faces. In particular I remembered Wei Kangqin, a two-year old little girl. The last time I came, she had just had her cleft palate surgery, and now she can already sit and crawl by herself. "I remember you, yes I do," I told her softly, patting her back. "You are a very special girl!"

Visiting this particular orphanage is not as depressing as it might be, because these children will almost all be adopted eventually and are in the meantime receiving very good care, but it's certainly sobering.

And now it's only a week. Went to the Silk Market yesterday to get presents for people, and I'm glad to think that I'll never be ripped off there again.

And I'm a formalist! Damn it, how does this happen?

The Roach

2006-08-06T01:35:00.000-07:00

The other day when I came into our room, my roommate greeted me and said, "We have a friend." I peeked into the bathroom and saw a roach about the size of a small mouse - I'd say over an inch long, easy. I screamed and jumped about a foot in the air.

"What are we going to do?" I cried, ashamed of myself for being so girly. Small roaches are one thing, but this was the biggest I'd ever seen.

"We could step on it," my roommate suggested feebly, and I gave her a pained look.

"But the scrunch," I said. "And we'd never be able to wear those shoes again. Plus I'm meeting B. and the others in a minute, and I have to go to the bathroom."

My roommate shrugged.

"Okay, I'm going to abandon you for a minute and go buy roach spray," I decided. Then I ran down to the first floor and knocked on B's door, looking as though I were being pursued by assassins.

"Can you help me?" I demanded when he opened the door.

"Of course," he said.

"Can I use your bathroom?"

B. has many faults, but manners are not among them. He didn't even ask why, just agreed. In the interest of returning his courtesy, I returned the to its original position - it is a boys' room, after all.

What a polite fellow: he didn't ask for an explanation, but I felt I owed him one, so I explained about the roach, at which point he offered to kill it for me. I turned him down, though - I have my pride. We went to Fabao and I picked up a Y17 can of Raid.

I went back to my room and stepped inside. I felt a scrunch and looked down.

I had stepped on the roach.

I screamed and ran to the other side of the room. After a moment, I mustered up my courage and sprayed it with Raid until it stopped moving. Then, after several aborted attempts, I managed to scoop it up with a piece of paper and flush it down the toilet. Then I washed my shoe.

Two more weeks.

Simultaneously the coolest and most horrifying thing that has happened to me EVER.

2006-08-06T01:30:00.000-07:00

So I've mentioned our blockbuster hit movie, Wang Ba Dan ("If you see only one movie this year made by fourth-year Chinese students, make it this one!"), and how at one point B. and I throw cupfulls of small change on the ground in front of the bus stop to see what would happen. Well, yesterday I found out that this stunt made the papers. I haven't seen it yet myself, but our teachers inform us that it ran something like this: "Two foreigners and someone who looked Chinese threw money on the ground at a bus station. The Chinese citizens present were angry and confused."

We're notorious! I was somewhat horrified when I heard, but our teachers seemed to find it amusing, so I guess it's all right. And here I thought the high point of my film career would be being voted the best of the three films made by the class. We actually made the paper!

I think my work here is just about done.

Race Against Time

2006-08-03T00:13:00.000-07:00

Three weeks left and the clock is ticking ... I am running out of deoderant. Lili left me a tube when she went back to the States. It is the brand which claims to be "So effective you could skip a day." I do not quite know how to take this. Are they telling me not to shower? I asked one of my teachers where I could buy deoderant and she said the grocery across the street would have it. She told me the brand name but it was long and I only remembered part of it. Still, I managed to find an object that had several of the characters she'd mentioned and bought it. I took it home and, after removing the foil seal, found an object more like a bright yellow flan than anything else. How to apply it? On my finger? Also, it smelled incredibly strong - it smelled up the whole room.

It was air-freshener.

So I tried again. I swallowed my pride and asked one of the women who work in the cosmetics department where I could find "the thing you put under your arms so you don't stink." She laughed and led me to the product I was after, assuring me that I would not stink at all, and it would be great. I bought it and brought it home. On the outside was a picture of a baby, and although babies don't use deoderant, this is China, where packaging does not necessarily relate to content. In this case, however, it did - it was baby powder. "Snake Gall" baby powder, no less - what does that mean? Is it made of snake gall or is that just the brand name? I do not know, but I worry.

It goes without saying that baby powder is not deoderant, but my options are slim. I use the baby powder, which, combined with my lavendar-scented moisturizer, makes me smell like an old lady. Moreover, everything I own and everything my roommate owns are now covered in baby powder forever, in much the same way that a well-timed glitter bomb could eliminate civilization as we know it.

So there is, as we say in Chinese, no banfa. I will simply have to make do with what I have. And anyway, I still have the air freshener.

Work

2006-07-29T03:39:00.000-07:00

In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Johnny muses that maybe someday the unions will fix it so that a person can work steadily but still have some time to himself - "now it's work all the time or be a bum," he says. Although the adults closest to me all appear to have some leisure, they are all fairly affluent. Whether or not things have changed for Johnny's class I do not know.

In China, however, things are much as Johnny described them. Chinese people work like maniacs from the time they begin school until retirement. People are so busy that it's quite common to send babies to be raised by their grandparents and children of four or five to boarding school. I was appalled when Zheng Xiaoxue told me she'd boarded at five, and I couldn't quite explain to her why this seemed so wrong. "They have teachers," she pointed out. "It's not like they just play all the time." This was so far from being my objection I thought it best to change the subject.

If you're too busy to raise your own children, you maybe shouldn't be having children. It's not as though there's a population shortage. But the children are busy, too - school days are longer here, and high school students don't do sports or work part-time jobs or have any outside activities the way we do in America. There is simply no time.

One of my teachers told me that her parents don't want her travelling or going out, saying that these things are a waste of time. Children aren't allowed much free play time, either - they are supposed to be studying whenever they're not sleeping. The Chinese have no concept of pleasure or "the pursuit of happiness" as a right that people ought to have.

I wonder why this is. Perhaps it's related to the population - the competition is incredibly fierce, because there are more people than jobs or space in colleges. If this is the case, then when the population is under control (which I believe it will be someday - if anyone can do it it's China) people will be able to take time to breathe.

Wang Ba Dan

2006-07-29T03:24:00.000-07:00

Instead of an essay, this weekend the fourth years are making movies. Originally, the assignment was to make a movie about what happens to the characters in Zhang Yimou's worst failure, "Keep Cool," which was this week's movie lesson. But C. got Mao laoshi to change the requirements, and so now we're just making a movie where we act crazy and see what people do.

Really.

Our movie is called Wang Ba Dan, which means "bastard," and was one of last week's vocab words (movie classes often have a lot of rude vocab, which is what I like about them). Me, C, and B dress up in traditional Chinese outfits (the boys' have more or less the same one, only they also have little beanies) and wander around Chaoyang causing trouble. So far I haven't done too much gangstering (which in Chinese is a verb!), but merely worked the camera. However, there is much left to do - yesterday the boys fought over corn by the subway station, then when we had everyone's attention began to ask people about Mencius and Confucius. Tomorrow we are going to take a small paper cup of spare change we gathered from our classmates (somehow asking classmates for money is not so embarrassing if you are wearing a qipao) and scatter it in a public place. We have other plans as well, with greater or lesser potential to get us arrested, so I think it's quite likely our group will have the best movie.

Today we had a fairly pleasant field trip to a reservoir two hours from Beijing. The amount of time travelling to and fro greatly exceeded the amount of time actually there, but it was nonetheless nice to get out of the city and climb a mountain. The weather was not so good though; it's dreadfully sticky out, and the boys I was with both took off their shirts, which I suppose is their perogative.

Women are Tigers

2006-07-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

Spent the weekend in Datong, a tourist town in Shanxi Province, to the west of Beijing. We took the train Thursday night after our midterm - sadly, my last Chinese train experience was spent sleeping. (I've been doing that lately - thinking about Last Things: Last Train Ride is the first that I'm aware of but there will be more as the days go by). We pulled into the station rather early - around six thirty - and proceeded to the hotel for breakfast.

ACC's field trips are always rather intense and mountain-climbing-centric, which is all well and good but can be tiring. On Friday we visited the Hanging Monastary, which was a little disappointing because it was so packed with tourists. I love Buddhist sites, especially monastaries, but this one had no monks and no pilgrims, only tourists. Then we went to Heng Mountain, which is one of the most sacred and famous mountains in China. This I did enjoy, because I got to talk to the nice Taiwanese teacher mentioned in an earlier post, C. and Xi Shiyuan, and some Taoists, who C. enjoyed teasing.

"Are you American?" one of them asked him.
"Yes," said C.
"But you don't look like her," the Taoist pointed out, motioning to a blond-haired girl.
"I used to," said C. earnestly. "When I was younger. Do you like blond hair?"
"No," said the Taoist.
"Me neither," said C., "So I dyed my hair black."
The Taoist did not ask about C.'s eyes or anything else that distinguishes him from a white person, and we moved on.
"Do you eat meat?" we asked.
"No, we don't kill anything."
"Can you get married?"
"No, women are tigers."

Women are tigers! That is my new favorite thing!
"What about Taoist women?" I asked him.
"Women cannot be Taoist," he informed me.
"Because they are tigers?"
"That's right."
"What if a woman really wants to be Taoist?" C. asked.
"She can't."

Shi laoshi explained that these people come to Taoism at a very young age, maybe eight or nine, and their master tells them women are tigers and they are scared and grow up believing it. I for one was vaguely flattered to be called a tiger, but my temporary roommate Chen laoshi, a Chinese girl studying in the U.S. and working as a T.A. over the summer, was somewhat affronted.

That evening I went with C., Xi Shiyuan and his roommate, and Chen laoshi for noodles. We wandered around gormlessly for awhile and, to tide ourselves over, purchased some Stinky Tofu. I'd had Stinky Tofu once before, in Chengdu, at Zheng Xiaoxue's insistance, and I can assure you that it lives up to its name. When there is a Stinky Tofu vendor nearby the entire block is unbearable. They say the worse the smell, the better the taste, but the Stinky Tofu we had that night was quite tasty and mildly scented. I suppose it must not have been the real stuff, which is quite all right with me.

We ended up having snails and noodles outside, which was pleasant. I like hanging around with the other fourth years, because we use our vocabulary words and sentence patterns constantly, and say things like "My mind is full of capitalist decadence!"

Datong, being a tourist town, is very full of decadance. Prostitutes propositioned C. and poor Shi laoshi (C., who had just shaved his head, told them he was a monk, and they apologized profusely) and as we walked along the street we passed adult shops and street vendors selling obscene Japanese videos.

Last night I had the good fortune to eat dinner with Chen laoshi, Zheng laoshi, and Wang laoshi, all Chinese people. We had a very nice meal of various Datong specialties (the food was very good on this trip) and then walked through the busy downtown, packed with vendors, fortune telling machines, games, and shops. Chen laoshi purchased more Stinky Tofu, very pungent this time, and it was terrible. I was surprised that it was so crowded - Datong's kind of a nothing little town ("Its specialty is that it has nothing special about it," C. informed me, and I was pleased at the paradox) but the only time I've ever seen more people in one place was at the temple fair my Chinese brother took me to over New Year's.

Returned to Beijing very early this morning, tired, but quite satisfied.

One Month

2006-07-20T03:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went with some people I don't normally see much of but whose company I enjoy to the Korean restaurant for banfan, and then on the way back we got milk tea and it struck me: I'm going to miss this place.

I am going home in a month, and for the most part that's been a source of comfort to me. Cockroach the size of my thumb in the bathroom: six more weeks. No internet access: five more weeks. The only three options are boiled, fried, or deep fried: four more weeks. But there are so many things I'm going to miss -

ginger scented shampoo
the way the guy at the Korean restaurant always knows that I'll have a banfan, no meat
having everything be 1/8 the price of the same thing in the US
bootleg DVDs
goofy Chinese pop
lychees, mangoes, and coconut milk

Since coming back from Luguhu, all I can think is that Beijing just doesn't measure up, and of course in most ways it doesn't, but I've been here a long time now, and it's sort of grown on me. I will be sorry to leave. I'd kind of forgotten that.

To Datong this weekend for our field trip. Hopefully there'll be stories when I return.

Italy Noodles

2006-07-13T01:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon Liu Xi and my roommate Meiyi invited me to go to their teachers' apartment to make dinner for them. I am, of course, always game for Western food, particularly when it's under Y40, and I love going to teachers' houses. This is generally because my teachers - I'm thinking of Jim Henle and the deVilliers in particular - are wonderful cooks, but I also love having a chance to get out of the weird atmosphere of College/ACC and peek at people who have lives.

The teachers in question, Wang laoshi and Xu laoshi, are new this semester, and in fact I remember attending Xu laoshi's "tryout" last spring. They're from Taiwan and when I learned that they lived together I assumed they were married, since under other circumstances I don't think Chinese people can have co-ed roommate situations. It did not take me especially long to surmise that this was not the case, however - they are the exception: two women can live with a man if he's gay - wasn't that the premise of a TV show before I was born? I have now met four gay Chinese men and all four have been absolutely delightful - all the loveliness of Chinese men with none of the unpleasant personal habits. Or at any rate, fewer. Chief among the sins committed by Chinese men are hacking phlegm all over the place (the ground in Beijing is seriously coated with a layer of phlegm at all times), growing their fingernails really long, and smoking all the time, which causes the long fingernails to yellow. I hasten to emphasize that not all Chinese men do these things - not even all heterosexual Chinese men, and not all gay Chinese men - presumably - refrain. Just the four I've met.

So, moving right along from my charming racist overgeneralizations, the two teachers and my friends and I went to Fabao for ingredients, then to their apartment in the professors' dormitory to whip up some "Italy Noodles" and fruit salad. This is the second time I have made Italy Noodles for Chinese people - the first was in Chengdu with Zheng Xiaoxue - and I would say it was fairly successful. It was so nice to have a meal that was not literally dripping with oil. There are only three methods of preparing food in China - fried, deep fried, and boiled. The teachers seemed to enjoy it (they claim Taiwanese food is not as greasy as Beijing food - I am not sure) and we talked about which Chinese pop idols are the most handsome.

"We have a saying that girls who hold their chopsticks really high up will marry someone from far away," Wang laoshi told us as she helped herself to salad. "Maybe a foreigner or someone from another province, and girls who hold their chopsticks lower marry someone nearby - "

"Like their roommate," said Xu laoshi, and shifted his hand to the very end of his chopsticks.

"Well don't do it on purpose!" Wang laoshi scolded him. "I really want to find some handsome guy," she confided, "but people see me with him all the time and think we're together, it's so annoying!"

"Thanks," said Xu laoshi.

"Jingwen thought you were married," said Liu Xi helpfully, referring to me.

After dinner the others had to finish their homework (not me though - I had an important date with David Duchovny. Fourth year is great), so we headed home. It was raining hard, as it has been lately, so the laoshis sent us off with umbrellas and a slice of dried kiwi apiece.

And the best part was, I think they may let us come over again.

Dinner with Courtney

2006-07-09T01:21:00.000-07:00

You know how sometimes something really bad will happen, but the result will be something really good? For instance, getting a really, shall we say, incompatible roommate and having to switch rooms last semester was inconvenient and upsetting, but it led to my sharing a room with Courtney, and that was wonderful. She is one of the funniest people I've ever met, she was friends with all the cool kids, and she had an enormous DVD collection. What more could one want in a roommate? She's still in Beijing, though no longer at ACC, and yesterday I took the subway (changing lines three times) to Wudaokou to meet her for dinner.

We went with her boyfriend The German and her roommate, Julia, to a nifty Korean place for non-greasy, non-Chinese food, which is always a pleasure. And we spoke English - I am so over the language pledge, have I mentioned that? - and talked about actual things, and my brain was happy. We talked about wanting to have our obituaries in the New York Times, about education, about the first major world event we remembered. This really reflected the difference in our ages: the German's was Chernobyl, which took place when he was 13. He said that afterwards they didn't eat grain or drink milk for five years. Courtney and Julie remembered the first Gulf War; I was only six or so and didn't even know we had had a war until years later. Mine was in eighth grade, when my History teacher Mr Morrisson told us there was a threat of nuclear war. "There was no time in the nineties when that was not the case," The German informed me.

And then after much good, brain-strengthening conversation, we watched a movie, and since the subway stops running at 10:30 in Beijing, I was obliged to spend the night on the couch. Crashing on the couches of friends with apartments is one of my favorite things; it makes me feel so grown up. Courtney has her own washing machine, which, far more than the five years age-difference, makes her seem like a grownup.

In other news, I have my email back up and working. My quality of life just went up 235%.

The Tattoo

2006-07-07T04:28:00.000-07:00

Some days are easier than others. Some days slip by in a haze of uninteresting studying and Sex and the City reruns (I know) and I barely realize I'm in Beijing.

Beijing is a funny city. It's an international city in the sense that there are hundreds of foreigners who for one reason or another have decided to spend some time with the word LAOWAI tattooed all over their bodies. The tattoos are invisible, but Chinese people can see them. This does not bother the foreigners I am thinking about at the moment because as far as I can tell they live their lives completely seperate from China. This could be Otterdam, or anywhere; they read That's Beijing! and do not think 60 yuan is very much to spend for a gin and tonic. They probably don't speak Chinese. Their Beijing is not my Beijing, but from time to time I pass through it.

Nor is my Beijing the Beijing of the locals; I'm not that deluded. There are times when I do forget about the tattoos, but no one else is forgetting them, as I'm reminded every time a Chinese person pantomimes at me or shouts "hello" off a minibus.

"I thought you'd be pleased to see other foreigners," Luo Wei said to me once, in Luguhu. "I thought you'd be excited." But pleased and excited is not what I feel, not at all. Other foreigners just made me feel more foreign, as though by virtue of my whiteness (or something) my alliance had to switch from the Chinese people I knew and cared for to these laowai I didn't know from Adam.

"We are all one family in a home we call China," we sang last semester. But I have never been so far from home.

These are things I tell myself on the hard days:

this is not my real life
elsewhere there are people who love me
I am lucky to be here
struggling will make me stronger
someday I will come home.

Tai Qi

2006-07-03T05:22:00.000-07:00

Walking up the steps to the internet cafe, a young Chinese guy called out, "Hurry up!" "You hurry up," I retorted, and then realized that he had, of course, been talking to his friend, a few steps behind him. I should have known a Chinese person wouldn't speak Chinese to me out of the blue, and indeed he looked up and responded with the only English word I bet he knew, "Hello."

There are times when one hates this country.

Today I had a meeting with the ACC field director. We all have to meet with her this week to discuss our feelings early into the semester. I have this belief, left over from childhood, that if you tell your problems to grownups they will be able to fix them. They never actually can, but I am undeterred.

I told her I felt frustrated. On the one hand, I have reached a point in my Chinese where talking to other foreigners is actually making my Chinese worse, as awful as it sounds. I think I've already reached my peak and now I'm just wasting time. But on the other hand, I don't especially care. I've already been to Luguhu. I'm not coming back to China for years, if ever. I am no longer interested in learning this language. Been there, done that.

Her advise, though I found it unsatisfying at the time, was actually the best and only advise she could have given: When you're in a situation you cannot change, you may as well try to enjoy it. And anyway, two months is not a long time.

So I guess that's what I'll do.

Today was our first Tai Qi class, which was enjoyable, though the passers-by could not help but stare at the crowd of foreigners moving their arms, ever so slowly, into the White Dragon Position or whatever it was. When I first arrived in China, the staring didn't bother me - why shouldn't they stare? But it bothers me now. Someday, as I told Zheng Xiaoxue when we were in Lijiang, I will return to America, and I will not be a monster anymore. But for now I just do the best I can.

The Trouble With Being Human

2006-06-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

I am shy. I've been shy ever since I was a kid, but in recent years it has actually gotten worse - or at least, more specialized. I'm rarely anxious in large crowds, and I can even speak in public without much difficulty, but I am obsessively terrified of one-on-one interaction. It has reached the point where today, when someone I like and who is obviously interested in making friends with me asked me to lunch today, I turned him down - because we had lunch yesterday, and obviously we'd have nothing to talk about if we had lunch again today. It is particularly worth noting that at lunch yesterday I talked to him about possible world logic and yet he asked me to lunch again. Plus he seems to be one of the only people here who can understand a word I say. But no, I am too crazy for friends, so I said, "Um, I have to ... do other things." I didn't end up having lunch at all.

Don't bother emailing me to tell me I'm crazy - I am already well aware. Don't bother emailing me at all, actually; not only is my school email still down, but my Yahoo mail doesn't work anymore either. Soon I'm going to have to resort to sending messages in empty bottles of Tsingtao.

Tie a bottle to the neck of an albatross or something and enclose a list of conversation starters. It would be a great help to me.

Still obsessed with Moby Dick

2006-06-25T23:28:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of classes, which went well - actually too well. I am afraid (in that way where it would be awesome) that I made so much progress over my break that fourth year is going to be a breeze and I will have nothing to do all summer but sit in my air-conditioned room watching the X-Files during the day and go out dancing at night. Fortunately I have just utterly destroyed any chance of that by mentioning it, and I will have the grueling two months I signed up for.

There's something worrying me. It's not the sort of thing I want getting around, which is why I'm only going to share it with you, Internet. I think my Chinese has reached a point where talking to other foreigners is going to make it worse. Every time I spend time with my classmates it is as though I can feel the progress I made in Sichuan dripping away. But I have to interact with my classmates! Otherwise I will be lonely! I could talk to Chinese people, I guess, but I'm too shy - my Chinese isn't that good. Once again I find myself relating to Quequeeg - I'm civilized enough to wear boots, but savage enough to put them on under the bed.

I've got to start reading something else.

Had lunch at the Korean restaurant with Cedric, who is new, so I had the pleasure of introducing a newbie to the joy of banfan. (He didn't finish it, but maybe he's just a light eater.) Then I went with about thirty other people to renew my membership at the gym, which is where I am now - free internet access! And at some point, presumably exercise or something.

I have been back for about two days and already we have had more cockroaches in our room than we had the entire last semester. I found one on my bed. It was very tiny, but that is so obviously not okay, and now I have to search all the bedclothes before I go to sleep at night. Mostly they are not tiny - mostly they are the big kind - I got one over an inch long - and it makes me want to cry. I went to the store and bought roach motels, and we're throwing out all food-garbage in the hall, and we've covered the drain of the bathtub with an ashtray, but it seems to be having little effect.

Also, I bought a toilet brush the other day, which means I am officially a Grownup.

If anyone's been trying to email me, I apologize for not responding - my email has been down for awhile. I assume it's because they're doing something to the system, and that they emailed me to warn me about it, but I wouldn't know, because I cannot check my email. And I emailed the person in charge of email, but he never emailed me back, presumably because I had to use my Yahoo account, and who can blame him.

Also, if you find Y20 on the floor of the gym, you get to keep it, right? I forget how that one goes. It's hot out, and Y20 will buy a lot of corn ice cream.

Back in Beijing

2006-06-23T17:59:00.000-07:00

My train from Chengdu got into Beijing yesterday morning around five, and I have to admit it is good to be back. Despite how much I hated to leave my friends in Luguhu - I indulged in looking at photos and listening to sentimental music for longer than I'm going to tell you yesterday - there are nice things about being in the city. It's nice to be back with my books, for instance. Before I came to China I was told that we wouldn't be allowed to read English. This turned out not to be true, and I am so glad, because if it weren't for reading and writing I'd have succumbed long ago. I've filled almost my entire journal, in addition to this web-thing, and I've read quite a lot - Anna Karenina, Sense and Sensibility, Psmith Journalist. I've acquired a lot of books since I've been here, and though it pains me, I expect I will be obliged to leave most of them behind. I will give them to ACC to help other bookworm students stave off madness. In the meantime I get to play librarian to my new acquaintances, which is always a job I enjoy. Last night I got my roommate to start reading Moby Dick, and now I am watching her with the air of a mother hen, hoping she gets it.

(When we were travelling together I often thought Zheng Xiaoxue and I were a bit like Ishmael and Queequeg - people weren't surprised to see a foreigner, especially in Lijiang, and they weren't terribly surprised to see a foreigner with a Chinese. But they found it very difficult to believe that we were friends, that she wasn't being paid to translate for me or something, and that in fact when we were together we spoke Chinese.)

Met some nice people yesterday, including my roommate, a brother and sister whom I envy somewhat, a Chinese boy named Cedric, and another boy whose Chinese name I will never forget, since it is pronounced the same as White Pig. Why do Chinese people do these things to us? My friends in Luguhu wouldn't even call me "Ou Aimei," for reasons they were never able to make completely clear, and so Xiaoxue eventually gave me a nice nickname: Jingwen. The "Jing" is homophonous with "quiet" and the "wen" means (written) language - taken together, they indicate that I am quiet and like to read. I like this nickname but I've been Aimei for so long it might be hard to get used to.

Last night my roommate and her friend and I went to dinner at Fuyuan, whose Gong Bao tofu I dreamed of in Sichuan (between dreaming of peach pie and blueberry pancakes), then hung around and talked until fairly late. It was wonderful - we were still speaking English, as the language pledge doesn't begin for a few hours, and we talked about IDEAS! How long has it been since I've had a conversation in English about ideas? I think it has literally been months. And it will be months before I have another one - but only two months, which, as I keep telling myself, is not a long time.

We are in the home stretch.

The Picnic

2006-06-22T08:53:00.000-07:00

Here is the long-awaited (I'm sure) continuation to my story. When we last left off, our heroine was drenched and bent on revenge. It was not too long in coming.
"Let's have a picnic this weekend!" Zheng Xiaoxue exclaimed one warm afternoon as those of us not in class lounged around under the peach trees. From the classroom, I
could hear Luo Wei telling the first-graders about how important it is to do what
Chairman Mao wanted us to do. "Ou Laoshi and I will treat," Xiaoxue went on, "because we're leaving on Wednesday. We can have potatoes and onions and cookies! All in favor clap your hands!" She herself was so very much in favor that she clapped her feet as well, causing Mao Namu to remark that she looked like a frog.
"And I'll tell you what you should do," said Old Mr Wu confidentially, "You girls ought to get back at them for soaking you that day. It'll be fun!" I for one had no
doubt that it would be; I pictured the other girls and I dumping basins of water
over the heads of the miscreants.
What actually happened was far better than that.
A few days in advance, Xiaoxue, Zao Zao, Wang Cheng and I hired a car to take us to
town for provisions. Fang Laoshi and his girlfriend, just arrived from Guangzhou, went too, but ever since the arrival of the girlfriend Fang laoshi had been of little or no use to anybody, apart from providing us with something to laugh at. The car was crowded, and we three girls sat in the back seat and discussed the future.
"You'll come back, won't you?" Zao Zao (one of the two Naxi girls on the school
staff) asked Xiaoxue. "Of course," Xiaoxue assured her. "We can all go to Shangri-la together."
I was jealous - I wanted to go to Shangri-la, too, not return to hot and dirty Beijing.
"You'll come back too, Ou Laoshi?" Zao Zao went on.
"Sure," I said. "I'll bring my grandchildren."
"You can bring your husband," Xiaoxue corrected me. "And he'll be super handsome and
nice."
Wang Cheng, who was sitting up front with the driver, snorted. We ignored him.
"Oh, look!" said Xiaoxue, "This is where we met you that first day! Do you remember?"
I did. It seemed much longer ago than a month. "We all said you were so pretty - especially Luo Wei and Wang Cheng. Wang Cheng didn't even dare speak to you - the beautiful foreigner."
"Beautiful ge pi!" I retorted, successfully employing one of the more colorful words
in my vocabulary, and the others giggled.
We arrived at the town and bought supplies - potatoes, onions, disturbing-looking hot dog-like objects, cookies, and so on. "We can buy a little beer, but not too much," said Xiaoxue. "There will be about six men - five bottles ought to be enough. We don't want them getting drunk." I didn't contradict her.
The day before the picnic it rained, and Xiaoxue and I anxiously discussed the dismal prospect of having a picnic inside, in the kitchen. But the day of the picnic, though the sky was overcast and there was a cool breeze, it was decided that we would risk the trip to the island. We gathered up the food and hiked down to the lake, where we obtained one of the long Naxi canoes. A few of the men went into Zao Zao's family's store and returned carrying an entire crate of beer to supplement the meagre allowance Xiaoxue and I had bought. She was dubious; I was pleased - I felt up for a beer myself. The men paddled the canoe and Zao Zao and Mao Namu sang Naxi folksongs. Zao Zao had a little girl on her lap - about four years old, and not a word of Mandarin. "A gu bah rah," I greeted her solemnly, using one of my few Naxi words.
When we reached the island, the men built a small fire and we girls started to wash
the vegetables in the lake. Before we could start cooking, however, a trip had to be
made to the top of the hill, where there was a small temple made of white stones. We
hiked to the top - Wang Cheng helped the little girl over the difficult bits by
hoisting her by the collar of her jacket, much like a mother cat with her kittens -
and a small, smoky fire was built at the base of the temple. Then, somewhat to my
surprise, Zao Zao gave each of us a small handfull of sand and we began to circle
the temple (moving clockwise) and scattering sand as we went.
Now, ordinarily, of course, my inclination would have been to leave the religious
rites to those who understand and believe in them. But I took my cue from Ishmael -
I was on my third read-through of Moby Dick at the time - and reasoned thus: that
the most important teaching of my own religion is to do unto others as I would have
them do unto me, and that the Buddhists present clearly wanted me to walk and throw
sand, and that my own God wasn't likely to mind. So I went along, and after a few
laps round the temple we stopped, bowed three times, touching our foreheads to the
ground, and Wang Cheng and Yang Shifu took turns blowing a large white conch. Then,
taking care to move only in a clockwise direction, we went down the hill to the
picnic spot.
There we divided in a typical Chinese fashion - the men sat down to play cards and
drink beer, while we girls started to roast the potatoes and whatnot. The exceptions
were Fang laoshi and his girlfriend, who sat at one end of the canoe and whispered
sweet nothings or something, and Luo Wei, who lay at the other end and slept. (He
and Wang Cheng had been keeping rather long hours due to the World Cup.) Of course,
the advantage was all ours - we ate the potatoes and things hot, and only when we
had had our fill did we pass the bowl to the men, who were intent on poker, and Fang
laoshi and his girlfriend, who had eyes only for each other.
"Do you still remember what Mr Wu said?" Xiaoxue asked me confidentially as we knelt
over the fire.
"Of course," I replied; I'd been chuckling to myself all day at the thought of
getting back at the boys.
"What did he say?" Wang Cheng demanded.
"Oh, just explaining to me about some grammar thing," I lied, and Xiaoxue managed to
turn a giggle into a passable imitation of a cough.
When we had eaten our fill for the moment, it was suggested that we play a game. I
don't know how it is, but these folks loved to sing, and all day long at the school
you could hear Houzi's gravelly voice singing traditional Chinese folk songs, or
Wang Cheng's enthusiastic tenor, or even, very softly, the occasional off-key Laura
Cantrell. And so the game that was agreed upon was Sing A Song Or Run Around the
Island (The first suggestion, Sing A Song Or Remove An Item of Clothing, was
rejected, somewhat to my disappointment). We were broken up into teams - Naxi, Han,
and, rather unfairly to my mind, Laowai. "Ou laoshi can be Han," Xiaoxue suggested,
but this would have been letting me off too easy.
And so we sang. The Naxi team sung their folk songs, which were lovely, and the Han
team sang a few Han songs (but not quite as well), and then it was my turn. I tried
to stall. I tried to get out of it. But I do not like to be a poor sport, so finally, starting off unsteady but growing stronger as I went, I sang.
***I need someone to love me
Need somebody to carry me home
to San Fransisco
and bury my body there
Oh I need someone to lend me
a fifty dollar bill and then
I'll leave Hong Kong
far behind me
for happiness once again ***
"What does it mean?" Luo Wei asked me.
"It's about an American in Hong Kong, who wants to go home, but he can't. My dad
used to sing it to me when I was a baby."
By and by some of us decided to go for a spin around the island (moving clockwise,
still, owing to the temple at the top). Luo Wei, Wang Cheng, and Houzi rowed, while
Xiaoxue, Mr Wu and I sat around and looked decorative. Fang laoshi followed us along
the bank for a bit, throwing large stones to splash us, but Wang Cheng got him with
the paddle and he desisted. "Want to go swimming again?" Xiaoxue joked, and I said
yes.
"We'll close our eyes," Luo Wei grinned.
"You two are gay anyway, so you don't count, but we can't trust Mr Wu," Xiaoxue
retorted, and quite probably this was true.
As we approached the picnic spot, we saw that Yang Shifu and Xiao Zhou, a 16 year old Naxi boy, were waiting for us with the old basin of water routine. Wang Cheng got them with the paddle, but then - traitorous boy! - switched sides and jumped onto the bank, where he began splashing us unmercifully. Luo Wei helped me and Mr Wu onto the shore, but poor Xiaoxue couldn't get off the boat, and Wang Cheng jumped back on and paddled off, splashing everyone indiscriminately with the paddle. Xiaoxue bravely tried to shove him off the boat, but she was either not strong enough or not quick enough. Finally, Wang Cheng came back to shore and Xiaoxue, utterly soaked, managed to climb off the boat.
Then I gave chase to Wang Cheng, but he was fast - and armed. Soaking me with one
last basin of water, he took off up the hill. I followed, but I had no water and so
was forced to return to the picnic to get some. This cost me valuable time. I did
not find him at the top of the hill, and by the time I made it back to the bottom
things were in a pretty fix. Xiao Zhou had climbed to the top of the pagoda and
people were throwing all sorts of things at him in a feutal attempt to make him come
down. Wang Cheng had taken the boat and was now reclining in the middle of the lake.
"Never mind," Fang laoshi said to me as I stood, panting and holding my bottle of
water. "He has to come back eventually - we'll get him then."
"I'm never coming back!" Wang Cheng shouted from the boat. I was soaked. I took off
my shoes and socks.
"You're all going to have to swim home!" he crowed. I took off my glasses and placed
them carefully in my sneaker. "Ou laoshi, what are you doing?" Luo Wei asked, but I did not answer. Fully dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, I plunged into the water and began to swim.
Oh, but there is nothing on earth wetter or heavier than wet jeans! I swam freestyle
for a few yards, then paused, treading water, to catch my breath.
"Ou laoshi! Come back!" they cried from the shore. "Come back!"
"Ou laoshi, go back to the island!" Wang Cheng shouted. "I'm coming back, I'm coming!"
"Are you really coming?" I demanded.
"Really! Yes! Go back to the shore, Ou laoshi!"
So I turned and swam back. After all, I did not have any particular plan - if I had
made it to the boat I don't know what I would have done - I couldn't tip it even if
I wanted to (and imagine the headlines - MORON LAOWAI DESTROYS NAXI CULTURAL ARTIFACT) and it would be very difficult to climb up and throw him off.
They made a big fuss over me and tried to make me stand by the fire, but I broke
away and went to stand on the shore to wait for Wang Cheng.
"Here," said Luo Wei, handing me an enormous knife. (I wanted to make some sort of
joke about his ardor being dampened but nothing came to me.)
"I'm coming," said Wang Cheng from the boat. "I'll do it myself." He paddled the
boat close to land and resignedly climbed off in order to wade to the shore.
This was obviously inadequate, and I was already as wet as it was possible to be
without drowning. I chased him back into the water and, amidst his shouts of protest
and howls of laughter from the audience on shore, proceeded to make him as wet as I
was. "Peace," I said finally, and he raised his hand in acknowledgement of our
truce.
"That was very brave," Old Mr Wu said.
"I am proud of you," Fang laoshi said.
"I saw her take off her shoes," Luo Wei said, "and I thought, 'what is she doing?'
And then she just jumped in! Wang Cheng must have been terrified!" He whacked Wang
Cheng on his still-dripping back, then threw his arm around him.
"It was awesome," Xiao Zhou agreed.
"Very romantic," said Zheng Xiaoxue, which of course resulted in some more hitting.
That evening as we stood outside with our bowls of soup, watching the moon come up
over the mountains, Luo Wei told the story again, relishing every damp detail. "I don't know what on earth you're talking about," I said with quiet dignity. "I
would never do a thing like that. I am a lady."
"It's no good saying you're a lady," they laughed, "we'll always remember." And I dare say we will.

CHILDREN'S DAY

2006-06-15T06:07:00.000-07:00

June 1 was International Children's Day, which to my knowledge is celebrated everywhere but America. Li Jie, the older Taiwanese woman, took it into her head that we should take the children - 50 all told -down to Yunnan for a picnic. So that weekend she, Zao Zao, Mao Namu and I took a bus to Yongning to buy provisions. And what provisions! Each of us had a large basket on our backs, and all four baskets were completely filled with every kind of vegetable. And then, somewhat to my
consternation, we bought the chickens. Alive. Worry-prone relatives, you
might want to stop reading now.

Since coming to China I have developed a morbid paranoia of all domestic fowl - to the point that I feel even seeing a chicken is but the first step towards inevitably dying of bird flu. So it was difficult for me to live in Luguhu, which is country and where there are chickens and ducks everywhere. When visiting a Naxi house it is not uncommon for chickens to run around your feet. Still, I watched the purchase of twelve live chickens with a good deal of apprehension.

After a very good lunch in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, we assembled our mountain of vegetables and went to hire a car. Due to construction, however, we had to take a small minibus. The vegetables went in the back, but the chickens, drenched and miserable, were piled at our feet.

"I'm going to die," I thought grimly. "I'm going to die for the sake of a barbeque."

But I did not die, and soon it was Children's Day. [Relatives can resume reading now] "This is going to be exhausting," said Xiaoxue. "Why don't we celebrate Children's Day by leaving the children at home and having a picnic by ourselves? That would be fun. This way, we're each going to be responsible for about seven children, and they're certainly going to drown or burn themselves." This seemed likely. The Chinese can be very lackadaisical about child safety, and I pictured myself trying to
wrangle seven children, simultaneously hell-bent on playing with fire and swimming in the lake. If only the Chinese ate sandwiches - one hundred PB&J's would've about met the case, and I'd have personally volunteered to cut off all the crusts.

That morning we marched the children down to the lake, loading them down with chickens, pots, pickled eggs, and so on. When we got to the water, the boys loaded most of the supplies onto a boat and set off for the picnic spot. The other girls and I herded the children. Mao Namu made them sing their Naxi folksongs and "Frere Jacque," which they can sing in English, Mandarin, Naxi, and Mosuo (Naxi is my favorite - it has a lot of syllables so it's kind of syncopated). Hearing fifty Naxi
children sing "Frere Jacque" never failed to make me laugh.

Eventually we reached the picnic area - a shady spot, hidden from the road, at the foot of a large rocky hill. The children were turned loose and the men lit the fire. The other girls and I washed the vegetables in the lake and a few of the older children helped wash the chickens' feet in preparation for their death. Wang Cheng and Wang Muniang did the actual killing - Luo Wei said he didn't dare. They were killed in what struck me as a particularly inhumane manner - their throats were slit
and their blood collected in a bowl. I will say this for the Chinese - when they eat chicken, they eat the holy living hell out of it. We ate the feet, the blood, the heart (quite good), the intestines and lungs (not so good) - EVERYTHING.

After the chickens had been grilled and eaten, along with the bananas, pickled eggs, and hot dogs (somehow I could bring myself to eat chicken heart much more easily than I could Chinese hot dogs, which I did not dare to try), the boys took the boat out and went for a swim. I was very envious - I'd been reading A Room With a View and the thought of swimming in the clear, cold lake seemed very idyllic, but I supposed it
wouldn't do for girls.

In this I was happily mistaken - when the boys returned from their swim, Houzi ("monkey"), Xiaoxue, Zao Zao, Namu and I took the boat out and went for a swim ourselves.

At first we were timid - the water looked cold, and some of us [i.e. me] had large, cumbersome American bodies they were reluctant to reveal. But promises were exhorted not to look, and I stripped down to my undershirt and underpants and jumped from the boat. The others, with the exception of Houzi (monkeys can't swim, we teased her) followed in short order.

It was so nice to paddle around the boat under the clear Yunnan sky. When we got tired, we swam back and Houzi helped Zao Zao and Xiaoxue climb back on board. I was able to get up myself, but Namu, naked except for her underpants, could not be pulled up and had to drift, holding onto the side as we paddled to the bank.

"What if there are snakes?" she said, and we scolded her - a local, a Naxi girl, afraid of snakes and unable to climb onto a boat! The rest of us dried for a bit in the sun, then got dressed. We were still a little damp but no matter. Namu climbed in from the shore and we paddled back to the picnic grounds, singing "Dui Mian de Nuhai Kan Guo Lai" ["The Chinese Harmonica Song"].

As we approached the others, Old Mr Wu stood on the huge boulder and threw an empty bottle near the boat to splash us. "You have to go get that, foolish child!" Houzi commanded him. As we came closer, we saw Wang Cheng, Luo Wei, and Xiao Zhou, a 16 year old Naxi boy, waiting on the bank. They each had a washbasin, and as we screamed in protest they proceeded to soak us completely. I was the fastest - I chased Wang Cheng all over the picnic ground, but he was quick - and armed. With one last
drenching toss of the wash basin, he took off up the mountain. I could have followed him, but then what? No water on top of the mountain, and it didn't quite seem to merit throwing him off. So instead I joined the other girls by the fire with roast potatoes and beer and dried my clothes.

But that was not the end of the matter.

To be continued.

2006-06-14T11:59:00.000-07:00

This morning Zheng Xiaoxue and I left Luguhu for Lijiang. Before leaving we were presented with a variety of gifts from the other teachers. "I'm not going to say anything more," said Luo Wei, giving me a painting, and then ran away.

"I can't bear to leave you all!" Xiaoxue wept, and I felt the tears come to my eyes as well.

"Don't be such a girl," said Hou laoshi roughly, then immediately stalked a few yards away and turned her back to us so we could not see her face. I shook hands with Luo Wei, Wang Cheng, and Zao Zao, and then Xiaoxue and I got in the car and started off on the bumpy road to Lijiang.

It was hard to leave Luguhu, it really was. "Life is made up of meetings and partings; that is the way of it," I said to myself in the car, trying not to cry. "That's awfully good - what is that from?" A brief rummage through the filing cabinets of my mind revealed that I was comforting myself with quotes from Kermit the Frog in the Muppet Christmas Carol. I'm okay with that, though.

Oh but there are so many stories for me to tell you - how the other girls and I went swimming in the lake, the temple at the top of the hill, and most of all my revenge on Wang Cheng - but I'm afraid I haven't time. Xiaoxue and I are going to stay two or three days in Lijiang - which is pretty, but dreadfully touristy and I am more glad
than ever that I got to see some real China when I was in Luguhu - then going to Dali for a day or two, then finally to Xiaoxue's home in Chengdu, and then back to hot and dirty Beijing. I will try to be in touch during this sojurn, but by no means on an every day basis.

When you have a nice thing, it is only natural that you should want it to continue. But instead of saying, "Why no more?" I am trying to say "Thank you for what I had." I would not trade my time in Luguhu for anything in the world. And though that story is over, there are more adventures yet to come.

2006-06-05T06:28:00.000-07:00

On the day I decided to remain in Luguhu, I wrote in my journal, "To stay here - to not have to leave on Monday - is like being given a beautiful present." And such has proved to be the case - it is a present I open every day and every night when I go to sleep I am so filled with thanks. I can't seem to refrain from cheesiness, I apologize - I'm just so gosh darned fond of Luguhu. And it's hard to say what it is, exactly, that I love so much, but here is an account of an average
day here. Maybe a bit of the beauty will leak through.

Every morning, I wake between seven and eight o'clock and lie in bed for a bit, thinking of this and that, watching the dim light coming through my opaque blue curtains. There's no rush; somehow I always manage to wake well in advance of breakfast, which is almost always xifan, a watery rice porridge which at first I found unbearable but I've gotten used to it. Occasionally we have noodles, which is always exciting, and once we had sweet green pea soup. Lately we've also been having pickled eggs, which are so much tastier than you would think. I'm already
thinking about the pickled egg situation when I return to Beijing, and the entire aisle of pickled eggs in the grocery store I patronize.

Breakfast is rather catch-as-catch-can because it's served ten minutes before classes begin. I do not have any classes until later in the morning (and I have only five classes a week which is not very many) so I generally sit outside on a bench under a tree and watch the lake and read.

When I do have class it is a challenge. Teaching elementary school, it seems to me, is chiefly a matter of keeping order. Make them love you, my grandmother advised me, but it is just as important to keep them in line. The two are not mutually exclusive - it's one of the mysteries of children that they often seem to love the strictest teachers the most. The thing is, Chinese child management involves a lot of hitting. We have a special riding crop sort of thing that is used to hit the children's hands, and when they won't present their hands to be hit a smack to the head is administered instead. "How do I keep order?" I asked Luo Wei and Hou laoshi one day when I first arrived, and in their meandering Chinese way they told me not to spare the rod. I felt like Anne of Green Gables.

What's worse, when I don't hit the children and they misbehave, Hou laoshi
generally comes in and hits them for me, which causes me to lose face in front of
all the children and the other teachers. So what is there to do? I slap the children on the hand when they misbehave, but I use my hand, generally not the stick. It's a compromise but it's
the best I can do. After classes are over we have lunch, which, although generally the same, is
filling and tasty. In the afternoon I am free, so I usually read or hang around the kitchen and chat with whoever else is hanging around the kitchen. Sometimes Zheng Xiaoxue and Hou laoshi and I go down by the lake and sit on one of the boats and talk. We have dinner at eight, and after I have helped to clear and wipe the table, Zheng Xiaoxue and I generally go for a walk down by the lake. When we come back, we hear the horn being blown to signify the start of evening classes, which are for the local adults. Then Luo Wei, Wang Cheng, and I have our English/Naxi
lessons. Unfortunately we've been neglecting the Naxi side lately (Naxi is so incredibly complicated it makes Mandarin look like a picnic), but I love teaching them English. Luo Wei is Sichuanese and so does not distinguish between the "n" and "l" phoneme, either in Chinese or English. It's very interesting - he claims he can't hear any difference at all between, say, "light" and "night." I made a list of l/n words for him and we practice almost every night. "When you say 'light' your tongue is on the outside of your teeth," I say. "For 'night' your tongue is on the inside." This observation has helped a lot. It's much more fun to teach English to Luo Wei and Wang Cheng because they are learning on purpose; also, Wang Cheng's hilarity makes everything fun. Even when I can't understand a word he says, his delivery never fails to crack me up.

When the boys are tired of English, Luo Wei politely suggests that I go to bed. When I first arrived, he told me proudly that he had an English name, and I thought he said it was Terry, which suits him admirably. However, one day during our lesson he wrote his name down and I saw that it was, in fact, "Cherry." "What's so funny?" Luo Wei asked, bewildered. "That's a stripper name," I told him. I was pleased with myself for knowing how to say "stripper."
"WHOO!" Wang Cheng shouted. "Get up on the table, Luo Wei, and dance for us!"
"I don't understand," said Luo Wei. "It's a cultural thing," I explained, and could not explain it any further. But I still occasionally laugh when I think of Luo Wei, a famous architect, coming to the U.S. to design a high rise or something and introducing himself as "Cherry Luo." Someone needs to supervise Chinese people when they choose their English names; when we were in Xi'an, Lili met a guy who introduced himself as "Superman."

Last night some of us went to Wang Cheng's house after dinner. Li laoshi had insisted that we eat beforehand, but when we arrived at Wang Cheng's house he insisted that we try Naxi Hotpot. So we sat around the fire and ate sunflower seeds while the hotpot was prepared. Naxi houses are all very similar - a large room with a raised platform in the back with a fire for cooking, heat, and light. Wang Cheng's house has posters of Chairman Mao and the Dalai Lama (the Naxi are Buddhist) on the walls. In addition to the school people, there were five or six Naxi men, including Wang Cheng's father, two women who kept in the back, and a little boy of maybe three named Eight Kilograms, his weight at birth. There are at least two other Eight Kilograms
that I know of, and a Six Kilograms. Chinese hospitality can be intense. "Eat that!" Wang Cheng commanded. "Don't be polite! Finish that so I can give you more. Ou laoshi [that's me], Cheers!" Then when I attempted to toast with my tea (the Naxi corn liquor is very strong and very vile) he whacked me on the leg. "NOT OKAY!" he shouted. There were many toasts - to Fang Laoshi and his girlfriend, who arrived yesterday; to me and Zheng Xiaoxue - "You should stay forever," said one of the men, raising his glass to us, "Stay forever, and if either of you and Wang Cheng -"
"AIIAAAA!" Wang Cheng shouted, and Luo Wei nearly died laughing.

After much hotpot and much corn wine, the four of us made our way homeward, the boys with their arms around each other, Zheng Xiaoxue and I holding hands as close female friends do in China. There were no lamps, but there was the brightest moon I've ever seen and more stars than we have even in Northampton.

"I saw a moving star!" I said. "Did it have a tail?" Zheng Xiaoxue asked. "You can make a wish." "We have that custom, too," I said. "What did you wish?" Wang Cheng demanded. "She can't tell you," Luo Wei said. In fact, I can't remember what I wished. But at that moment there was nothing I could want.

2006-05-29T07:59:00.000-07:00

Luguhu
(Gosh, where to begin?) The bus ride was decidedly unpleasant - the seat was hard; I
had one bag on my lap and the other at my feet; the road was bumpy and in places
could not even have been called a road. Next to me was a middle aged man who smoked
the entire journey - several hours - and asked me difficult to understand questions
in heavily accented Sichuanese. Moreover, I was filled with vague apprehension - what if there had been a misunderstanding and I was not expected at the school? What if they were on vacation? What would it be like? What if I couldn't understand anything they said? A captain with seven children - what's so fearsome about that?

When we arrived at Luguhu, two young women in what I later learned was Mosuo ethnic costume - heavy braided turbans, long, white pleated skirts, and silk Mandarin blouses with woven belts boarded the bus to collect our entry fees. Someone - possibly the driver - had explained to them that I didn't need to pay, since I was there as a teacher. One of the Mosuo women called the school, received confirmation that they were expecting a laowai, and informed me that as there was no time to pick me up, I would have to walk. It was about this time that the spirit of adventure set in. I was ready for anything. I took my bags, clambered down from the bus, and, not looking back, began to walk.

Imagine, now, a long, dusty road. There are mountains in the distance, and here and there a ramshackle shop or guesthouse. Mostly there are fields, for Luguhu is real rural China. I pass chickens and pigs, men leading mules, but mostly what I notice is the women. They are Mosuo, which I am told is the last remaining matriarchal society on Earth. There is no marriage, and women are free to take as many lovers as they want throughout their lives. Older Mosuo women wear dark colored turbans and baggy gowns. Generally they have scarves over their heads and all I can see is their eyes, which seem to follow me - not hostile, exactly, but apprehensive. They have large baskets on their backs, containing babies or vegetables. Some carry water in a
double-bucket arrangement over their shoulders.

I passed a group of young people who greeted me with shouts of "Hello!" as Chinese people invariably do. They asked where I was going and I told them Dazucun. They were surprised to hear me speak Chinese. They pointed me in the right direction and I walked on. Presently a small white van came up from behind me and stopped a few yards ahead. Anxious, I kept walking and did not look at the windows. A man leaned out and asked where I was going. I hesitated, then told them Dazucun Elementary School. They said they were going too and I should get in. I resisted, but eventually, when they told me the name of my contact at the school, I gave in. I spent the brief drive praying to the Virgin Mary that they not be kidnappers, and as
it turns out they were not, merely visiting teachers, same as me. Wu laoshi, one of the men, still laughs about this incident.

The school is very lovely. There are three main buildings: one for the two classrooms and the office, one for the kitchen and meeting room, and one for the teachers' dorm. The buildings are a nice-smelling golden wood, very rustic, with stomped down dirt floors, but glass in the windows, which is fancy. Also there is a proper flushing toilet and shower facilities which are generally very cold. When we arrived, we were given a special sort of Naxi tea (Naxi is the ethnicity of most of the villagers; Mosuo is not an official ethnicity athough they have their own language - they are counted as Naxi) and introduced to some of the teachers, then told that we could have dinner at one of the nearby Naxi houses. This, I think, is one of the coolest experiences of my life.

Outside the house were about twenty or so people of all ages, many of whom wore the traditional Naxi vest as well as scarves over their heads - men as well as women. We were led inside to a fairly large, dark room at the back of which was a raised platform where a pot was cooking over a small fire. I was told to sit down by the fire, next to an old Naxi woman who smiled and nodded congenially as she smoked her cigarette. We were given sunflower seeds and a truly horrible corn-based liquor which I could barely sip. After this extraordinary cocktail hour we were taken back outside and went to the house next door, where we ate dinner with a bunch of Naxi men who toasted us continuously and called me Ou laoshi (Teacher Ou), which pleased
me. Eating dinner in this small, dark house with these cordial, enthusiastic people,
I decided that no matter what else might happen, it was going to have been worth it.
And such has proved to be the case.

Over the past week I have gotten to know the other teachers, most of whom are fairly young. There is Fang laoshi, a Guangdong man in his late twenties, who has taken it upon himself to educate me in Classical Chinese and who, despite some pompousness, one cannot help but like. There is Hou laoshi, a "Sichuanese hot pepper girl," whose nickname, Houzi, means "monkey," who wears boys' clothing, scoffs at notions of traditional Chinese femininity, and who is at any moment prepared to fly into a temper or make a terrific joke. There is Zheng Xiaoxue, a Chengdu girl my age who has taken me under her wing and invited me to stay at her house when we're through teaching at the school. There is Li laoshi, an older Taiwanese woman who makes me think of a cross between Oprah and an Italian grandmother - she never sees me but
she gives me things: instant coffee, hard boiled eggs, black bananas, chocolate candy - she is extraordinarily generous with everyone. There are Luo Wei and Wang Cheng, who are the two most fun and best-looking Chinese boys I have ever met - so I find it pleasingly symmetrical that they are dating one another. Wang Cheng, who is Naxi, shouts more than he speaks and sings as much as either. He is small and dark, with very wild hair and a wonderful shouting laugh. Luo Wei, a college student from Chengdu, is quieter - beautifully mellow, but with a wicked sense of humor. They are so clearly fond of each other and sweet to everybody and good with the children that it would be impossible not to love them.

There are about fifty students altogether, divided into kindergarden and first grade. They range in age from about six to perhaps twelve, because before Old Li Laoshi came and started this school the children had to travel two hours each way to school

2006-05-14T07:49:00.000-07:00

Well, there's been a glitch. I seem to be encountering just about every single possible problem on this journey, but on the bright side, I am surprising myself with my ability to cope. Last night I left Chengdu for Xichang. I had chosen to ride "hard seat" instead of my usual "hard bed," and let me tell you, you do not want to do that. Hard bed is the only way to travel. "Hard seat" evokes splintery wooden boards, and actually it was not too far off, aside from the splinters. The seats are arranged, picnic table style, in clusters of two benches with a table in between. I was with two girls and a boy probably about my age and two older people whom I gathered were Tibetan. I'd have liked to talk to them, but chose instead to attempt sleep, as the train didn't leave until ten and I was tired.

Sleeping, however, proved to be an elusive dream. It's hrd to sleep on a bumpy train on a hard wooden bench with two other people. I tried every possible configuration of my limbs, but to no avail. It was not a comfortable evening.

When we got to Xichang, I was dismayed to find that I had missed the only bus to Luguhu. This was scary, as Fan laoshi had specifically told me not to hang around in Xichang. "It's full of ethnic minorities," she said. "It's very chaotic." Then she hugged me. All in all, I was not so thrilled. I got a cab and asked to be taken to a "safe hotel," where I instantly locked myself in and slept for several hours.

(Here's the part where it starts to be about food again - I know you were waiting.) When I woke up, I was hungry - maybe I hadn't eaten in awhile or something, I'm going to be vague for the sake of my relatives. But I was kind of afraid to leave my room. I watched some English television (oh so exciting!) and ate some raisins, but the pangs of hunger were not to be ignored. Not to mention thirst, as this particular hotel room lacked a kettle for boiling water. So I took a shower in the oddly-designed Asian shower (which is to say, just a tap on the wall, flowing onto
the undifferentiated floor), dressed, and went out to find supplies.

I had a bowl of rather bad noodles containing tomato, cucumber, and what I took to be pork, but did not ask. I was on my way back to the hotel to lock myself in for the night when I saw those magic characters: internet cafe.

2006-05-12T05:39:00.000-07:00

Not much has happened since my last post, which I think is actually a good thing. I'm reluctant to wander around in the dark by myself, so I've been going back to the hotel by nightfall and spending my evenings with Saki and Melville. Did you know that Herman Melville actually went whaling and was shipwrecked and lived with savages and did all kinds of other extreme things? Well he did. If he can do that, surely I can survive my vacation.

I received a flurry of emails after my last post regarding my diet of ramen and peanuts. I have eaten several other things since then, but to date have only had two sit-down meals in Chengdu: a bowl of very sketchy noodles in a very sketchy noodle place, and a delightful lunch of bean sprouts and walnuts at the Wenshu Monastary's vegetarian restaurant. However, some of the best meals in China, I find, are those that you purchase here and there on the street. A kuai's worth of spicy tofu skin here, 5 mao of sesame seed cake there, and you're golden. Most of my time in
Chengdu, apart from the interminable hours of sleeping, has been spent wandering around, always a favorite activity of mine in any city. I wandered so much the first day that I actually sustained a minor injury to my knee, and, because I don't want to go back to Smith walking like Gregory House, I said goodbye to my worn out brown Pumas and bought a new pair of sneakers. It made me very sad to ditch the Pumas, but it would be even sadder to have to shell out for orthopedic surgery so I bit the bullet. At least I'm responsible for my well-being in some aspects.

The Sichuanese have been taking their tea-drinking very seriously for over 3000 years, and when in Chengdu I think it is well worthwhile to put in some time at one of the many teahouses that line the streets and fill the parks. My first day I went to a tea house in one of the parks and read Moby Dick with my bottomless teacup for a few hours. It's been chilly and damp, unfortunately, but that hasn't stopped me. While drinking my tea I was interrupted several times with offers of Mary Kay sunscreen, foot massages, and "ear cleaning," which is done with an assortment of terrifying-looking bamboo rods. I said no thank you.

Yesterday I spent most of the day at the aforementioned Wenshu Monastary, which I've decided may be one of my favorite places in China. I went there the last time I was in Sichuan, in March, and thought it deserved another visit. In their teahouse, I spent about an hour talking to an ancient, toothless Chinese man about Anna Karenina, Dream of the Red Chamber, and how I really should visit Shanghai. I understood much, but not all, of what he said, and it was valuable language practice, but it's difficult for me to relax when approached by strangers. Since I was a little girl I've been told not to talk to strangers, and it's a hard habit to break.

Tonight I leave Chengdu for Xichang. In a moment of insanity, I purchased a hard seat, which is kind of worrying me. I expect it will be very uncomfortable. From Xichang I leave immediately for Luguhu, where the principal of the school I'm going to has said he would pick me up. Please keep me in your thoughts or prayers, if you're into that, over the next few days, because the Chengdu to Luguhu stretch of the trip is in some ways probably the trickiest. I don't think there will be internet access in Lugucun (the "cun" is what gives it away - it indicates village) but there will be stories galore when I am back in civilization.

2006-05-10T05:40:00.000-07:00

Chengdu. So Operation: Travel Alone In China is underway, and I can't say it's been without mishap. First of all, the first day on the train I spilled about a liter of water on my bed, so I had a very cold, damp evening. Sleeping in one's jeans always leaves much to be desired, and damp jeans are among the least comfortable garments known to man, and trains are cold at night, so you can imagine the general state of things.

The next day, I was feeling all right: chipper, and pleased by Moby Dick, which is much better than I had expected. I took a little nap, and then decided to have lunch. Lunch, like dinner the day before, was ramen noodles. Breakfast and the previous day's lunch had both been peanuts. I got my ramen assembled and was just about to add water when I was struck by how very hot it was. I was covered in sweat. I stood to get the water and was suddenly very dizzy and nauseous. Leaving the ramen, I staggered to the bathrooms at the end of the car, both of which were
occupied. I slumped to the floor and closed my eyes, thinking of what an unfitting
end this would be.

Apparently you can't just lounge around in points of egress on a train, so a woman came and helped me to my feet and asked what was wrong. I told her I was very dizzy and she went off to get the conductor or something. Another woman came and gave me a Wet Nap to wash my face. I was feeling rather confused but still desirous of using the bathroom so when one of them was vacated I went in.

It's hard to use a Chinese squat toilet when you're really dizzy and it's moving. There was a knock at the door and I said "Please wait a moment!" I heard people talking outside, then the turn of a key.

The Chinese are not terribly delicate about these things. The woman from before peered in at me and explained that she'd found some staff to talk to me. Fine, fine, I said, just a minute. She closed the door; I washed my hands and stumbled out.

About half a dozen train personnel were there, including a man who spoke English. I explained the situation and they took me to a lower bunk and told me to lie down. I was anxious, not wanting to spend my time in Chengdu in the hospital, but I lay down for a bit and then felt better. I had a nice chat with the girl who's bunk had been stolen for me - an English major at a university in Chengdu - and an old lady gave me some corn-flavored hard candy and all was well. I appear to be fine now but I haven't had an actual meal in two days and I'm about ready.

When I got to Chengdu, I had a great deal of bother because none of the cab drivers or civilians I interrogated had ever heard of any the nice hostels I'd researched (but not actually booked, because I am a moron). A lisping bellhop at an expensive hotel finally agreed to help me ask a cab driver, who took me on the most utterly terrifying ride of my life. He actually pulled over at one point to holler at a small white minibus. (Actually, perhaps I should be glad he pulled over. Maybe that's actually safer.) When we finally got to the hostel, it was full. They directed me to a nearby hotel, and at that point I was ready to admit defeat. I shelled out for an actual room with a bathroom and everything, and I am a failure. A broke failure with weeks and weeks of vexing travel to go. Once again I ask you, rattling the bars of my cage, Why must we have six weeks of vacation?!

Anyway, girls who pass out on trains are entitled to three nights in a proper bed, don't you think? And my next stop is Luguhu, where I'm damned if I'm staying anywhere with running water.

One last thing...

2006-05-06T23:33:00.000-07:00

Saw Lili off this morning with jiaozi and a hearty handshake (followed by a hug - some people are so sentimental) followed by a good two hours of previously unwatched Jeeves and Wooster to cheer myself up a bit. I finally got around to calling the school in Sichuan where I'm going to be teaching, and I was pleased to discover that the guy I talked to seemed to understand what I was saying and I think I understood what he was saying, too! This is marvelous because as I've mentioned I'm terrible at using the phone in Chinese. Plus I'm given to understand that he might be picking me up in Luguhu on his scooter. But it occurs to me now that it's also possible "moto che" means "motorcycle," and that's a very very frightening thought. But you should not be worried! Everything is going to be super!

Right, now I'm off to Chengdu.

Graduation

2006-05-05T22:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had our final exam, and it went all right, and the moment I got back to my room the phone rang.
Me: Wei?
Voice on Phone: Ni hao!
Me: Uh, Ni hao?
Voice on Phone: Hi! It's me! Your mom!
I talked to my family for a really long time, especially since this was only the third phone call since I've been here. I have been complaining a lot lately, and my mum was worried, I guess, but as it happens things are still pretty okay and should continue to be so.

After the phone call, I went to go buy my train ticket to Chengdu - Y400 for a hard sleeper. It's weird, buying the ticket means I actually am going on this trip. It's hard to believe. I'm not a person who deals well with uncertainty, and the fact that I don't clearly know where I'll be a week from now is stressful, but I suppose the key is to take it one day at a time. My mission in Chengdu is to buy a pair of shorts - it's pretty tropical down south - and to find a guidebook, especially the Lonely Planet one because it's great. I've been copying down all the information in my roommate's copy, but that's not really the best methodology. I'm also going to visit a monastary or two, because I never get sick of looking at Buddhist and Daoist places of worship. I might even go back to Wenshu Yuan and have my fortune told by the blind fortune tellers who line up outside the gates with clay bowls and bamboo spills.

Then I returned home and worked on the speech I was asked to give at graduation and watched American Idol and Oprah with my roommate and her boyfriend, Lili, and Mi Yike. At three thirty we split up to dress for graduation - ostensibly a semi-formal affair but a lot of the boys wore jeans and a lot of people had been drinking since 10 a.m. when they finished their tests. (Not me though! I waited until after noon to share a Bacardi Breezer with Lili!) My speech went all right, but I was extremely nervous and it messed up my rhythm. It wasn't an especially good speech, but I mentioned cursing the ancient Chinese who thought it would be fun to make a tonal language, and that got a laugh. Actually there was an entire cluster of teachers just laughing their heads off at a part that wasn't intended as a joke, which made me even more anxious because in Chinese you never really know what you're saying. But it was got through, and then the language pledge ended.

I will tell you, internet: I did not obey the language pledge the entire semester. I obeyed it a lot, but ... And I feel bad about it, kind of, but on the other hand there were several times when I had such a great time with my friends (and usually foreigners who didn't speak Chinese, which was normally why we broke the pledge) speaking English. Everyone is leaving now and I won't see them again and I wouldn't trade a single one of my memories with them, so I can't feel too bad about the English speaking.

After graduation I wasn't sure what to do with myself. My roommate had locked me out by accident, which has always been a dream of mine because when you're locked out you get to climb in the window. But I was wearing a skirt, so one of the boys did it for me. I was so disappointed I went and put on pants, locked the door again, and climbed up to let myself back in. It was great fun but I scraped my arm rather badly.

Then all the teachers and students went out to the nearby Beijing Duck restaurant, which was disappointing - Lili and I got stuck at a half empty table of people not interested in making conversation, and of course neither of us eats duck. One of our teachers got drunk and started speaking fairly okay English, but in a very embarrassing way - he's one of my favorite teachers and so it was awkward and weird. We went back to the dorm, feeling uprooted and off-center, and chatted with Mi Yike and Yi Weida. I'm going to miss people a lot, and I know I'll never see any of them again, and it's kind of a depressing thought. But at the same time, I know that a lot of the social errors I made this semester are avoidable next semester - I'm going to have another chance, and I am looking forward to that. Summer semester is going to be good. I'm hanging onto that.

It was a bit early to go out, so we hung around in the dorm for awhile, chatting of this and that and watching the Simpsons. Geqingr, one of the nanzihan Yale lads, had torn his jacket and asked if anyone had a needle and thread, which of course I did, and when I gave them to him he asked if anyone knew how to use them. So I made him hold my Tsingtao and sewed up his jacket. He was so pleased he kept showing people my handiwork, remarking that my stitches were so neat and even, and I couldn't help but feel gratified.

Eventually I went with a big group of people to San Li Tuanr, the bar district, for dancing. A lot of ACC students were there, as well as some teachers, and we danced for awhile and then got bored and went across the street for french fries and cider on the patio of a little fish and chips place, followed by more dancing. We didn't actually stay out past eleven-thirty, but we'd started early so a lot of people went home much earlier than I'd expected. Lili and I went back to the dorm, where we ended up talking until past three with Mi Yike, Jiani, and Zhiwei about women's colleges (which everyone is opposed to for some reason except me), saying goodbye, and so on.

Saying goodbye is stupid and wrong. I hate it. Even people I never really got to know, but whom I am so used to seeing every day. I will miss my roommate, Mi Yike, Zhu Meina, Yi Weida, and most of all Lili, who put up with so much of my weirdness and hung out with me and was such a good friend all this time. But I am going south, where they eat goat cheese and noodles, and I will read Moby Dick and it will be good for me.

My next post will be in Chengdu. The adventure has only just begun.

Tidbits of Eggplant and Other Things

2006-05-04T00:30:00.000-07:00

Shortish attention span today, so this will be a dim sum sort of entry.

I don't know why, but I have a lot of trouble with the distinction between "eggplant" (qiezi) and "wife" (qizi).

It's some sort of big important stores-are-closed-all-week holiday at the moment, but I can't be bothered to find out exactly what. Aren't I a good little cultural anthropologist?

Today was our oral exam, in three parts. The first was skits- Lili was Batman and I was Rogue and she interviewed me for a talk show called "Today's Superhero." We now know a lot of good superhero vocabulary, including the Chinese names of several characters. Rogue is "Luocha," Batman is "bianfuxia," Wolverine is translated as "wolf man" and Cyclops as "laser eyes," which makes a lot more sense than his English name. These utterly useless vocabulary words will no doubt stay with me for years, long after how I have forgotten how to discuss the U.N. and taking one's bird for a walk in the park.

The second part was a five minute speech on "My Most Something Something." I chose to introduce my favorite logical paradox, which I guess is the Liar because, horrifyingly, I was only able to come up with two and the Heap is hard to explain in Chinese (I know because I tried). I have clearly been in China for too long.

The third part was just a bunch of crazy rambling and I don't want to think about it anymore.

I don't think there are many people in the world I would like to travel with for six weeks - that's a very VERY long time. But the thought of being alone for six weeks doesn't entirely appeal either. Even apart from my concerns about safety (note to all relatives: There are no concerns about safety), I'm afraid I will be lonely. How long does it take to go insane from isolation? Of course, you're never really alone in China, and it's not as though I don't speak the language (ha) but all in all I do wish I could just skip this bit. I fear there must be something wrong with me, to be so unmoved by the thought of six weeks, footloose and fancy free in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Tomorrow is our graduation ceremony and I have been selected to make a speech (in Chinese, obviously). I don't know what I'm going to say. I feel kind of down on the whole experience at the moment, even though strictly speaking I am still very happy.

Before I came to China, I used to spend a lot of time thinking "I'm going to China" and feeling a deeply distressing vertigo, like looking over the edge of a cliff. For the first few months of actually being in China, I often thought, "I'm in China," and felt an amazing floating sensation, like being lifted off the ground. Now I think, "I'm in China," and there's nothing. I'm like a dead battery. Moreover, before I left the States, I found it very hard to believe that I was actually going to China - it just seemed so unlikely. For the past few days, however, I've felt like I will never go home. I keep thinking, "I'll never read Kavalier and Clay or see the wallpaper in the bathroom in Washburn or eat catfish pecan meunier ever again." It's very irritating and I wish it would stop.

The Chinese guy next to me is definitely swearing in English as he plays his computer game. Where on earth did he pick up a word like that? I wonder if there's money to be made teaching Chinese youth American vulgarities. I should look into that.

The Orphanage, The Magic Thing, and Others

2006-04-30T23:18:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-26T23:15:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-24T22:53:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-21T23:24:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-18T00:56:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-16T01:12:00.001-07:00

"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

2006-04-16T01:12:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-13T00:54:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-04-11T00:51:00.000-07:00

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)

2006-04-09T01:33:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-09T01:04:00.000-07:00

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)

2006-04-08T02:15:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-03T06:40:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-03T01:07:00.000-07:00

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.

The Great Wall, The X-Files, and a Race

2006-03-27T22:03:00.000-08:00

Another pleasant weekend. On Friday, Lili, Bai Kunning and I went to the Korean place for lunch, followed by a trip to the bootleg DVD store where I bought the first X-Men movie and season 2 of the X-Files. So much dorky X-Ness! So exciting! As it turns out at least two of my 7 X-Files CDs are no good, so they will have to be returned (this often happens - you get what you pay for, I guess), but that still leaves so much X-Files goodness. I think I'm developing a problem - I just keep watching one after another until I'm so spooked I'm afraid to leave my room. Part of the problem is that I keep thinking “That was so scary -I’d better watch another one to calm myself down.” This strategy: not so smart.

After my afternoon of X-Dorkness, Lili and I joined a group of mostly fourth-year students and a couple of their teachers for Karaoke. This was a lot of fun, although the teachers made us sing a lot of Chinese songs with extremely fast subtitles, many of which were in traditional characters. We all knew the words to “Dui mian de nuhai kan guo lai,” however (my family knows this as “the Chinese harmonica song). The only other time I'd ever sung karaoke was at my uncle Greg's wedding. This was not like that - it wasn't one person onstage singing by himself: everyone sang together from the couches in a small private room.

I enjoy spending time with boys - it’s still fairly novel for me and I'm sure I am learning valuable social skills most people pick up when they are fourteen. However there are times when one wonders whose idea it was to let college boys wander free. We're in a country where not only can anybody at all drink in bars, but beer and even baijiu are available in the campus convenience store. Friday was the 21st birthday of one of the boys present, and he decided it would be a good idea to have 21 drinks - fortunately over the course of the day, not all at once, but nevertheless there was much vomiting. He at least made it to the bathroom - another boy, after too much baijiu (how much is too much, you ask? ANY BAIJIU IS TOO MUCH BAIJIU) threw up right in front of everybody in the karaoke room. Fortunately the teachers had already left, but still it was highly gross. Why on earth do you need to drink to that point? It can't possibly be pleasant. Then the vomity boy asked for a breath mint and when Lili gave him one he attempted to kiss her. EW. EW, vomity boy, that is not okay.

Another good way for boys to not endear themselves to me is to make a constant effort to ensure that no one thinks they are girls or, god forbid, homosexuals. There is something so funny and yet so pathetic about a boy who makes a big scene when people are singing a Chinese pop song, saying that the men in that group are all gay and he, the boy who is making the scene, is a MAN. A REAL MAN. “Are you a man?” I asked him at one point. “Because it is so hard to tell.” And then when somebody chose “Bye Bye Bye” by N*Sync, he was all over it, dancing and singing and it's just so stupid.

On the way home, two of the boys, strapping Yale men, decided to race back to the dorm, so I raced too. I got off to a good start, but the first boy caught up to me and said, "Do you run cross country or something?"

"No," I said.

"I'm a bit worried. I think you might win."

"No," I said again. He passed me, but I kept running steadily. The second boy caught up to me, but eventually I left him behind and overtook the first boy again. "You win," he panted. I left him behind and kept running. When I got to the dorm I found the second boy waiting for me in a cab."I win," he said. "Didn't I win?" he addressed the cab driver, who nodded. "Can I borrow 11 kuai?" he asked, turning back to me.
"Sorry," I said, "my wallet's in my bag - I gave it to Hesin to hold. I only have 2 mao." (a mao is 1/10 of a kuai.)
"Oh," he said.
"I guess you'll just have to wait for the others to catch up," I said. "In the meantime, the race is to the dorm. Bye." And I ran off, feeling a little bad for leaving him, but after all I couldn't have been much help under the circs.

So I won the race, which just goes to show that having to be in Special Gym in middle school is no indication of anything.

On Saturday we went to the Great Wall, which was extremely beautiful. It’s higher than you might think, and surrounded by mountains - quite a sight. We climbed up many steps to the top, then climbed many more steps, then finally climbed down and had a lunch of fried pancakes - not half bad. I don't know why I have so much more to say about Karaoke and the X-Files than about climbing the Great Wall, which is something I'll remember all my life and whatnot, but after all it is just a wall - we climbed it, and it was nifty, and that's sort of that. That evening Lili and I went out for a dinner of chuanr - stuff on sticks. Very spicy, very sketchy, and very inexpensive, it reminded us of our time in Sichuan, where we ate a lot of delicious chuanr. They had many different kinds of tofu - tofu pi, which is a flat, rough sheet of tofu; soft tofu, hard tofu; also many types of vegetables and non-chicken eggs. On our way back we bought sweet sticky rice on sticks from a street vendor - always a nice treat. If you ever come to China, buy food from street vendors. But don't do it right away; wait a couple of weeks until your stomach is absolutely indestructable. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and the cheapest, dirtiest restaurants are often the most delicious. That's where you'll find the dog.

Circumlocution

2006-03-23T01:02:00.000-08:00

Me: Sometimes in the summer, my father and senior younger sister and I get up and ride our bicycles in the clear early morning. We often ride very long ... um, very long ... [hand gestures meant to indicate "distance"]
Lu laoshi: Oh! I know! You ride the American bicycles that three people can ride all at once, yes? I have seen this on television!
Me: Um, no.

Me: ... but actually it's the ... oh, what's the word, you know, like big and little, far and near, tall and ... something...
Lu laoshi: Short?
Me: Yes!
Lu laoshi: Opposite!
Me: Right! Opposite! (pause) What was I talking about?

Today I felt that if I even so much as looked at a baozi or a dacong bing I would throw up, so my roommate, Lili, Tian Kangrei and I went out for Italian food. Oh it was so wonderful! It was clean and it didn't smell like smoke and I bet you a mao that the bathroom stalls even had doors, although I didn't check. (How much effort would it be, China, to put doors on your bathroom stalls?) I had penne, cooked perfectly, with tomato sauce, garlic, basil and red peppers. "Please bring bread," my roommate said to the fuwuyuan.
"Oh my god, they have bread?!" I said. They did. It was warm, and contained yeast. I was almost reduced to tears by the beauty of it all.

After lunch we had Magnum bars and then I read some Anna Karenina and took a nap. I was woken up by the mailroom calling to tell me I had a package, which was surprisingly not from my mum but my dear Aunt Claudia and her family. So that was nice. Then I went to the gym.

Today's lesson was about "taking a morning stroll" and included much useful vocabulary like "to take one's pet bird for a walk in a quiet place" which is just two characters in Chinese, which indubitably tells you something or other. Something about birds. So tomorrow our Language Culture Practicum is to go to the park in the morning and watch people do their crazy Chinese park activities like disco dancing and Tai Ji sword dances. That should be pleasant - I love Chinese parks. Saturday we're going to the Great Wall, so if I can I'll be posting pictures by and by.

Thanks for the encouraging response to my last post. As a rule I try to keep all angst in my paper journal, but not every laowai day is corn flavored ice cream bars and sunflower seeds.

Trapped

2006-03-21T22:57:00.000-08:00

Before I came to China, my greatest fear was that once I got here I would feel trapped. It wasn't a very practical fear - China is a very large country, not a little box- but it was a realistic one, and it has proved somewhat accurate. I didn't realize, though, the extent to which I would be trapped in my own mind - the effect of day after day unable to express myself out loud. Today I learned the word for "arm" - I will no longer have to refer to my arm as "this thing." I've been studying Chinese since I was 16! Not knowing the word for arm! Yesterday the woman who hands me my towel at the gym spent a good two minutes trying to get me to pronounce my own name correctly! Four years! I CANNOT SAY MY NAME! I'm not sure you can imagine how frustrating this is. Plus I frequently don't have internet in my room (I'm in a stupid internet bar at the moment, where apparently playing music without headphones is de rigeur and no matter how much I speak Chinese to the staff, they insist on responding in English), which makes me feel even more trapped and isolated.

In addition, I am trapped in my schedule - this whole Chinese all day every day thing is really taking its toll, especially since I am still unsure why I'm doing it in the first place. Yes, so I learned the word for "arm" today, that will be handy ... until I return to America. I feel like a hamster in a hamster wheel - studying Chinese just for the sake of studying more Chinese. And it does get easier in a way, but it doesn't get a whole lot more meaningful.

My father sent me an email yesterday asking about the food - he said he'd heard the poor-quality food here was really good and "he knows I'm really enjoying the food." It made me want to cry. Lunch today was a heavy, greasy bread made with flour, water, and egg. I want a plate of spaghetti and tomato sauce (not now, because the stupid bread is still in my stomach and I feel bogged down and ill, but, you know, someday). I want a sandwich. I want a fajita. Chinese food is all Chinese - how do they stand it? I've been to almost every restaurant in the vicinity. I've eaten every tofu dish they have. I'm so sick of bok choy with mushrooms and sauteed eggplant I could weep.

I know I'm learning as much from the bad times as the good, and the good times are still pretty thick on the ground. On the whole, I think I'm happier here than I have been in years, and the problems I have here are just slightly different versions of the problems I have in the States- there's nothing new, really. Five months from today I'm going home. Five months is not a long time.

Despite A Total Lack of Demand - More Recipes!

2006-03-21T01:16:00.000-08:00

Today we had Chinese Lunch Table, i.e., free lunch at a restaurant with our teachers. We went to Piaoliang Beizi ("Pretty Cup": not its real name) and when the teachers asked us what we wanted, I suggested a mushroom dish that's very good there. Only instead of "mushroom" (mo GU), I said "magic" (mo SHU). Everyone was very confused.

So here are three recipes from today's cooking class. None of them are magic, but they are pretty good anyway.

Baby Tofu and Eggs

Take some eggs and a bit of salt and beat them very well in one direction. Heat up about three tablespoons of oil (all measurements are completely made up - try it and let me know, eh?) in your wok that I told you last time you need to have. Get it nice and hot. Toss in your eggs and swirl them around in the wok for about a minute, until they are clearly not raw: not translucent, but still in more or less one piece and fairly moist and quite soft. Remove from wok and put on a plate. Add a bit more oil to the wok and once it's quite hot toss in some finely chopped ginger, followed in short order by a package of very soft tofu. Mix it around until it's like scrambled eggs and add some di san xian (ask me nice and I'll mail you some) and some diced scallions.
It might interest you to know that I just totally forgot the English for "scallion" and had to look it up in my Chinese/English dictionary. This concerns me. Anyway, once you've scrambled well your tofu (oh god it's happening to my grammar, too), toss those eggs back in and add a bit of hot sauce - not Tabasco, though - but I can't think of any other kind of hot sauce you have in America. Do other families besides mine use another kind of hot sauce? I guess you can make do with Tabasco for the time being but if you can find something a bit less smoky tasting that would be best. Mix it all up until it looks quite unappetizing and put it on a plate to serve. Garnish with some more chopped up "scallions" and perhaps some chopped hot red peppers if you've any that aren't too dusty. It's better than it looks.

Da Cong Bing (Scallion Cake)

Okay. So of course our cooking instructions are given in Chinese, so I am not too sure about the repeatability of this one, because when I asked whether the yellow flour was corn, our teacher said no, it was "corn" (in English), which is different from corn because it's smaller, but it's not small corn. However, I can't think of any other sort of flour that's yellow, so we're going with corn. Also, I'm assuming you don't have any special greyish flour from Tibet, and I think semolina's too heavy, so let's try a mix of whole wheat and white flour. Still with me? Good.

In a smallish bowl, combine two parts white/wheat flour and one part "corn" flour (like you'd use for cornbread), two eggs, and a bit of water. Stir in one direction, adding flour or water as necessary, until there are no lumps and it's about the consistancy of pancake batter. Add some chopped scallions and mix well. Heat up about three tablespoons of oil in your wok and swirl it around until all surfaces of the wok are covered. Pour some batter into the wok (maybe a quarter of a cup - it's hard to work with when there's too much) and swirl it around until it's like a thick crepe. You can use your spoon to spread it if you need to. After a bit, flip it over - both sides should be lightly browned. Serve hot.

Fried Cabbage

Wash some white cabbage and chop it into bite-size chunks. Heat up some oil in your wok (a bit more this time) and get it plenty hot. Toss in your cabbage, add a bit of di san xian and some hot sauce (see above) and cook until cooked, yet still crisp. I will ordinarily not eat cabbage but this is actually pretty good.

Sweeping the Dirt

2006-03-17T18:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday ACC arranged for us to go see a "Chinese Play" - actually it was "The Playboy of the Western World" by JM Synge, translated into Chinese and set in Beijing. It was very odd, and obviously I didn't understand most of what they were saying, but thanks to the English plot summary handed out at the door I was able to follow most of the plot. It concerns a man who turns up at a beauty parlor (I think in the original, Irish version it was a bar) claiming to have killed his father, which everybody thinks is very exciting and they decide to let him hide out there and all the women try to seduce him. The best part was when the four women in go-go boots and miniskirts started dancing spastically to Chinese pop music and pouring beer on the playboy. I have no idea what that was all about, but it struck me as very Asian.

When I got home, I dined on Convenient Noodles and crackers and started watching a Jeeves and Wooster, but then Lili came by and my roommate, who had been watching a movie, said we had to listen for a minute and unplugged her headphones. "Please don't," I said, but I think she thought I was kidding, and before I knew it we were watching Scary Movie 2, which is a spoof on horror movies, and which I do not think anyone reading this would enjoy. It was extremely excessive and gross, and I didn't understand any of the references (except one which I think was a reference to The Canterbury Ghost - is that possible?) but somehow I found myself laughing from time to time. A sort of "I can't believe this is happening" sort of laughter.

Then we watched a very strange movie called Palindromes, which significantly messed with my head. It was rather intense and had some very upsetting subject matter, but it was interestingly done. The main character was played by about ten different actresses of different ages and races. Sometimes she was a very large black woman, sometimes a skinny white girl with long red hair, etc. This was not as confusing as I expected it to be.

This morning I went to the gym. I'm trying to get back in my routine, which was thrown off by our trip to Sichuan and the midterm before that. As I ran on the treadmill I listened to Dressy Bessy and watched about half a dozen women in blue jackets sweeping the dirt outside. This is very Chinese. People sweep the dirt all the time. I saw a woman sweeping the dirt on Mt Emei, which was even stranger, somehow, than sweeping city dirt. When you sweep the dirt, how can you tell when you're done? There's not going to be any less of it. Perhaps it's simply meant to serve as an extremely obvious metaphor for life.

Losing

2006-03-15T07:06:00.000-08:00

Hello. I am in China. There are many people in China, many many, but there are also many people who are elsewhere, people who mean a lot to me, or who did once, or who could have, almost. People come and go so quickly at this age. Firstyears start college, seniors graduate, juniors go abroad. I am twenty years old and I have lost so many people already.

A good thing to do under these circumstances is to listen to a lot of Stars.

Today Lili and I went to Mai Hou (so called because it is behind (houmian) Mai Dang Lao (McDonalds) – several of the local restaurants have nicknames like that) and had scrambled eggs with tomatoes (the best in town), homestyle tofu, and because Lili thought I needed cheering up (see above) sweet little disks of some sort of gooey substance, possibly bean paste or pumpkin. The conversation kind of went like this:

Me: He’s gone. He’s never coming back.

Lili: Yes, it’s very sad.

Me: I don’t understand! How can he not be coming back?

Lili: These things happen.

Me: He didn’t even say goodbye! I am very sad!

Lili: It is okay to be sad.

Me: He’s never coming back. I do not understand.

It was probably extremely boring for her but she’s a good friend like that. However, to put it in perspective, this week’s movie class is To Live, which you should absolutely see even though it will tear your heart out. I don’t think any movie has ever given me a better understanding of Chinese history. And then to cheer yourself up you should watch Needing You with Andy Lao, Hong Kong’s dreamiest actor. You have your orders, get to it.

Don't Make the Pandas Angry

2006-03-10T19:43:00.000-08:00

Hello, lI am back. Sichuan was absolutely breathtaking – by far the most beautiful place I have ever seen. The train ride was very pleasant – we had sleeper booths, which was kind of nifty. I was on top, and climbed up and down so much my classmates kept calling me “monkey.” We kind of all had monkeys on the brain, since we’d been warned about the wild monkeys of Emei Shan, who will steal your glasses and camera and rummage through your bag looking for food. I passed a very pleasant thirty-odd hours reading What Maisie Knew, looking at the beautiful and varied Chinese countryside, listening to music, and sleeping. Here are some things you can buy on the train from Beijing to Sichuan:
· Very spicy ramen noodles
· Fireproof socks
· Toothpaste
· Playing cards
· Musical gyroscopes
· Hard boiled eggs
Our hotel in Chengdu was very nice, with extremely comfortable beds. Our first day, we went to Dujiangyan, a very large, very old irrigation facility. The weather was wonderful, and we wandered around in t-shirts, eating ice cream and taking pictures. After lunch, we went to Qingsheng Shan, a sacred Taoist mountain. Most people took the cable car up, but I and about ten other people went on foot, passing other hikers and pilgrims and the occasional shrine or temple. Sichuan is famous for its fog, so the view from the top wasn’t too spectacular, but it was very beautiful anyway.

The following day, we went to Leshan to see the giant Buddha. It is indeed a very large Buddha, far and away the largest I have ever seen. That evening we went out for xiao chi, which is supposed to be a Sichuanese specialty, but I was disappointed that none of it was very spicy. Sichuan food is famous for spiciness, but our tour guides had arranged all our meals to not be spicy, and it was a little vexing.

Third day, third mountain – Emei Shan, one of China’s most important Buddhist mountains. A group of people went all the way to the top, but I didn’t – I didn’t have the right equipment or anything. Emei Shan was very beautiful and sacred and full of wild monkeys. “Do not touch him! Do not touch him!” a monkey-staff person told me.

“I am really, really not going to touch him,” I replied.

At the base of Emei Shan we had a really horrible lunch of flavorless, slimy tofu cubes, bitter greens, and fish that had seen better days. To make up for it, that evening a large group of people went to a Tex-Mex restaurant in Chengdu: Peter’s. It was quite expensive, as foreign food tends to be in China, but it was well worth it. Fajitas, nachos, half a strawberry margarita – I am aware that I am in China but I still have another six months of mapo dofu and xihongshi chao jidan, one night of Tex-Mex isn’t going to kill me.

The next day Lili, Kangrei and I went to see the giant pandas. They were extremely cute, so cute one can almost forgive them for their stubbon refusal to thrive – they will only mate once a year, they rarely mate in captivity, of China’s hundreds of types of bamboo they will only eat a couple, and if she gives birth to twins, the mother will generally kill one of them. This is not good planning, pandas. That evening we went to what the hotel staff claimed was the most authentic Sichuanese restaurant available. I am in no position to doubt it – we had slippery black noodles that burned my throat and set my ears on fire, shrimp chuan, mapo dofu, sweet and hot tofu, and all of it was so hot I had to slowly sip corn-flavored yogurt beverage and rice, and the tears poured down my cheeks. It was great.

Thursday I went by myself to Wenshu Yuan, an ancient but still active Buddhist monastary in the center of Chengdu. It was very lovely and quiet and peaceful. There were middle aged women doing tai qi, worshipers chanting and burning incense, and monks (both male and female) with their shaved heads and brown and yellow robes. I spent a long time there, drinking green tea and writing in my journal, and had lunch in their vegetarian restaurant. The Chinese are masters of fake meat – I had pea leaves (which made me miss my mother) and a strange dish consisting of onions, cucumber, and fake meat ranging from odd looking but realistically-textured fake shrimp to what I could absolutely swear was roast duck skin, complete with fat, to completely unidentifiable reddish, spongelike cubes. Very strange. That evening I went with a large group of ACC students to a rather fancy Sichuanese restaurant, which was great fun, since my roommate was there and she is one of the world’s funniest people. She is the sort of person, moreover, who inspires those around her to unusual levels of funniness, so it was a very merry meal.

Yesterday, our last day in Sichuan, Lili and I visited the home of ancient Chinese poetess Xue Tao, where we looked at bamboo and accidentally ordered the world’s most expensive tea. We sat with our tea and talked for a very long time to get our money’s worth out of these tea leaves, which were good, but tea is tea, really. Then we returned to the neighborhood of our hotel and bought incredibly, almost fatally spicy tofu kebobs from a street vendor and made friends with a Chinese girl who showed us the way to the post office.

So that was Sichuan. I’m sick now, so I think I’ll be taking it easy for awhile, but apart from that I feel great – very rested and centered and ready to return to the mammoth task of learning this peculiar language.

Two Recipes and A List

2006-02-27T21:33:00.000-08:00

Sihongshi chao jidan (tomato scrambled eggs)

1. Heat up a small quantity of vegetable oil in a wok. If you don't have a wok, I suppose you'll just have to improvise.

2. Stir up some eggs in a small bowl, maybe with a little salt. You have to stir only in one direction. Stir them until they've got little bubbles, which in Chinese is "paopao," which is awesome.

3. Toss the eggs in the wok and swirl them around a bit. You don't want them to be regular scrambled eggs all little curds, and you don't want it nearly as well done as an omelete. The eggs should remain soft and moist and more or less in one big glob.

4. Cut up some nice tomatoes into bite-size pieces (actually, you'd better go back in time and do this beforehand or your eggs will get cold). Put them in the wok with maybe a little MSG if you happen to have some and sautee them gently until they're warm and the skin wants to come off.

5. Put the eggs back in the wok and mix it all together briefly. Serve immediately.

Basi Hongshu (Pulled Caramel Sweet Potato)

Wash and peel two sweet potatoes and cut into goodish bitesize chunks.
Put a goodish amount of peanut oil in your wok and heat it until when you dip a chopstick in (god, you don’t have chopsticks, you don’t have woks, what is with you people?) small bubbles form.
Gently slide sweet potato chunks into oil and cook until soft and yellow. Remove from oil and set aside.
Put a little more oil in your wok – maybe a cup. Add sugar – perhaps not as much as you would think necessary. How much? Gee, I don’t know, two thirds of a cup? Try it and find out and let me know. Stir it around with the oil until it is well mixed and the sugar is melted.
Add your cooked sweet potatoes to the oily sugar mixture and stir until they are well coated. Remove from wok and put on a plate. When you pick up a piece of sweet potato with your chopsticks there should be thin strands of sugar. You can serve with a bowl of cool water to dip them in so that you don’t get candy floss all over everything.
Serve immediately.

ALSO: At my mother’s request – things you can buy on the street in Beijing

Flowers
Beige brasseires
Jewelry
Sweet potatoes
Sugarcane
Popcorn (I was surprised by this)
Bootleg DVDs
Copies of The Little Red Book
Novelty socks

Not a lamb. Lamb.

2006-02-26T00:50:00.000-08:00

Today some friends and I went to the Korean restaurant for lunch. Their specialty, according to Liu Lei, is dog, and Nina and Aijia ordered a plate of dog to share. The rest of us stuck to the tasty rice, egg, and miscellaneous dish we always have - it is served raw, in a very hot iron bowl, and you stir it around really fast to cook it and then eat it, it's very good.

When I was fifteen I stopped eating meat. I still ate fish (a "Catholic vegetarian," as my friend Elizabeth says) and I was fairly laid back about it, having the occasional bite of someone else's meal or even, once, a hamburger. But I believed, and still do, that vegetarianism was the correct choice. When I found out I was going to China, I started eating small quantities of meat in preparation. It was never my plan to be vegetarian here. I wanted to taste everything. I wanted to be a good guest. So for about the first three weeks I was in Beijing, I consumed large amounts of meat. Then, maybe two weeks ago, I stopped again. Now I'm even more laid back about it than I was before, but to all extents and purposes I am once again vegetarian.

This is why, today at lunch, I did not eat the dog. I am not at all sure how I feel about it. Intellectually, meat is meat is meat, as Nina said. And yet. It's dog. I don't even especially like dogs, and I suspect my hesitation is irrational, but there it is. I did not eat the dog.

This is not my last chance. I will be in China for another six months. If I really want to try dog just for the sake of having tried it, I will surely have another opportunity. But first I suspect I ought to think about what it means to eat a dog, what - besides novelty - makes it different from eating a chicken or even a rabbit, which I have eaten in the past without difficulty. In the meantime, please pass the kimchee.

All Manner of Things

2006-02-25T20:41:00.000-08:00

Very busy weekend. On Friday, we had our Language Culture Practicum. Every week I whine and drag my feet – I hate Language Culture Practicum, I hate talking to strangers, I’m tired – and almost every week it’s actually really interesting and fun. This week we had a scavenger hunt. We broke into teams of three and ran all over Chaoyang looking for people to answer questions and have their pictures taken with us, then to the various places where teachers were stationed, where we showed them our answers and had to sing a song or recite a tongue twister to get our next clue. We came in third, mere seconds behind.

Then we had Chinese lunch table, where we ate potato mountain, Japan tofu (I do not know why it’s called that), caramel bananas, and bok choy with mushrooms with Li laoshi. After lunch we returned to the dorms and then I embarked on a SOLO BEIJING ADVENTURE! I had just about finished all my books so I took the subway all by myself to Xidan, where Li laoshi said there was a huge foreign bookstore. This turned out to be untrue. Still, I figured I might as well look around while I was there. I looked at expensive, pretty clothing and expensive, ugly clothing in shops, and tried on a pair of pretty shoes. Why I bother I do not know. I asked the salesperson to bring me a pair to try on, and she asked what size, and I said I didn’t know, how about the biggest you have. So she brought me some shoes and they were maybe two sizes too small. They said, “So pretty!” I said, yes, they’re very pretty, but they’re too small, do you have any bigger ones? They said to wait a moment and came back presently with the ugliest shoes I have ever seen, all square-toed and covered with green rhinestones. (They love rhinestones not wisely but too well over here, it’s very irritating.) This is how shoe shopping always goes for me in China and I would give up, only the shoes are just so pretty, and hope springs eternal.

Presently I decided that I probably had time to take the subway to Wangfujing, where I knew there was a foreign bookstore, so I did. I didn’t find the bookstore I’d been to before, but I found another one that had some English books, so I bought Anna Karenina, What Maisie Knew, and The Scarlet Pimpernel, which ought to tide me over. Then I left the bookstore and got lost. I asked several people for directions but I didn’t understand their replies, so I just kind of wandered around until I found the subway station. I was back at the dorm in plenty of time for our Evening Cultural Event: Chinese Teahouse.

The teahouse – how to explain. We all sat at tables and drank tea, which the waiters poured in a very fancy manner from elaborate, long-nosed kettles (on one occasion, onto my lap) and ate xiao chi - little snacks including barbequed watermelon seeds, tiny cookielike objects, and rice porridge. As we ate, we watched performances of Chinese songs, dancing, juggling, conjuring, and utterly incomprehensible Beijing repartee. It was interesting, and I enjoyed the conjuring and juggling especially, but it was hard to see and hard to understand.

Afterwards I went out with some people to San Li Tuanr for pizza, which was exciting since it was my first time eating Western food since coming to Beijing, but the company left something to be desired. It was mainly second-year boys, and they were all speaking English, which made me deeply uncomfortable. It’s odd how since coming to Beijing my mother tongue has taken on this sense of taboo. I felt as though my companions were committing some horrendous sin. Also, one of them, a deeply deeply irritating chappie, was smoking a cigar and blowing smoke around in a pretentious, irritating manner, and it smelled horrid and who on earth did he think he was? So Lili, the only Chinese-speaking boy (kind of a wet blanket but compared to the rest of these boys stood out as a winner), and I left and went to Pure Girl Bar, where we met up with some friends and managed to speak Chinese for goodness’ sake, finally ending up in a little restaurant for more pizza and discussion of Sleater-Kinney with Liu Lei. So my evening out turned out to be far more fun than I had expected, and I’m glad I didn’t just go home as I had thought I would at first.

The following day (Saturday) I went with Shuhui to the electronics market, where I bought a microphone, so I can look into using some sort of program to chat with people back home. After lunch, I went with a group of people to the National Museum, where we saw many things made of jade. That evening I was very tired so I watched some Jeeves and Wooster and went to bed early. A week from now, I believe we shall be in Sichuan – provided we all live through the midterm.

2006-02-22T23:17:00.000-08:00

Today Lili, Kunning (my roommate) and I went to the nearby Korean restaurant for lunch. It's a little bit bu san bu si - their specialty is dog - but they have a very good dish. It's served in a super hot iron bowl, and when you get it it's just a raw egg and rice and vegetables and seasonings all arranged in little piles, and you stir it really fast until it's cooked and then eat it. It's very good but a little expensive (11 kuai for the vegetarian version), as foreign food tends to be in Beijing.

Next week or the week after that we're leaving for Sichuan, which is super exciting. My roommate, who was here last semester, says that lots of people are going to get drunk and sleep together, which pleases me in a sort of evil way because I do so enjoy other people's drama. (I've been away from Smith too long.) Plus we're going to see pandas. Drama, pandas, and oranges - what else could anyone wish for?

After lunch I read an old copy of Bitch for awhile and then came to the gym and listened to Sleater-Kinney and now I'm feeling all high-school nostalgic and wanting to smash the patriarchy. Sleater-Kinney would probably be excellent live. I think they're still touring but I could be wrong.

Macondo

2006-02-20T23:49:00.001-08:00

Today we had a brief, planned blackout. They'd told us a week ago that this was going to happen and that we should check the bulletin board for more information, but the notice was written in Chinese so forget that. Much more fun to simply make stuff up and spread it around. So I was surprised to hear that stores and restaurants were open, since I'd been under the impression that there would be NO POWER anywhere in Beijing, and I was even more surprised when the lights came back on after lunch, having expected the blackout to last 24 hours. I was actually a little disappointed. You can't do homework when it's pitch black in the dorm, so I'd entertained thoughts of sitting around on the floor telling ghost stories. Miaolan, one of my classmates, had apparently been under a similar misapprehension, since she's purchased a small red lantern and candles. Oh well.

Last night my roommate and I were sitting around doing our homework when we became aware of a loud hissing, roaring noise that had probably been going on for some time. "What is that?" she said. "I don't know," I answered, and got up to take a look. The sound was coming from the water boiler down the hall. The entire hallway was full of steam. People started pouring into the hallway to look, and once one of the teachers had shut off the water heater and we were no longer concerned about the possibility of it exploding, everyone started jumping around and taking pictures. If I were at my own computer instead of the gym, I would post a picture of the steam, but unfortunately internet access in my room is sporadic at best.

Speaking of noises and things that are a little irritating about my new room, the new room has roaches. This is not a huge deal. I have actually only seen one roach since I moved. I wan't sure what to do. It was in the bathtub, not really moving. I was about to take a shower, and somehow the fact that I was not wearing shoes (or, you know, pants) made the situation seem much more difficult. Finally, I dropped a ceramic ashtray on it. This did not kill it, so I went and got a can of roach killing spray and sprayed it a bit, worrying as I did so about poisoning myself and the fact that I was about to bathe in the now foul smelling shower. Then I wasn't really sure what to do with the body- throw it in the garbage? Flush it down the toilet? I didn't want to touch it with my hands, god knows, and toilet paper seemed inadequate to the task. I went back into the other room to find a roach-moving implement (God only knows what I was looking for) and when I got back it was gone. Ew.

But anyway the connection to noises is that often when I'm in the room I'll hear a noise and my crazy brain will assume it's roaches. Any sort of noise. Roaches squeak, don't they? Or maybe kind of hiss? Yes, I'm sure that roaches hiss, and also rustle things around, and thank god we have power again because using the bathroom in the dark when it might be full of hissing roaches is really not as much fun as it sounds.

However, would I trade my new roach-infested, internetless room for my old room? Not in a million years.

Party

2006-02-17T19:14:00.000-08:00

Last night a few students threw a teacher/student party in the faculty office. Some people tried to show the teachers how to play the ever-popular Beer Pong, but the teachers didn't seem to want to play with beer, preferring empty cups. They were very adorable. Then the Beer-Pong Loving Students took over. For some reason ACC gave the party organizers Y300 to spend on alcohol- there was beer aplenty as well as baijiu (which makes you go blind and smells very foul) and even wine. Never much for beer or ping pong or any crazy combination of the two, I myself stuck to iced green tea and inflicting myself on Zhiang. I would have pictures, but I still do not have internet in my room and so I'm posting this from the gym, where I just spent a pleasant hour listening to Dressy Bessy and running on the treadmill.

Also, a belated happy birthday to Aunt Grace! Hope you have a wonderful year.

Recently

2006-02-17T00:10:00.000-08:00

Fridays are always pretty busy for ACC students. In the morning, we have a two hour exam, followed by our Language Practicum, which is generally kind of a drag. Last week we went to the Chinese Kindergarden, which was interesting. Today we went to visit Chinese families. Not our Chinese host families - this was a one-time deal. Xiao Gao, a second-semester boy, Kangrei, and I took the bus to our family's apartment. This was my first time taking the bus, and I was very glad to have Xiao Gao along, since he is something of an expert. Moreover, it's always nice to have a boy along in China so that he can do all the talking (sorry, Lills, but if you're sending feminist magazines overseas you might include the latest issue of Bitch). The bus was terribly slow owing to traffic, but we eventually arrived.

The family we visited consisted of a sometime-ACC teacher and her mother. Their apartment was small, of course, but extremely nice, well-lit and well-decorated. Like my Chinese host family, they had a futon in the living room which was set up as a couch during the daytime - a very practical arrangement. They had prepared a very nice lunch, including pork cake (sounds awfully unappetizing in English, but was actually delicious), soup with corn, rice, and prunes, and potato salad. I am baffled by the Chinese love for potato salad - my Chinese host family served it, too.

After lunch we sat in the living room and chatted over cups of Nescafe. Xiao Gao did most of the talking, which was fine by me. I interviewed the mother for my independent research project, so that was good. I have to interview three people by Tuesday, which is not really that many but it's awfully daunting to approach Chinese people on the street or in shops and ask them questions. Still, we must do what we must do.

Yesterday I giggled all day over two ancient private jokes with my sister Caroline. The first was owing to the slightly bulbous forehead of one of my classmates. Here's a riddle: "The bigger it gets, the less you see." Caroline's instant response: "Your huge forehead overhang." That's been cracking me up for years, but I suspect you had to be there. Second, at the gym, a line from a story Caroline wrote at maybe age seven popped into my head: "'I love her ... a little.' I cried inside. My dog Sparky ran to me and licked me." I cannot explain why, but that too had me in stitches. I'm snickering right now in the somewhat bu san bu si [sketchy] dorm computer lab.

To the post office now, to send letters to my maternal grandparents and Aunt Gee Gee, none of whom have email, and to the bank, because I am down to my last few mao.

Incidentally, this blog cannot be accessed from the gym or from any of the computers in the dorm's internet lab. I would not be at all surprised if the only computers in China that can get it are those of my former roommate and The Boy Who Does Not Want A Girlfriend At This Time. That would be just my luck.

I leave you with a recently learned very useful idiomatic expression: "Po chu da ma": to break out in a stream of furious invective. You've no idea how useful such things can be.

2006-02-11T22:13:00.000-08:00

I have never been able to access this blog from China. I can post to it, but I can't see the things I've posted. I can't get to any other blogspot site from my computer, either. I jumped to the conclusion that Blogger pages couldn't be accessed from China.

Turns out I was wrong. As it happens, Blogger pages can be viewed right from my very own room. Or what was once my room.

So that's that.

Fortunately Unfortunately

2006-02-10T06:02:00.000-08:00

Today was an interesting day. We had our weekly two hour exam (Weekly. Two hour. Exam. Yeah you heard me right.) and I did pretty well, and then we went to a Chinese kindergarden for our weekly Language Practicum (see pictures). This was pretty interesting. Some highlights:

When we stepped into the classroom, twenty little voices piped, "Laowai laowai! Foreigners! Waiguo ren! Foreigners!" I am not sure what their attitude was towards us. I thought I detected no small amount of aggression but it could be my imagination.
We were told to "play" with the children. This was very difficult. Ordinarily I'm pretty good with children, but either today was an off day or I just can't do it in Chinese, because my conversations with the children went nowhere fast.
It's really kind of sad when you ask a four year old "What color is that toy?" because you yourself honestly do not know.
At the preschool where I worked sophomore year the children all used the bathroom together, but there was only one toilet so they all took turns. There are no toilets in China. What China has is holes in the ground, or, in the case of this school, a long trench. A whole bunch of children can pee in the trench at the same time. Girls, boys, it's very weird. (Yeah, that's my big cultural observation: it's weird. Who let me out of the country?)
The principal gave us a brief lecture, much of which was lost on me, but I did catch that at this school, fat children are subjected to a special diet. They get less food than the other kids, they have soup first, and they are weighed regularly. I found this peculiar but perhaps it works for them.

Then we had Chinese Lunch Table, and I went with Li laoshi (one of my teachers) and Xiao Gao, a third year boy. We had Sichuan food and it was pretty good. Plus I adore Li laoshi because he's the one who told me about Chinese math that one day.

After lunch I returned to my increasingly unpleasant room. My roommate no longer responds to my greetings. How much effort would it be to just echo "ni hao" when I say "ni hao"? Plus when my test came back she basically threw it at me. I was so filled with hulklike rage I went out for a walk. (What an anticlimactic sentence. It ought to be more like "so filled with hulklike rage I smacked her" or "I played my Steve Earle really loud over her top-40 Country." Next time.) I went to the post office and sent a letter to the Thomases which should get there sometime before August hopefully, and I explored a bit. It was my first real solo expedition in Chaoyang. I wanted to buy some underpants so as to avoid doing laundry a little longer, but Chinese underwear is really unfortunate. I really want to buy some and send it to Caroline because she would be appalled. It comes up to practically your sternum and it's all beige. Instead I bought an ice cream bar, which was probably the best 1 kuai 5 mao I've ever spent.

When I got back I read some Psmith and took a nap, with my headphones on because heaven forbid my roommate use hers, so I couldn't lie on my side and had to instead lie on my face. But I listened to the Katie Rose CD, which always cheers me up.

Then it was time for our Evening Cultural Event: a trip to see the Chinese acrobats. We rode on a chartered bus, and we had no sooner started to move than I found myself breaking down. I just started crying like a six year old in front of everybody, and most notably in front of Zhi'ang, who was (of course) across the aisle from me. He was super nice and asked me if I'd had a bad day. I managed to pull myself together a bit and respond and dry my eyes and everything, but by the time we got there I was in pieces again.

"What's wrong?" said Zhi'ang. I just sort of shook my head. When I'm upset, kindness just undoes me even further. We went inside and my friend Jiani saw me and squeezed my arm, said it was okay and offered to take me to the bathroom. I went by myself and washed my face (there was a sink, which is super fancy, but I had to dry my face with my scarf) and by the time I got to my seat (next to Zhi'ang and in front of Jiani and the two of them are my heroes of today) I was able to act like a grownup. These things happen abroad. It's stressful. It's okay.

The show was pretty amazing. It basically comes down to this: they could balance stuff really well. Stuff like other people standing on their foreheads. Things like spinning plates on sticks. The Chinese love plate-spinning. The guy who did one hand handstands on top of dozens of chairs stacked one on top of another was pretty intense. "Are your hands sweating?" Lu laoshi asked us. They were. My favorite though, was the women riding bicycles, because they reminded me of Bears on Wheels, the first book I ever read all by myself. So many women on one bicycle! So exciting!

When we got home, Lili invited me to play beer pong with some people, and I went, but just watched. I really don't like Yanjing Pijiu. I really don't like beer. I was torn between What Is More Boring, watching people play beer pong or being by myself in my room, and my room won. I know it's important to be social, but I have had a rough day. Today has been like the game we used to play when we were little: "Fortunately Unfortunately." (Do you remember that?) "Fortunately, you sat next to Zhi'ang on the bus! Unfortunately, you were crying humiliatingly! Fortunately he was really nice! Unfortunately your nose was running and your eyes were all rabbity! And so on!"

I think today has been a net gain, however. So there's that.

2006-02-09T23:19:00.000-08:00

Haizi washing their little hands

2006-02-09T23:17:00.000-08:00

Kindergardeners having lunch - soup and baozi

Ou Aimei

2006-02-09T17:44:00.000-08:00

I often think about my name. It was given to me by my Chinese professor at Buffalo State College when I was sixteen. When Chinese people introduce themselves, they often explain the meaning of the characters in their names. Mine generally goes like this: "The 'Ou' is from 'Europe'; the 'Ai' is from 'love'; the 'mei' is from plum." Europe love-plum. Interestingly, the "Ou" of Europe is also the "Ou" of "vomit" which would be an interesting way to introduce myself if I'm ever in the mood. Moreover, as my father recently pointed out, both P.G. Wodehouse and I are known as "Plum" which pleases me.

It's weird though, that this made up name is actually official now. I used it to sign my credit card receipt when I joined the gym. I believe it is on my visa, and I know it is on my letter from the Chinese university where I'm studying that allowed me to obtain a student visa. I am told it's on the file that the Chinese government now has for me. (I had a whole post about my thoughts on race in China, and it vanished. Invisible hand of the (REALLY AWESOME!) Chinese government at work? (This post is so going down next.))

Kep, bless her, sent me a recording of a logic problem, including several iterations of my real name, which made me very happy. Despite the fact that 85% of girls my age are named Emily, I love my name. I think it's really pretty. I don't care for "Aimei" as much; I think it's too cute. But it's my name now, in some sense. It's all rather confusing. How can "Ou" be my "family name" if no one in my family shares it? What sticks names to people? What's the difference between "Aimei" and "Emily"?

"... as if one believed that different people had to correspond to the word 'I' and the name 'Ludwig' because the concepts are different." (L.W., On Certainty)

Why doesn't this kid have a fanclub?

2006-02-08T18:50:00.000-08:00

These comments are too awesome to stay in the comment section.

Well, well, well. Has feminisim deteriorated into "I will be demure and eat my potato salad?" I say! Perhaps we shold send you a copy of 'Ms.'
Lily

'You don't speak the language and you're pasty white. And everyone else has a natural tan.'
Be brave, Em. I know you can do it. Don't be watermelon!
Lily

It seems I was spared the thudding of basketballs. Perhaps it's cause the Vogelsangs are older now. Then, too, the snow could have something to do with it.
Lily

Ever So Much More So was in Centerburg Tales. And really, Em, don't you know better than to buy French food in China? God!
Lily

The older she gets, the more I dig my little sister. Plus I hear she has mad public speaking skills.

2006-02-08T05:42:00.000-08:00

Today was my first Chinese painting class. This is me with my painting of bamboo. Liu laoshi says it needs more leaves; the leaves look too lonely.

2006-02-06T21:49:00.001-08:00

Smurf Kuaizi

2006-02-06T21:49:00.000-08:00

Smurf kuaizi and Convenient Noodles

Ever So Much More So

2006-02-06T21:31:00.000-08:00

I had a break between classes today so I went to Fabao, the "French" grocery store across the street. I never noticed it before, but they have an entire aisle of MSG. Isn't that crazy? MSG always reminds me of Ever So Much More So from that Centerburg Tales story (or was it Homer Price? One or the other. Robert McCloskey = talented guy). It makes things better! Or more! Or something! What does it do? The Chinese word for MSG is weijing, which literally translates to "flavor essence" which is not very illuminating. Fabao also features an impressive selection of pickled eggs, and it is a mark of something or other that I am sitting here right now thinking, "mmm, pickled eggs," rather than making the yuck-face I bet you a nickel you are making right now.

Today was not a day for purchasing MSG and pickled eggs, however (two great tastes that taste great together!). Today's purchases:

4 liters of water. I buy a 4 L bottle of water at least every day, and each time I swear it is the last, and next time I will start getting used to drinking the peculiar tasting boiled water from the dorm's boiler, but I drink a lot of water and I just can't bring myself to quit.

Two small Tupperware bowls with lids

A Dove bar, because it has been at least two weeks since I last tasted chocolate, and oh my goodness it was worth it for 4 kuai.

A King Packet of Convenient Noodles (ramen), shrimp flavor. Ramen is like bowling: best very late at night, but I had some for lunch anyway in the interest of saving time which I could theoretically use for homework but am instead spending typing this. It was extremely complicated ramen, too, containing no less than three little packets: one of dried plant material (carrots? parsley?), one of what I assume was Shrimp Essence (Essence of Emeril: "Did he ... die?"), and one of a crisco-like substance I could not hope to identify but which I added anyway. Made it very hard to clean the bowl.

Best of all, a packet of children's chopsticks, one blue pair, one pink pair, and a small wooden spoon. They are a little too small for convenient use, but it is totally worth while because when I got home I realised that they are in fact KNOCKOFF SMURF KUAIZI, which is the coolest thing ever. And they came with a sheet of (presumably) Smurf-related jokes which I haven't gotten around to translating but when and if I do I will post the results. They look pretty awesome. I used to really love the Smurfs when I was little for some reason.

Walking home from Fabao I passed Sa Zhi'ang, whom I pretended not to see because everyone knows that is the quickest route to friendship. But then I made up for it by stopping by his room after class to chat for 3.2 minutes, ending in an abrupt, "Okay, bye!" At least this time I remembered not to thank him.

BEST CLASS EVER.

2006-02-05T21:11:00.000-08:00

Oh my goodness I absolutely adore Li laoshi. Today's chapter is about single-parent families, and full of melodramatic vocab like "tears" "to fall" "face, cheek" "to throw oneself" "someone's embrace" etc. So we discussed that for awhile and he asked me about whether I thought Comrades (homosexuals) should be allowed to marry, etc, and then he asked about my parents' attitude towards my studies. I said that they were very involved and when I was younger they'd even arranged for me to have a math tutor. And then we started talking about math. And it was so awesome I could barely handle it.

Li laoshi told me about Chinese mathematical discoveries like pi and permutations, and he told me a story about horses to illustrate a Chinese paradox, and he told me a Chinese version of the lawyer paradox. After my family, I miss logic more than anything else. In fact, I would say that although I have retired the jersey for #1 Thing I Miss (my family), the next 10 or so things on the list are all logic. So you can imagine how exciting it was to finally get to talk logic with somebody besides my journal.

People who go abroad to countries where they speak less ridiculous languages get to take actual classes like literature and history and math, and I deeply envy them. I would take logic in Spanish. I would take it in a boat, I would take it with a goat. I would take it in Chinese, in a heartbeat, and if I only understood one out of every twenty words that one word would send me so high over the moon it would be absolutely worth it.

You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

2006-02-05T19:50:00.000-08:00

I've listened to Madeleine Peyroux's cover of "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" about twenty times in the last two days, and I finally got around to looking up the lyrics. She is not, in fact, saying that her relationships have all been like "valets in Rambo." But isn't that a pleasant image? Jeeves being like, "I should recommend the M60, sir."

Well, it amused me.

It's snowing! This makes me ever so happy, from inside anyway. And it means that the ever-present basketball players outside my window are taking the morning off. I'd forgotten what it was like not waking up to the thud thud thud of rubber on asphalt. On the other hand, the constant basketball playing reminds me of my old room at home, when the boys next door would play long into the night.

I'm drinking my Nescafe and thinking up possible slogans for an ad campaign. "Nescafe: It's almost like coffee!" "Nescafe: When It's Too Early For Beer." "Nescafe: Much More Expensive Than Tea!"

I had a fairly pleasant, laid back weekend. Didn't go out, but did homework, watched a bizzare Korean movie with my friends, and read This Side of Paradise. Plus I was Very Brave and knocked on Zhi'ang's door all by myself and talked to him for like five minutes before panicking at the first lull in the conversation and bursting out with, "Okay, well, I don't want to horse you, bye!" and ran away, no doubt leaving him with the impression that I am a spaz. Also, "I don't want to horse you?" What on earth was I trying to say? Do I want to horse Sa Zhi'ang?

Roommate Politics

2006-02-04T23:37:00.000-08:00

My roommate and I have some issues. It is nothing insurmountable; it's not so bad that I feel the need to painstakingly express my dissatisfaction in Chinese, but it is a little grating. For instance,

Her music makes me want to jump out the window. We only live on the first floor, so it's not as bad as it sounds, but still. Jump out the window, run over the basketball court, and not stop running till I get to Sichuan. Sidenote: the other day at my Chinese Host Family's house we were eating oranges, and the dad said "These oranges are really good, where are they from?" and the mom replied, "Sichuan." I cannot get over how weird that is. The oranges are from Sichuan! I thought all oranges came from Florida and California! Obviously that makes no sense, since I am in CHINA, but still. Sichuan! How exotic!
She speaks English all the time. Not just on the phone with her friends and family, which is allowed, but when her friends come over, they speak English! Why does this make me so furious? It really doesn't affect me at all, but I can't stand it.
Her friends are in the room all the time, which is fine, but on the rare occasions when one of my friends comes by, my roommate is really rude. One day Nina came by around 11:30 to see if I wanted to go get some lunch and my roommate told me to "please tell my friends not to knock early in the morning." Excuse me?
We have this subtle music warfare going on. She listens to music all the time, even when she's sleeping, and it's like a race to start playing the music, whoever loses has to use headphones. Sometimes I have been listening to music and paused it to use the bathroom (which is in our room, not down the hall or anything) and the second I close the bathroom door Toby Keith or something starts blaring and when I return it's headphone time for me.
Her attitude towards China irritates me. She hates the food, she thinks the city is filthy and disgusting (which it kind of is, but in a COOL way), and she seems to have no interest in work. She actually requested to be put in a lower level than the one she tested into so that she wouldn't have to work too much. Whereas I requested to be put in a higher level because I am a swottish weirdo.

However, turnabout is fair play, so in the interests of "balance":

My music is probably pretty irritating too. I'll take it into my head to listen to Stars' entire ouvre or Madeleine Peyroux's cover of "You're Going to Make Me Lonesome When You Go" on repeat, and even when I'm wearing headphones I tend to sort of sing along and dance in my chair.
I am addicted to sunflower seeds and so I periodically have to clean up sunflower seed shell debris from the area around my chair. It is like I am a parrot.
I tend to wake up much earlier than she does and although I make an effort to be quiet I do a certain amount of bustling around.
I sometimes call her a po xie under my breath, for example, "Zaijian, po xie."

Feichang Feichang Hao Day

2006-02-03T06:27:00.000-08:00

Well, while you all have been sleeping, I have been having a very nice day indeed. I was a little less prepared for class than I could have been for irritating, not-entirely-my-fault reasons I won't get into, but on the whole classes went well. After class, I went to find my friends for lunch and found out that Aijia, who is a FABULOUS FRIEND, had invited Sa Zhi'ang to lunch (he's in her class). When Shuyi told me I was so excited I jumped in the air and rather startled her. In addition to Sa Zhi'ang, there were two males I hadn't met before, both fourth year students. They were extremely hilarious because they speak in these really deep voices. You really don't get to use the Chinese expression "Nan zi han" nearly often enough. My second-year textbook translated it as "He-man." Isn't that awesome? He-man.

So Sa Zhi'ang and his friends the Nan Zi Han and my friends and I all went to the Muslim restaurant for lunch. Zhi'ang is a vegetarian, and so is my friend Lili, and my very amusing friends announced that I was "half a vegetarian." They also kept grinning at me and making faces all through the meal because I was so obviously transfixed by Zhi'ang's prettiness. He was wearing a t-shirt with a complicated equation about juggling! And he had tucked it into his black jeans! Who wears black jeans!? It's 2006! And he was wearing white sneakers! And okay that's enough Aimei, get a grip!

After lunch, my friends and I went to the Silk Market. They mostly have boyfriends and needed to find presents for them. Like, presents, plural! So much work! And at the Silk Market you have to bargain, obviously, and it's kind of a bother. Lili helped me bargain the pretty skirt below to a very nice Y75, which is not quite $10. So that was pretty nifty. Did I need a skirt? No. But who doesn't love pretty skirts?

After the Silk Market we had Beijing duck for dinner, and that was pretty good although certainly not something I would want to eat every day. And then! Shuyi went with me to Zhi'ang's room! And left me there talking to him about math! For like 5 minutes before I lost my nerve and said "I do not want to bother you, goodbye" and bolted for the safety of Nina and Shuyi's room, where I bounced on the bed and was happy.

Not going out tonight as I'm rather tired and the Beijing rock'n'roll lifestyle is not exactly my cup of tea. Perhaps I'll watch a movie with Nina and Aijia. Tomorrow: The Forbidden City?

2006-02-03T06:26:00.000-08:00

Feichang piaoliang new skirt

2006-02-02T19:11:00.000-08:00

Lili and me, cripplingly terrified at a jiaozi ba in Xi Dan

Dinner Conversation

2006-02-02T18:00:00.000-08:00

Me: I want to make friends with Sa Zhi'ang. He is clearly so great. And I haven't seen him in days, which makes me very watermelon.
Aijia: You mean sad. Anyway, what's the problem? Just say "Ni hao." It's easy.
Me: But HOW?!
Shuyi: You open your mouth. You say "Ni hao."
Me: I am too frightened.
Jiani: What are you frightened of? You're in Beijing.

I thought this was a very good point. Apart from being sent into outer space, there is really nothing scarier than going to Beijing. I should, by rights, never be afraid of anything ever again. Getting on a plane and flying around the world to a country where you don't speak the language and don't know the customs: scary. Knocking on a door: not scary.

Yeah, right.

Chinese Host Family

2006-01-31T18:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my ACC "brother" Liu Lei and I went to our host family's house for New Year's. (It's still New Years. There are explosions every hour of the day. I have expressed my fondness for this holiday, but I think we've had enough.

I brought them oranges, because everyone says that's an excellent gift at New Year's and after my last, horrible meeting with my host father I may have kind of eaten all the chocolate I was going to give them. But how many oranges are appropriate? You cannot give your family four oranges, because the Chinese word for "four" is the same as the word for "death." You do not want to give your family death-many oranges. That would obviously signify that you wish them dead. Which I didn't, even after that first visit. But I digress.

Liu Lei and I took a cab to some area, I don't really know where, and stood outside in the cold for about half an hour, waiting. Liu Lei bought and started reading a Chinese rock magazine. I just stood there, feeling stupid. After a long time went by, Liu Lei called them. They said they'd be right there.

More time passed.

As it turns out, we were in the wrong place. Liu Lei eventually spotted our host brother, whom I really like. He's a little older than I am, tall, with long, frizzy, bleached-brown hair. He kind of reminded me of Alexander in Everything is Illuminated; less guileless, but the way he dressed and his saunter.

We got to their apartment and met our host mother. I gave her the oranges and we sat down. Chinese Brother flipped through the channels on the television while people made small talk. I like our host mother. She seems very patient, and accepted my explanation that although I can understand what they say, I prefer listening to talking. Which is true, even in English, most of the time.

Our Chinese Father kept returning to the - to him - hilarious fact that I couldn't understand a word of what he was saying. Not one word, no sirree. "She can't understand at all!" he laughed.

Yes, I can. But it seemed like too much trouble to tell him so. Liu Lei was nice about it and said that I was a good student, just quiet and new to Beijing. They preferred to talk to him, anyway- host families always get a girl and a boy, and in every case I know of they vastly prefer the boy and direct all the talking to him, even if the girl speaks better Chinese. I am totally okay with this. Liu Lei can do the talking, it is not a problem. I will be demure and eat my potato salad.

I don't know if it's because they had Americans over, but the first course of the meal would have fit right in at a labor day picnic. We had potato salad, coleslaw, and something that looked an awful lot like hot dog pieces cut up into pennies, with a pool of ketchup to dip them in. I kept expecting ambrosia salad to turn up. We also had cold Beijing duck and jiaozi, which our host mother tried to teach us to bao (fold). Baoing jiaozi is fun. Saying "baoing jiaozi" is super fun.

After lunch, my two ersatz brothers put on their coats, so I put mine on, too. Chinese was spoken, and I nodded and smiled and said "hao." Then we shook hands with the parents and the three of us left the building. I had no idea where we were going, when we would be home, or when I would have an opportunity to use the bathroom, but I went with it. I trusted Liu Lei and my Chinese brother whose name I don't know.

We got in a cab and I looked out the window and wondered, idley, where we were headed. We got out and found ourselves in the most crowded ... place I had ever seen in my life. This is the sort of crowd you only see in Asia. I swear I could have lifted my feet up off the ground and been bourne along by the current. I do not know what these people were doing, exactly. There were vendors to the sides of the road selling funny hats, chuanr, pinwheels, etc, as well as the occasional stilt walker and enormous drum, but generally speaking the purpose of the event seemed to be to mill around. So mill we did. Chinese brother bought us all enormous chuanr consisting of what I later learned to be Hawthorne berries (doesn't that sound poisonous?) dipped in caramelized sugar on a stick. I ate my chuanr and thought, "This is an enormous chuanr, but it's not as though it is a particularly enormous chuanr, that's just the size chuanr are." The phrase "the size chuanr are" appeals to me a great deal.

So my second meeting with my host family was, in my opinion, rather a success. I still don't care for my host father, but the mom and the brother are all right. Liu Lei took pictures, which I've asked him to email me. If he does, they will be posted later.

2006-01-31T01:00:00.000-08:00

Xi Dan

2006-01-31T00:59:00.000-08:00

Jia Jia, Jiani, and Keting at Xi Dan

2006-01-31T00:58:00.001-08:00

Ningxin and Kangrei

2006-01-31T00:58:00.000-08:00

My friends at the Nai Cha (Bubble Tea) stand

2006-01-31T00:57:00.000-08:00

(from left) Tian Kangrei, Ke Ting, and Ningxin

2006-01-31T00:55:00.000-08:00

Lili at XiDan

Tao Jia Hun Jia

2006-01-29T18:08:00.000-08:00

Buns and a green tea juice box make a very nice breakfast.

Yesterday my friends and I took the subway to Xi Dan, which is a huge shopping area. There are fancy department stores, Starbucks (Xin Ba Ke), and KFC as well as small vendors. Mostly we were in a huge building full of vendors. There was a floor of accessories, a floor of shoes, and many floors of clothes. Certain readers will be glad to take note that I purchased a new sweater, which I deeply love and which I now intend to wear - yes - every day until I purchase another sweater.

The thing is though, you had to bargain. And I don't know if you know this, but that's really not something I'm going to be good at, even without the language barrier. You may remember an earlier post about the pushyness of Chinese vendors. That was a department store. At this flea marketish type place, it was a hundred thousand times worse. I am a person who likes to shop in peace. I do not wish to talk to the salespeople. I just want to be left alone. In China, this is not an option.

Me (seeing attractive sweater): May I try this on?
(Xiaofan takes sweater down from wall and puts it on me as though I were a Barbie.)
Me: How much?
Xiaofan: 180 kuai.
Me (shaking head and taking off sweater): Oh, no. 180 kuai, that's too expensive. I can't pay that.
Xiaofan (rubbing sweater on my face): But see how comfortable it is! It is jlh fadj khfiu hfja hlfk sdjh (speaking incomprehensible Chinese)
Me: It's very nice, but I just can't. I'm a student. I have no money.
Xiaofan: What is the highest you will go?
Me (looking to Shuyi for help): Uhh... ummm... what would you say, Shuyi?
Shuyi (sceptically): I'd say no more than 70 kuai. You don't really like it.
Me: True. Okay, 70 kuai, that's the highest I'll go.
Xiaofan: WHAT?! 70 kuai!? This is a really hia jia mun ja fa zi sji sweater!
Me: Um, 65 kuai.
Xiaofan: What are you talking about? You can't have it for 65!
Me: Okay, well, it's nice and all, but I'm going now.
Xiaofan (grabs my arm): No no, what's your highest price?
Me: How about 90 kuai?
Xiaofan: Fine. (Takes my money)
Me: Happy New Year!
Xiaofan: Whatever.

And while we're doing dialogue,

Nina: My child [ertong] hurts.
Me: Your what? Your child?
Nina: I think I have a child disease.
Me: What are you talking about?
Nina: (points to her ear)
Me: Oh, your son [erzi]. Do you need to go to the doctor?
Nina: Too expensive.

later:
Nina: My son still hurts.
Aijia: Your what?
Nina: My son. (points at her ear)
Aijia: That's your "erduo"
All: Ohhhh.

So, today's lesson:

ertong = child
erzi = son
erduo = ear

bonus:
Aijia: Love is bad. It is better to not have a heart.
Me: Aijia, you are too bitter [ ku(3) ]
Aijia: What? I'm cool? I know I'm cool [ ku(4) ]
Me: No no no, bitter. [ ku(3) ]
Lili: What?
Me: You know, bitter, like vinegar [ "tsu"(3) ]
Lili: Shu? (pointing at Shuyi)
Me: No! VINEGAR! As in, sour sweet bitter hot, all the experiences and sensations of life!
All: WHAT?!
Lili: Oh, vinegar.
Me: YES.
Aijia: I am not.

Things I Miss

2006-01-28T20:00:00.000-08:00

Spaghetti
Not having to bring my own toilet paper everywhere
Watching House
LOGIC
Having more than one sweater
Hearing my real name spoken aloud
Being able to express myself effortlessly
Going to the grocery store with my parents
Using tap water to brush my teeth
No, really, Logic, like a lot
Washburn
Caroline keeping me up all night talking about high school drama
Going to the library
Exchanging literary quotations with Lillian
The afternoon sunlight on the Science Quad

Things You Would Think I Would Miss More Than I Actually Do:

Western toilets (TMI, sorry)
Proper breakfast food (sunflower seeds make a very nice breakfast, I find)
American music in public places
High-speed internet

Fireworks

2006-01-28T19:23:00.000-08:00

I cannot even begin to hope to describe last night. First, around 5:30, Aijia came by my room to ask if I wanted to go to the park, which of course I did.

When we finally got to the park, it was closed, but it was a long and interesting walk, with fireworks exploding in every direction. We decided we were hungry, so we went to a very cozy restaurant and had dinner. (Chinese food again. Did you ever think about what it would be like to have Chinese food for every meal, every single day, for eight months? Not that it's bad, I love Chinese food, but still. Think about it. Think about the MSG.)

Later that evening, Shuyi, Lili, Jia Jia, Aijia, Mengen, and I went out to Pure Girl Bar again. I mean, Pure Girl Bar is apparently the cheapest bar in Beijing, and has a very nice, relaxed atmosphere, but still. We drank sweet, girlie drinks and gossiped and played pool. We kept hearing explosions, but, as I said, I've been hearing explosions all week. If there is one thing the Chinese LOVE it is fireworks. But eventually we went outside to see what could be seen, and I am so glad we did.

I have never, never seen anything even remotely as intense. The noise, the explosions in every direction. Jia Jia and I ran down the block to get a better view, and we kept nudging each other to look at spectacular pyrotechnics in every direction, hugging ourselves and jumping up and down (we had not bothered with anything so mundane as coats), and screaming. "I LOVE CHINA!" we shouted at the top of our lungs. And I do. Oh, I do.

We ran back up the block to where Aijia was standing, and then the three of us ran and leaped and shouted down four blocks, surrounded on all sides by explosions and flashes of light. The air was thick with smoke, and I was convinced that at any moment I would be blinded, but at the same time I felt that it would be kind of okay, since I have seen New Year's in Beijing.

"This is unreal!" Jia Jia cried. It really was. I'm simply not doing justice to the experience. You'll just have to trust me. It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen.

Eventually, we went back to the bar for more drinking, dancing, and talking. A very tall guy who did not speak Chinese bought me a drink, which was kind of nice even though it was, he said, "Jack and Coke," which is nasty. I'm really not much of a drinker. Last semester I think I had one beer, after the Washburn Halloween Party. And there comes a point when discussing some drunk guy's views on feminism at three a.m. is just boring, so I got my coat and got Aijia, who'd had a bit too much to drink, to get in a cab and go home.

Please don't send me emails about not drinking. You know who you are. Please trust me to be responsible, because I am. And Happy New Year.

2006-01-28T19:19:00.001-08:00

Jinshan Park

2006-01-28T19:19:00.000-08:00

Tiananmen

2006-01-28T19:18:00.002-08:00

The sidewalk-drawing man

2006-01-28T19:18:00.001-08:00

Jinshan Park

2006-01-28T19:18:00.000-08:00

Jin Shan Park

2006-01-28T19:16:00.001-08:00

Jinshan Park

2006-01-28T19:16:00.000-08:00

I swear, China actually looks like this.

2006-01-28T19:14:00.000-08:00

Tian Kang Rei with a portrait a sidewalk-drawing man did of her

2006-01-28T04:54:00.000-08:00

Chaoyang

2006-01-27T23:11:00.000-08:00

Shuyi, Me,and Ningxin in Jingshan Park where the last emporor hanged himself

2006-01-27T23:10:00.002-08:00

Lili and Nina on the bus on the way to tour Beijing

2006-01-27T23:10:00.001-08:00

Shuyi, Lili, Ningxin and me at Tiananmen Square

2006-01-27T23:10:00.000-08:00

Me, Aijia, Ningxin, and Lili at Jingshan Park

2006-01-27T23:08:00.000-08:00

From left: Caroline, Chava, Ningxin, Me, Kangrei, Lili, and Jiajia

Preserved Mandarin Peels

2006-01-27T22:38:00.000-08:00

Incidentally, what on earth was I thinking when I bought a bag of "Preserved Mandarin Peels"? They are salty and make my whole room smell bad.

On the other hand, when I leave China, I am going to have to bring an entire suitcase of sunflower seeds home with me.

Pure Girl

2006-01-27T22:28:00.000-08:00

Since it is (still) Chinese New Year, my friends and I celebrated last night by going out as a huge group to San Li Tuanr, which is Beijing's laowai bar district. There's a bar called Pure Girl Bar which, my Gege informed me in drunken Chinglish, is definitely an ACC bar. In fact, everyone in the bar except the bar tenders were ACC students or their friends. It's a small bar, but still. The walls and furniture, and even ceiling were all covered with people's names and graffiti tags, and my Gege kept pointing out ACC signatures, of which there were several.

Pure Girl Bar is, according to the second-semester students, one of the cheapest bars in Beijing, and since it was New Year's the bartender treated the whole place to a round of Kamakazes, but alcohol is still rather expensive in Beijing (compared to, say, food). This is just as well, because for the most part people weren't getting terribly drunk, which is good because I do not enjoy drunkenness or drunken society. The music was decent and we danced and chatted in Chinese. It was very nice.

This afternoon Lili and I are going to the gym and maybe then to have some bubble tea. I'm enjoying going to the gym. It's funny, listening to the Format and running on the treadmill feels the same, whether the view from the window is Chaoyang or Paradise Pond.

It's been a week since I heard my real name spoken aloud.

Xin Nian

2006-01-27T04:28:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, lovely readers. Well, kind of. Technically it's not New Years until Sunday, but Chinese New Year doesn't seem to bear much resemblance to ours. For one thing, it's been going on for days, if the loud BOOMS are any indication, and is expected to continue for awhile. Your word of the day: Fireworks, which are "yan(4) huo(3)." If you don't know what the numbers mean, feel free to ignore them, and slip it into conversation with a Chinese person. Just to see what happens.

We have a long tall weekend. I am so giddy with excitement I don't know what to do. Do I want to read a book? Watch a pirated DVD or an episode of Jeeves and Wooster? Go out for mushrooms, mutton and green beans (which I just did)? Go out to the bar district (in about two hours)? Buy pretty clothes (tomorrow or Sunday)? I can do ANYTHING. I have no homework! I don't have class until Thursday!

Excuse me while I breathe into a paper bag for awhile.

2006-01-26T22:08:00.000-08:00

Me in my room in Beijing

laowai days

Endings

One Week

The Roach

Simultaneously the coolest and most horrifying thing that has happened to me EVER.

Race Against Time

Work

Wang Ba Dan

Women are Tigers

One Month

Italy Noodles

Dinner with Courtney

The Tattoo

Tai Qi

The Trouble With Being Human

Still obsessed with Moby Dick

Back in Beijing

The Picnic

CHILDREN'S DAY

One last thing...

Graduation

Tidbits of Eggplant and Other Things

The Orphanage, The Magic Thing, and Others

Night Life

Sichuan again

Italy Mian

Sandstorm

Pang

Easter

Watch how fast this post disappears

Gavagai!

Back from the X-Men Planet (2)

Back from the X-Men Planet

Xi'an (in brief)

Lao Beijing

Yang Yang

The Great Wall, The X-Files, and a Race

Circumlocution

Trapped

Despite A Total Lack of Demand - More Recipes!

Sweeping the Dirt

Losing

Don't Make the Pandas Angry

Two Recipes and A List

Not *a lamb.* Lamb.

All Manner of Things

Macondo

Party

Recently

Fortunately Unfortunately

Ou Aimei

Why doesn't this kid have a fanclub?

Ever So Much More So

BEST CLASS EVER.

You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

Roommate Politics

Feichang Feichang Hao Day

Dinner Conversation

Chinese Host Family

Tao Jia Hun Jia

Things I Miss

Fireworks

Preserved Mandarin Peels

Pure Girl

Xin Nian

Not a lamb. Lamb.