Saturday, April 17, 2010, 4:40 PM
There’s a lot of stuff floating around in my head right now. In a good way. It took a while for me to allow myself to find this second portion of the trip educational and inspirational and something I should be absorbing, because of how totally awesome Shanghai was, and how absolutely different this feels from that. So while parts are pretty illegitimate feeling, and über-touristy, I’m getting some good thoughts out of it.
And I feel like I owe you some Xi’an recollections, but there really wasn’t all that much that was crazy inspiring or interesting to me. I mean, the Terracotta warriors where pretty freakin amazing, and were a real highlight. But I can’t really expand on anything that a series of facts wouldn’t tell you. There are 8,000 of them currently unearthed, 6,000 of which can be found in Pit 1, the first pit discovered, which is that one that you’ve seen in the pictures. The craftsmanship is unreal. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/TerraCotta_Color_and_Detail.JPG note the detail on the feet. This is the only perfectly preserved warrior. All others were destroyed by the emperor immediately following Qin [more on him below], because no one really liked him at the time [more on that below].)
Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, who is one of those awesome mixed-bag sort of figures, had them built around his tomb. He unified China and the currency system and the writing system, and is basically the reason the country exists at all, but he also killed a bunch of people and scholars especially and burned a bunch of books and things. (A really oddly clean parallel to Mao, now that I think about it. Mao instituted simplified script, which is a real big deal, but he also killed a bunch of people, scholars especially, and destroyed a bunch of history. A connection worth thinking about.)
Qin also had one of the raunchiest armies in history (I think I remember hearing from somewhere, but I no longer remember if it’s a reliable source. I suspect I’m just getting it from Hero. Ya know, the guys with the arrows.), and so he instituted a policy that rewarded people for having a bunch of kids, so that in the future he’d have a gigantic army. Which is a big reason why China’s population is so gigantic, and is why Mao (who I see more and more as a historical brother, of sorts, [how was that grammar? not so good?]) had to institute that Of course, he died before that whole generation could get through, because everyone wanted to kill him, and a Daoist (I think I remember that, too. We learned it just the other day, but I forget if it was a Daoist monk or Buddhist monk, but it was one or the other. Not that they’re interchangeable.) monk told him if he ate a little mercury everyday, he’d become immortal. Which wound up killing him. His tomb hasn’t been excavated because his coffin is said to be floating in a pool of mercury, which is a pretty good way of keeping people from robbing your tomb.
But so anyway, that was really cool, but I feel I don’t have anything original to contribute to it.
These few graphs should be looked at. (sort of a continuation of the “China’s future doesn’t seem all that bright, sorry to say” theme from last time.)
Current(ish) age distribution of China (Population Pyramid): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Pyramide_Chine.PNG
Previous, current, and predicted age distribution of US: http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us/Age_distribution
Trends of population pyramids: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/DTM_Pyramids.svg
The future is a tricky thing.
Today was our first day in Beijing. (Which is to say, I don’t have much to say about Xi’an. It was cool, and our foot massage was awesome, and we saw a lot of really old things, but it didn’t quite get my gears going. It was like a really cool nature show, or something. A lot of fun to watch, but you can only talk about it for so long, before you realize that there’s nothing really to be said about it. We saw pandas, which were cool, and some of the pieces in the big museum in Xi’an where really nice. [Okay, there’s a point: I like how you could see the maturation of the art over time. Take horses, for example. At first, in the early societies, they were just doing little clay figures, content with making a simple horse figure, without any frills or details. Later on, though, as you got closer to and further into the Tang dynasty {the golden years of ancient China, I think}, you get a larger, more stable society, that can support artisans and craftsmen to sit around making horses all day. So the horses became more and more detailed, larger and larger, until eventually, instead of just making a lump of clay that basically looked like a horse, you got really detailed horse. And then you got a horse that was doing stuff. It was waving its head about, it was racing other horses, it was on its hind legs, it was carrying hunters about. The jaws were lovingly carved, as were the leg muscles, and the many situations and body positions dreamt up to put these raw, muscular bodies in were really spectacular. The maturation of art was in direct proportion to the stability of the society. And it was also freakin beautiful.] So sorry for boiling down 4 days of pulse-pounding travel into a couple of paragraphs. [Also we had a truly hellish gauntlet through which to pass in order to get to our train on time, which requires too much gesticulating, too many choice words, and rather a lot of stress on my part to recount, so maybe just the fact that I wound up sweating far more than I had in years while getting on a single [bleeeping] train can do for now.] Also I’m tired [from the train!] and apparently remembering things that happened 3 days ago is far too difficult for me right now. What a hellish slog that was.)
It’s a cool place, I guess. I haven’t got much of the actual city life, and I don’t expect to. Tourism keeps me from that.
I would be playing guitar right now.
Oh, and we biked on the ancient city wall of Xi’an. Which was really rather awesome. There are 4 gates and we only got to 2 of them, including the one that we started on, but it was still cool and fun. Nice and odd to be back on a bike again. No one does the standing walk bike technique sort of thing like we in America seem to do constantly, so I felt weird for doing that on the wall, and may have gotten more stares (than usual) because of it.
I’m not sure if I want to blend in or stand out anymore. People ask me to take pictures with them, just randomly, and it’s weird and fun. I usually let them, because how weird is that? I wonder if I’ll wind up on someone’s mantle place or something. That’s a weird thought. (“Weird” count: 3)
Or they just want to sell me stuff. In Beijing especially, the shopkeepers and the random people selling random stuff are really aggressive. They’ll walk in front of you and try to make you hold stuff. (I’ve used “stuff” in the past 3 sentences, mostly to refer to useless trinkets and the like. On a totally unrelated note, I have a sunflower that bobs back and forth in the sun.)
So, being a white-skinned dude in China, I’ve really no idea if I’ll ever achieve an air of legitimacy. Even if I wind up hanging with a good group of dudes for most of the time, and I am, for all intents and purposes, immersed and functioning in China (in my surely fictitious future vision), to the average shopkeeper or man on the street, I’m a dumb foreigner, I think. Which is probably just me demonstrating how little I can understand what it’s like to grow up in China.
The phones in this hotel have little video screens on them, and they play advertisements periodically.
At this point, with just a very few days left in the trip, I get to start wondering if this has all been more in the spirit of escapism than anything else. Creative frustration can only take you so far. Cleanse diet from all the crap of suburbia, or something. (These statements make sense to me.)
When I was in the throes of the college essay process, I was told not to write one of those went-to-costa-rica-and-I-saw-how-people-lived-over-there-and-now-I-appreciate-my-life-more essays, because everyone writes those. But isn’t that the single most important point someone can possibly bring up? Am I being redundant and irrelevant if I want to talk about how much the world sucks outside of The Bubble? Will I be dismissed as a fool if I want to see what’s outside of The Bubble? Does anyone on the outside want a bubble boy like me living next door to them?
I just hit page 70 in my Pages document. That’s pretty cool. At the beginning, I set out to hit at least page 70, and here I am. 10 pages a week, for 7 weeks. I feel like I’m going to keep writing once I get back, to get to all those things that I forgot about, and maybe to do some editing and word smithing and things. It’s funny, my first post doesn’t sound anything like they tone I’ve (sort of inconsistently) struck upon. I’m not sure if I should leave it as is, or if I should make it more consistent with what I think I meant, and how I think I meant to say it.
We went to the Forbidden City, which I enjoyed a lot, but some people said it was sort of a let down, which I could almost see. It was sort of in disrepair at parts, but I sort of liked the fact that you could look at this or that pillar, or those stones, and realize they’d been there for over 500 years, and a good number of emperors had walked under over and around the very same structures. Not consistently pleasing to the eye, but I got a good kick out of it. I was psyched that I could read “The Hall of Supreme Harmony,” in Chinese, and realize that the literal translation is “Hall of Excessive Harmony.”
(excerpt [I kept thinking “excerpt” doesn’t have a “c” in that one spot, but I guess it does] from a chat with Mom [hi!] when she asked me how visiting Mao’s mausoleum [I’m also unable to spell that after 5 hours on a plane] was. His body
so there was this weird sense of tribute and festivity and mourning and commercialism [and capitalism! gift shops!]
8:39 PM
[mom: so what was your overall impression?]
my impression is that life is an interesting thing
Sunday, April 18, 2010, 9:13 PM
Just got back from a really weird “kung-fu” show, which was 90% interpretive dance, and the other 10% some unsavory combination of kung-fu exposition, dramatic master-talking-to-young-student dialogue, and scarf symbolism. Everyone else seemed to like it, but I really didn’t. Then again, comparing a bunch of dancers who do 5:30 and 7:30 weekday shows pretending to be monks with the legitimate, for serious Shaolin Monks I’ve seen a couple times at the the Orpheum isn’t exactly fair.
I keep winding up in really, tremendously touristy places, and it’s making me feel dirty.
So you know those restaurants with the Lazy Susans (is that a proper name?) in the middle? And they just bring out a bunch of food, and you spin it around and it’s a grand old time. Well, that’s how you usually eat at restaurants, unless it’s a hot pot. So, now that we don’t have any native chinese dudes eating with us, when we wind up in those restaurants, the Lazy Susan etiquette just goes out the window. You can clearly see that we’re all inept at getting it going around nice and smooth. We go around in both directions, and it speeds up really fast and slows down randomly, and people don’t check when someone else is trying to grab some food. There’s an elegance in the way native chinese dudes can wield these things. There’s a clear sense of flailing about when we use them.
Monday, April 19, 2010 6:54 PM
Well Beijing has been interesting. Summing it up would go something like this: “We’ve been sold stuff.” Sold touristy (I really don’t know how to feel about that being an actual word) trinkets, sold watered down versions of Chinese history, and sold sugar-coated and poorly fictionalized versions of China’s current condition.
Being a tourist sucks. I think we’d all much rather be in Shanghai right now. Our tour guide is pretty lame and we're being taken to all these really tremendously crappy touristy places where foreigners wear matching hats and have laminated name tags. We get taken to places just to get stuff sold to us. "You want to go to a 'silk factory?!'" "No, we've already been to a silk mall." We’re pretty sure she makes commission on all the crap we buy when we get there. Today we started saying we didn't want to go to this and that place, and now we think the driver and our guide are mad at us, which is a weird sort of predicament.
We've been served American Chinese food in China for the past 3 days straight. It's really absurd.
Right now is when I should be packing.
The Great Wall was pretty awesome. We took a chairlift up, because apparently the most exhausting part is just getting up there in the first place. And then we set out on the crazy up-and-down-and-up-and-down portion of the wall, as opposed to the nice and flat section, which turned out to be totally amazingly worth it. I’m really not sure if I can begin to capture it.
Awesomest news in a long time? http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100416/sc_space/nasasnewasteroidmissioncouldsavetheplanet
P.S. Bill Nye is quoted, who turns out to be the Vice President of the Planetary Society, “A nonprofit organization devoted to the exploration of the solar system and the search for extraterrestrial life.” Yes.
April 23, 2010 10:15 PM
The plane actually has XM radio stations, which means I occasionally luck into a good song or two. “Get Back,” (Beatles, doi), and “Us and Them” (Pink Floyd, also doi), are the latest choice selections.
So. Leaving China? At this point, not such a big deal. The main shock came from leaving Shanghai. I didn’t become too attached to either Xi’an or Beijing, although I’ll say that Xi’an was a lot better than Beijing, and leaving now seems more like stopping the misery than anything else.
Oh man, I caught the last 3 songs of Dark Side. Ahh yeah. Wow, this last song is crazy fitting. “And the sun is eclipsed by the moooooo-oon”
Oh, I got sniped by the checked baggage x-ray machine thing. They called my name over the loud speaker and everything. I had some lighter fluid fuel in my bag, and they made me take it out. Which is funny, because I have another lighter nearly as big as my forearm, (filled with even more fuel), and they didn’t make me take that out. (Hi, mom!). I’m pretty regularly stopped for security checks wherever we go, because I’m an odd looking foreigner. The people where giggling when they saw my passport picture, which is always interesting.
I’m tired and excited to get back to life and things. Make good use of what I learned and all, but I’m also mildly wary of all the crap that I’m gonna wind up putting up with. One more month of high school, anyone? Prom? “Where are you going to college?!” etc. But then it’ll be done, and I’ll actually be living, for a while, and that should be good.
“All Along the Watchtower” Thank you, Jimi. Thank you, Bob.
It’ll be weird being plugged in again. Cell-phoned and facebook-ed. I was able to avoid that, to a certain extent, (except I got a cell phone from the family [I said that, right?], which made me sort of text-y, but mostly with Jason and peeps, so that was cool. Much less plugged in than I am at home, at least.
The other day (and by that I guess I mean lunch from today, which seems like it was a long time ago, for a variety of reasons), we went to perhaps the worst quality touristy lunch buffet ever ever ever. They didn’t have chopsticks, and tried to make pizza on toast and made juices out of powder, etc. etc. But so they didn’t have chopsticks, and I’d had a solid month straight of not having used western utensils, so it was really freakin’ annoying have that record broken by my very last meal in China. But my point: I used the fork like a pair of chopsticks. I nudged the food in the way that I would’ve to prepare it to get picked up by my chopsticks. I kept trying to put a whole big chunk of a thing in my mouth, take a bite, and grab it back out of my mouth, as is SOP with chopsticks, and really the only way to eat the bigger things, because knifes are exceedingly rare, and even unnecessary. But so I kept trying to pop a chunk of meat or something in my mouth, and then stab my fork back onto that chunk, while it was in my mouth. Which doesn’t work so well with forks. And I only noticed it after I kept trying to do it a coupe of times, and even after catching myself I tried once or twice more. I’m working out the logistics of bringing chopsticks to school, for lunch. We all lifted a pair from the hotel this morning, because they were pretty good quality, and we felt justified, because the hotel was expensive and not that good. (That’s reason enough, right?)
American Idiot just came on the radio. I’m generally unsure how to feel.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 2:33 PM (Back in American time, I guess.)
Maybe that’s a good thing, overall. To really not know how to react. Being assured of anything means you’re wrong, on some level. For some reason, James Gatz of The Great Gatsby comes to mind. “Personality” was sort of described as “a long chain of unbroken gestures,” or something, and the sentiment makes a good case for how being definitively sure of something is a sure sign of idiocy, instability, or some combination of the two. There will always be another shade of meaning to consider, another tiny implication that’s been forgotten or out of our reach.
Which I’m struggling to make less abstract, get it a little more tangible, but I don’t know exactly what case I’m addressing. When I’d find something new, experience something I’d never experienced, meet someone I’d never imagined existed, have to do something that had never been asked of me, how can being perfectly decisive benefit anything? I’d known essentially nothing of what there is to consider. So you exist in that gray area. And while the examples are less clear in more familiar environments, the same basically holds true in all of our experiences. No matter how totally familiar we are with a certain situation, there is at least a small chunk of knowledge that eludes us. And so there is a gray area, and we exist within it. So becoming comfortable with uncertainty is a pretty good course of action. I think I’ve learned that on this trip. That for a gigantic portion of life, you’ve no clue what’s going on. And that’s okay.
Revisiting albums is always fun. I listened to Tera Melos’ unnamed album yesterday, which is always immensely satisfying. (But if you want to get into them, which you should, I’ll start you off on their demo.) And now I’m listening to Blink 182’s Take Off Your Pants And Jacket (please don’t look to hard for the sexual innuendo, mmk?), which is really an excellent album, which I haven’t listened to in its entirety for a long time. A couple weeks ago I went on a Captain Beefheart binge. I’m not sure why I’m writing about this. I like music. I wish I were playing guitar. I have so many things to play. My callouses just started peeling, which is sad. And it means I’ll have to play a lot before I’ll be comfortable enough to go through my whole song writing process thing, so that’ll be interesting. A Cake phase a week or two ago. “Cake Phase” is a really good phrase.
Here’s a funny story. So we went to this market in Xi’an, which was one of the better markets we’ve been to in China. So we went around buying a bunch of stuff. So I spotted this pretty cool (but mostly sort of lame) Starbucks Coffee Shanghai t-shirt, so I figured I’d get it for the pops (cuz if you know anything about Dad...) So I pointed at it, and bartered for a minute or two, and got it for a reasonable price, and I was all satisfied and everything. But I missed a step in the whole process, which was to check the size. I checked it the other day, and it turns out it just sort of barely fits me, which means it won’t fit Dad (cuz if you know anything about Dad... I jest, I jest), so I have this pretty lame Starbucks t-shirt now. And then, packing up last night, I realize that it’s my only clean t-shirt. So now I’m wearing a loser-y touristy shirt, and feel silly, in general. Like that Onion headline, (I have a lot of those memorized... I’m oddly proud) “Shirt Demoted to Night Shirt.” Anyone want a red and green Starbucks t-shirt? (P.S. Now that I’m home, it got sent through the wash, and sort of made all of my socks pink.)
Tuesday, April 20, 2010, 6:07 PM
So we just arrived after that (I can’t think of words now. I’ve been awake for 22 hours straight. Don’t tell anyone.) flight. I talked to a bunch of random people on the plane, which was interesting. A chinese dude, a swedish girl. Okay, just the two. And then once we got off, there were a bunch of Chinese dudes being subjected to the rigors of American airport assistance. So I hopped up, and spoke what little I could, which wound up being really helpful. There were a couple of people being told to GO UP THAT ESCALATOR, TURN RIGHT, GET ON THE TRAM, TAKE 2 STOPS, TAKE A RIGHT, AND WAIT FOR 4 HOURS, so I thought it appropriate to intercede, saying (in mandarin, essentially), “follow us until we tell you to go over there.” An old couple was going to Memphis, and another women was going to Kansas City. Cool stuff. I’m useful. It was sort of a magical couple of moments.
It’s really weird to be able to overhear conversations. I find myself listening to entire conversations, fascinated that I can understand it all. And then I catch myself, and pretend to not be able to understand anyone, like the good old days, but it doesn’t work so well.
I’m really glad I bought some good chopsticks. I’m not sure how adjusting to western utensils will work now, because I’m totally going to be using the chopsticks whenever I can.
I just went to the airport bathroom here, and I had a moment of hesitation as I wondered if they were squat toilets. It’s going to be weird adjusting. Little things will sneak up on me, I think. Things I’m sure I didn’t even notice, as I was adjusting to them.
I just realized that the internet isn’t blocked over here. What should my first youtube video be? Answer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt34aHAFkV8 (It’s a clip from that movie that I found playing in a movie store, but the guy didn’t know what it was. Thank you, IMDB.)
Anyone ever heard of a guy named Michel Polnareff? He’s this snazzy french dude. I got a random song of his while trying to download a random song of someone else’s. Good stuff.
I just did a bunch of mandarin homework, typing some essays in Chinese. (By the way, I’ve tried to refer to the written language as “Chinese,” because the writing is unified across all dialects of the Chinese language, and I’ve been referring to the spoken language as “Mandarin,” because that is the dialect [is it considered a dialect if it’s the most common form of the language?] I am learning to speak. Using “Chinese” to refer to the spoken language is ambiguous and ignorant to the fact that there are tons of ways to speak the language. I’ve at least tried to be consistent with those semantics.) Writing in chinese was disconcertingly (and wonderfully) easy. Yeah know, relative to before.
That basically covers it, right? I’m tired and I smell and I learned a lot and I’m glad to be home but I’ll go back in a heartbeat.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Home again?
So, it being my last night in Beijing, I'm probably obliged to make some sort of update that addresses all the interesting things I've done. Which won't happen mostly because only some of them were interesting. Those that were interesting were tremendously interesting, and those that weren't were incredibly frustrating. And I'm kinda sick, and I'm really jaded, and stuffs.
So I hope to have a good something or other to post once I get back, by which time some of you will have already heard my bathroom stories and other unmentionables, as well as whatever I'll wind up putting in said upcoming post. Hold tight, my kittens.
I've taken to carrying around rolls of toilet paper in my jacket pockets, for nose snifflies, but it really just winds up making me hobo-esque.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Oh right, the internet
Thursday, April 8, 2010, 4:38 PM
We just realized that we have, like, a solid 3 [Update: now 2. Further Update: now negative 3 or so] more school days over here, so we walked around town as much as we could.
I bought a donut on a stick. It's everything I wanted and more.
I can now sort of carry on purchasing conversation pretty excellently, sorta. "How much is it? Do you have a new one? Can I have a discount? I want to buy a bunch, so I should get a discount. How many (insert item) are in the package?" What's more, I can understand what they're saying, and respond in real time. That's pretty snazzy, if you ask me.
I dropped off a couple CDs of awesome music to give to Xun Gang, the guitar store dude. He wasn't there, but his friend was, so I was like, "you know Xun Gang, right? Can you give this to him?" And he was like, "yeah sure." I tend to be able to communicate.
I'm getting H+M (Hannah and Malia, not to be confused with the clothing store of the same name) into They Might Be Giants. I'm proud. Violin, I am a Grocery Bag, I am not your Broom. Start them off with them the kids stuff.
Sprite has this awesome new flavor over here: Sprite + Iced Green Tea. It's great.
I wonder how many security cameras there are in China. Everyone makes jokes about London having all those security cameras, but over here there seems to be a camera pointed at every camera pointed at everybody.
Aunt Missy section:
I'm actually going through my pictures and boiling them down to the very best. Maybe this is a good thing, maybe I'll sort of forget some other very good, second-place sort of pictures. What may be uninteresting and normal to me can be wonderful and enlightening to another. Who knows.
Also, Chinese Uncle Jeff. I meant to write more about him, but I sort of forget to, somehow. I met him at this family party dinner thing that I talked about briefly. There were 4 families represented there, and the dads of the group had grown up together in High School, I think. They talked about their first words in english class: "Monkey, Banana." Anyway, he was one of the dads.
For the first 10 or 15 minutes or so, I sort of kept looking back at him, to figure out why he looked so familiar. The way he sort of titled his head down and looked at his drink and then looked up to say something tipped me off. And yeah, he didn't just look like you, (cuz I guess I'm mostly addressing this to Uncle Jeff at this point), he sort of and the same mannerisms and things. He liked his Heineken, and sort of approached it in the same way, if that makes any sense. I guess he was quieter than you, Uncle Jeff, (which isn't meant to imply anything, yeah know), but was lively and smiley and sort of tall and gangly-ish, and had glasses and long hair by Chinese-standards. Not quite mini-ponytail-able hair, but close. And he gave me a big, Uncle Jeff-y hug at the end, which was rather a lot of icing on the cake. I don't know what else to say about him, except I'm awed by what seems to be the fact that I will never get to see him again.
I saw an amazing kung-fu movie clip in a store today, (P.S., End of Aunt Missy section) and I asked the guy what movie it was, but he didn't know and sort of screwed up the dvd player it was saved on in the process of figuring out. I think I recognized one of the actors in it, (the early bad dude, the older master guy, from Fearless), so now I'm on a mission to use my internet/mandarin skills to get myself that movie. Wish me luck. [Update: Found it! It's called Ip Man, and it has Donnie Yen in it, and I found the movie online. I win at interdisciplinary movie bounty hunting.)
Good news! I'm about to make $700,000!
We have been waiting for you to contact us for your registered package(Bank Draft) of $688,000.00. Please send us your complete Name, Addressand Phone Number for confirmation purposes. Customer Care officer: Mr.Anderson Cole. Email Address: fedex.customer.care-ng@msn.com PhoneNumber: +2347052102158
Is there someone I'm supposed to send this to? Spam police?
Saturday, April 10, 2010, 10:34 PM
Just had another good conversation with Jason about governments again, sort of about one-party vs. multi-party, like I wrote about earlier. We have some good conversations. It's cool because I'm a sort of (sort of) worldly American, and he's a sort of worldly Chinese dude. So we meet on the same level, a lot of the time, but in very [Chinese/American] ways, which is interesting. I'm trying to give an example to explain exactly what I mean, but it's a more subtle thing, I think. I dunno, maybe I'm just making stuff up.
Two kids talking political theory. We essentially know nothing, and our conversations represent more who we are as people and as products of our respective societies rather than anything original we can add to the discussion of Politics. But it's satisfying and interesting nonetheless.
I made what may be the best playlist I've ever made for the guitar guy. That was a bad sentence. I cover absolutely all of the bases. Tortoise, Streetlight Manifesto, Cake, Tim Armstrong, Charles Mingus, Zach Hill, Steely Dan, Captain Beefheart, Rancid, Hella, The Cardigans. Battles, Bad Religion, me, Blur, Ghosts and Vodka, Melt-Banana and Ahleuchatistas. And it works, somehow. (If you know half of those bands, you're officially my favorite person ever.) (also that last band is spelled right. Ah Loo Cha Tees Tas). I want him to know everything ever. I found I had to explain psychedelia to him. It's weird how people here just don't have access to culture. I mean, period. They simply have no chance to be exposed to basically everything that has shaped me into the person I am today. If I were identical biologically, but raised in China, I feel like I'd be a totally different person, simply because I couldn't find my own cultural likes and dislikes, and things. Find what inspires me. I guarantee the vast majority of guitarists how would've heard of, been devotees of, Steely Dan, have not heard of them at all. Same goes for any other bit of culture you want to look at under a magnifying glass. Artists wouldn't have heard of Pollock. Authors wouldn't have heard of Vonnegut. The list goes on.
It's easiest to find examples with movies and things. Jason said he liked Denzel Washington, and I was like, "Wasn't American Gangster awesome?" and he'd never heard of it. "Inside Man? Malcolm X?" Nope, nope. The list goes on. Half the shows on TV in America. (Not that, ya know... they're worth watching.) They just get this odd, not very inspiring mix of so-called "American" things. Linkin' Park, 'Prison Break' and Basketball. It doesn't really add up to much. I dunno. I wish everyone had access to everything, so everyone could think whatever they want, etc. etc., but it doesn't work like that, and it won't for quite some time. I want to get these guys' addresses so I send out music I think they need from time to time. "Remember me from 6 years ago? I think you should listen to this album. P.S. Don't let the bastards grind you down." (by then I hope to be able to say that in Mandarin.)
Which isn't to say that I'm not enjoying myself.
Monday, April 12, 2010, 7:21 AM
So I guess this is it. I'd mistakenly assumed that my ramblings would sort of find their own natural structure; would make sense of themselves. They haven't, though, I don't think. So if you've been reading along (and some reports say there are a rather lot of you guys out there,) I thank you, but it's a little too late to warn you that this doesn't have a story arch. I showed up in China, I was a little lost for a bit, and then I got progressively less lost. And now, before I can legitimately say "I have a handle on the workings of Shanghai," I'm getting out of here. Just a story that I really want to be continued.
I do have the one last observation, which may sums things up nicely.
I've said before that we're all basically the same, and I've said before that our (i.e. me and all of the people I met in China) only basic differences are the language we speak and they many fine distinctions between our cultures. We're all human, and we all exhibit humanity in basically the same way. Now my goal is to be able to truly communicate, eventually. Having said that, I don't want to sound all Pocahontas-y. (The white man is a-comin' to save you, savages!). I'm just realizing that it's crazy presumptuous and ignorant to be content with living in America and speaking English all my life. (Not to insult all you guys who do. I'm not sure how to bail myself out of this one... I don't want to insult you guys, but it seems a little unavoidable.) In order to be good and honest with myself, to develop into what I could consider "fully realized," I'll need to spend some solid time outside of suburbia, outside of America. (This is where you collectively say: No sh*t!) And then there's the whole Emersonian "why travel, you should be able to take full advantage of yourself wherever you are," thing, which should basically hold true. But isn't that not the case when you can't access any non-homogenized culture hub? When you'll be exposed to the same things, over and over again? Maybe I'm just pretending to have a legitimate philosophical argument for "get me out of Needham, please," but I've at least got context for whatever follows in the next few years of my life.
Monday, April 12, 2010, 9:27 PM
Kae-por and I agree that Needham is a good place to raise kids. It's an equally good place to shelter them.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010, 10:35 PM
China officially broke my mind today. We watched TV in the hotel room, and that was odd. We watched the part of True Lies where Arnold makes the alligators eat those guys. Then we watched Future X-Cops, the script of which contains, "this time the hitmen are cyborgs," "Have a good hug now... I am afraid this will be your last hug," "Dad... why am I a robot?" and "Sorry I didn't tell you that you are a robot." I'm not sure if I need to say anything else, except that I'm going to make all of you watch it when I get back. Everyone.
So really, though, we left Shanghai today. The place I'd been pretty comfortable calling home. I woke up early after a long night of packing, and the family and I all rode together in the car to the school. And then we piled into the school van, and that was it. The ride to the airport is just a little longer than you expect to be. It was this long, drawn out buzzing sound. When we stopped at the airport, I realized I'd curled up into the ride, hoping it'd never end. The sounds and constant Shanghai-highway fear and the unending apartment complexes looming and stabbing out had become my comfort zone.
We went into the airport with the ceiling that gave you vertigo, and rushed through security checks, getting busted for little cartons of milk, but not for bottles of liquor. We ran the length of the terminal to catch the plane, and that was it.
We've been telling ourselves we'll surely return to Shanghai someday, to go back to this or that store to check in with our favorite shopkeepers (who we tend to dub in relation to their trade, i.e. "baozi lady" or "dvd lady," or "awesome guitar store dude,") but we all wonder a little, (rather a lot), if we're fooling ourselves.
That I'll see Jason again, that we'll see Ms. Gao again, that we'll come back and pick up from whence we left.
I gave Naiyi a bunch of the pictures I took, which he appreciated a lot.
Now I'm in a hotel that's perhaps far too spacious just me, and far too swanky for anyone, really. Modern art hangs on the wall and the decor is themed and the plants aren't fake but certainly low-maintenance. Toilets: western. It's hard to say anyone belongs anywhere, and it's hard to say anyone will learn anything from anywhere. I really want to play guitar. I'm getting Jason to say a proper-er goodbye to my guitar store friend than what I gave him.
We all agreed that it felt like we were leaving for home, rather than just leaving for somewhere else in China. All there is is the fact that we are no longer in Shanghai.
Xi'an is actually pretty great, and I'm glad that I'm here. But I won't be able to play volleyball with the kids from Shanghai No. 2 anymore. That girl named Encore won't play me in ping-pong, and I won't walk home with the kid who really wants to build robots. We can't take Jason to new places in his home city, and DVD lady won't wave to us from down the street.
It's much quieter here. For some reason no one honks their horns. I got used to this wonderful soundscape pouring into my room at night. I should've recorded it. Now there's all this silence, but for the mini-fridge and air conditioning. There's a touch-screen button I can press in my wall to turn on the reading light on my bed, which shines from the ceiling down to exactly where you'd want to read a book. The beds are soft, which generally isn't the case in China. I feel like I'm in a cocoon. We'll be whisked around in a tour bus for the next few days, and then go to Beijing, and be whisked around some more. I'd been living life before, right? Being a city kid, spending my time how I like, jammed into buses and taxis and restaurants and being loud and silly and self-reliant and learning so much more than I thought was out there. I think I'm going to wind up writing some more on this topic, sort of in the abstract, but it always amazes me how people seek out inauthenticity. How that is comforting. The streets of Shanghai are authentic. There are beggars who have cut off their own hands to make more money off foreigners, who are smiling every day. Immigrants from far off in the country side peddling bicycles filled with fruit, trying to make it in the city. Kids studying until they convince themselves they're idiots, and their peers who skip school and know they're on to something. A government that seems like it's selling something, at all times. It's all very jumbled and grey and authentic, and no one really knows what to make of it or themselves. And that's where we should spend our time. In that grey zone. But now I'm here, propped up between to incredibly comfy, identical chairs, contemplating which of my incredibly comfy, identical beds I should sleep in, and whether or not my wake-up call will be automated or not. Here there is a system, a tangible structure, that is sold to me, and it says that I am on top. Back home, (America, this time), I'm also told that I'm part of system. Of schooling and civic duty and citizenship, and it says that I am on the bottom. None of it's true. I knew that before, but now I know what being in the middle can feel like.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 10:38 PM
Today was pretty great, actually. Started off not so great, because I couldn't get to sleep last night, because the impossibly spicy food we ate (just a bit of, the rest of the food was splendid. Up in the more northern part of china, they eat a lot more noodles, because you can grow wheat up here, whereas down in the south [Shanghai is considered southern, but it's all relative] they eat a bunch of rice. So now I'm eating crappy rice but delicious noodles, and before [even though I didn't realize it] I was eating crappy noodles but delicious rice. Nothings better, all in all. Just different.) made me whip out the Alka-Seltzer, and I had some residual Xi'an cuisine hangover or something in the morning, so that wasn't that great. But then we went to our pretty excellent buffet, and I knew how to order coffee. Coco Crispies. Ahh yeah. Which makes me think of the home made egg/Chinese-pancake concoction I'd probably be having back "home," so it's still a pretty thoroughly mixed bag.
And having said that, I probably owe you guys a tangent on my final impressions of Shanghai, now that I'm some sort of cultural ambassador, or something.
Kae-por asked me, on my last day there, what I thought of China's future, now that I've gotten to know the kids so well. It was a really good question, and one that I hadn't given any thought to, before. But the answer is basically that it's really muddled. It's all murky and odd, and saying anything definitively (tends to be, but especially in this case), is ill-advised. But I'm not all that hopeful. There's all these directions I want to go in with this.
First. Jason captured this well, I think, when he said "the students are looking for the answer key, not the answer." In the Chinese school system, there is always an answer key. In a written test, where they ask you to respond to something, or give "your reaction," there is a "correct" view point to take. He said there was this famous poet or author or something, who got an excerpt of his published in a popular text book or something - as part of a test, maybe. And no one could get it right, the answers where so hard. So they called up the guy, and had him take the test about himself. And he got it wrong. "What do you think the author intended to convey by writing this passage?"
It's so easy to point out the flaws of the American school system, as I go about being flung about within it, but now that I see the idiotic pressure-cooker schools that they have over here, I'm beginning to realize the strengths of our American schools as well. No one is asked what they think. No one writes what they believe. Like that Onion headline, "Decency Accidentally Bred Out of Human Race," it seems like a by-product of the school system is the breeding out of creativity.
I saw my very first street musician (who wasn't selling something) on the subway the other day, and I immediately emptied my pocket change on him. I couldn't believe it. I was in a rush, so I couldn't stop and listen, but I totally would've chatted and things. I thanked him and ran off.
And the state of music in China. Don't even get me started. I talked earlier about the financial conundrum any potential musicians find themselves in, as told by Xun Gang, the awesome guitar store dude, so I won't really go into that. But all of the music that people listen to in China sort of scares me. Absolutely every band you can hear on the radio is selling something. It's surprising to find a sugary juice fruit drink that doesn't have a popular band on it. And the American music is just the very top few bands of the past decade. Lady Gaga, Backstreet Boys, Michael Jackson (who is huge over here, but, even so, no one can recognize "Thriller." I think his popularity is limited to "Beat It," but it could just be his dancing, or what he represents that captures the imagination."), Jonas Brothers, etc. It's frighteningly uninspired and corporate, just like back home, but to the nth degree. There is nothing original to take in, even if the population wanted to. Which I want to say is an exaggeration, but I'm really not sure if it is.
Which is to say, while the country seems to be "on the rise," their population seems to be pretty stagnant. There's hope, sure. I meet a bunch of kids who are really talented and have legitimate thoughts in their heads, but have no idea how to go about it, or how to get recognized, and before they can give it any thought, they get told to do their homework, while being forced to listen to audible money. The system can't grow with their kids in this situation. Everyone talks about "the workforce," and how awesome China's future is, in terms of sheer numbers. But what if no one can problem solve? Or think creatively? Then what? I feel like I read somewhere that the American worker is the most productive individual worker in the world, which I originally discarded as bollocks. But I may be beginning to see why. We're pretty well trained to figure things out, and be flexible and creative and things. The way China is structured right now, they're going to get a gigantic workforce of second and third-tier workers. I'm afraid all of this smatters of racism, and I really don't mean it like that at all, and it pains me to say all of this, but it certainly seems true and the people I've talked to seem to agree, and it's all very sad and stupid and one big waste.
Xi'an is awesome; it really is. But I'm really not in the mindset to talk about how cool this stuff is. I'm enjoying it all, but I wind up juxtaposing it against what I learned in Shanghai, and all that makes for these sorts of thoughts. So I'm sorry, I guess, but you'll get some good, juicy Xi'an updates soon. This is where I cop out to Briggs' blog, because there are good pictures and things of the awesome artifacts and things I should bring myself to write about soon. And things.
(Also it was hard to work out the internet for the past few days, so sorry all you guys who have been trying to get in touch. Internet is back now, but my time tends to be short. I'll be doin' my best. Don't you worry, kids.)
Friday, April 9, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Mandarin class
"It's pronounced like this"
(teaching each other internet-invented words in our respective internet tongues)
Signs here
Get ready for some pics, people.
Hannah really likes taking pictures of mistranslated "fire extinguisher" and "bathroom" signs. Occasionally you find a gem that is awkwardly translated, but says something better than a native speaker ever could've said it. This is in Suzhou, where the "don't touch things" signs seem to be a bunch of awesome idioms and little poems.
Bloog
Monday, April 5, 2010
I just realized how to characterize what creeped (apparently not a word?) me out so much about the Pudong community the other day. It was felt and looked like a home for the elderly, but it was occupied by the young and pretty and inexplicably rich. They could have gotten their own mini-mansions elsewhere, and lived their lives in lavish seclusion, but chose to live together in the same freakish apartment complex, so that they might be more efficiently marketed to. There were postings for lectures by scholars and tutorials by experts. Adverts for the class "Mixology 101" and a lecture titled "Forld = Foreign World" were prominently displayed.
5:44 PM
So anyway, I just got back from walking around the Bund, which was crazy cool, sorta, but even more hot and tiring and a little boring and really tiring. Too many people there. The family couldn't quite understand why people wanted to go to the Bund, I think. It was one of those (Thank you, The Onion,) "Everyone at Bar Wonders How Everyone Else Has the Energy" moments.
11:12 PM
I just met Chinese Uncle Jeff. It was amazing and funny and odd. At first I couldn't place why I seemed to know him, and then I realized that he was basically a Chinese clone of my Uncle Jeff. How crazy is that?
It was at this awesome family party thing that I just went to. But it was the culmination of a bunch of weekend awesomeness, so I should start with other stuffs.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010, 7:32 AM
Anyway. Weekends are awesome, here. Saturday the family went to Sao Mu, which translates literally to Grave Sweeping, but is really, like, paying respects to ancestors at their graves. Burning money and eating sweet fruits in tribute to them. It was really amazing to see the graveyard, which was the biggest I've ever seen. The graves were packed really tightly together, and were in the shape of thrones. Every grave was made for a husband and wife, and each had two spots for little portraits of the deceased. The atmosphere was interesting, one of both grief and festivity. On the way up, I thought it was just going to be my family and I, but it turned out the whole extended family was there. I could see a few other families who were seriously grieving for their loved ones, but our family had a pretty jolly sort of attitude.
Then we all, a big bunch of us, went to eat, not at a restaurant but at a pretty cool kitchen thing which the family seemed to rent, and they cooked a bunch of food themselves. I had some soft-shelled tortoise.
Oh, like, last week, my mom packed me some snack-food-packaged duck tongue. Jason was all over it. A little too cartilage-laced for me.
And then we walked around with just Naiyi and another dude our age and I, to a park, which was more like a well-padded outdoor series of workout implement things. It was odd and another one of those places that seems a little government infused, and I wouldn't really consider it a fun place to be, as a kid.
And then we had dinner with the same people, in the same room, with some of the same food, which was good but again, a little odd. They had me sit down at one of the tables, and I started eating and things, and then I realized that the table I was sitting at was just dudes, and I looked over, and the other table was just women. Which didn't seem like coincidence, I don't think.
And there was this awesome little girl there, who was learning English, so she asked me how to say "band-aid," and it was crazy cute. I've confirmed that my Mandarin is about as good as a 5 year old.
We're all in denial that we'll be leaving Shanghai in a week, and China in two. Should I prepare myself for America again, or become further attached to life over here? I got really nice Chopsticks to bring back, so I'm prepared for whatever happens. I'll eat bagels and cereal with chopsticks. Ahh yeeah.
Outside, public stairs here tend to have bike lanes. Little ramps on the side, so people can ride up and down the side, or if the bike is too big or has a big load of stuff on it, you can hop off and walk the bike up the side.
Us American kids have involved conversations about Chuck-E-Cheese from time to time.
http://www.allposters.com/gallery.asp?startat=/getthumb.asp&search=123667&c=c&aid=485555780&tid1=33 (Look! People cashing in on and misattributing crappy art to Banksy! How could someone ever think this [http://www.allposters.com/gallery.asp?startat=/getposter.asp&APNum=5327226&CID=6E5B8BDD1A094B559800F8C85AEA517E&PPID=1&Search=&f=t&FindID=0&P=1&PP=1&sortby=PD&c=c&page=1] is a Banksy? Auggh. Allposters.com, you just lost all respect.)
For the real stuff: www.Banksy.co.uk
A bunch of people have fake iPhones over here. Some are good fakes, and others are just clearly made for pretend.
Okay, totally random note. I'm going to take you on a journey, now. Pretend you're opening a bag of chips. You grab the sides of the bag, and pull. Ta-da. Okay, now pretend you're opening a ketchup packet. You grip the top, and rip the perforated edge thing, right? Okay. Now come with me to China. Here, bags of chips can't be opened like bags of chips. Here you must open them like a ketchup packet. Yes, it is true. I have yet to come across a bag that can be opened like a bag of chips, but ketchup-style bags are everywhere. Crazy stuff. Also, right now, I'm eating a bag of "Ethnican Flavor" chips. They're called Inca Chips, but there's totally a Native American on the bag.
And then on sunday we went to that party thing, described above. And yesterday I played badminton with the father for a solid two hours. It's absurd how good he is. Now I'm really sore, like, all over, because he had me sprinting around, left-right-left-right. (Zuo bian you bian zuo bian you bian, in Mandarin, which I said, all exhaustedly, after a particularly ridiculous volley. Everyone giggled.)
(Hannah and I just found out we both have a solid appreciation for Cake. You should share our solid appreciation. We think you should start here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5KmB8Laemg)
I just realized that I'm really used to wearing slippers around the house. I come in, I take off my shoes, and I slap on those snazzy slippers. Ta-da. When I get home, I dunno what's gonna happen. If I'll pine for the slippys, or what.
Something I'd sort of noticed earlier, but got a pretty good, direct explanation of just now, is that no one eats raw vegetables over here. When I was eating hot pot with some of the German students and hosts and friends, (and hot pot, I hope you remember, basically consists of a big pot of boiling water, and people dipping different things in there to cook them. So you get raw meat and vegetables and things, and cook them and eat them yourself. So anyway. Back to main text), I popped some veggies into the broth, and then some into my mouth, and some people freaked out. Which I was totally not expecting. So now, Naiyi and I were just watching "You Are the Chef!" which is a weird you-can-cook-too sort of show, whose host is a British ex-pat lady who can speak really good (at least I think so) Mandarin, so they have there, appealing to a wide demographic, cooking ineptly. And so she popped some raw mushroom in her mouth, and said that the Chinese tend to believe that raw vegetables are poisonous, and that basically everything should be cooked. Which is pretty consistent with my experiences, here. (Also apparently the same thing happened to Hannah. Tried eating raw cabbage at hot pot, got everyone scared. "It's not cooked yet!")
Just had an awesome dinner conversation with my host dad. Naiyi and I ate by ourselves, as we often do, but then he got home early with even more food, because today the food was oddly slim, so we ate "more and more," as my host dad likes to say for just about everything in a really endearing and surprisingly descriptive sort of fashion.
So we talked about a bunch of things, with surprising amounts of information being passed between us. He's going to America next year to study at Arizona State University, which he couldn't really pronounce, so he went and got me his grades that they sent him. All A's, except for a B+, so I said they were excellent, but that one teacher must've been bad, which was well received.
And another link, this time actually crazy relevant. https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/87/brain-east-west.html Describes pretty well exactly what I'm experiencing.
From Sunday on Naiyi's had a fever and cold, which really stinks. He's pretty tired all the time, anyway, and he pretty consistently falls asleep on the couch, while he only did that sometimes, before. He met me at the underground station with one of those face-mask thingys that everyone around here has (maybe I bought a face mask with some bones Bedazzled [Yeah know, "the fashion craze of the season," http://mybedazzler.com/] across the front? just maybe? Maybe I hit 30,000 words in this thing? Maybe?).
This is one of those "I thought I maybe had more to say?" sort of moments. But I did a pretty good job of actually recording what I've done in the past few days, so I'm good and proud. Now to waste time on http://hipsterpuppies.tumblr.com/
Wednesday, April 7, 2010, 10:58 AM
We just had one of the best mandarin classes ever. (Sorry, guys from Mandi class back home. Good times, but this probably took the cake.) We talked about Chinese/American internet slang, and it was nothing short of epic win, as I think you can see from the picture above.
One of those quotes that's better taken out of context: "She saw me with Chardonnay and Oreos, and I was like, 'yeah'"
6:32 PM
Just got back from the Tailor with Kae-por, again. Good times. We talked about some places in Needham, and I was surprised by both how much he remembered, and how much I cared about the place.
I took the underground home again. By myself for just the second or third time, I think. It's always a good experience. I heard someone say to their friend, "The American is on the phone!" when I was texting Naiyi. I've started to have pretend conversations with people on the subway. Little dialogues in my head.
"Shei fong pi le?!" ("Who farted?!")
[Any of the myriad exclamations I've learned over here.] Examples: "Qu ci!" (go die), "Tian a!" (Oh my god!), "Wo ca!" (censored) [Native speakers: do I have the pinyin for that right? Maybe you don't want to tell me. That's cool.], "Ta ma da!" (censored), "Gan shen me!?" (What the hell!?), etc.
"Wo shi yi ge wai guo ren! ni zhi dao le ma?" ("I am a foreigner! Did you know that?")
"Wo xi huan ni de tou" ("I like your head.") (Inspired by seeing a bunch of dudes rubbing their friend's buzz-cut-ed dome, in that way that apparently everyone in the whole world likes to do.)
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Pudong visit (etc.), ensuing musings
Sunday, April 4, 2010
(I switched from writing this in Word to writing this in Pages, because at page 50 or so Word starts to get buggy, so now my Insert -> Date & Time command is a little different from before. Not that you would've noticed or cared, but for that one guy out there who would have, here is your explanation.)
I can sort of speak Mandarin. It's official, I think. I just had a real awesome dinner, eating and drinking and speaking and whatnot with the family. No need for translators or anything. It's sort of amazing, the depth and breadth of communication I can cover. I mean, I'm rather short of being fluent, but I can sort of carry on a very enjoyable dinner conversation, which I think you'll agree is quite something.
Further chopstick notes: At first I was told that I used chopsticks "the right way," which I thought was pretty strange. But soon I noticed that a bunch of the people over here sort of improvise their chopstick strategy, and don't succeed all that much, in the long run. The "proper" way of going about chopstick-ing is to have the two kuazi (chopsticks) further apart at the back of your hand than they are in front of your hand, where they will be grabbing at food. This gives good leverage for all of food-nabbing needs, and is generally a good way to go about things. Most people, though, eat with their chopsticks closer together at the back of their hands, and further apart at the front of their hands, making for not-so-good leverage, and mildly poor performance (but, of course, by American standards, everyone is superb over here). For a while I didn't know what was the problem, but now I realize that the most common feature in my acquaintances' use of chopsticks is how they prepare to use them. There is the really cool, really quick gesture that everyone does, where they grab both kuazi with one hand, tap them on the table to even them out, and start eating right away. While this is a really quick way to position the kuazi in your hand, it tends to make people use them "the wrong way." While I, having never seen people do the quick, pre-eating tap, tended to use both hands to affix the chopsticks in the proper position in my eating hand. This takes rather a lot longer than it takes most people to prepare to eat with their chopsticks, and while it may be culturally not-so-common, it seems to have set me up to use chopsticks "correctly." I put "correctly" in quotes, because it many people are of the opinion that "whatever gets food in your mouth is correct," but I'm still complimented on the "correctness" of my chopstick skills. There is a "correct" way, and there is an even more "correct" way. So now I'm trying really hard to be able to just tap my kuazi on the table, and have the fall into the "more correct" position, though this is rather tough. Again, this is one of those things that may need to be gesticulated and demonstrated, rather than described.
So anyway, today. Jason invited us to a cool thing at Pudong (East of the River, a part of the city), which is apparently a really foreigner-heavy part of town. Someone described it as "the Disneyland Bubble," which was spot-on. It seemed like someone plopped a bunch of the gated communities of Florida in the middle of Shanghai. It was sort of creepy to be there. It was an Easter celebration sort of thing, at this weird little gated community, filled with really rich Ex-pats. We helped out with games for the kids to play, while the swanky adults ate and drank in the buffet lounge sort of thing. There were so many wai guo ren (foreigners, I think I broke this down for you guys earlier) there, I could hardly believe it.
For a while It was hard for me to distinguish what made this group of English-speakers in China worse than a Chinatown, for example, but I eventually hit on it. None of these people could really speak Mandarin. They were living in China for the exchange rate-induced lifestyle, mostly. There wasn't a upward-mobility sort of motivation for their emigration. Most of them wanted to go there because they had a decent amount of money back in America or wherever, which they knew would be considered a gigantic amount of money in China. So they moved over here, and somehow started living the lifestyle of kings.
But so anyway, I played with their kids, who were sometimes brats, and sometimes really fun and nice. I can't adequately capture all of the extreme emotions they inspired in me, but it was generally an interesting experience.
Jason said that in Melbourne, Australia, there was a street or two where you could go and speak Shanghainese, and everyone there would understand you. Which is almost an okay comparison to what was going on in the neighborhood. But all those people who could speak Shanghainese could also speak English. But not so for these guys, over here. There is this weird imperialist sort of streak among these guys. Someone said "where's my Mimosa?" and another said "where's my Chinese guy?" in reference to one of the works at the community. They can all speak a very little Mandarin, but very, very little. It's an odd, surreal sort of place.
I told them where I lived, and they were like, "ahh, you live in the real city." Really very weird and unsettling.
And then we (Malia and Jason and I) hung out with one of Jason's friends. Sexual innuendos translate tremendously well across cultures.
I think I mentioned this earlier, but Starbucks are exactly the same here. Comfy chairs still comfy. Americano tastes identical. The sweetener packets are slightly different, but I'll give them that one. (Another reason my dad wouldn't survive over here.)
I reflexively said "Zhen de a?!" (pronounced more like "Jen da?!") today. It means "really?!" I forget what someone said, but I was like, "serioulsy?!" and they where like, "yup!" It was cool. I don't know how to describe how well I can understand Mandarin, but it certainly seems like I can understand quite a lot. It's becoming reflexive and intuitive. Which is really weird and fun. I try really hard to overhear conversations, whenever I can. And I get lots of little grammatical, structure sort of words, like "then," "about," "if," "but," "because," and stuff like that. But my straight up vocabulary needs work. But that's cool.
I'm not sure whether to get further attached to this place, or if I should start get used to the idea of living in America again. I mean, the answer is obvious: "Live every second here to the best of your ability." But I'm gonna get such a huge whiplash going back. Like, gigantic. And really, when you get down to it, why should my environment inform who I am? But I'm no Dalai Lama or Gandhi or Emerson or whomever, so I really can't work like that. I know I'll function differently, to some extent, back in Needham. I don't know where exactly I want to go with this, but it maybe deserves some more mind-flailings.
Changing, as a person, depending on your environment, is rather not ideal, right? But growing as a person, as a result of your environment is a good thing, right? But how do you distinguish between the two? My experience here seems to consist of watching others find the distinction between these, while having absolutely no idea which camp I, myself, belong in.
Pretending I'm a Chinese dude isn't accomplishing anything, while appreciating their culture is. But it's such a fine distinction. I just don't know anymore. Living in the moment (mindfulness, as I think Buddhists and Herman Hesse might say), seems to be my temporary solution/defense-mechanism, but that always seemed like avoiding the fact of life, in the Modern World sense.
Maybe I've stopped making sense to you guys. Can you tell I had a big Existentialist unit in school before I came over here?
Everything requires more hashing out. But then something else new happens, and then I get behind in my conscious thinking and rationalizations and things. Which is probably for the better, after all. So many things come so hard and so fast, all I've got left are the feelings. What more can I ask for?
Saturday, April 3, 2010
It's Kickin' in, yeah
3/30/10 7:20 AM
You can always tell when the tea is made from tap water. Which is to say, it's always made from tap water. Thoroughly disappointing, especially in the fancy restaurants. It tastes like my shower (water) smells.
It was really cool being in a group of kids who routinely spoke 3 different languages, and being privy to 2 of 'em.
I dropped by to the guitar store again yesterday, and had another great conversation with the guy. There was this wonderful moment where we were like… "is that… dude! It's you!" in our respective heads.
He's making me realize how universal everything is. (Alert! Recurring theme!) We were talking bout spending a lot of our time, invested in something, like playing guitar. He used the word "pledge," as in "to pledge your life," and I thought that was awesome. And he said "I just don't know what's worth fighting for," and I totally got that. And I had my normal logical argument about "well, the only thing that seems provable around here is that we can enjoy ourselves from time to time, so we might as well flex that muscle," but he got to the same point by proving it in the negative. "We're all going to waste so much time and energy because of the way society and the world certainly seems to be structured, so we need to work as best we can in the opposite direction."
3/31/10 8:31 AM
I bought some really cheap packs of pokemon and yugioh cards the other day, just for kicks, and it turns out they're both incredibly, elaborately faked. All of the numbers on the pokemon cards seem to be randomly generated, and all 20 cards I got, without exception, were "rare," and it looked like one card had cake frosting spilled on the back of it. The Yugioh cards were a little more legitimate, but in two of the packs, 12 (of the 15) cards were identical, and came the exact same order. One of the packs of pokemon cards that Malia got was exactly the same as another pack she got. Sort of funny, I think. Maybe no one cares but me?
We found a really good DVD shop (remember when I talked about finding band DVDs? That one, last week, around the Nanjing trip-ish), which closed down about 4 days after we found it. First time we dropped in, we got unexpectedly good prices, the next day we dropped in, half their stock was packed away, and the next day we dropped by, the store was empty but for a lady eating noodles who told us to go away. We find fewer occasions to drop by that way nowadays, but as far as I know, it's being gutted, and will be redone into something else.
Kae-por said there is sort of a crack-down on the bootleg DVD business, in preparation for the Shanghai Expo. Same thing happened before the Beijing Olympics, apparently. He says the DVD places on side streets that aren't so visible will be left alone, but the more prominent ones are on their way out. I think Hannah or Malia said something about a really visible DVD store by their house closing down, too. The store right by our school, though, that is tucked away and hides all signs of being a DVD store (nowadays; before they had a sign up advertising DVDs [this is how we found out about it], but two weeks or so they brought it inside and sort of boarded up all of the windows, so the racks can't be seen), so as to protect their business. Crazy stuff.
I'm reminded of something I read that Banksy (wicked awesome London graffiti/guerilla artist[/apparently filmmaker now?]) wrote about the graffiti scene in Australia, specifically Melbourne, which apparently has a truly wonderful street art vibe, which got basically destroyed by the preparations for the Sydney Olympics. Don't know exactly where to go from here, except to say that governments seem to tend to have the power to destroy culture?
3/31/10 7:00 PM
Naiyi and I watch America's Funniest Home Video's basically nightly. The channel, ICS (International Channel Shanghai), realized a problem with the broadcast, though. Calling something "America's" isn't so international, now is it? So over here it's called "Funniest Home Videos." But that also means they can't use a lot of the live footage of that annoying guy who introduces all the videos and stuff, because he says its "America's" videos, not anyone else's. So they have this other random guy, who's young and sort of awkward and I suppose inoffensive, reading this other, even crappier than normal script. But they still like showing some of the segments and games that they do on the normal show, but the studio of the regular show has "AFV" everywhere in big yellow letters, and for anyone who's seen the original show, it's really strange.
They pretend to have two hosts. The new, clearly not legitimate host talks sometimes about hanging out with the original host, and it's generally weird. The new catchphrase is "the show that speaks the international language of laughter," which is mild bollocks, because some of the shows, I think are, edited to keep the American-ness to a relative low.
This is the best documented series of things I have ever done.
There are advertisements in Naiyi's apartment's elevator, which are refreshed often and cover all three available walls, but no advertisements or previews before movies. Odd stuff.
When Jason hangs out with us too much, he starts talking to Chinese dudes in English. And they sort of stare at him. Afterwards he catches himself, and feels really silly, and the whole thing is definitely a spectator sport.
4/2/10 7:31 AM
Some hilarity has been ensuing with regards to toilets over here, but I don't think they're "General admission" sort of stories, so I won't recount them here. But when I'm back in good ole 'merica, I'll be happy to give you the whole story upon request, with mid-air, wavy-arm diagrams and all ("Okay, so this is the hole in the ground, and right here would be the plumbing implement, and there's the plunger…"), to bring it all to life.
We have like, a week and a half left in Shanghai. How am I supposed to work with that?
Oh yeah, people spit food on the table when they eat. Like, bones and things. Our family has a bone-bowl, as I suppose it should be called, and we pop the fish and chicken and things in our mouths, and spit out the extra craps. But apparently at Hannah's house they don't use bowls, and just spit the stuff on the table, and at the end of the meal clean up the table. Some restaurants do this, too, with the occasional place mat for easy clean up.
Apparently Jason's dad works on post-production on really snazzy Chinese movies. The one you've probably heard of is Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Yes. Oh yes. And then I started sort of freaking out and naming some awesome fight choreographers and kung-fu actors and people, and Jason said his dad probably knew all these dudes. So I'm a little star struck, now, even though I didn't actually meet anyone.
I showed Hannah and Malia Legend of Drunken Master, which I still firmly believe is one of the best martial arts movies ever made, and is that movie that I'll talk about with you whenever we start talking about martial arts movies. They loved it. Because it's awesome.
On "Cool Edition," (has anyone noticed that I don't know whether to underline movie titles/TV shows/books or put them in quotes? I've noticed. Forgive me, MLA.), an odd but not so bad show that covers "all things cool," there was a segment on the Kids' Choice Awards. And it was really weird and lame and Disney-channel-sponsored, and I was like, "I remember when that started! I'm old school!" I feel like in 20-30 years time, I'll be yelling at the TV as my kids watch some 9 year old make millions by coughing into an auto-tune machine for 2 and a half minutes. I saw Katy Perry get green slime shot at her.
But anyway. China stuff. I'm sort of amazed that anyone can speak any language at all. I mean, really. How can a single person contain all this information? It seems like the gross mental load needed to learn and repeatedly work within a language seems more cumbersome than any other thing we can do as humans.
Also, I was so guilty tossing a huge chunk of Wikipedia in my last post that I forgot to say that Jason lived in Tennessee for a year while he was like, 11 or 12, so his brain deals with English as if he were a native speaker, I think.
It's a little too easy to mistake high-end Chrysanthemum tea for Kool-aid, at first glance. And then you taste it, and it's all good. But there's those first few moments of dread.
I walked on a broken escalator for the first time yesterday. I wanted to say "sorry for the convenience," but I knew no one would get it.
I have a lot more to write about, but I'm tired and I think this might do.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Epic update?
3/25/10 5:52 PM
I realized that I can't really write about really interesting things, right after they've happened. I have so many things I want to say that are just sparking around in my head… I want to capture all of it, at the same time. And I can't, because I'm not David Foster Wallace (some of you are rolling your eyes in your head). So when I sit down to write, I freeze up a bit.
Also, I did a bunch of chop-sticking today, right after some major ping-pong sessions, with someone us American students affectionately dubbed "Ping-Pong Girl," though apparently her English name (like in Mandarin class, they give us Mandarin names, to get us in the mindset), is Encore. That's right. Encore. They have crazy names, here. Someone is named Feeling, and someone else is named Cherry. I mean, my name translates pretty crappily, too, because while Chinese names are literally just random words strung together, there is an art and history behind this, so apparently my name, AiDe, (Love Virtue), makes no sense. So people call me Addy or Andy, whichever they pronounce first. Ms. Gao calls me Add, and she says it so perfectly, I just can't bear to correct her. Naiyi's name is Ace, (which a good number of people constantly mispronounce, perhaps intentionally, as "ass," which Naiyi thinks is "a kind of disease," [another one of those I-don't-have-the-heart-to-correct-him situations]) which is why I refer to him as Naiyi.
Which is me saying that I'm tired and sort of distracted and my right hand is hurting a little, but that I'll do my best to write down some of the things I've been exposed to and thinking about, which are mostly in the abstract, so forgive me as I flounder.
Creative energies are snuffed. It's tremendously sad. So many kids I've talked with have these wonderful creative minds, and tell me all these things that, if I were in their position, I would never come up with. (Not that that was well phrased, or anything, but you know what I mean.) I was talking about movies with this kid (who I think was called Yuan Yuan or something? Which seems to be the cultural equivalent of "girly man," because everyone thought he talked a lot, which is true, but the girly man label was generally unwarranted) the other night, in Nanjing, and he brought up Quentin Tarantino. Yuan (which is what I guess I'll call him, even though that is the name of the currency [though the official name is Ren Min Bi, it's referred to as the Yuan or Kuai , like our US Dollar is referred to as a dollar or buck or cheddar or something {I totally wrote this independently of The Briggs', I just didn't publish it until after they talked about it...}]) knew what Tarantino stood for, and the sort of things he does with movies, but Yuan knew that he wouldn't be able to see any for a long time. He had this wonderful way of thinking about things, and the way he expressed them (in his second language, no less!) was great to listen to (even though I had to tune out Adam Sandler's masterpiece, "Click," on the telly.) Everyone sort of knows they're being defeated, in some way, by their government and their situation.
Google.com just started redirecting me to Google.com.hk, yesterday or so. But I just use Google.co.uk, so it's all good.
We went to a mass grave the other day, where a bunch of CCP guys got killed by CCP resistors, way back in the twenties. It was sad and scary and propaganda-drenched, and came hot on the heels of a bunch of overworked high-schoolers getting drunk on the school trip to Nanjing, so people were generally having none of it. So I was sort of there, in the middle of all that, not knowing what to think for a couple of hours.
Exhausting and enlightening.
3/26/10 9:29 PM
At this point, I forget what prompted this. But it's valid nonetheless.
I should be asking myself, what do I want to get from learning this language? How will I change, what will I gain, what will I lose? Is it rewarding in its own right?
The answers are mostly positive. I'm convinced that really only good can come of this. But I know there will be limitations. I will never be a native speaker. I will never be able to truly capture what I mean to capture, when I speak. I'm barely able to say what I mean half the time, when I speak my native language. I feel like I'm going to constantly miscommunicate, ever so slightly, whenever I speak Mandarin.
And, as I write about this, I realize what prompted this.
There is this really awesome kid in our P.E. class, who is always palling (I like how that's considered an actual word) around with everyone. We'd been casual ping-pong buddies, but recently he went up to me and talked with me, in English. But his personality changed completely. His body language completely flipped on his head. The guy who I'd know to jump around, shove other kids away (good naturedly, of course), so he could play ping-pong, and crack loud and (apparently) hilarious jokes across the room, was suddenly squirming in front of me, with his hand over his mouth and words dribbling, ever so softly, from his seemingly shy self.
Will the person I have been and will be honing my whole life disappear as soon as I start speak another language?
3/27/10 10:56 PM
Apparently I'm awesome at paper folding while mildly inebriated. Go figure.
Today we went to Happy Valley, which is known as the "Six Flags of China." (I say this as a foreshadow-joke to Zhou Zhuang being known as the "Venice of China," but I'm pretty sure no one would ever get that if I didn't totally point it out. So here it is.) We hit that place hard. Tamara, a snazzy German girl, really likes all the rides, so I actually wound up riding basically everything worth riding, unlike back in stupid old Mei Guo (literally "beautiful country," actually "America"), when I shy away from the Superman and the like. (Yes mom, I know, all the crap that does to your spine and brain cavity. I can't justify my riding these things all that well, but I know about all the reasons why I shouldn't be going. I'm not sure if that's a point for or against me.) Naiyi's ex-girlfriend (who is really cute and they have this awesome flirty thing going on, and neither can realize that they both want to date again, has this sort of hard to pronounce name, and everyone mispronounces it to tease her, so it makes it extra hard to remember her actual name, so we English-speakers tend to refer to her as "Naiyi's Ex") went along with us, and we made her go on some of the rides. At first she really didn't (and I mean reaaally didn't) want to go, but we built up her courage and we had a blast and she had a great time.
3/28/10 6:17 PM
Oh but I forgot to tell about Friday. Which was also rather awesome. Jason, the aforementioned amazingness, wanted to hang and take us out for dinner after school. But the German students and some of their host kids planned a bowling night already, so we couldn't do that. So Jason said he'd meet up with us. So we went bowling (not the candlepin wimpiness we have back in Needham. This was real, Big Lebowski, bowling. Which I've never done before. Pretty cool stuff. I spent most of my time figuring out which sized ball I wanted to use, and by the time I did figure it all out, we had switched over to chilling at the pool tables. And then Jason showed up. And it turns out that he is semi-pro at pool. Like, really actually. So we were all there sort of flailing about for the hell of it, and Jason shows up and rocks the tables, and we all sort of felt silly. And then (personal information about Jason, redacted, but I assure you, it really sucked), so he was sort of a mess. So we went out to eat and drink and give him a good time, which we did (but of course, not to excess.) (I think the point of all this is that I'm hanging out with people and having a blast. This interpretation is further bolstered by the fact that I, just now, got a call from someone being like, "dude! Let's hang out!" but with a lot more translation issues and things.) So that was fun, and I got a really good text from him, basically saying "thanks I feel a bunch better."
Also, I just bought some awesome Little Red Books, a modern one with English on one page and Chinese on the other, and an old one, published December 1967 (for publishing history, check this out, though note the bias [especially visible at the end, before the acknowledgements] http://www.bibsocamer.org/BibSite/Han/index.html), which is crazy legit. It seems to be a really early printing of the third edition, which became the accepted edition, which is used for every subsequent printing. The previous owner checked off a passage in the chapter called "the people's army," which is only mildly unsettling. All of the books I had seen were the English-Chinese ones, and they were really sort of chunky and big. But now I see the actual size of the original thing, which is about a third of the size, and you can totally see how people would just carry them around. It's just a bunch of paragraph-long quotations from Mao's writings, and is just such a hard hitting collection of fallacy-laden propaganda. It's really frightening. All of the men in the propaganda poster I got were holding them, and it's easy to see how the book functioned in the culture, at one point (and even easier to read this potentially skewed Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_From_Chairman_Mao_Tse-Tung).
Karaoke bars are ridiculous? Naiyi likes Backstreet Boys a lot. Those videos are the stuff of legend. I'd totally forgotten about them.
The songs in Mandarin are actually really excellent practice for reading the characters. They scroll along at the bottom of the screen, and so I read the words to myself, as best as I could, but there's only a second or two before you hear the words from your Chinese-singer-in-residence, so it's a continuous, immediate-feedback sort of quiz. And learning is, almost by definition, helped a ton by music. (Musicophilia citation pending, but there's that chapter about stroke patients learning how to speak through singing along to music). (Maybe this is me just finding a semi-legitimate excuse to hang around Karaoke bars and watch random dudes sing songs I don't know?)
3/29/10 11:27 PM
We just hit the town to wish some of the cooler German kids goodbye. I feel like one of the gang now.
Again I find myself apologizing for gearing up to write what is an essentially content-less assortment of thoughts. A lot of people can say they've been to Zhou Zhuang, (where we went yesterday,) and I'm very lucky to count myself among them. But this isn't where I feel the content is, right now.
I'm just hanging out with these guys. We're all the same. I can make the same jokes here that I can make back home, to the same reactions. We have the same thoughts and insecurities and emotions. We are just 10 kids from 3 vastly different cultures, all finding our way around a sprawling city. Even with the help of our host kids, we kept getting lost and being disorganized, and encountering all of the little hiccups that come with the territory. Teaching each other swears in our native tongues. The pleasures of lolling about in a new country that we're starting to get a handle on. Or, for some of the Chinese kids, just sitting back and watching as their cross-cultural peers unwittingly eat fried pig skin for the first time. ("I'll tell you what it is after you eat it. Otherwise you won't want to." – Thank you, Jason.)
Jason is always surprised by all the vocab he knows. He said "jaywalk" today. And "sixpack." And then said, "why do I know that? That's crazy." And so I gave him my "critical period" talk, which is summed up well by these Wikipedia article introductions:
In general, a critical period is a limited time in which an event can occur, usually to result in some kind of transformation. A "critical period" in developmental psychology and developmental biology is a time in the early stages of an organism's life during which it displays a heightened sensitivity to certain environmental stimuli, and develops in particular ways due to experiences at this time. If the organism does not receive the appropriate stimulus during this "critical period", it may be difficult, ultimately less successful, or even impossible, to develop some functions later in life.[1]
For example, the critical period for the development of a human child's binocular vision is thought to be between one and three years,[1] and further critical periods have been identified for the development of hearing and the vestibular system.[2] There are critical periods in childhood in which imprinting can occur, such as when a greylag goose becomes attached to a parent figure within the first 36 hours after hatching. A young chaffinch must hear an adult singing before it sexually matures, or it will never properly learn the highly intricate song.[3] These observations have led some to hypothesise a critical period for certain areas of human learning, particularly language acquisition.
Experimental research into critical periods has involved depriving animals of stimuli at different stages of development. Other studies have looked at children deprived of certain experiences due to illness (such as temporary blindness), or social isolation (such as feral children). Many of the studies investigating a critical period for language acquisition have focused on deaf children of hearing parents.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period)
And
The critical period hypothesis is the subject of a long-standing debate in linguistics and language acquisition over the extent to which the ability to acquire language is biologically linked to age. The hypothesis claims that there is an ideal 'window' of time to acquire language in a linguistically rich environment, after which this is no longer possible.
The critical period hypothesis states that the first few years of life is the crucial time in which an individual can acquire a first language if presented with adequate stimuli. If language input doesn't occur until after this time, the individual will never achieve a full command of language — especially grammatical systems.
The evidence for such a period is limited, and support stems largely from theoretical arguments and analogies to other critical periods in biology such as visual development, but nonetheless is widely accepted. The nature of this phenomenon, however, has been one of the most fiercely debated issues in psycholinguistics and cognitive science in general for decades. Some writers have suggested a "sensitive" or "optimal" period rather than a critical one; others dispute the causes (physical maturation, cognitive factors). The duration of the period also varies greatly in different accounts. In second language acquisition, the strongest evidence for the critical period hypothesis is in the study of accent, where most older learners do not reach a native-like level. However, under certain conditions, native-like accent has been observed, suggesting that accent is affected by multiple factors, such as identity and motivation, rather than a critical period biological constraint.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Period_Hypothesis)
I can now understand a lot of what people are saying. It's really odd. If I concentrate a bunch, (and get a good bit lucky), I can make out a solid third of the meaning out there, I think. There's this one girl who likes saying "go die," to her friend, and it's my little secret that I know what she's saying. She might pick up on all the giggling, though.
I sort of want to do a seminar or lecture or something on Chinese culture observed through kung-fu movies. I just have this odd cultural sense, as a result of growing up on Jackie Chan and his kin. As if there were a cultural critical period. I mean, none of the movies I watched took place in modern day China. But many of them were made very recently, so they present their stories in a modern Chinese way, and the actual subject matter they deal with – from many hundreds, even thousands of years ago – is still tremendously relevant.
New favorite word: "an" (pronounced like "unh," like a grunt). It means "yes," essentially, and is crazy useful because there is no set word for "yes" for every situation. (Quick explanation: verbs are very important in mandarin, and are used over and over in slightly different ways, instead of having to conjugate. [Sorry, all you linguists out there. This may be just all-together wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is how it works.] So if you say "you want some?" some just [prepare for over-literal translation] says "want" in response, [see?], instead of saying "yes." This holds basically true for any question. Q: "Are you?" A; "[to be verb]" Q: "you have?" A: "[to have]," etc.) But there is a word, "dui," which means "to be right," that is sort of used as a substitute for this structure, and I'd been using that. But I only sort of built in my reflex for saying it, and it was hard to remember all the time, and I found myself nodding pretty often. And someone said, "we say 'an' instead." So now I basically rely on my already well-trained grunt reflex. "Ungh" = "yup." And no one bats an eyelash.
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