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.

One of those "Glad I'm in China" moments

Sarah Palin's Alaska series to appear on TLC

18 minutes ago

The TLC network will air Sarah Palin's eight-part series about her home state of Alaska.

Network owner Discovery Communications announced Thursday that it had acquired rights to the series. It's being produced by Mark Burnett, who produces "Survivor" and several other TV series.

The series tells stories of some of Alaska's unique features as seen through the eyes of its former governor. It will be called "Sarah Palin's Alaska."

Discovery reportedly won a competition for the series with the A&E Networks. There is no immediate word on when it will premiere.

Sort of Nanjing related

3/24/10 8:44 PM

 

I just noticed that I'm pretty good about putting the Date/Time stamp in front of my blogs, if nothing else.

 

Yesterday we left really early for Nanjing, one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals, which has a much more elegant name in Chinese, but I forget it, and I don't think it's the one that Wikipedia gives (although the article makes for good reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_capitals_of_China), and we came back today. And by "we" I mean some 300 Students at the school, 12 German kids, 3 American kids, and a butt-load (It wasn't really a butt-load, but it's a good expression, I suppose) of teachers (I find it funny that Word doesn't have a definition for "butt" that means buttocks. Very PC, for some reason. I've become acutely aware of things like this. Hannah keeps finding words her English-Mandarin dictionary doesn't have, like "cut," "murder," "necrophagous," etc.)

 

It had a really great dynamic to the whole thing. The we're-cramped-together-in-a-bus-for-four-hours-so-we're-going-to-be-nuts-and-then-really-tired-and-then-nuts-again-in-hopes-that-we-might-pass-the-time sort of dynamic. The way the classes work (I think I mentioned this much earlier, but it bears repeating), is that all of the students stay in the same room, with the same group of kids, for their entire school day, while the teachers move around from class to class. So it winds up that all of the kids in any given class are crazy close with one another. So I was on a bus with these kids, who have all been together for a long time (I should find out if they stay with the same class throughout high school, or if they shuffle the classes every year. Regardless, they're all wicked tight), and was sort of hanging out with them. I forget that I'm a foreigner more and more often. More like I'm just a kid who sort of doesn't get what's going on all the time, and no one blames him for it, but is totally and definitely a part of the dynamic. Not necessarily defining the atmosphere, but a part of it as much as anyone else.

 

People want to open up to me fairly often. I think because they're wound up so tight, and because I'm someone they can vent to, someone they won't see for the rest of their lives. I don't really know what to make of the kids anymore. They're at once happy and stressed, skeptical and subservient. It feels bad of me to talk about them as a single unit, because they're as varied as any other group of kids on the planet. But there is sort of a loaded perception of them that exists. That they're so studious and such good kids and that they're vary traditional and are good little communists and whatever else. But I find that the differences between how noodles are eaten and how poops are taken to be much greater cultural gaps than anything thought by these kids.

 

I was reading Wikipedia (what else is new?) and came across a really good article on Intercultural Competence. It had an interesting list of cultural differences, like how the "thumb's up" is perceived, squat toilets vs. western toilets, marriage garb, public displays of affection, etc. Some of the cultural differences I'm experiencing (lifted straight from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercultural_competence):

 

§  People from the west are shocked by the squat toilet prevalent in Asia most especially, China, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia and the Indian sub continent, even found in Singapore's spotlessly clean, ultra-modern Changi Airport toilets. However, it is common for Asian public toilets have both type of toilet designs. However, these may not be connected directly to mains water supply and not have toilet tissue. Instead in these cultures, cleansing after ones ablutions is done with a through water (and preferably soap) douche, and the user is expected to flush their resultant mess on the toilet or floor manually via the ladle or bucket provided. As such, many Asians are revolted by Western toilets not providing the post-ablution toilet hose. Humorously, even among themselves many resourceful Asians will bring bottled water into toilets or fill them from the sinks as a makeshift post-ablution rinser.

§  Additionally, a wet toilet seat and surrounding floor is considered clean, or newly rinsed, in many parts of Asia, while a dry toilet and bathroom are considered possibly dirty. A Westerner would find a dry toilet cleaner.

§  Arranged marriage is very common in the Middle East, India and Africa, while in some Asian and most Western cultures, the romantic marriage is idealized and one has a right to choose their marriage partner and thus an arranged marriages is perceived as an infringement on this right and viewed unfavorably.

§  It is very common for heterosexual men in the Indian subcontinent and most parts of the Arab world to hug each other, sit with arms over the shoulder or walk while holding hands but it is regarded as homosexual behavior in the West and some Asian cultures such as China, Indonesia and Japan.

§  In Indonesia, and many Asian nations, girls and adult females will often hold hands and be quite "touchy-feely" with one another, even slapping one another on the bottom. This is considered locally as harmless sister-like platonic affection, but some outsiders may inaccurately perceive it as widespread lesbianism.

§  In some nations, heterosexual unmarried couples holding hands in public are uncommon or frowned upon, and hugging is considered unacceptable. In many Western and Westernized nations, especially urban centers, this is common and considered harmless.

§  It is common to see couples kissing, even quite passionately, in public in the Western countries but such an action may cause consternation, alarm or even legal action in African and Asian countries.

§  Punctuality is very highly regarded in many developed nations, such as (perhaps infamously) Germany, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and the United States. "Fashionably late" would be at most ten minutes early or late. In some European nations and Asia (though not Japan), particularly because of huge traffic problems, clock time is less strictly adhered to, as most are well aware of the unpredictable traffic chaos.

§  If invited to dinner, in some Asian countries it is well-mannered to leave right after the dinner: the ones who don't leave may indicate they have not eaten enough. In the Indian sub-continent, Europe, Australia, South America, and North American countries this is considered rude, indicating that the guest only wanted to eat but wouldn't enjoy the host or guests.^{[citation needed]}

 

While this is very interesting and makes for good reading, the differences that distinguish one culture from the next can't begin to outshine the things that remain the same. And I know that I sound like someone over- and poorly-quoting Gandhi when I say that, but I mean it.

 

Allow me to demonstrate, by way of digression-within-digression.

I was talking to Jason about healthcare reform, and explaining why it's been taking so long, and describing the inefficiencies of democracy, in general. And then he jumps in with what was going to be my next point, saying that a one party system, though generally regarded as "unfair," may, in fact, be better for a country, because then that party can actually get things done. (Whenever people whip out comparisons to Hitler and Stalin and the like, I tend to tune out, because mostly this is used for name-dropping and shock value and the point isn't relevant or true anyway, and the casual discussion of mass murderers obscures the fact that they are, in fact, mass murderers, and I fear that you, my astute reader [woah those are some intense fireworks] have developed the very same, very reasonable gag reflex. But I ask you to bear with me as I discuss Stalin, in what I think is a legitimate context.) Stalin got things done. He brainwashed and killed his population, to the point of creating a state of unrelenting, Unified Thought, but as a result, he was able to go out and do things. He set out the 5 Year Plan, which was extremely successful.  "For instance, coal and iron production both quadrupled their output, electric power production increased and 1500 new industrial plants were built." (Sorry for all the wiki citations. I don't want to go out and get actual sources, because that takes too much time, and I always know that these wiki articles are good, because I remember learning about these sorts of things earlier. So Wikipedia it is, Wikipedia it will be. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plan_(USSR)#The_First_Plan.2C_1928.E2.80.931932). This isn't to say that his methods were the right ones. The peasant class was essentially decimated and suffered a massive famine, as the focus on growth was on the industrial level, rather than the agricultural level, and the strain on the farmer class to produce all the raw materials, as well as the food for the gigantic middle class was immense. This is also a symptom of a one party system. There is no meaningful discussion to take place, no way to improve a flawed idea by defending it against other, potentially better ideas.

 

But, in the case of healthcare, to almost return to my point, this discussion does not produce a better answer to a problem. The debate was (is?) not focused on creating an ideal way to go about improving the healthcare system, but it is instead focused on sort of "giving everyone a say," which will lead to (man, I hate political buzzwords, but they're so darned handy) cherry-picking and gerrymandering. Not to mention hate speech and Tea Partiers.

 

But, to actually return to my point, I was able to truly discuss this with someone in China. He may prefer squat toilets, he may pal around with other guys in ways that make Americans squirm, he may eat with chopsticks and wear a uniform to school everyday and be a member of the Chinese Communist Party, but nothing can keep us from sharing our thoughts genuinely, and truly being able to meet together and understand one another's opinions on the world.

 

We then went on to a great discussion about morals, and he talked about that famous lecture about pushing the fat guy in front of the train vs. letting more people die, and things like that.

 

We're all intensely human, and all feel the same way, on some wonderful level. It's so sad to know that people let things like skin color and chopsticks get in the way of this.

(A more satisfying blog post to follow.)

(Trying out new formatting things turns out not to be a good idea)

This is the same post as before (hopefully China will let me delete it), except it's readable.

3/20/10 9:48 PM

(This bit will mostly consist of the stuff I wrote in my mini notebook thing to and from Suzhou, in an effort to preserve what’s left of our respective sanities.)

Kae-por (a wicked cool dude who my father worked with many moons ago) took me out on the town (yeah know, sorta) this Friday, which was great. We had some delicious foods and delicious conversations and all around had an awesome time. What follows is miscellany, mostly inspired by our conversations and things.

That big pillar in the new highway (which apparently wasn’t there 3 months ago, or something), is all huge and decorated. It’s basically, so the story goes, they kept trying to drill there, but it would never work, and some people died down there. So they got some Buddhist monks to come by and check it out, and they said there was a sleeping dragon (or just a dragon head, I sort of forgot to distinguish between the two when I was trying to reconcile the concept), and that they couldn’t drill when it was awake. So they blessed the place and told them when to drill, and they drilled, and it worked. (I’m a good story teller, aren’t I?) So now the pillar isn’t just another pillar, it’s this huge thing, with huge dragon carvings all over it, and it’s really cool to see, all of a sudden, in the middle of the relative monotony of the highway.

We went to a great restaurant. (Should I figure out better words for “great?” probably.) They showed us the fish we were going to have, rolling around in a bucket. Kae-por nodded his approval, and then a bit later, we had the same fish sitting there, on a platter. I think I’ve heard of this sort of thing happening, but I’ve never seen it myself. I mean. That was some fresh fish.

We ordered Scallion Pancakes (remember that recipe? Anyone try it out?) which were really good. In a different style than I make them, but I knew that they could be made that way, too, so it was cool. It was smaller and thicker and less crispy, and was a little more pastry-like, but it they were still stupendous. I’m gonna have to make a bunch of different batches when I get home, cuz there are so many different ways to approach the single dish. Good stuff. (Scallion Pancake side note: The school took all us kids to the Pudong Pearl TV Tower today, and we ate at the revolving restaurant, which was one of those things that’s far cooler in concept than in practice, but they had scallion pancakes that tasted exactly like latkes, which was a pretty stunning cultural bait-and-switch.)

It was really cool to see someone who was fully functional in both cultures in which I’m tentatively becoming a citizen. The cultures I’m tentatively straddling.

I’m reminded of the bit I had earlier about all the foreigners making eye contact, out of some irrepressible reflex. He spoke of “expats,” which was something I’d heard before, but never assigned too much meaning. I’m also reminded of Hemingway and the Lost Generation and things. I don’t mean to get too romantic about the whole thing, but it seems too American-ly ignorant to not consider the world as a place of residence. It’s good to see what it might be like to live in a place completely different from where you grew up.

Ernyway. Apparently getting a license plate is crazy hard. It’s done by auction, once a month. It took Kae-por (sorry, is that actually your name? Doesn’t seem Pinyin-ish [Romanization of Chinese phonetics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin]) 8 tries – yes, that means 8 months – to get his license plate. A good deal, too, but it was far more than the 50 bucks or whatever those back in Massachusetts can pay. Just for the license plate itself. “The world’s most expensive piece of crap.”

The drinking culture is interesting (and this includes both stuff I learned straight from Kae-por and Jimmy, [his colleague who came along, who I haven’t talked enough about, but he’s a cool dude], and stuff I’ve begun to notice subsequently. Before coming here, I knew there was a big, odd culture surrounding “jiu” (a sort of all-encompassing term for alcohol, but I think when it is alone it usually means “wine,” but you can add little modifier words to the beginning of “jiu” like “red,” “yellow,” “white, [which is apparently some nasty stuff, proof in the 100s]” “grain,” and the like to differentiate between everything, and is sort of an easier term to use than our “alcohol” nomenclature, because “beer” and “wine” and “whiskey” and the like have no common theme. They’re just names for things. Here, the topic is clearly “alcoholic beverage,” even though one might not know the specific classification or whatever, while “whiskey” could mean just about everything; there isn’t even an indicator of classifying it as “beverage.” There are similar systems in place for different types of meats, types of vegetables, types of mushrooms, types of fruits, and I’m sure many more than I’ve picked up on so far. A good example was, just now, at dinner, we were having an interesting sort of meat. Looking quickly, I thought it might be some sort of beef or pork, but I was told it was “liu rou,” rou being the “meat term,” and “liu” being something specific that I haven’t encountered before, unlike “jiu rou,” which is pork, “niu rou,” which is beef, and “ji rou,” which is chicken. [Should I apologize to vegetarians at this point?] With “rou” tagged on there, at least I knew I was still occupying “meat” territory, and I wasn’t off in some tofu or fungus terrain. Turns out, it was donkey. Not bad. Anyway.), but I didn’t know exactly what that culture consisted of. (Hope you caught up with me there.) (Another good example of how Kung-fu films have helped me grasp the culture here. Jackie Chan’s classic [and remake of the classic, which also happens to be classic,] “Legend of Drunken Master” and Jet Li’s “Fearless”, both chronicle kung-fu drunks’ struggles with drinking, eventual “bottoming-out” [I think that’s AA term] thanks to drinking, and eventual recovery from drinking, to save the day [while kicking ass]. I know it’s easy to dismiss kung-fu movies as unimportant and idiotic, but these are tremendously worth checking out. I would link you to some clips from the Youtubes, but alas, that can’t be done. Someone who knows what I’m talking about, post a comment with a link? Some glowing reviews will have to do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunken_Master_II#Critical_reception ). Anyway. Basically, everyone drinks before doing business. It’s sort of to keep each other honest. Jimmy said something to the effect of “if you’re comfortable drinking in front of someone, it means they think you are honest with them and are willing to show your true personality and true intentions.” Which sort of makes sense. But it can mean heavy drinking on weeknights, and for those whose job it is to sign things and get people to sign things, it can mean nightly heavy drinking as an inherent part of the job.

Also, and I’ve just noticed this in the past day or so, but the word “jiu” is used a lot to make non-alcoholic phrases. For example, what would literally be translated as “alcohol house” is a traditional restaurant, and what would be literally translated as “alcohol store” is a hotel. A different but equivalent (and I think otherwise interchangeable) word for “store” is used to actually connote a store in which alcohol is bought and sold.

Also (less related, now), if you want to indicate that your restaurant or hotel is particularly big, you can just slap on the word for “big” in front of it, which I find funny. There’s no real American equivalent to that, except maybe having a Super Stop n Shop, rather than just a regular one. But that’s more of a branding issue, and this practice seems to be an accepted and regular distinction. You wouldn’t call a skyscraper-sized hotel just “a hotel,” you’d call it “a big hotel.” Calling it a plain, old, “hotel,” would just be silly.

So after dinner, we went to a crazy stylin’ rooftop bar. It was straight out of “Lost in Translation.” I ordered an Americano, which isn’t just a coffee beverage, anymore, apparently. In fact (I found this out after the fact,) it’s the first drink that James Bond orders in Ian Fleming’s first Bond book, Casino Royale. Bond’s first drink is my first drink. Coincidence? I think not. It was good stuff, but fairly bitter at the beginning. As I went into it, I tasted the sweet vermouth more and more, so it got quite good. A spectacular view of the Bund (Wai Tan in Mandarin), at night. And I mean, spectacular. This also makes for good Google images fodder.

I officially found the best illness ever. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome

I find it funny that the Wikipedia page for “Culture Shock” recommends the page for “Student Exchange Program” for further reading.

Also, apparently, I’m in the “honeymoon” stage of culture shock, and I think that everything around me is awesome. Which sort of makes sense. It seems I’ll stick around just long enough to go into the “negotiation” phase, and things will look a whole lot crappier. Stay tuned!

One of the German girls asked me if I ate dog yet. I said yes, and she believed me. When she asked if I’d eaten cat, too, I began to get worried.

Very good analogy that I attribute to Kae-por: When learning a new language, it’s like sitting in darkness. When you hear someone speak, there is only the occasional spark, small and isolated, in the darkness. Could hardly even be called a “glimmer of understanding.” It’s not enough to illuminate anything, just enough to recognize that someone intends to say something that you just can’t understand. The pops and sparkles eventually become more frequent, sometimes clumping together to temporarily to actually reveal a meaning, in earnest. This eventually progresses, until: illumination.

I had Ke$ha stuck in my head most of the day. “Wake up in the morning feeling like P-Diddy…” I’m not proud of myself.

I’m realizing that the speed of the language is mostly attributable to the way the way the language is put together, rather than the actual speed of communication. So, what I mean by that: every individual word in the language is basically a single syllable. Different phrases come about by stringing different syllables together (as explained, sort of, above, in my “jiu” digression), and sentences come about by stringing these together. What I hear as an average sentence, then, is maybe 20-30 of these different syllables, which my semi-untrained ear can mistake as being 20-30 individual words, which isn’t the case. It’s sort of a “graininess,” of the language that makes it seem especially fast. Simply put, if you were to count each and every single grain of sand that went through an hourglass, your impression would be that “time was going quickly,” whereas someone asked to count just every 100th grain or someone else asked to count every hour of the hour glass, they’d have very different opinions on the relative speed of “time.” That analogy works better than I thought it would, I think.

On the bus to Suzhou, which is supposed to be (now I can say with confidence, it is) awesome. The tour guide is speaking nonstop Mandarin, and there’s an odd combination of “I wish I could understand this” and “at least it’s “not touristy” (cuz I’m the only person on this tour who’s not from China somewhere). I read this comic a couple of years ago, which sort of relates well. (20,000 words! How does that work?) I actually found the very strip I was considering crappily describing, and I think I’ll just link you to it instead. http://www.secretasianman.com/images/strips/SAM071007.gif This rule doesn’t quite apply anymore, and is replaced by “Is it largely in English or Mandarin?” For example, restaurants that should be avoided advertise largely in English, and having to order in Mandarin is always a good sign. There’s an interesting combination of “seeking out legitimacy” and “getting absolutely lost once I get there.” But I’m sure learning a lot along the way. Absolutely can’t complain.

The sparks of understanding persist. I listened crazy intently to the guide’s seeming hyper-speed Mandarin-ing, and I picked up that she was talking about lunch, a list of things we were going to do (I only got the fact that there was a list, but not what the content was), and that you can “buy stuff.” Which leads me to the following digression. The phrase for “to buy stuff” is really fun. It’s “mai dong xi.” “Mai” is “to buy,” and with a slightly different tone it can mean “ to sell,” which is cool in itself. But “dong xi” means, literally, “east west,” but is translated, actually, to “stuff.” I think someone said it goes back to the silk road, which ran (from China’s perspective) from east to west, but I sort of like the idea that two opposites can just sort of mean “stuff.”

Apparently our tour guide is really funny. I need to learn the Mandarin for “but seriously folks.”

3 moisture beads in a single glob of Purell! Score!

In My Element (unlike Donny)

3/16/10 8:25 AM

 

Pretty awesome freakin day.

 

The Germans came here, which is sort of interesting. They're mostly keeping to themselves and grouping together awkwardly, but somehow snobbily. Which isn't all that bad. I'm reminded that I'm actually doing pretty well for myself here.

 

The day is nice and warm, so we played outside a lot. We played volleyball with the gym teachers and maybe 10 other girls who wanted to play. There are very distinct lines drawn between "girl sports" and "guy sports," which I thought just sort of came about naturally, like it does back home. But it seems like there is a school rule or general policy taught by the teachers that "girls should play this, guys should play that." Which is unfortunate. The lines are occasionally broken, but mostly by guys treading into girls sports territory, and not the other way around. I think Ping-pong is the only culturally neutral sport, even though it is largely dominated by dude players. It's so hot I didn't want all 14 bajillion layers on me, so I was running around with just my t-shirt  (I'm trying to make this as G-rated as possible, but describing taking off layers will always have some raunchy undertones), having taken off all them hot layers, which I haven't done in a long time (but is my go-to, bread and butter sort of dress at home, so it was good to get back to it. I feel sort of stuffy and languid and things when I have so many layers on.) I'm feeling relaxed and on top of it all. In my element.

 

People call me "Shuai ge" behind my back, apparently, which means something like "cool guy," but I choose to translate it to "Fonzie."

 

(I started reading Fonzie-related articles on Wikipedia, and got to this. Enjoy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thums_Up)

 

German kids are alright, I guess, but are sort of snobby to people, in general? Jason, Hannah, Malia, and I all sort of arrived at this conclusion separately but near simultaneously. The first question I got asked by one of the kids was, "can I shop around here?" To which my mouth replied, "yes," to which my head replied, "'Culture,' where are you?"

(quick section of general cultural doubt induced by the German kids:)

 

There's so much more to do and see and learn here, but I wonder if people actually realize this? Do most people treat these trips as vacations for their own benefit, or wonderful and rare cultural excursions? I mean, not that I'm taking advantage of every second of my time here, or that I'm not succumbing to the occasional tourist trope, but I like to think I'm absorbing what I can.

 

I realized the other day that Briggs' blog, ya know, my teacher in this whole box social of a trip (which is just not how this is supposed to be used, I don't think, but I remember that one Simpsons episode [yeah Dad, I know you remember that one] where it's mentioned, and so I'm going with it) compliments my blog well. I go on rants about chopsticks and umbrella etiquette, while Briggs does a good job of chronicling what we have actually done. Which I don't do all that much. So, I know it's sort of a cop-out, and that I'm going to (really, actually) start telling what I've actually been doing over here, but for now, it makes for good further reading. http://BriggsChronicles.blogspot.com

A link can always be found on the top right of this page. There is also the group blog over there, but that isn't very interesting. (Sorry, people who expected that to be productive. We're investing so much of our energies into homeworks/personal blogs/awesome cultural experiences that there is rarely enough time to workshop a blog post together. Again, a subtle combination of Briggs' and my blog should do the trick, for those interested in the trip. Hannah's and Malia's [apparently infrequently updated?] blogs to be linked up there shortly).

 

I can pick up two beans at once with chopsticks. Stacked, like this: |00|, with one bean pressing against the other. By the end of the trip I hope to play ping pong with a chopstick or two.

 

 Thanks, all you guys who've been commenting. I would like to write back to you, but the way proxies and The Great FireWall of China (so called) work seem not to let me do this. But I get all of them, and it's always good to hear from you.

 

Anyway. I should probably update you on my weekend doings, before I have another weekend full of stuff to talk about, cuz then we'll both be screwed.

 

Oh, quick cultural note. The American phrase "What's up," when said quickly and casually as kids these days are wont to do, can sound uncannily like "I f**cked your mother" in Mandarin. No joke.

 

Anyway. Saturday we went to Qi Bao, which is a cool market couple of streets, and has its roots in some snazzy history something or other that no one seems to really care about anymore. But it's a must-see marketplace sort of thing, and is jam packed with people, all the time. Briggs and I went on the same day and didn't see each once during the four or five hours we were occupying the same couple of streets. Even though we both have hello-I-am-a-foreigner sort of hair (onto which even I can latch in the streets and things. You seem to be constantly aware of foreigners, whenever they're around. Which is a great thing to think too much about.) We took a boat tour up and down a nice little stretch of the river, which was nice. There are bridges that are just as awesome as you'd want them to be. The bustling activity on the side streets that overlook the river and the crampededness of the boat gives it a great sort of mixture of isolation and busyness, which is a fairly common feeling, nowadays. Squeezing into the subway, contrasted with laying on the couch in the apartment, with the sounds of the city constantly pouring in. I'm sleeping wonderfully, by the way, which is weird, considering the absolutely unbroken mist of city sounds. Taking lessons in an empty classroom meant for 40; chilling out in our room, which we call "the office;" playing volleyball with just a couple of kids, with basically the rest of the school watching from the windows; being immersed in some sort of beautiful surroundings, like Hangzhou's West Lake or Lingyin temple, or a painting, or the majestic buildings around me. There are so many moments of tuning things out and being yourself, moments of recognizing everything at once and losing any sense of identity. 

 

I saw a little girl shitting into a box on the street today. Jokes about "going to the box" aren't going away any time soon.

 

I was sorely tempted to buy the first 3 seasons of "Man vs. Wild" for about 11 US bucks, but I'm gonna wait on it. Got some awesome live band DVDs instead, some of which are gifts, so I'm not sayin' who! (which, now that I've tried 'em, may or may not work, so I'm really not gonna say who!)

 

Anyway. After QiBao we went to the Sports Park, (dunno the official name), but it was awesome. It was basically a place where a bunch of people could go and hang out and run and bike and walk and boat and rollerblade around, with a bunch of different paths and rentable equipment and things like that. It was crazy cool. Something like that just wouldn't work in America. No one would go. I mean, there is a huge demand for something like that generated by the sheer denseness of the apartment/legitimate business parts of the city, so it works out. But even if the same holds true for some American cities, I'm sure there wouldn't be that many people there, even on a great day, which Saturday wasn't. Anyway, we drove around a 4-person bike-car, where we all pedaled in our seats and Naiyi steered (store?) us around. Hills didn't like us. Inertia, man. The only brake was an oddly placed and oddly sensitive hand brake, so there was the occasion this-thing-better-not-tip-over-when-we-go-down-this-hill-because-I-don't-know-if-my-right-hip-is-up-for-it moment,  but I got out of the thing with only my breath missing. (zing!) Then we went on a pedalboat (or is it a paddleboat? Word likes "paddle," but "pedal" is more accurate) onto the lake, which was the first time I've actually had fun on a pedalboat. Just Naiyi and I and his "sister," who I don't think is actually his sister, but a cousin, but I'm not sure how to ask and I'm not sure he knows how to respond. And then we ate at this awesome place, which apparently served food in the style of Mongolian Hot Pot, but has a better and I'm sure more descriptive name in Mandarin, which is probably lost on most of you, anyway. Oh wait, it's called "huo guo," which translates to "fire pot." Okay, never mind, just have some Wikipedia instead. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_pot

We basically had an awesome pot of really hot water in the middle of the table, and we stuck things in there and cooked it a bunch. Delicious and tons of fun, and "fei chung bao le"-inducing. (remember what that means? I translate it to "state of extreme fullness," but more literally it's just "extremely full," I think). This is most of what prompted me to write that community-based-eating bit from the last post, or so. How people would be like, try some of this! And would hold it under the water for a sec, cooking you some beef, and pop it into your bowl. And that was awesome.

 

Then the next day, we left real early (good thing I knew ahead of time [… Borat …] … NOT!) to go to Hangzhou, which was thoroughly amazing. It's basically a really beautiful city 2.5 or so hours from Shanghai, that produces some of the best teas in the world and is home to China's most famous temple, Ling Yin Si (Si just meaning temple). Man. Perhaps the highlight of my trip so far. Where do I begin? (Guess nowhere. Gotta go do something. Sleep, specifically. I'll get to it later.)

Correction

And when I said "cow ventricles" I meant "cow bronchioles." Stupid anatomy. Bits of cow lungs, not cow hearts. They look basically as you'd imagine them, and I've already sort of forgotten how they taste.

(another bit that I didn't post earlier)

3/10/10 6:53 PM

 

Crazy taxi ride yesterday that I forgot to talk about. The guy maneuvered like he was on a bicycle. He almost hit someone, in one of those I'm-walking-here-but-you're-walking-here-so-I'll-move-out-of-your-way-oh-wait-you-moved-the-same-way-I'll-move-again-oh-wait-you-moved-again sort of moments, but with a car and a person rather than two people. A fast moving car. 

The taxi driver today was much more relaxing. 

 

The mandarin lessons are going very well. We have double periods, three times a week. Our teacher has been changing each week, which is sort of lame, but we're learning a good bit nonetheless. First week it was Mr. Shen (which I think I talked about earlier), then it was a nice new guy who just had one lesson with us. He was subbing for someone, so he couldn't match our schedule, or something. And then this week we had Ms. Gao (and I hope, and maybe it seems like we might have her as our teacher for the rest of our time here?), who has basically been our strongest contact to the school from day one. She picked us up at the airport (and now I remember that first car ride, where we could barely understand anything she said [in Mandarin, of course. She's an excellent English speaker]), and has been helping us with general stuff throughout our stay. One day she helped us order Baozi, because we didn't know what the sweet black bean filling stuff was called. We still sort of forget, because it's a solid 4 characters that we haven't learned, in a single phrase, but the Baozi lady is beginning to recognize us, so she has our orders down.

 

But so Gao Lao Shi is the best English teacher at the school, and is now teaching us Mandarin, which is going very well. Mr. Shen couldn't speak much English (even less than we can speak Mandarin, believe it or not!), and had to teach through a translator, even though he was very helpful. The New Guy (I forget his name) was nice, but was inexperienced, in general. Gao Lao Shi is basically excellent. She's sort of harsh to her class, (which we visited last week and to whom(s) we explained our school schedule, which caused a mild uprising [did I write about this? I don't think so… Will explain further below]), and compares them to each other all the time and things. She had us stand up in front of the class and told them that our Mandarin handwriting was better than theirs. And this was after we told them that our school schedule was basically infinitely less difficult than theirs.

 

This brings me to another point (although I sort of promise that I'll return to the very good Mandarin lesson we had today, and then to the "schedule presentation" we have given to some of the classes, which will continue to give to others). While I am thoroughly enjoying my trip here, I feel like I'm making many of the students feel crappy about their lives. Not me, on an individual level, I don't think. I do lay down some old-school playground embarrassment from all my ping-pong smackdowns, (Word doesn't like the phrase "smackdowns." Get with the times, Bill), the fallouts for which I take no responsibility (did I do that right?). But what I represent. I'm middle-class America, the lifestyle (or cultural equivalent) they will pursue most of their life. This, ultimately, is what all their schooling is for, whether they realize it or not. (Or if I'm making some unfounded assumptions, but I think this is a pretty safe assertion.) And I will probably have it easier throughout my life; through high school, through college (university, as they call it. Most adults with which I've had a long conversation will eventually ask me where I'm going, and I tend to preface my list of schools with "they're very small, so you may not have heard of them." Someone we met on the street today asked about Harvard), through my "employment years." And here I am, drinking their milk tea and wandering into their classrooms taking pictures and notes. Giving them long lectures on how my school life (for all intents and purposes the sum total of our respective lives, as of yet) is far easier than theirs. Which we tell them directly, every time we "teach" a class.

 

Anyway, we went to the Shanghai Museum today. There was just so much to see. I love the landscape paintings, but spent so much time looking at them, I had almost no time to see anything else. It's free and the public transportation is good, so I think I'm going to go back soon.

 

I'm fairly often stopped when we go through the turnstiles at the underground stations for a quick security check. They just pass one of those metal detector wands over my bag, which is no big deal, but I'm afraid for my computer. I've been screened 3 times, twice in the past two days, even though I'm clearly with some local students. It's sort of funny, the discrimination I'm experiencing. I don't really blame 'em; Shanghai is a lot less diverse than almost anywhere I've been. But it's also pretty sad, knowing that some people experience this wherever they go, and suffer through far more than a metal detector-wand prodding. I want to get the school's uniform (they didn't have any on hand so they're calling the factory to see what's up), so I look at least a little legitimate. (Note: since I wrote this, we've gotten our uniforms. We look even less legitimate, somehow.)

 

I found this the other day, and it's perhaps one of the better examples of why Mandarin is so difficult for English-speakers to learn (at least that's how I interpret it. Written for a different reason, but still very cool). If the formatting has gone to shit (which I fully expect it has), the original is here:

 

http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/stonelion.php

 

(www.yellowbridge.com is a great place for all your Chinese-language needs, by the way. Unfortunately, I don't benefit financially from this statement. Hopefully the next one.)

"Lion-Eating Poet" Tongue-Twister Essay While tongue-twisters in all languages take advantage of similar sounding words and syllables to generate confusion, some Chinese tongue-twisters also take advantage of the fact that Chinese is a tonal language. Taken to the extreme, it is possible to create a tongue-twisters where all the words have the same sound but varying only in their tones. Zhao Yuanren (趙元任) (1892-1982), an accomplished Chinese linguist, created just such an essay. He did so to prove just how inadequate it would be to replace Chinese characters by a purely phonetic script as others were advocating at the time. The beauty of this essay is that although the romanized version is utterly ridiculous, its Chinese character version is perfectly clear and its content totally interesting. However, it is up to you to find out whether a native Chinese speaker hearing the essay for the first time could correctly parse it when read by another native Chinese speaker.

施氏食獅史 shi1 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi3 Story of Shi Eating the Lions 石室詩士施氏, shi2 shi4 shi1 shi4 shi1 shi4, A poet named Shi lived in a stone room, 嗜獅,誓食十獅. shi4 shi1, shi4 shi2 shi2 shi1. fond of lions, he swore that he would eat ten lions. 氏時時適市視獅. shi4 shi2 shi2 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi1. He constantly went to the market to look for ten lions. 十時,適十獅適市. shi2 shi2, shi4 shi2 shi1 shi4 shi4. At ten o'clock, ten lions came to the market 是時，適施氏適是市. shi4 shi2, shi4 shi1 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi4. and Shi went to the market. 氏視是十獅,恃矢勢, shi4 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi1, shi4 shi3 shi4, Looking at the ten lions, he relied on his arrows 使是十獅逝世. shi3 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi4 shi4. to cause the ten lions to pass away. 氏拾是十獅屍, 適石室. shi4 shi2 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi1, shi4 shi2 shi4. Shi picked up the corpses of the ten lions and took them to his stone room. 石室濕， 氏使侍拭石室. shi2 shi4, shi1, shi4 shi3 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi4. The stone room was damp. Shi ordered a servant to wipe the stone room. 石室拭，氏始試食十獅屍. shi2 shi4 shi4, shi4 shi3 shi4 shi2 shi2 shi1 shi1. As the stone den was being wiped, Shi began to try to eat the meat of the ten lions. 食時, 始識十獅屍, shi2 shi2, shi3 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi1, At the time of the meal, he began to realize that the ten lion corpses 實十石獅屍. shi2 shi2 shi2 shi1 shi1. were in fact were ten stone lions. 試釋是事. shi4 shi4 shi4 shi4 Try to explain this matter.