3/3/10 8:19 PM
Ms. Briggs ran me over on a motorcycle. Okay, maybe she didn't run me over. And she was only riding on the motorcycle, not driving. And it was like, a little moped thing. But she almost was. And she almost did. And it almost was.
It's raining a ton. Thunder and lightning, which reminds me of home, interestingly enough. Everyone, everywhere knows what thunderstorms are like.
Sitting in on my host dude's English class is getting to be my favorite part of school. They stand up when they speak, and are incredibly studious throughout. Also, most of the lesson is taught in English, which has obvious appeal.
They're currently reading a sample passage about body image and cosmetic surgery and things, which makes for some surreal moments. Another thing that feels government influenced (like back home, when our mandarin textbook
Just ate the famous noodles across from the school, followed by the famous baozi from down the street. Delicious. Incredibly delicious. They (everyone, ever) feed all of us a ton, and not just because we're guests in their home. Portions here are huge. We sort of assume that we have the world's biggest portions, but it's not so. They keep eating and eating, and don't gain any weight. I'm trying to piece together why, but it's mostly pretty obvious; the food is incredibly healthy (but the butt-tons of KFC detritus [using that correctly?] is working to change that), and exercise is daily. People walk more than they drive, and if they don't do either, they ride bikes. Everyone plays basketball, or tennis, or ping-pong, or whatever, and morning exercises (I have this thing where I can't spell the word "exercise") are daily, even though they're pretty low-impact.
Our foreheads get scanned every morning to test our temperature, "cuz the H – N – ["–" being the number 1, pronounced "ee"] spreads very quickly," says Naiyi.
Everyone constantly wonders if we're warm enough. I think I've said that, but its true. It gets to the point were the cold weather itself seems psychosomatic. I'm wearing 8 layers today, because its supposed to be crazy cold. But so far just rainy.
Skyped with my mandarin class the other day (hi, guys!) which was cool. I wasted a good 15 minutes of their long block. I gotta remember to be more entertaining next time.
Went to the mall the other day with Naiyi and a friend, Ariel, actual name forthcoming, to get Naiyi a calculator. It's a big place. It's in the center of town, and it's all very big and busy.
Briggs owned some Chinese people in ping-pong (near-direct quote from Hannah), after just 45 minutes or so of warming up. She says she grew up with a ping-pong table in her house, but I am beginning to suspect she is some sort of American spy, intent on taking down the Chinese ping-pong domination from the inside-out. Crush their spirits first.
People don't drink much, and get most of their liquids from the soups that get served at least twice or so a day.
List of things that certainly seem like they are overseen by the government:
- Large-ish scale construction and use of land. The main building of the school is designated a historical building by the government, but the other building is getting torn down/remodeled – it's hard to understand which, both because I have no idea which building I'm in at a given time, and because of the language-squishyness.
- Morning exercises.
- Eye exercises
- School uniforms
- School testing, exams and things
- The interwebs (youtube got banned yesterday, I think)
- Apartment complexes. Either it's just really good business, which I'm sure it is, or there is a lot of government support. They all look pretty much identical, and in some blocks, they are literally identical. I'll post a picture of Naiyi's apartment complex. The mind boggles.
- The underground. But that's mostly because it looks like the train station from the Matrix Revolutions.
- Half the commercials on tv. The Shanghai Expo 2010 (which is one gigantic propaganda machine, and will get its own lengthy discussion once someone call actually tell me what it consists of) has an incredibly involved ad campaign. "Better city, better life," is one of the big ones.
- Gym class. First time I've been in lock step. I did own me some ping-pong, though. After I broke my wrist in (cuz they want me to hold it differently. Dunno how to describe it, but you pinch the handle with your thumb and pointer finger, and your other 3 fingers on the back side of the paddle itself. It's designed to give you mad spin-control, which I was suddenly able to harness. Discussed further below.)
Please note, though, that I've really no idea what I'm talking about. These are just my general impressions, and describe more about what I, as an American teen, think of as what "normal" should be, rather than any sort of truth about what the government here does, about anything. (And I don't just say this so my blogger account stays safe.) I'll be adding to the list periodically, but my real plan is to write some sort of series of thoughts about freedom vs. restriction by the government, and the sort of people these policies create.
It's interesting, interacting with foreigners. Wai guo ren, (from the words for external, country, and person), as they're known around here. You can't help but make eye contact and exchange some sort of message. Every white dude compulsively looks at every other white dude with looks of "can you believe this shit?" It's also pretty easy to distinguish the people who haven't been in the country for very long, or can't speak the language very well. They'll start to open their mouths and feel like you can totally start a conversation, as if you were the only mildly familiar face at an otherwise stranger-infested cocktail party. But then they'll realize that stopping complete strangers on the street and engaging in conversation is sort of an odd proposition, and will go on keeping their head above water. I say this as if I were able to walk the streets of Shanghai with absolute confidence, but I do realize that I go through these motions as well. There was one guy who just sort of smiled all smug-like, and I knew he had basically gotten a handle on everything, or was just having the time of his life.
I'm not pooping right. More on that later?
Food is absolutely delicious. Sorry for discussing this soon after the poop bit. But, yeah. One reminded me of the other? I ate at the famous noodle place directly across from the school. And by famous I mean a tiny whole-in-the-wall, and I think I'm one of 10 Americans in the whole world who knows about the place. But it is tremendous. 5 Yuan (less than a dollar) for a huge, steaming bowl of delicious, hand-crafted noodle soup. I couldn't take a picture, I was too excited to dig in. You can watch them make the noodles right outside, which is a really involved process, which I'll be sure to take a video of. Lots of stretching. It has tons of scallions and cilantro and the broth is delicious and they put lovely chunks of beef on top. No way you can eat it all. But I did. Because of the deliciousness. The chopsticks there were really flimsy, and reinforced my dream of my own pair of quality chopsticks. Parents: don't be surprised if I eat with them when I get home. It's gonna happen
I guess I'd like to make a correction from an earlier post, about the stairs. Not all of the stairs have the uneasiness-strips; it's mostly just in the old school buildings. Much more common is to have little indentations in the stairs, providing the same sort of grippiness, without fear. Which is turning out to be a pretty awesome feature of the city, considering how thoroughly it rained today.
On the subject of rain: Everyone had umbrellas, and there was a wonderful skill with which they were yielded (should I conjugate "yield" differently there? "yeld?"). A whole different set of etiquette and things. People raising and tilting and lowering their umbrellas. Sort of magical, if you were to speed it up and set it to music.
Jackie Chan endorses hair products. I've just seen the one commercial, because Naiyi likes to (or for my benefit?) watch just the English speaking channel, with mandarin subtitles. It is helpful for me, and he seems to enjoy iCarly (I feel like I keep talking about this? It's just really absurd to have the Disney channel machine follow me here.) He flipped over to try to watch a basketball game, and we watched the commercial, and he realized it wasn't on. I wanted to make a Jackie Chan adventures joke right then, but I got hold of myself.
I feel like I haven't talked enough about ping-pong, which they constantly refer to as table tennis whenever I bring it up. Maybe because I'm used to pronouncing ping-pong with my English inflections, when the word is really mandarin, (ping pong qiu), and they think I'm just doing a crappy attempt at pronouncing the phrase. Like when I say "ni hao" to strangers, and they sometimes respond with a "hello." Or maybe they're practicing their English, and I'm confusing the two phenomena. Or both or neither.
But yes, ping pong. It's really lovely stuff. I've gotten a good hang of the game, I think. I was reminded of our games of four-square, back at Needham, in terms of the culture surrounding who-plays-who and how the rotations work, and the rush to get paddles and a table, and the occasional intensity of the games, and the silly things people do, and the spectators, and the spectators getting thrust into the games. Really wonderful and lively and fun. I was giggling the whole time, even though they probably thought I was the most awkward (but pretty good) thing they've seen in a while. I had all 8 of my layers on while playing, because I couldn't find a place to ditch some of my layers. Also, having 8 layers on in the first place is cause for some sort of shame, and showing the inner-workings of my warmth-amplifying-system is sort of rather ridiculous. I want to make a Wikipedia page for "Warmth Amplifying Systems."
The feel of the sport is great. Like in four-square, where you have an excellent feel for the ball and the way you can make it move, and how much you read into someone's body position related to where you can put the ball in their court, and so forth. All of this holds true for ping pong, but on much more deft scales, while incorporating the amazing concept of spin. For the first time ever, I was successfully hitting balls with a nice amount of spin on them. Kids who were, as far as I can tell, quite good, got fooled pretty often. Of course, they probably just expected me to be terrible, and I expected them to be excellent, which throws off all calibration of rankings or anything. But I had a ton of fun. And I think they might've, too. Occasionally I was a spectacle, occasionally I was old news. But it was all pretty great.
Dunno what else I should talk about. Suggestions, anyone?
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