Further adventures, closing in on the end of week 1

3/4/10 5:39 PM
I found out that I’m pretty good at stuff today. Taichi, ping pong, calligraphy (sorta?), and ordering delicious food. Where to begin?
I am continuing my ping-pong wizardry, but that sort of feels like old news? Ms. Briggs can still beat me, though, so maybe I shouldn’t keep talking about it. Naiyi has ping-pong club after school tomorrow, so it might just be that the kids I’ve been playing aren’t very good, or something.
Gym class is very interesting. Everyone splits into two groups of boys and two groups of girls, and stands in straight, atten-SHUN sort of lines. I fell into one of the lines the other day, and now I guess I’m going to join this group when I can. You clump together, stand straight, bow (to your sensei! [I hate to ruin this joke with a cultural note, but I don’t want to be misunderstood. This is a quote from a movie {I’m not going to ruin it that much be revealing which movie}, and is ridiculous. The word “sensei” is Japanese, and is a way of addressing a superior, such as a teacher or master. We called the teacher “lao shi” when we bowed, which means, simply, teacher), and then we ran around the basketball courts a couple of times, in very crappy running form, I must say. We’re expected to stay moving forward fairly slowly, but to step quickly, which results in short, awkward, jumpy steps, which is no way to run, especially if you’re doing it everyday. Then they took me off to the side to teach me Taichi, which turned out to be pretty fun. It was only a short set of movements. I guess I’ve still got the ole kung-fu skills, because it came easily and was very nice. They were very impressed. I kept trying to explain that I’d done some other kung-fu before, but I didn’t know how to tell them what style it was, or anything. And they explained Taichi by saying it was “a type of Chinese kung-fu,” so saying I’d done “Chinese kung-fu” wouldn’t really get me anywhere, I don’t think. So now they think I’m a genius? Which probably isn’t a good thing. They told me to practice the movements at home, but I think I’ve forgotten them already.
Calligraphy was amazing. An English teacher at the school came and taught us. He brought a published book of his and his father’s paintings, and it was truly amazing. Breathtaking landscape paintings. He had us do calligraphy, which can be summed up by saying it is harder than it looks. The characters we practiced were very simple: http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/wordsearch.php?searchMode=I&characterMode=t&dialect=M&word=4787 , http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/wordsearch.php?searchMode=I&dialect=M&word=25409 , http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/wordsearch.php?searchMode=I&characterMode=t&dialect=M&word=17220 , http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/wordsearch.php?searchMode=I&characterMode=t&dialect=M&word=20965 , http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/wordsearch.php?searchMode=I&characterMode=t&dialect=M&word=21358
But it was tremendously difficult to have them come out well. The technique is hard to discuss and explain, and I once again find myself asking the reader to find a good video online (youtube is thoroughly blocked, so I can’t direct you to one, specifically), to get an idea of what I’m talking about. Ms. Briggs took a good video of the master at work, I think.
It was truly gripping to watch him work with the characters. There is a oddly pleasant feel to the characters, even when you don't consider the act of looking at them; simply reading the characters evokes a world of symmetry and logic, which can be divined through all the chaos the characters originally seem to be. Wrap this up in all the variations and demands of communication, and steep it in thousands of years of tradition. Have this poured from the brush of a master painter. Observe, breathless.
I think my family is arranging to see Avatar this weekend with me. Very cool. I gather that there is a big theater in the center of Shanghai, by the big mall we went to to get Naiyi a calculator. Or maybe in the mall.
Now that I’ve gotten a handle on ordering baozi, (http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=chrome&q=baozi&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=HJ6PS4bIGouTkAXSmrXxDA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CBgQsAQwAw), which are delicious little steamed buns, I’ve been eating a bunch. When they say “spicy pork,” boy do they mean it. Xi’an is supposed to be an even spicier sort of cuisine, which I can totally see happening. The spice isn’t terrible, as I’ve said before, but it can occasionally sneak into foods you wouldn’t expect to pack much of a punch. Some otherwise harmless looking beef can turn out to be mildly hostile. If that’s not an oxymoron, which it very well could be.
I’m finding my thorough background in Kung-fu movies to be tremendously helpful, oddly enough. Random cultural tidbits keep coming in handy, when processing the information around me. The other day in Mandarin class, the principal, who also happens to be our teacher, Mr. Shen, wrote out a long poem about springtime for us to copy down. It was clear he had it memorized, and the subject matter was so random and useless, we were sort of surprised. The passage did help teach us Mandarin, because it used many different phrases, but it seemed useless for him to have it memorized. Many of the classes we’ve visited had the students memorizing long passages, and reciting them for the class. And I remember (I think it might’ve been a Jackie Chan movie, or maybe it was Fearless) a few films that showed this teaching style.
Oh, correction time. Last post I said “Another thing that feels government influenced (like back home, when our mandarin textbook,” and just sort of left you hanging there. I don’t even know what I meant to say, really. But I think this is a familiar experience. We had a vocab book in 10th grade that had all these very not-so-subtle “moral lessons” or whatever. Their book seemed to be laying it on extra thick, though.
I keep trying to get pictures on here, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Slow internet connection = law.

3/5/10 10:10 PM
A bunch of stuff to talk about today.
We went to the first meeting house of the Chinese Communist Party, which was pretty amazing. There were a bunch of original publications of revolutionary leaflets and things, and an arrow that was mistaken for a spear. There was a Qin army cannon, with what I think said “Qin army” engraved brilliantly on the side. The descriptions of the movement was propaganda-laden. There was a life-size model of the people at the meeting, gathered around a table, with Chairman Mao standing up and in the center, looking very dapper. There was a society called the Small Dagger Society, and they had an uprising called The Small Dagger Society Uprising. Band name. (Dibs.)
We were surprised, at first, that the museum was free of charge, but now I realize that it is a nice bit of propaganda, so they don’t want to keep people from it. We went into a Starbucks to ask for directions.
We had milk tea, not at Starbucks. The stuff is great. It has little balls of tapioca in it, and you drink it with a really wide straw, so the bubbles (they call them pearls) of tapioca go up in your straw and you chew and drink and drink and chew. Good stuff. They have an absurd number of flavors, so we’re thinking of going back an absurd number of times to try to try them all.
A ton of rain again today. Not particularly exciting, when told to you. But that intensity that rain can have sometimes is always a treat to experience. Thunder.
I had even more ping-pong ludicrousness today. Naiyi is on the ping-pong team, which seems to consist of only 4 or 5 guys, so I stayed with him as he practiced for 2 hours after school, and watched his carzy skills. I also played with (and thoroughly lost to) Briggs, but we both recognize that I’m getting better. I figured out how to put topspin on the thing, so I can get in the occasional aggressive shot or two, and catch the unwary opponent off guard.
Jason, who is a wicked cool dude and speaks basically perfect American English, played with me, and talked general game with me. Mostly about the difference between holding the paddle like “this” versus like “that,” (I think the descriptions might be too involved, but basically one is like you’re shaking the paddle’s hand, and the other is like you’re doing the “okay” ring with your thumb and forefinger around the paddle, upside down. Sorta…), and what they’re used for and why one person might go about playing this way or the other way.
I like umbrellas. I’m considering buying a nice one, with the cane sort of handle. That way I don’t have to keep worrying about Naiyi’s family’s extra umbrella popping inside out from all the wind.
We took a taxi to school this morning, which was fun and interesting. Not that this is an encouraging point, to all of you concerned for my safety, but none of the cars I’ve been in even have seatbelts. So we’ll see how that works out.
As I was watching the taxi driver drive today, I realized it reminded me of that highway chase scene from Matrix Reloaded (have I referenced Matrices too often for your comfort level, too?), when Trinity is zigzagging between cars, and the camera swooshes back and forth and all that. It’s the same sensation.
I just realized I forgot to talk about some stuff from a couple of days ago (Tuesday, in fact! Where has the time gone? I keep thinking I’ve only been here for a couple of days, but it’ll be a whole week in another day!). We had an art class, were we did Paper Cutting, a very cool and excellent, old-school Chinese art form, which basically consists of cutting paper. I thought you only used scissors to cut the paper, which is why it is so ridiculous (see? That’s all paper! http://carreycookies.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/chinese-paper-cutting-arts2.jpg), but you use a razor blade thing on the details in the middle, and cut out the edge with a pair of scissors. So, because of my mad stenciling skills from back in the day, I turned out to be really good at it. The art teacher was totally surprised. I was too, because I thought the day was going to be a display of my sucky scissors-skills, but it was not to be! I’ll try to show you people once I figure out how to get pictures on here.
Youtube is bloooooccckkkedd…
I learned a Chinese exclamation today. Ay-a! It’s like, “oh, woops!” or a quick, reflexive, “shit!” sort of term. To be used when floor-pie is accidentally served. Similar to Uncle's exclamation when Jackie does something stupid.
Baozi remain warm and delicious.
Everyone who rides bikes or motorcycles wear these big ponchos that cover them and their bike, so there is this great, big mass of color driving straight at you all the time.
The tissues are pretty often scented. Jasmine, I think.
I know I have more to say, but I wanna put this up soon. We’re seeing Avatar today. Gonna be sweet. I haven’t seen any ads or bootlegs of any kung-fu movies at all. Pretty disappointing.
I’ll give you my interesting language observations next time.