(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!