Will goes to China

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2008-10-19T17:24:00.001-04:00

www.willgoestocollege.blogspot.com

In Conclusion

2008-08-22T23:37:00.003-04:00

China was hard, but so much fun.

I started this blog claiming that anyone who read it would be doing it out of pity. Now I've heard that for some people, reading this has become a part of their daily routine (and only one of those people was my mom). Following my stories, a habit! But all things must come to an end.

I've done a lot since I left. I was rerouted flying out of the country. I bought a cheap watch. Then tried to get a refund. I purchased a scarf for the first time, got unexcited about China, felt really embarrassed, slept in my roommate's bed. I chatted up the bakery girl, broke copyright law, ate dinner with a Chinese family and a secret vegetarian, grabbed a cab, and realized that Chinese really enjoy the NBA. And that was just in the first month.

I used to think that I wasn't good at finishing things, that I was doomed to having great ideas that I couldn't bring to completion. But I have consistently blogged for the last seven months. Cumulatively, about 75,000 words. That's long enough to be a book. Speaking of which, I've been writing a novel. I never finish my writing projects, but maybe I will this time. Anyone who's read through these posts has surely earned a look at the final product when I'm done (this time 2009?).

One final story. After I hung out with a bunch of my friends tonight, Jessica dropped me off at home. As I got out of her car, I started making sure that I hadn't forgotten anything. I hadn't been wearing a hat, I didn't have any bags, my wallet was in my pocket. Why think through this so assiduously? So that when the taxi drove off I wouldn't lose anything, of course.

That's silly, I told myself. You're not in a taxi. But my mind persisted in thinking the situation through: it's okay, I said. If I left anything behind, just make sure to write down the license plate number and I can find the driver. Who can I get to call the taxi company who speaks good enough Chinese to explain what happened?

And then, at the end of my chain of thought rested this dilemma: I could call Sophia, but now that I'm in America it'd be really expensive to get in touch with her.

And so it goes.

Reentry

2008-08-21T00:41:00.002-04:00

And Will comes back from China. It's almost 1am here in Orlando (that's right, in America), but I think my strategy for quickly overcoming jetlag has backfired. I left Beijing August 20th, at 4:10pm and arrived in Chicago August 20th, 3:50pm (it was a fast plane). Florida is twelve time zones away from Beijing, so when I got on the plane I tried to think of it as being 4 in the morning. "Just like a night out clubbing," I thought to myself. "Although this airplane seat isn't as comfortable as Emma's couch." I slept until around 11, then decided I should be awake until I got home. That way my body would be convinced that it really is night. But I'm afraid I've held out so long it thinks night has just skipped and I'm already on a new day. Gives me energy for a blog entry.

The guy I sat next to on the plane was a Chinese guy with bad English coming to America for grad school. It reminded me of me seven months ago. I had to explain how to put on an airplane seatbelt, and helped him fill in his customs card, and taught him the word "soda." All in Chinese.

In general I felt pretty good about my Chinese leaving. Someone forgot to stamp my ticket saying I had gone through security, and a random American next to me knew the word "to stamp" when they questioned me about it. I'm not perfect. But I understand some things. I recently learned 乘客是上帝, the Chinese equivalent of "the customer is always right." And then the Chinese guy two over from me used it, only in English: (to the stewardess hassling him about asking for ice too late) "But the customer is God."

Arriving in America I felt out of step, like a marching routine that I haven't done in a long time and isn't instinctual any more. I was in Chicago trying to sort out Verizon's ridiculous rules about getting my phone working. ("I need the primary account holder [my mom] to approve me helping you." If I could call my mom to ask permission, I wouldn't need to talk to Verizon.) An older woman comes up to me trying to shuffle me toward a terminal. I told her I wasn't sure where I was going, and she went off to ask her supervisor to help me or something. When she came back toward me, I said to her, "Hey, I think I actually got it worked out."

"Don't call me 'hey,'" she says. "But that's good." I was so thrown off. "Sorry," I apologized, trying to think of what I was supposed to have said. Lao dama isn't English, nor is nainai...

Then on the subway I was watching people interact and heard a middle-aged guy say to his son, "Did you hear what I said to your mom when she left us?" Then he noticed I was looking in his direction and paused, sizing me up. "Mind your folly," he said, pointing his finger at me and going back to his loud monologue. I don't even know what that phrase means. I spent the rest of the subway ride a little confused.

But now I'm home. Rosie remembers me. I ate toasted Little Caesar's bread sticks and an apple that I picked right out of our gigantic refrigerator.

I think I'll post once more, a kind of summing up of everything. Because now, I'm back! And I'm glad life is still interesting.

What I'm Returning to

2008-08-19T22:13:00.002-04:00

My family

My friends

Shower curtains

"No smoking" policies

Real peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

The need for knives

Beaches

Little smog

No public transportation

No ring roads

Signs that I can read

Unfettered Internet access

TV stations that aren't controlled by the government

Good music

No one outside at dusk relaxing

Babies with diapers

Several kids per family

Businesses, not shops

Miles and pounds

Fruit that I don't need to disinfect before eating

Ovens

A racial mix in which Chinese are the foreigners

Religious freedom

A normalcy that I automatically understand

Hurricanes

Classes taught in English

Printers

Restaurants with less than three waitresses per customer

The pressures that face college students

Houses

Video stores

A car that the government says I'm allowed to drive

What I left

Bible studies

The extravagantly wide street winding through Waterford

Speed limits

No trains

Toilet paper in bathrooms

Nobody squatting. Ever

Not being the tallest

Not being able to pick my nose in public

Haircuts that cost more than $1.20

UF football games

Non-negotiable pricing

Exercise toys that are the least used playground equipment, not the most

People who won't have experienced the same things as I have

Money that isn't colorful

Cellphone plans

Rosie, our dog

Pets in general

Privately owned grass

My mom's spaghetti and meatballs

The End is Near

2008-08-19T10:53:00.002-04:00

This blog entry has been in the back of my mind since the first week I came to China, so even if it's not that interesting or whatever, I'm still going to talk about it, since tonight is my last night in China, and time is short.

I want to mention all the experiences I've had with music since I've been overseas.

On my first day in Chengdu, back in January, our group ate lunch a few tables away from a wedding ceremony. Weddings in China are a little strange, since they don't have the traditions we do--hence pastel blue wedding dresses. But what I haven't forgotten is that one of the songs they sang was "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands."

I went in to a music store once and tried to buy authentic Chinese music. One CD was Jay Chou, who's like a Chinese Backstreet Boy in popularity, and the other is... erhu. That's a two-stringed instrument which, played well, sounds like someone is moaning to death. I've gotten used to it, though, just like Mom taught us to eat fish.

When I went to Kyrgyzstan at the beginning of the summer, I had a picnic lunch with a few 10 year old boys I met. As we hiked, they broke out into an accented, thankfully incomplete rendition of "Smack That."

Later in Kyrgyzstan, I heard the latest American hip-hop song for the first time. I disliked it so much I was going to write an entry about how bad it was, but then I had other things to do.

When I was really overwhelmed living at the train station in Kazhakstan, I bought a CD of My Chemical Romance, a classic emo band. Most of their songs are about dying, but I've enjoyed having new music anyway.

I think I was in Turpan (that is, remote desert in China) when my taxi driver played "Numa, Numa." Several times. I doubt he's seen the video. (I'd link to it but China won't let me.)

And finally, during the Olympics, they play the Pirates of the Caribbean theme.

Links to old posts to remind myself what all has happened in the last seven months.

No, Fifth Time Really is the Charm

2008-08-18T12:32:00.005-04:00

If you don't have an amazing time at the Olympics, try, try, try again. I met some cool people recently and hung out with them this afternoon. They had bought tickets online for the women's soccer semis, and I went with them on the subway since I didn't have anywhere I had to be. Then we got closer to the stadium and saw people selling tickets, and I couldn't resist. 300 kuai lighter (100 of that being Bekah's loan) I had a ticket to an important Olympic game.

America was playing, which made this twice as cool. And, of course, you might even have watched it (or will watch it, depending on NBC's mood) on tv. The New York Times had the result of this game on their home page! I was there. Watching us kick Japan's butt.

Japan was actually the best opponent we could have had, because after WWII, the Chinese hate Japanese. The 40,000+ crowd joined in bilingual cheers rooting on America.

The ticket I bought gave me a perfect seat: at the front of the second tier, right in center field. But I snuck into the lower level for the second half to hang out with the people I came with. We had a great time.

Afterward, we talked to one of the players' mom, since my friends knew their family.

Coming back home is part of the story, of course, but this time it has a happy ending. The game ended late and I only took the subway partway home. When I got a taxi, I told the driver, "Take me to Wangjing Bridge, South Nanhu Street." He said sure, then asked which place on the street. "I'll tell you when we get there," I said.

Again he agreed. "But there's a different way I could go," he said. Since I've been in Beijing a while, I knew that the road I was talking about was really long.

"The place I'm going is right by the bridge," I said. And that was the right answer, because then he said that his other route wouldn't be helpful.

I leave the day after tomorrow, (although with a hurricane coming, when I'll actually get home is a different question) and it was nice to have a chance to use the local knowledge I've acquired being in China so long.

Fourth Time's the Charm--Almost

2008-08-17T06:26:00.006-04:00

By far the most exciting (and expensive) tickets I had to the Olympics was for a morning of athletics events in the Bird's Nest. That is, this Bird's Nest, the steel nurturer for a nation ready to spread its wings, easing its way into Beijing's once-in-an-Olympics blue sky:

And from close up:

All I knew going into the morning is that our ticket covered whatever happened from 9am to 1pm, and that we wouldn't be seeing the finals of anything. But then we got there, Emma, another girl, and I, and the first thing to start was the finals... for the 20k walk. Don't worry, if you didn't catch the hour plus event on tv, I took pictures:

They're in a pack like that partially because it's the beginning, and you can't get a huge lead when you've walked half a lap; and partially because packs make things respectable, even if that's waddling like a seven-year-old rushing for the bathroom. Coming in first was Mr. Borchin, a Russian whose life story likely begins, "Back in my day we had to walk 10 miles to get to an outhouse..." I'm joking, of course. 20 kilometers is 12.4 miles, not 10.

The morning was really exciting. What I didn't understand was that they do three or four events at once. So while the women's shot put is under way on the field, the women's heptathletes are warming up for the long jump and the men's steeplechase heats are taking place. It was like having seven tvs, and whenever one thing finished--the women's 100m heats, for instance--a flying discus would catch my eye until it fell, and then I'd notice half of a pole vaulting attempt.

I took pictures of all of the events, but they're uninspiring. But, when I slipped past the "don't cross this unless you have a ticket" rope to get a picture of the women lining up for the 100m dash, the picture came out pretty well. Credits to Grandad for teaching me that it's not a real picture unless you broke a rule to get it:

But then I had to get home from the Olympics. Although it was my fourth time to see an event, it was also my fourth venue, but lots of frustration, several subway stops, and a taxi ride later, I made it home. I made myself a late lunch of leftover rice and sliced apple-pear, and took a nap. When I woke up, I realized that the way I had locked the door left my Chinese mom locked out for the last forty-five minutes. What stress I had relieved sleeping was back in an instant as I insufficiently apologized.

But when you talk to Norwegian Olympic athletes on the subway about innovations in swimming, and see scenes like the one pictured below, there isn't much room for dissatisfaction.

End of the Term, No Exploing

2008-08-15T07:30:00.003-04:00

I came across a blog today which shows that good writers can have a successful blog. I thought being in China might compensate from any good writing skills I haven't acquired yet, but maybe I should start putting up cute pictures of kids. Or use CAPITALIZATION or cuss words.

I did teach my Koreans some bad words yesterday. You have to start at low-level words because their vocabulary isn't good enough to work on words that they might only have an opportunity to say once in their lives. They've already mastered "crap." I did find it interesting that when I said I was willing to trade bad words in English for any bad words they knew in Chinese, the two boys who are bored out of their minds by English scrambled for paper and a pencil. The most studious girl sat there with her head in her arms

Speaking of my Koreans' progress, I brought home the essay Sky (a boy) wrote in class today. We've been reading Harry Potter, and today we read the first scene in the third book where the students encounter boggarts. Boggarts, as you'll remember, are the monsters that take the shape of whatever you fear most and are only destroyed by laughter. The assignment was to pretend that they saw a boggart.

Sky writes: I'm scared of teddy bears. I'm a president, but I scaring of teddy bears. so students laugh at me. So my boggart is teddy bears. It is cute. so I sayd, "It is cute!!!" So It exploed.

And yet, with several weeks down and only one more lesson to go, I think I've helped them make progress. I've tried to convince them that the past, present, and future tense are not the same; that nouns need qualifiers; that sentences generally consist of more than three words and lots of pointing; that verbs are important; that "He is 155 cm height" is not a proper sentence; that "Me, too" should be "Me, neither" if you're concurring with a negative statement; and that "died" is not transitive.

I had my last day of class today. I attended reading class, because it was the last day and I still have that elementary school urge to think that my attendance will affect my final grade. It was a waste of time.

But I've made it to the end of the term, and haven't exploded. China can still work me over when it wants to, as my most recent trip to the Olympics shows, but I've survived. And here's an icing-on-the-cake story.

When I was younger, my mom would occasionally let stories about learning Chinese slip out. One time she was trying to tell me about how the Chinese have a proverb for almost any situation you can imagine. I asked for an example, and she told me the only one she remembered. "A poor man walks by a bakery every morning and lingers to smell the great aroma of the bread baking. The shopkeeper gets mad at the poor man for enjoying something he didn't pay for, and starts to demand payment. When wise Asanti gets there, the baker explains the situation and says he wants 10 kuai for all the smells the man has gotten as his expense. Asanti says that that sounds reasonable, but the poor man pleads that he doesn't have the money. "No problem," Asanti says. "I happen to have a whole purse full of money here." When the baker sees the pouch, he gets really excited. Asanti jingles the coins. "The sound of money buys the smell of bread," he says, putting the pouch back in his pocket and walking away with the poor man.

I'm bracing myself this morning for reading class, when what do I see? This same story. The story that represented Chinese to me when I was seven is the last thing I study before leaving the country. Isn't that cool?

A Day at the Olympics

2008-08-13T10:40:00.004-04:00

Today was a disaster. It began simply enough by me skipping class at the last minute to go see basketball. But Emma and I rode the subway there with three other people from our program who were not as group-conscious as we were. To make a long story short, they ended up in a taxi on their way to the stadium and we ended up on the subway with one of their extra tickets (People had backed out, so the three of them had eight tickets total and Emma had two extra). On our way in, lots of Chinese were haggling for tickets, so we sold them Emma's two tickets and the extra one that she was carrying. Then we got through security and received a call from the people we were with. Apparently, they had also sold their extra tickets, but were counting on getting their other one back from us and had actually sold a ticket they didn't have a replacement for. Well, we were past security already and, not expecting to hear from them, had sold the other ticket.

They got mad, we got mad, and we stormed into basketball--which, contrary to one's guy's firm assertions when the tickets were bought--was actually women's basketball. There were lots of empty seats and we did see these people. I spent most of the game trying to calm down from the hectic morning and get into the spirit of horrible Olympic basketball.

But on to handball. Emma and I didn't have time to have lunch. Our taxi dropped us off at the wrong place. We walked half an hour and showed up halfway through the game.

But, every Swede in Beijing must have been at this match, because the handball game (which is actually more like lacrosse than it is ultimate frisbee) was very lively. Emma and I eventually managed to say that we were having fun.

These mild paragraphs lightly pass over what was possibly the most stressful day of my life. I have the feeling I've said that before, but like Michael Phelps' swimming, records can be broken. Forget taxi drivers being able to speak English: it'd be nice if they knew where the buildings were and were willing to drive you there. It's not like we just said, "Hi, please take us to go see handball." Emma and I had an Olympic map with the location labeled in Chinese, a dot where it was in relation to all the other streets, and even a picture so the driver would recognize it by the shape! And I won't even mention the fiasco trying to get a taxi to the women's basketball game.

When all else fails, or you're not enjoying the Russian women's basketball team play Belarus, you can always practice for the next big thing, Olympic napkin throwing:

(Package of napkins not actually visible)

Juggling, Koreans, and Handball

2008-08-12T07:33:00.003-04:00

Last night I went to the Beijing juggling club. What's a China experience without going to a juggling club? And now that the days are down to single digits until I fly back to the States, I have to do all the China-y things I can.

(A basic 10-club feed with a guy from Italy and America.)

That includes continue my part-time job teaching Koreans English in China. My curriculum consists of Harry Potter for one hour, then grammar help/story time for the next hour. Do you want to improve your English, too? That'll be $29.00 for the day.

My Koreans have taught me really cool things about their culture: in Korea, newborns count as being one year old, so I'd be 21 there. In Korea, their thumb is called the "father" finger, followed by the "mother," "son," "daughter," and "baby" fingers. And Koreans don't play. They just work.

And now to briefly discuss handball. Tomorrow will be my second adventure to the Olympics. This time I'll be seeing an event almost unknown in America: handball. I thought I knew what it was, since Dan and I play racquetball, but I was wrong. This sport, best I can tell, is like ultimate frisbee with a ball instead. If you're younger than 30, that description probably didn't help, and I recommend going to NBC's handball page and reading the rules or watching some video. Unfortunately, NBC figured out that I'm not in America and won't let me watch any of its coverage.

Finally, I wanted to say that you asked a good question, Jaclyn. I don't have the distribution of Olympic tickets quite figured out. The cheapest ones are really cheap ($4 US). On the other hand, a lot of the ticket sales happened during work hours, so if you're a wage earner dependent on those hours for food, it's unlikely you'll go stand in line, especially if you're risking a stampede. Large blocks of tickets were given (or bought, or somehow ended up in the hands of) large, rich companies, but that's to be expected. If worse comes to worse, you can always find a ticket to attend handball!

Going to the Olympics

2008-08-10T08:00:00.004-04:00

This weekend has been crazy. Up till 3 Friday night for the opening ceremony and celebration, up till 1 last night hanging out with a rich friend Emma went to school with, and going to see Olympic weightlifting this morning.

I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. I was really impressed at how Olympic the auditorium looked considering we were in some random school's gym. And everything was so official, from the Chinese guys who rushed out to change the weights, to the dramatic "There has been a change of weights" announcement when people decided to push themselves harder.

I'll give you the set-up. There are eight weight classifications for men. Emma and I watched the first round of the lightest group (less than 56 kg). That's less than I weigh, and I couldn't donate blood in high school because I didn't weigh enough. But all of them were a head shorter than I was, so I guess that gives them kilos to spare for muscle.

Olympic weightlifting is the composite of two events: Snatch, and Clean and Jerk. In the first, you lift the weight from the floor to over your head in one motion. In the second, you first bring the weight up to your chin, and then jerk it over your head. Obviously it's easier to lift something over your head when you get to stop halfway, so the Clean and Jerk sees higher weights. So even if you're winning after the Snatch, you still have to do well in the Clean and Jerk because it's easier to lift a few more kilos in that part.

The other rule that made everything really exciting was that even though everybody gets three attempts, turns go in the order of the next highest weight. So if you start attempting a 103 kg Snatch and only go up a few kilos from there, you might have used all three of your tries by the time a better weightlifter starts at 112 kg. The upset of our match, though, was that the highest-seeded guy, who started at 115 kg, couldn't do it! "Bombing-out" disqualified him, since how can you add the scores of Snatch and Clean and Jerk when you don't have a Snatch? He was disappointed, to say the least.

Our round had obscure countries (Moldova, Belgium, Turkey) so we weren't sure who to root for. One of the Americans sitting next to us, though, lived in Thailand and swept us up in cheering him on.

After the Snatch (these aren't supposed to be capitalized, by the way, but I think it adds to the excitement), our Thai guy was in first. The Clean and Jerk began, the weight kept going up, and I thought Mr. Maneetong had it for sure. He finished his three attempts early on, but had such a high score from the Snatch that he looked unbeatable. Then, the only one left was the weightlifter from Turkey. On his second attempt, he locked in third place. (We thought this was the finals, too, so were doubly enthralled.)

For his last attempt, he first had the weights set to put him in second. Then he went balls to the wall and loaded them up so that, if successful, he would usurp our Thai favorite to win. He came out focused, and then 10 seconds away from his time expiring, lifted the weight to his chin, then with great effort pushed it up all the way, trembling with the exertion while the judges made sure his feet weren't moving.

"成功!" the commentator said in Chinese. You don't need language classes to understand that.

Opening Ceremony

2008-08-09T00:48:00.005-04:00

First, an online high-five to Lauren for knowing that I wrote the word guanxi (loosely translated "connections") in my last post.

My attempt to see the opening ceremony instead of watch it on tv can be summarized by one picture:

Can you see any fireworks? Neither could we. And it's not just because of the smog (recently relabeled "fog" by the Chinese Olympic Committee).

I stood on a bridge--that was the view for non-ticket holders who aren't NBC--with several hundred Chinese people as the auspicious time of 8:08 August 8, 2008 drew near. Then it passed. We on the bridge still didn't see anything coming from the Bird's Nest, located in the picture in between the skyscrapers on the right and the building with video of fireworks in the center. From what I'd heard, the huge firework display would happen near the beginning of the opening ceremony.

Then we saw one firework go off. Then a burst of fireworks. And then nothing. "Wouldn't it be funny if that was it?" I joked to the American couple standing on the bridge next to me. Apparently, I wasn't joking. About half an hour later, when nothing came next, all the Chinese on the bridge decided to go home.

I had come to the spot itself because I knew that right next to the Bird's Nest was the building with a video screen several stories tall. "Excellent," I thought. "I'll watch the fireworks over my head and the show on the screen." Only the screen, several stories tall, didn't broadcasting anything but previously recorded fireworks. So we were left standing on a bridge, alone, a quarter mile away from the action watching for fireworks that didn't seem to be coming.

Not only that, but I was separated from my friends. I had tutoring in the afternoon, so they went ahead of me. It turns out they arrived early enough that the protective barrier was put up with them inside. I didn't know this, though, and spent an hour or so trying to ride the right bus to get closer to them. I ended up on the bridge far away with two very nice Americans, but they weren't my friends. And there was no fireworks/ceremony-watching, regardless.

How do you say "disappointment" in Chinese?

The low came when we jumped ship and tried to go to the Olympic party we had tickets to. All my friends were going and I was to meet up with them, since Emma had my ticket. But taxis were scarce and I didn't really know where I was going. Then I passed a group of Chinese on the bridge crowded around a girl's phone watching the show.

"This'll make a great blog entry," I thought to myself bitterly.

Just then, Emma calls to say I should hurry to the club because they have the opening ceremony in high-def on huge screens.

I've let myself describe the full extent of my frustration because the second half of my night made up for it. This video gives you a good idea:

If your body wasn't pounding with the background music, the speakers on your computer aren't giving you the full effect. I didn't imagine I would watch every country in the world stream into the Olympic stadium to a throbbing techno beat, but loud, slightly drunken cheers for each person's country removed any doubt of patriotism.

And with weightlifting tickets for tomorrow, I fully agree in saying let the games begin!

Guess Who Got Olympic Tickets

2008-08-07T11:05:00.002-04:00

I didn't think I'd be able to come back to America and tell people that I had happened to be studying at the city hosting the Olympics and not attended. Now I don't have to worry. I've been working my connections the last few weeks and am proud to say that I will have Olympic tickets.

I feel like I'm allowed to be excited now. And with the opening ceremony tomorrow night, I'll have a lot of chance for it. (Our teacher said that despite most of Beijing (and China?) having tomorrow as a holiday, we would still have class. "What if there are no students?" I asked. "Then we teachers will have a holiday, too," she replied. Sounds like a deal to me.)

That is, if everything goes mostly according to plan. One of my friends from America had tickets but wouldn't be in Beijing until halfway after the Olympics were over, so he readily agreed a few months ago to give me some. I only got the contact info of the person who actually had the tickets two days ago, and she said she had already allotted them to people. Out of the goodness of her heart, though, she said she'd give up a few of the ones she was planning to use personally so I and a friend could go see weightlifting on Sunday.

Independently of this, Emma found a website that the newly accessible BBC said was legit and bought a few tickets for a track-and-field event later next week.

Then Emma's boyfriend's friend is Chinese and said he didn't have any tickets, but he knew people. A day later he said he found a pair of tickets for handball. Not exactly the 100m dash, but who says we foreigners can't use 关系?

All told, I should be able to attend three Olympic events, and one of those should be in the Bird's Nest.

Our teacher said that Chinese people are all going to watch the opening ceremony on tv at home. That's practically the same as watching it from America, though, (except for the 29 locations where ridiculous fireworks will be set off simultaneously, so the whole city can be part of the action) so my friends and I are going to try to go to the Bird's Nest and watch things from nearby. 100,000 people will attend the opening ceremony, though, so maybe we'll think it's too crowded.

I'm excited!

When I'm Not the Tourist

2008-08-06T07:05:00.004-04:00

My audience asks, and I deliver. I think I assumed that since I was reading everything anyone wrote about the Olympics, that everyone else would be, too, and wouldn't want to hear me saying kinda the same things. But I do have a perspective of already having been here for six weeks.

I was walking to lunch yesterday with two friends when a random Asian accosted us in rapid-fire Chinese. "You guys speak Chinese, right?" Lizzie, a British friend I went to Tianjin with, didn't understand anything, and I was too thrown-off to be helpful. The Polish girl from my class answered that we did. "Good," the guy says. "Can I have a picture with you?"

I pause here while we asked him several times what he wanted. Chinese tourists don't consider it a trip unless they've gotten a picture with a real foreigner. Seriously.

Eventually we agree to take a picture with him. I think that this encounter was so strange, and our school so full of Koreans (i.e. everyone in my class but me and this Polish girl) that this guy might not even be Chinese. When I ask what country he's from, though, he was offended enough that I knew he was Chinese.

It's his first time in Beijing, he explained. He lives in the Northeast and is here because his sister, who lives here, found him tickets for the Olympics. "Welcome to Beijing," I called to him as we left.

I was riding the bus a few days ago when I heard several people ask the conductor, "Does this bus go to the subway?" Of course it goes to the subway, I thought to myself. Don't you know which stops are subway entrances? But of course they didn't, because none of them live in Beijing. I was proud of myself that I was able to tell independently of their questions, since anyone who rides the bus frequently (that is, not them) would use their transportation card instead of paying in cash and getting a receipt.

I live in between school and the Bird's Nest (the Olympic stadium), so even though practically no cars are on the road, I still get hit with a huge burst of traffic as we pass it.

The pollution is still horrible. Earlier, I was annoyed that everyone would come to Beijing, see the fantastic weather, and think it was always like that. But now all the Western media talks about is how there still aren't blue skies. I'm rooting for China to get it cleaned up.

Maybe I'm not as excited as this guy, who we saw in Tianjin:

My Ferris Wheel Experience

2008-08-04T09:49:00.002-04:00

Now in video.

Apparently we weren't alone in being terrified riding Tianjin's ferris wheel. I found this video of other foreign students:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htz78_34918

I posted mine as a video reply:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuEwGaUEe7A

Now that I watch it from the peace and quiet of my apartment, it doesn't sound like a leaf blower. Any better suggestions?

I found out that the train we rode from Tianjin back to Beijing opened only three days ago, and is now the fastest train in the world. So that's cool.

Chinese Amusement Park

2008-08-03T10:00:00.002-04:00

Emma, Lizzie and I decided to go on a day trip to Tianjin, the neighboring municipality. We tried to plan a trip to Nanjing, but were thwarted when train tickets were sold out when we went to buy them. I'm much better at planning for just myself--that is, not planning at all.

We managed to buy tickets for the slow train to Tianjin, though, and arrived without incident. In my opinion, the funnest part of traveling is that your Chinese naturally gets better. Emma is in A+, and Lizzie is in B, so they have a lot of travel to do. Emma has been feeling discouraged that she's been in China six weeks and she feels like she's only gotten worse. At first she boldly tried to talk to people, but now that she knows she knows nothing she feels too overwhelmed. When you can't even pronounce the name of your apartment complex so that taxi drivers can understand you, it's no wonder.

I think when I came to China I'd already crossed that phase, so it wasn't bad for me. I'm still prone to disappointment, obviously, but it's on a different level.

There were no must-sees in Tianjin. I mostly wanted to go because I've been itching for travel and I knew my language partners back home came from there and thought it would be cool to say I'd traveled to their home town (if you can call a city of 10 million a town).

First we wandered down a street of tourist-y shops. I finally found a stone master to buy a stamp with my name in Chinese from. He explained how he went to the quarry himself to get stones. He carves them, and polishes them, and knows way more than I do about why one costs 30 kuai and another one that looks almost the same costs 300. I settled on a really cool big one for 50 kuai, and seeing my excitement Emma and Lizzie decided to buy one too. Their "How much is this?" was getting better the more we walked around. What use are we going to have for a stamp in Chinese? Probably none, but for about $8 (after the engraving fee, by the stone guy's "famous brother") it's a really cool symbol of China. Just wait till you see my name in red ink: 潘伟.

After lunch, we went to a park. When we entered, we realized that it doubled as a low-grade amusement park. The bumper cars were 8 kuai, which made them a must. I felt quite at home using all the driving techniques I've learned from taking taxis on small Chinese kids.

Then we saw the ferris wheel. It was huge, and was moving really slowly. We bought snacks before we boarded in case it broke halfway.

We couldn't hear it creaking until we got on, but it sounded like something was horribly wrong. The noise increased the higher up we went, until I was honestly a little nervous. I couldn't tell what the noise was either: it sounded like a leaf-blower that would turn on and off. I've found Chinese has relatively few obscenities, so I couldn't practice my Chinese by translating Emma's comments.

We had a fantastic, expensive dinner at T.G.I. Friday's before we boarded the super-fast train back to Beijing. It topped out at over 340 kilometers/hour, which is 200 mph. I felt like I was in an industrialized country. All three of us agreed that we like Tianjin more than Beijing, but maybe it was just the freedom that a day out of town can do to you.

Olympification

2008-08-01T06:46:00.007-04:00

Beijing's countdown board, which one couple I met said they saw with thousands of days left, is down to single digits now. Olympification is in high gear.

"Pictures cannot reflect reality," Du Shaozhong, a high-up, said in response to the bad press it's getting about Beijing's air quality. "They are not accurate." (As if I have enough skill to know how to upload a picture to Photoshop, let alone alter it.) But pictures are still speaking a thousand words for me, making this a very long entry.

Most intrusive to the average Chinese, of course, is Beijing's traffic rule that license plates ending with even numbers can only be driven on even calendar days, and odd-numbered license plates on odd calendar days. My solution, of course, would be to drive without a license plate, but I understand why many haven't adopted that. (They would ban cars altogether, then, of course.)

Or, if you're like my Chinese dad, you just don't go to work on the days you can't drive.

That looks like a substantial number of cars, you say, but you're wrong. These cars don't even have their brake lights on, and everyone knows that it's not an Olympics-worthy city unless there's normally a traffic jam anywhere cars are allowed (and some places where they aren't).

What you can't see in this picture is the Olympic lane that most of the roads have. Highways only have three lanes each way here, and when you cut out a whole one for an unknown Olympics-related reason, you're back to a reasonable amount of traffic.

Exhibit two is Beijing's prettifying.

A week or two ago, Average Zhou and his buddy painstakingly positioned a flowery pedestal every hundred feet or less. Apparently, these were a one-time investment for the government, because since then the potted flowers have been withering and the nice enamel has been cracking. Today as I walked by they looked like something Beijing should clean up instead of evidence that it has.

I'm not sure if this sign was added in preparation for the Olympics, but it fits in. In case you wanted to time your terrorist attack properly, car bombings are only allowed from 6am to midnight. I don't know how else to interpret that sign. They've started to check my backpack every time I get on a bus now.

And then there's overall Olympification. This structure was in a garden Emma and I visited recently. Our school has been working on it's own project, a papier-mâché globe twenty feet in diameter. At least that's what it looks like. They make me show my ID to get into school now (since I don't look foreign enough already), so I concentrate more on accepting China's restrictions than on appreciating their artistic prowess.

If effort won gold, though, then China's in for a big victory party. But from what I hear, over eight people and the gathering is illegal. Gotta watch out for separatists.

Skipping Class, Listening to the Radio

2008-07-30T09:45:00.002-04:00

I feel stilted when I write something topical. My little videos, as Melanie assures me, are "thrilling." Didn't I say the erhu in the background would make it fantastic? :) Today was interesting enough for me to just talk about what happened.

I'm in C+ now. I worked like crazy for four weeks in D, then instead of moving up, I moved down. This level is really good for me, though, and I think I'll still learn a lot. I have speaking class every day for half of the morning, then either reading or listening for the other half. But my reading teacher is horrible, and since I'm not in high school any more, I don't have to deal with that.

Accordingly, I spent two hours in the school library this morning skipping class in the most blissful studying session I've had practically ever. I was reading, and comprehending, and learning. Then I went to speaking class and learned some more.

I'm struck by how Chinese is so different from English in some respects--they use the same word for animals making noise, like barking or chirping, as they do for kids making noise, and that offends me--and yet occasionally I run into an instance where Chinese actually makes sense. For example, in Chinese you can say that you know so-and-so "through" a mutual friend, just like we do in English. And today I just learned that when your kids are gone to college or whatever, it's also an "empty nest."

I've started a part-time job every afternoon that deserves explanation. I was on the bus a few nights ago when a middle-aged Korean woman asked me in accented English what country I was from. Then she asked if I was an English tutor, to which I said I certainly could be. "Do you have a plan?" she asked, and the answer was obviously supposed to be yes. She asked for my number (the parallels between this encounter and my chance meeting of now-let go Suzie have not been lost on my friends) and we talked briefly about what she was looking for. "How many days a week?" "Five." "And how long each time?" "Six hours." What? "And can you start tomorrow?"

I signed up to do two hours each day to the tune of 100 kuai an hour, which is about three times as much as I would make working at McDonald's back home. It turns out the Korean woman I met on the bus is actually just the middleman skimming some off the top for gathering students and teachers and having an apartment-turned-classroom to offer. I talked her into paying my taxi fare, so I'm all for the set-up. The two kids I teach are Korean middle-schoolers who don't really want to be there. I like teaching, though, and have had a good time trying to make them have a good time the past two days.

Tonight I went out to eat with my Chinese Mom and Dad. Mom was picky about where we sat, and did a really good job playing up her outrage when she found some bad meat. ("Look!" she said to Dad excitedly. "This soup they're giving us for free now cost 78 kuai!")

On our way home, they tuned into an English radio station, and I listened to some song by The Fray. It was the first time I've been in a car listening to English-language radio in more than half a year. I do miss America. And once I leave, I'll miss China. 这是一个问题。

Life in Beijing

2008-07-29T09:03:00.002-04:00

Grammie has given rave reviews of the videos I've made. I'm not very good at it, but I figured if I put the sweet sound of the Chinese erhu in the background, then what video could go wrong?

I hope it's uploaded.

Breaking Up

2008-07-27T11:32:00.002-04:00

I did upload the videos, but the post displayed before my last one (since I created it earlier), and now the videos won't play for some reason. It's too bad.

If you need to have a relationship to end one, I guess Suzie's been my girlfriend for a while, because we broke up. People say that the only decent way to break up with someone is in person. A phone call is horribly disrespectful, text message unthinkable. I can't even imagine what people will think when I say that I had my friend write the text messages that broke up with my girlfriend.

Actually, I do know how people will react, because there were several girls at my table when I did it. Seven or eight of us were out celebrating Emma's birthday. Suzie texted me a clingy question about why I hadn't replied to an earlier text. I tried to say that it was because I had nothing to say, but didn't say that well enough. That afternoon we had had a text message fight--I think--because our phone conversation didn't go well, I hung up rather quickly, and she got mad.

And sitting in the restaurant I realized that my Chinese was too bad to handle this. Not necessarily at its current stage, but if I met anyone who spoke English and looked pretty, I would have no problem dropping Suzie, and that was a much more casual place than she was at. As I found out when my friend Tony composed the well-worded break-up text. The only relevant vocabulary I could bring to the table was "to break up" (literally "to stop holding hands"), and any combination I could think of using that would sound really harsh. Tony wrote a very nice message about how my Chinese sucked too much for us to continue, and that it would be best for us not to be together.

"What? You don't like me?" Suzie replied.

We clarified. The process was not helped by the girls sitting next to Tony and me, who let out a sympathetic "aww" on behalf of Suzie any time we opened our mouths.

"I didn't think this would happen," Suzie continued. "You really don't want to hang out any more? We were doing so well."

About that time, my phone died, our dinner ended, and I was a single man again. Well, single-r, since I had denied having a girlfriend the whole time. Honestly, I was more relieved than anything else. I wasn't trying to be mean. I just think that when you feel like hanging up every time you talk on the phone, there's a problem.

We didn't know each other for a long time. I don't even think I've mentioned Suzie as many times in this blog as I have my epic sunburn (which, in the final count, befreckled my ear with two brown dots).

But all the girls still think I'm a heart breaker.

Military History Museum

2008-07-24T10:48:00.004-04:00

There's a very multi-medic post coming, but videos take a while to upload. While we're waiting, I'll talk about the Military History Museum.

I was told that this museum was really cool. It has its own subway stop for easy foreigner access and has been especially Olympified. I have a really low museum tolerance, so I think it was good that I made it through three of the four floors before retreating.

My favorite part was the floor with real, inactive tanks a few feet away. And, if you pull a Grandad and ignore the sign saying not to touch anything, right within your grasp.

What will really carry you through until my videos upload is this sign. You don't understand propaganda until you see it.

The Student Formerly Known as D-Level

2008-07-23T08:50:00.007-04:00

I finished my first four-week program at BLCU a few days ago. On August 20th, I'll be going back to America. I haven't blogged in a few days because I've been collecting video to demonstrate our varying levels of Chinese.

Here is Whitney, an American who was in A-level.

I interviewed someone from B-level, but then I accidentally deleted it. Oops. So now we're skipping ahead to D-level, with a guy from my class who's Peruvian-American.

And here's a piece from the worst guy in D-level. I think his was the least grammatical of all of these interviews.

There was one other average American white guy in my class. He's the one I went to church with.

And this is what most of the kids in my class sounded like: The native speakers who were in our D-level class because they weren't fluent at reading.

So for those of you not listening to four hours of Chinese a day, I hope that provides a good introduction to the way Chinese actually sounds. And hopefully all these samples aren't overwhelming, because I had enough of that this last month.

Chinese Church and Swimming Lessons

2008-07-21T09:41:00.003-04:00

Yesterday a friend and I went to a registered ("Three Self") Chinese church. That's the kind of church that China says is legal, except when it says it isn't--which happened a few decades ago and caused all the underground churches to flourish. The church has a deal with the Chinese government to be silent on the Second Coming and the resurrection of the dead. Wikipedia does note, though, that some churches have some leeway on that, and the one I went to must have been one of them, because the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead was explicit in the Romans sermon text.

My friend and I arrived twenty minutes before the service started and were already shuffled into the 300+ person overflow room where we watched everything going on upstairs on video.

I was so fascinated to see what a Chinese church would be like. Even if I had understood all of the message, I would still have been distracted trying to observe: What kind of people came? (mostly girls) What were they wearing? (better clothes than normal) What did they bring with them? (a Bible, I think, and/or a book of hymns) And so on.

I was interested in figuring out what the four or five other foreigners were doing there, too. Missionaries can speak Chinese and find it too ostentatious to go to a Chinese service like that, and students are usually in one place long enough to try to mesh with a church in a foreign language. After carefully watching the foreigners--who were all Americans speaking English to surrounding Chinese people who obviously knew them--I concluded that it was evangelically-oriented Americans in Beijing for a short time who had Chinese friends interested in Christianity. I talked with them afterward and found I was right.

Language-wise, let's just say it's good that I'm used to the content of church, because I had to fill in a lot of blanks. "Trusting in Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior" hasn't really come up as vocabulary in class. I heard it a lot, though, because they baptized 44 people. It was really amazing to see.

On a totally separate note, today I learned that my mom (real mom, not Chinese mom) is right when she says you should bring a swimming suit with you everywhere you go. Otherwise you may end up wearing something like the man on the left here:

And since I don't carry the swimsuit I brought all the way from America in my backpack, I did look like that man when I went to Beijing's swimming pool with Suzie today. It was an incentive to stay in the slimy-bottomed pool. When I got in, Suzie didn't eve know how to hold her breath under water. When we got out, she was doing the breaststroke for several meters at a time.

It was difficult to teach someone to swim in Chinese when the only related word I knew was "to swim." But like trying to attend church in Chinese, it's more the effort that counts.

A Night on the Town

2008-07-19T06:16:00.002-04:00

I've been in Beijing a few weeks now, so I think it's time I blogged about what I do on the weekends.

Here's what happens. Friday comes, the diligent go to class at 8:00 like usual. The afternoon is frittered away with fun, people eat dinner, and then everything starts like it's a new day. Plans are made, people get together, everyone in Beijing finds a taxi and goes out. There is one street that has a strip of clubs and bars which everyone knows, even the ones who can't write their own name in Chinese.

It's complicated in my case because I live with a Chinese family rather than with everyone else at school. Usually if we go out I end up just sleeping on somebody's couch rather than paying for a taxi to go home late at night.

Last night was pretty typical of my weekends. After dinner, I went to school and watched a (pirated) movie with Emma, this girl I know pretty well. Then, around 11, we met up with other people from school and rented a small van to take us to the club that someone had decided we would go to. The driver got lost, but around midnight we arrived, just when things were getting going.

I would describe the club in usual terms, but I'm struck by how similar it is to my daily bus commute: crowded beyond belief, everyone sweating, people jockeying for the seats, no one able to have a conversation. Our bodies reverberating from the music about equaled the jolting I get from the stop-and-start of the bus.

There are significant differences, however. Getting into the club was more than 100 times more expensive than boarding the bus. Surprisingly, there are more poles on the bus than in the club. People are generally more drunk in the club, and less tired. There are lasers in the clubs, and shiny decorations, and the only thing shiny on buses are people's iPods.

Oh, and the dancing. Chinese people, in general, don't know how to dance, and them being risque is what we Americans see at 7th grade school dances. But they try really hard, and since the music is mostly in English, it just feels like they're trying to be American and failing. Correspondingly, my self-esteem is always boosted by going to a club in China and knowing that I'm better than everyone because I know what "I'm bringing sexy back" means. (Well, as much as it has a meaning.)

I tire of the techno beats, smoke, lights, sound, and people pretty fast, so I left with Emma at only 2 am. She and I had a long discussion at McDonald's where we promised we wouldn't fall in love with each other, because she has a serious boyfriend and that would make things complicated. By the time I went to bed Chinese were out making baozi already for breakfast and the sun was coming up.

At 5 am, Friday--the sequel!--was over and I crashed on a couch way too small for me that felt fantastic. And that's how we do here in the Beijing.

Getting a Physical

2008-07-17T10:19:00.005-04:00

When your best hope for a passing grade relies on your perfect attendance, it's really frustrating to have to miss a day of class. On the other hand, when the biggest source of stress in your life is going to class, missing a day provides a nice break. I had to miss class today because the (seemingly only) place in Beijing to get physicals only does them in the morning.

Why get a physical? The answer isn't varsity ping-pong. My Chengdu residence permit expires at the end of the month, and as part of the expensive extension process, I had to get a physical to prove to China that I'm still healthy enough to live in their country for another month. Interestingly enough, if I were still in Chengdu I wouldn't need to do it.

But I was sad to miss the things we discuss in class:

It's hard to see in the picture, but our teacher found colored chalk and was giving us a color-coded explanation of the universe in Chinese. In red was the sun, in blue was the atmosphere surrounding the white earth, and in yellow was the ozone layer. He's about to give us a thorough explanation of how global warming works. What I find amazing is that everyone in China knows science and math. The other day my reading teacher wanted to explain a word that had to do with "rate" and she drew a graph on the board and looked like she was going to launch into calculus class for a few minutes.

The doctor's office was a slick operation. You signed in at a booth that had English, received a card with a lot of stickers, and then went to each of several offices to get yourself checked. Heart rate for one, height and weight for another, EKG (or a similar acronym that involves simulating the electric chair), vision, and so on. At each station the doctor takes one of your stickers to show that you've been taken care of. It felt strangely like a carnival. When I ran out of stickers, it was time to go.

I'm still healthy enough to not have China reject me. At the vision booth, though, they had the color-blind dot-test. On one of the circles the hidden number was perfectly clear, but the other one took me several minutes before I mostly guessed that it was 5 and ended up being correct. It reminded me of Little Miss Sunshine when the kid who's hasn't talked for several years to show his dedication to being a fighter jet pilot, and then realizes that he's disqualified because he doesn't have perfect vision. But being a teacher, a writer, and Supreme Court Justice don't take perfect vision, so I'm still safe.

After my physical (which, if anyone is curious did not include turning my head and coughing), I climbed a mountain with Suzie. And took pictures.

I think speaking in Chinese the whole way up and down a mountain must count for something, right? Because tomorrow's the last day before our finals, and I'm pretty sure I haven't done enough normal homework to make me feel comfortable. But at least now China is reasonably sure I won't die of discomfort. It's a reassuring thought.

Success!

2008-07-15T11:48:00.002-04:00

I've been in China six months now. Officially it might have been yesterday, but with the time difference between America and China (and the fact that I didn't blog yesterday), today is just as good. Six months is a long time. It's one fortieth of my life, and that's counting baby years that you don't remember.

Today was an encouraging day to hit my six month mark at, though. As I've been relating, I picked a class that was over my head in the hopes that I'd grow and have been discouraged that I'm not a giant yet. It's a rare day that I don't look like an idiot in class. And yet...

Our homework was to memorize the three sections in our lesson text to be able to recite them in class the next day. I knew that since more than half our class had been absent because a school field trip to Inner Mongolia returned late, that they would be exempt. That meant that I would definitely be called on to recite the lesson. I also knew that our teacher takes volunteers for each section, so if I could memorize the first section really well, then I would be able to have some hand in my own execution.

The urgency of knowing that I would have to speak combined with the strategic knowledge about only needing to know the first section really well and got me in a decent mood for class.

Sure enough, the field trippers were off the hook. Sure enough, he asked for volunteers. And then I recited my passage. Don't think that this was a marvelous memorization feat. I plowed through it, had a slightly embarrassing dialogue where I confessed that I messed up a phrase because I didn't really understand what it meant, and deviated at the end to give only the general idea instead of the exact words. But when I was finished, my teacher had an expression approaching a proud smile and said, "Not bad."

Then when we were discussing the topic "generation gap" in small groups, I think I accidentally said my sister was retarded. Progress is slow. In some ways, I wish I was here for longer, because I feel like just when I've gotten the hang of my teacher's expectations, the "term" is over and we have to change to a different teacher for the second four weeks.

We start discussing our last chapter tomorrow: Environmental Pollution and Protection. And as I've found out during my night of looking things up, I'm only 87 words short of being able to discuss it. Those words range from "carbon monoxide" and "erosion" to more innocuous words like "plant." You ask me how I could have taken Chinese for so long and still not know the word for plant, but I'll just tell you that I'm not surprised. When it's not "tempuratura" like back in the easy days of Spanish, which takes about ten seconds to memorize, learning 温度 and the corresponding pronunciation leaves less time for words like "plants."

However, if anyone would like to discuss air pollution in China in Chinese, give me a few days and I should be able to talk like I know something. Or at least I'll be able to recite my part of the lesson.

China Controls the World

2008-07-13T08:00:00.009-04:00

I went to the Great Wall of China yesterday.

You can't look at a wall that used to stretch for over 4,000 miles and not be impressed by China's dominion. But we were more amazed at China's control over the weather. Look at the blue sky. Marvel at the lack of pollution. I'm pretty sure on a normal day I wouldn't even have been able to see the wall from where I took that picture.

I'm not kidding about China controlling the weather. The Olympics are coming, and China isn't going to let little things like nature get in the way. They've been closing down factories outside of the city, and taken measures to reduce the number of cars on the road, and so on. What I just learned yesterday is that they can also control to some extent when it rains. Anyone with real scientific knowledge should feel free to comment here. Apparently, they can shoot chemicals into the air and make it rain, which improves visibility after that quite a bit. And it just happened to be nice weather on a Saturday, when all the visiting foreigners were free?

By the two hour ride to the Great Wall, my impression of China's ability to control the world was probably far higher than it actually is, but still. I didn't know anyone could make it rain when they wanted.

We weren't complaining. The weather was fantastic. I got a lot of good pictures.

The Great Wall of China:

And the Great Wall of China:

And the Great Wall of China:

The most amazing part is looking at one part of the Wall and wondering how in the world they kept building it over the mountains farther than the eye can see. In all of these pictures, you can see the towers where guards could live--and light the torch to stop the invaders, of course. But I think everyone knows how that works. Who hasn't seen Mulan?

There were surprisingly few people to share the Wall with. Here's one, though. Some people in my program are the ones trekking up, the people in Chinese bamboo hats are the workers who collect empty bottles (since it would look tacky to have trashcans along the way) and sell you souvenirs, and I don't know what the umbrellas are about.

And that was the Great Wall. I pass by the bird's nest (the Olympic stadium) every day on my way to and from school. I wonder if China will dominate the world in a throw-back to the good ole days of its powerful reign? At least we'll be sure to have good weather watching them try to make it happen.

*EDIT* Of course they're my pictures! The official ones aren't as good. Seriously, the picture on my entrance ticket is a close-up shot of the Wall shrouded in fog. The pictures in this post are the ones you get when China's steamrolling the world for the Olympics.

Stress Reliever

2008-07-11T10:53:00.004-04:00

I made it through another week of class and decided to go shopping tonight to celebrate. Girly? Mabye. But I've figured out that China is the best place for me to buy shorts. I'm skinnier than almost everyone in the States, but here I'm about average. Then I paid a ridiculous amount for Häagen-Dazs, and finished by buying a few DVDs.

I'm sad to say that the online high-five I offered yesterday for figuring out how to translate a number from the Chinese to the American way of organizing them goes unrewarded. You guys left me hanging? David was close, but missed a zero. (A "wiggety" is 10,000,000, which has eight zeros. Subtract one to get rid of the decimal and you should be left with seven zeros, not six. See yesterday's post and the comments.)

Today in class we talked about putting emotion into our Chinese. I found it really fascinating, because I've always wondered how to be sarcastic in Chinese. I'm not very good at it. Speaking of sarcasm, a little treat for you all: the video I promised several months ago of the sports day at my school in Chengdu. I think my tone of voice was a little over-the-top, but you still might enjoy watching my little documentary.

I'm going to go marvel at my new pair of stress-relieving shorts.

My Progress

2008-07-10T08:56:00.004-04:00

I'm killing myself to learn Chinese (it's probably bad that I've proudly noted the 1/4 mark of my 8-week session), I should at least be giving progress reports.

They say that you should take foreign languages to understand a different way of looking at the world. I think Chinese is so different that it should count as three languages. For example, in Chinese, they don't even divide numbers the same way we do. Those crazy Europeans mix up their commas and decimals to end up with numbers like 533,8 for the number close to 534, and we Americans think that's pretty off the wall. China kicks it up several notches.

In English, we make a new unit every three digits: after tens and hundreds we get a thousand, after ten thousand and one hundred thousand we get a million, after ten million and one hundred million we get a billion, and so on.

In Chinese, they divide things into groups of four digits. The first digit is the tens, then the hundreds, then the thousands, then the new unit, which in Chinese is called a wan but what I'm going to call a jiggety. Then you have ten jiggety, one hundred jiggety, a thousand jiggety, and then a new unit: in Chinese, it's yi, but I'm going to call it a wiggety.

For relatively small numbers things aren't too complicated. You get used to the idea that one hundred jiggety means a million, that houses in the States cost tens of jiggety, and so on. But then you read an article about GDP in China (in Chinese, after your reading teacher has given you a crash course in vocabulary related to business), and you're suddenly hit with huge numbers that are difficult to translate. If you hear, for example, the number "five thousand seventy seven point four wiggety," how much is that? An online high five for the first person to comment the answer.

Speaking of the words "how much," I had an embarrassing encounter today. I was outside of my apartment juggling when a bored security guard realizes that I have skills. I pause my music when I see he wants to ask me a question, and respond based mainly on hearing "how much" in his question. I'll relate our exchange the way an impartial Chinese observer would hear it.

Guard: "How much time have you spent practicing all that?"
Foreigner: "Mm, each of these juggling clubs costs about $30, American."

My poor conversation skills didn't stop him from calling over his buddy, who was drunk on duty. The two guards spent several minutes protecting the apartment complex a few feet from me and distracted me a lot with their interest.

Nevertheless, I think my Chinese is getting better. My preparation, if not my skill, now exceeds a few people in class who love Chinese partying more than Chinese vocab. Almost every night I'm convinced that it's too hard and that I can't possibly finish everything. Then I go to sleep and it usually works out the next morning.

My Chinese family rounds out my learning. Often I get frustrated when I can't understand what my Mom says, because I'm spending so much time in class and still see no progress with her. But when I think about it, in class I'm learning expressions like "a long night means lots of bad dreams" (to convince people not to put things off) and not "when you take a crap, you don't need to throw the toilet paper into the trash can because we have a fancy toilet that can handle it."

I'm really excited that tomorrow is Friday.

Forbidden City

2008-07-09T09:55:00.006-04:00

I don't have anything exciting to say about Suzie (even the most enthralling text message conversations are limited by my time and Chinese ability), and I'm not sure that that kind of information is what people are interested in when they read this blog. So I'm going to talk about the Forbidden City.

It was a cool idea. "Let's make a city, but then decide that we're more special and live in a special inner city with our own walls and moat and not let anyone come in for hundreds of years." But then the exclusivity is over and everyone realizes that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil only features fruit.

There were some buildings. People used to live in them, like most old places I've visited in China. That's really all I got out of it. And Tiananmen Square, which is adjacent, was unrevolutionary.

They did have a garden there, where I posed.

And there was an artificial little fountain, with a sign on the side.

But this is the worst translated sign in all of Beijing, since they've gotten it together for the Olympics, and it's not even that bad.

I guess I should have one picture of the actual Forbidden City itself, though, so it looks like I've written a detailed review of the place.

It's a pretty popular spot for people to visit. But if I were a travel guide people trusted, I wouldn't recommend it.

A Date? Or Two?

2008-07-07T11:23:00.002-04:00

When you only have two months, you gotta act fast. Friday after class I met a girl, Sun Wei, on the bus. After my Chinese Mom was worried that she was a prostitute, I bluntly asked her, "Are you a bad person?" She didn't appreciate my thoroughness and we had our first fight--by text message, because with background noise, reception problems, and my bad Chinese, I couldn't understand anything she said by phone.

We were back in the green by Saturday, though (and Mom said that after considering, she mostly just wanted to make sure anyone I met on the bus wouldn't be escorted into the house, which was fine with me). I decided that since it was the weekend, I should make a move and invite her to come do karaoke with the people from our program. Miraculously, I communicated where to meet, we met, and arrived at the apartment where we were all hanging out before going karaoke-ing. All my friends thought she was a cool girl, and we spent several minutes lovingly brainstorming an English name for her: Suzie. My closest friend, Emma, speaks hardly any Chinese, but really wanted things to succeed for us, so she spoke some horrific Chinese and I translated between them a bit.

It must have been boring for Suzie, since she doesn't speak any English, and most people in our program speak worse Chinese than I do. She pulled me aside once and said she felt--something, I didn't fully understand the word--and that she wanted me to try to include her more. She ended up having to leave before we actually left for karaoke, but that worked out well because we only sang songs in English. So the time went pretty well.

The question mark in the title of this post, though, reflects that I don't really know what this time meant. I'm hardly capable of a relationship in America, let alone in a culture I have little experience with. I don't know what her expectations were, and I don't have the language skills to ask very well. We were definitely together at the party, but we were with lots of people, and that was the lowest level of interaction we could have but still see each other.

Whatever Suzie thought, I had a pretty good time, and was glad that other people who haven't been deprived of Western beauty for several months still thought she was pretty.

This is all further complicated by what I admit have been mixed messages from me. I get her number, then question her integrity, then ask her to come to a party--then I freaked out afterward and said that since I thought she probably wasn't a Christian, I just wanted us to be friends. Then she replied with something that seemed like she was a Christian? I kept asking questions to figure out what she meant, and finally she asked why I was so inquisitive about that. "Well," I said. "I don't want to have a girlfriend who's not a Christian."

I sent this message off without much thought, and then realized that looked at a certain way, it might imply that we already were going out. She didn't answer for several minutes, while I thought about how I was flirting with a culture in which relationships are so unspoken that just asking a girl if she has a boyfriend can be considered asking her out. Suzie finally replied: "You're only here for two months, right?"

So then it seemed like I was the impetuous one and she was the reasonable one, but I quickly texted back (using a recently learned vocab word), "I think I spoke too candidly... sorry." She laughed it off, text-message style, and we said goodnight.

This afternoon she didn't have work so we went to an arcade and had a lot of fun. As we were leaving, she told me that I'm way more reserved than Americans she's heard of. In fact, I'm worse than Chinese people at looking like I'm having a good time. I tried to tell her that I'm not good at smiling, but I don't know if she believed me.

I feel like this is all kind of insignificant relationship stuff to be talking about, but maybe the fact that it's with someone I can barely communicate with makes it more interesting?

4th of July in China

2008-07-04T22:11:00.003-04:00

Happy 4th of July! Coincidentally, this is my 100th post, so there's a double celebration in order. My day had a lot to it, so I'll move quickly to fit it all in.

Maybe I had so many things happen because my day lasts so long. I woke up at 6:30 to be at the bus stop by 7:00, wasn't late for school, and only made a fool of myself in class the first time I answered questions. ("I don't understand what you just said," my teacher told me frankly after my attempt to make a sentence didn't fit the realities of Chinese grammar. "Are you even speaking Chinese?" He doesn't play around.)

It was only during one of our breaks that I realized it was the fourth of July. I tried to get in a patriotic mood, but it was difficult when most of my classmates aren't American.

After lunch I got on the bus to go home. It was the hottest day of the week plus that I've been here, and more humid than any day I've seen in Orlando--and that's saying something. I could see the humidity. So when I got on the bus, I wanted a seat but I also wanted to be near an open window. I shifted chairs once when it was available, and then the girl next to me noticed that I was eager to cool off. She offered me a tissue to wipe my face with, I said thank you, she said you're welcome.

That normally is about the most interaction I have with people on buses. You just don't talk to people on a bus in China. So me and this girl next to me sat there for a few more stops until I realized that the booklet she was perusing was the book of all the bus stops in Beijing. "That looks really useful," I said to her. "Where can you buy one?"

She told me, insisted that I take her copy of the bus stop book, and we started chatting. She's about my age, working now after she came to Beijing from somewhere else in China. I think, based primarily on the anti-cancer pink ribbon she had on a flyer-turned-fan and how much she said the word "doctor," that she goes around convincing Chinese women to get mammograms. I think.

I tried to tell her about myself, but often my reach exceeds my grasp. "Sorry," I said one time when I couldn't put together a sentence. "I speak so badly."

"You don't speak badly," she insisted. "I just can't understand what you say a lot of the time."

She was actually a pretty girl, so I enjoyed talking to her for the rest of my ride. Right before I got off, she realized that she was riding the wrong direction, so we happened to get off the bus at the same stop. "Here, take this," I said to her in what I hoped was a playful tone of voice. I offered her the bus route book. "It's very useful." That's right, I made a joke in Chinese. When we got off the bus, I started to walk away, kicking myself for not asking for her number in awkward Chinese. Then she called me back and asked me for mine.

We exchanged numbers, got our names straightened out (hers is Sun Wei), and then I came back home feeling pretty good about myself.

And then I tried to get advice about the situation from my Mom. "What?" she says as she cuts up vegetables to make jiaozi. "You met some girl on the bus? What are you thinking? You don't just talk to people on buses in China."

I was thrown off that she wasn't congratulating me on my prowess.

"She could be a prostitute! And now she knows where we live!"

I said that actually she only knows what bus stop I get off at, but that didn't help very much.

Mom continued to tell me why it was a horrible idea, and I understood practically nothing she said. "Get it?" she would say. I would say no. She'd rephrase and I wouldn't understand that either.

I got really frustrated and confused because I really thought this girl was nice, but the vocabulary I've been learning doesn't include words to discuss the probability that someone is or is not a prostitute. I could only say that there are good people who ride buses, too.

Our conversation was left on that unclear note because I had to leave to hang out with my friends. By the time I got to school, all the precipitation that had been building up during the day was being poured out. I felt like I was in a movie walking from the bus stop to the rendezvous apartment, holding my umbrella in front of me because of the wind, getting the bottom part of my pants soaked and risking my umbrella ripping.

Eventually, a soggy group of eight of us went out. We ate dinner, then went to a bar and tried to play a drinking game in Chinese, then went to a club.

"You know," I told the taxi driver on our way there. Today is an American holiday."

"No, I didn't know," the driver said.

"Yeah, it's when we broke away from England." Somehow that didn't satisfy my need to proclaim America's greatness like fireworks would have.

It was my first time going out in Beijing, and we had a really fun time. It's exhausting to have no idea what's going on all the time. Even when I understand things in class or at home, I still don't really understand what people mean when they say things. My mom had some final injunction about the girl I met before I left, but I hadn't understood that either. It was nice to be with a group of English-speakers dancing to songs in English.

There were several Americans at the club, and one of them finally took it into his own hands to celebrate the Fourth of July. In one of the most awesome, vulgar displays I've seen, this guy taped a small American flag to his crotch, stood on the edge of the second floor overlooking everyone below, and started dancing in the style popular these days where the main component is hip thrusts. All the Americans cheered, and once I figured out what he meant by it, I felt surprisingly patriotic. Now that's prowess! I thought.

要求很严格

2008-07-03T03:57:00.005-04:00

I figure if I'm studying Chinese all day, and this blog is supposed to describe how my life is (although how much of an "adventure" studying is, I admit I'm not sure), then I figure writing the title of this post in Chinese is also appropriate.

The words come from the lesson text which we've all memorized and mean "His demands are really intense." In our lesson, it relates to how Chinese fathers place a ton of pressure on their kid, because they want them to make something of themselves and have only one kid to do it. But in our class, our teacher's demands are pretty high, too. Our teacher explains that if we just paraphrase the text then it doesn't help us very much. Our working vocabulary will only increase if we can actually use the words and grammar patterns in context.

So without saying "memorize these two pages of really tough Chinese sentences," he's said "memorize these two pages of really tough Chinese sentences." Yesterday I spent all night from dinner until about eleven o'clock memorizing the passages so when he called on me this morning I would be able to live up to his standards. I think I actually wasn't too far off from that.

This week so far, though, I've spent so much time on that lesson that I've ignored my listening and reading classes. It's not a lack of effort--it's a lack of time. I'm getting more accustomed now to being in Chinese mode for four hours every morning, but it still tires me out so that I can't think about Chinese until several hours after lunch. And by the time I look up words for several hours (no exaggeration), I don't have any more time to go over the words we're supposed to be learning for our other class.

Almost everyone in my class grew up speaking Chinese, so for them memorizing in Chinese comes very naturally. Not so for me. Our teacher is really intimidating, too. The only example I can think of is one that no one but my brother and sister will understand, but I'll give it anyway. When we were little we took swimming lessons in the summer, and the way Mrs. Graves talked is the same way my teacher does, except he's not fat and he talks in Chinese.

But things are getting better. I broke down and bought an electronic dictionary yesterday, like everyone else in my class. I must be a serious Chinese student now. It cost about $125, and is amazing. I'll show it to you when I get back to the States. The definitions are really good, the stylus works well for writing characters, the interface isn't too bad. It's almost a pleasure to use, which is good since I'm going to be spending so much time with it.

If I haven't already explained the traditional way you look up a character yet, let me do so. Let's take the first word of the title of this post as an example.

First, you have to find what's called the "radical." I wrote a whole post about radicals a while ago, so I won't cover them again, but sometimes it's hard to say which part is the radical. In our example, is it the top half with two vertical lines coming from one horizontal line into a box? Or is it the bottom half, with three strokes that make a triangle in the middle? In this case, the radical is the top half.

Then you count the number of strokes the radical has. Here, to make the top half it takes six strokes.

Then you open your dictionary and find the number that corresponds to your radical. There are over 200 radicals, so that's why the radicals are arranged by number of strokes.

Then you count how many strokes are left. Here, the bottom has three strokes left.

Then you turn in your dictionary to all of the words that have your radical and your number of remaining ("remnant") strokes. So here we'd be looking at a list of words with this certain 6-stroke radical and three more strokes.

Then you find the word and turn to the page number where the definition is given.

It's only at that point, after six steps, that you discover that the word is pronounced "yao" with first tone (although, you will read, it's usually pronounced with fourth tone).

Now, with my sweet electronic dictionary, I just pop it open, write the character, and despite my sloppy, non-native handwriting, the dictionary will recognize what word I've written and display it. Click on the entry I want and I'm there.

Here's a picture of me in my Chinese house playing with it:

The reason I don't have a shirt on is because it's really hot and when my Mom said, "Why don't you take your shirt off? You're inside; you don't have to be so formal." I couldn't resist.

Have to get back to my homework. Looking forward to the weekend.

Chinese Chinese Chinese

2008-06-30T08:30:00.002-04:00

Nope, I'm not trying to spam Google into thinking my blog is awesome for anything that has to do with Chinese. The title only reflects how my life seems to consist of only Chinese right now.

The classes at the Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU for short) are strange for two reasons. First, we have separate classes--speaking class, listening class, reading class--but we have the same classmates for each of them; it's the teachers that change. That's a weird way to do things because a lot of the people here are ethnically Chinese, so they speak fluent Chinese, but are just illiterate. And a few people are Japanese, so characters don't give them a problem, it's the pronunciation and grammar they need to work on. And I'm American and don't know anything. So this seems like the perfect place to let the really good speakers take a really low-level reading class, and so on. But they don't, which means I know some Chinese who are in the lowest level and some who are near the top, even though they know the same amount.

The other weird thing is that they rank classes from A (you don't know ni from hao) to E (where you watch the news and discuss it the next day). So I'm working my way up to failing. I was originally placed in C level, but I already covered most of the curriculum and my main teacher wasn't very good, so I decided to bump up today.

And now I'm in D. This is the most intense class I've ever been in. Even in C, the teachers didn't speak any English, but now that I'm in D they expect that anything they say that they think isn't complicated we should understand. My class is almost all Korean and Chinese, and everyone in there is amazing. The only other white guy is an American who now lives in Italy teaching English and Chinese, but is here because he thought that his speaking wasn't quite up to par.

And the craziest part--and I say this having been in Chinese classes for two years now, and four years of language classes in high school--is that we actually speak in Chinese during the break. In C, we would've felt like a chump for doing that, but now in D I feel pressure to have international friends in Chinese. Even my break isn't a break.

So here's why I want to stay in the class. (I say this, by the way, only being about 1/8 of the way through my homework for tomorrow, and if I don't finish then I'll obviously switch down and regret writing this paragraph.) The teachers are awesome and the workload is heavy. My speaking teacher was really pushing us. There's only one D class, and today it had too many people, so he kept saying, "If you think this is too hard, get out." We'd be reading things that were a little over my head, and he'd say, "I know you guys all think this reading is easy. It is. this first paragraph is A-level. But knowing how to read is nothing! Tomorrow we're going to be discussing it with the book closed. If you can't handle that, switch to a lower level."

I'm going to have to bring my A-game (or D-game, as it were) every day. After three hours of class today (I missed the first hour changing my schedule) I was exhausted.

I think, though, that if I can survive, I'll learn a lot. Maybe by the end of the eight weeks I won't even be the worst in the class, although I don't really care if I am or not. I just need to know all the words that everyone is using and if I can start accomplishing that, I think it'll be a huge accomplishment.

That's my self pep-talk, because my elation at being rigorously challenged didn't even last the 3 days I thought it would. I started on my homework and already discouragement crept into my mind as the vocab definitions did. I'm a little stressed because I don't know how to eat to Mom's satisfaction. If I had three stomachs, I think I would, but now I just feel like I'm wasting things that I didn't sign up to eat anyway. And I realized that the long discussion I had with her where we were talking about American and Chinese trends with love and dating... every time I thought I was explaining my views by using the word "Christian," as in "I'm a Christian so I don't want to have sex before I'm married," I was actually saying "civilized." Play that back and I feel so embarrassed at what she must have thought I was saying.

Geography Lesson

2008-06-28T10:34:00.005-04:00

My five weeks of blissful (and blister-ful, see the entries about my sunburn) traveling have come to an end. I'm in Beijing now being pummeled with Chinese at home and school. But I start this entry with a map of where I went, partially to congratulate myself on having been so adventurous, and partly because I'm pretty sure even people who read my blog regularly don't know where Chengdu is.

I've reopened a years-old account on Photobucket just so I could upload a high-resolution version of this picture, so you should be able to click it and view it a lot larger. You'll notice Chengdu is about halfway up just to the right of the crease. That's where I lived all spring.

Geographically, Chengdu is in about the middle of China, but you'll see the whole brown part, which is Lonely Planet's rough topographical map, and that's Tibet. No one lives there. North of Tibet is another huge region called Xinjiang. I went there, but it's not really the same as the rest of China. So the most Chinese part of China ends at about Chengdu, which is why the school I went to was called "The Southwest School for Minorities."

But enough about Chengdu. From there follow the dotted line for Alex and my flight to Urumqi in the far northwest. We went to Kashgar together, and back again. Then Alex left and I had the great idea to go to Kyrgyzstan. I flew to Bishkek without a visa, which I successfully got in the airport, spent most of my time getting a visa but had time to visit nearby Karakol Lake, and then went to Almaty and met all of Borat's relatives (a joke for readers under 35). I took a brutal 30+ hour train ride back to Urumqi, then went on a multi-day public transport marathon to Turpan, then Dunchuang, then Lanzhou, then Xi'an, then back to Chengdu.

I stayed in Chengdu long enough to ship my luggage to Beijing, then flew to Yunnan province, where I enjoyed Lijiang and nearby Tiger Leaping Gorge, then went to Shangri-la, then bussed south to Dali, and then to Kunming.

I stayed four hours longer than I wanted to in Kunming because right when our flight to Beijing was going to come in, a storm was pouring its fury on the city and the plane was rerouted. By the time the storm stopped, the plane came, and they cleaned it, it was pretty late at night, but my sketchy study abroad program came through and had a driver waiting for me at the airport when I arrived at 3 am.

And then I was in Beijing.

This is Beijing on a sunny day. If I think these two months will pass as if in a haze, it's because they will. I hear that walking around in Beijing for a day is the equivalent of smoking 70 cigarettes. That's a pretty high number. After being here for a few days, though, I can relate. I didn't have a problem with pollution in Chengdu, I didn't feel it in Xi'an, but I step outside here and I feel like I'm licking the sidewalk every time I take a breath.

Beijing, while I'm talking about geography, is similar to Washington D.C. It doesn't belong to a province; it just is. Officially, I think, it's a "municipality," but China has so many special cases (Tibet is one of five "autonomous regions," Chongqing is one of three "municipalities," Taiwan is something else, I think Macao has yet another title) that I can't say for sure.

Beijing the city (what New York City is to New York) is huge. It's organized into five concentric "ring" roads. Chengdu had three. I live in the north-northwest part of the fourth ring road, and it takes forty minutes by bus just to get to the north part of fourth ring road where I have classes.

And Beijing the municipality is the size of Belgium. So I can travel all over China (and have) but two months won't be enough time to see everything one city has to offer. And that's China for you.

Homestay Dinner

2008-06-27T10:14:00.002-04:00

The Internet is moving too slow for my life right now. I'm skipping the last few days' worth of interesting things to talk about dinner tonight with my homestay family in Beijing.

The family I'm staying with is a mom, a husband who's home in the evenings, and a son about my age who I haven't met yet because he's still at college. We ate dinner together for the first time tonight, and this is how it went.

My Chinese mom (who I'm just going to call "Mom") cooked food that I told her I was used to when I lived in Chengdu. While she cooked, I sat in the kitchen doing homework and trying to have a conversation with her.

She served up the food, each dish on a plate in the middle of the table, asked me how it was. Providing some manly unsentimentality Dad said to her, "Don't ask him how it is. Even if it's horrible he's still going to say it's good. You have to wait until after the meal, and then you just look at which plate has the least left to see which was your best dish."

We ate. I listened to them talk about things I didn't understand but which might have included affirmative action in Chinese colleges (since she's a teacher). Then they started talking about the names of the food we were eating, and it was remarkable how familiar the flow of the argument sounded.

"So," Dad says. "You told him there's spicy chicken, chicken with vegetables, and sweet-sauce chicken. What was your argument again?"

"That he can tell what kind of flavor it is by paying attention to the beginning part. Look at this," Mom said, pointing. "Spicy chicken is spicy. Sweet-sauce chicken is sweet. You only need to understand the first part to understand the flavor."

"Ah, a teacher being a teacher. I don't think it's that simple, though. What would you call this?" Dad points at one of the dishes we're having.

Mom says something that isn't what he wanted to hear.

"Well, you might call it that, but everyone else is going to call it Green Beans and Chicken. But there's more chicken than there are green beans."

"Well, that's true. It's only a generalization."

Now, don't think that I know words like "generalization" or "affirmative action" in Chinese. I'm more working on "green beans" and "argument." But that's the reconstruction of what I heard in Chinese. Isn't that exciting?

They looked at me and asked what I was smiling about. I said I was just happy that I followed what they were saying, and raised my arms in triumph after having struggled to be in Chinese mode practically all day. I don't know if they understood.

Later they tried to include me in the conversation, and we talked about how often college students talk to their parents.

"I talk to my mom maybe twice a week," I said. "She likes to email me, so whenever I get an email from her, I just email her back. Short messages, you know."

"Oh," Mom says. "That's who you were emailing last night when you borrowed Dad's computer."

"Yeah," I said. Then I started paraphrasing my email in Chinese (which I will now paraphrase back into English). "'Just got to my Chinese family's house. They're pretty awesome. Will.'"

My grammar in translating this wasn't impeccable, of course, so Mom had to repeat it in good Chinese before Dad understood, but they were very touched. "Thank you," Mom said. "Tell them we say hi."

Then after dinner we drank tea. Mom tried to teach about how each tea has a different flavor and thereby a different way to prepare and drink it. I fumbled my way through a cup of some kind of tea. Mom poured some more water into the tea pot.

"You know," Mom said. "I think the second batch has the best flavor."

"Nah," said Dad. "I like the third cup best myself. The second is still too bitter."

"Really? I think the second is fine."

It was getting late, so I moved to go to my room. "Make sure to tell me what time you're going on your field trip tomorrow," Mom said.

"Yeah, I still need to text my classmates about that because I wasn't paying attention."

"Okay, goodnight."

"Goodnight."

And there you have it. A perfect family portrait with one member grafted in.

Stone Forest

2008-06-24T05:45:00.008-04:00

I've seen lots of things traveling in the last month and a half, but possibly my favorite was Stone Forest. The name explains it pretty well. Imagine several thousand natural rock pillars sticking out of the ground. Or better yet, look at a picture of it.

Over the years, some of the rocks got lodged in awkward positions.

I usually don't like people to be in my picture, but here the perspective of random tourists at the bottom might help you understand the scale of the location. Many of the rocks were fifty feet tall (with the tallest being ninety feet, according to Lonely Planet). At the entrance there was a technical description of how the rock formations came into being, but I understood that even less than the average translation.

There were paths all over, and many of them weren't taken up by the innumerable Chinese tours (which are just as obnoxious as Chinese tours in America, by the way). I found one path that led to the top of a high rock and got this picture looking into the distance.

A note about my hat. I'm glad April and Kristie like it, because all the Chinese think it's ridiculous. Now that my language skills can recognize when I'm being talked about, I only ever hear people talking about my hat. I bought it in Kashgar, so it's legitimately Chinese—but maybe too Chinese. I think it's a hat similar to the kind Mao wore, and any time a foreigner wears a Mao hat it must be hilarious.

Something about me, though, attracted all the Chinese ladies. I couldn't leave a rock before a random Chinese tourist asked if they could take a picture with me. After my third picture at the same place, one guy started joking (probably jealously) about how I should charge. Maybe it was my sweet shirt with Naxi hieroglyphics. Or maybe looking at rocks made everything else look exciting, too.

The rocks really were amazing, though. Some had small lakes surrounding them.

Others were so strange that people had named them for their shape.

I did get the impression that for the people who worked there every day, the limestone lost its allure.

I was not so jaded. I hope the pictures convey some of the grandeur of the garden. Stone Forest was a must-see.

Morning McDonald's

2008-06-23T10:35:00.004-04:00

Today I went to one of the best sights I've seen ever.

But this post is about the morning, which actually began last night. At 9 in the evening I boarded a horrible sleeper bus from Dali to Kunming. There was the usual problem: the bed was too short. But they also played music until around midnight, trolled Dali for more passengers for an hour before we actually left, and then--ironincally--didn't take long enough to get to Kunming, so we arrived at maybe 4 in the morning. I'm not sure exactly what time, because I was so tired that I looked around, kept sleeping, then woke up at half past seven to see we were still in the same parking lot. I asked where we were and disembarked a little embarrassed.

I walked around trying to figure out what I wanted to do today, since it was still so early in the morning. I saw a McDonald's, really needed a taste of home, and went in hoping that an Egg McMuffin wouldn't taste much different in China than it did before debate tournaments in high school.

Good ole Mai Dang Lao. It didn't. I ate 17 kuai worth of America with my #2 meal, which at $2.50 is a really cheap meal in the States and an incredibly expensive one in China. They had corporate decorations of appropriately diverse people in McBliss, a computer with Internet, and even two other traveling Americans. The workers had a bad attitude and slight smell, which just made me miss the branch in Waterford.

McDonald's in China is practically the same as in the States except that they get offended if you try to throw away your own trash. They also have weird menu items (like stuffed hash browns, which I barely avoided this morning) but all the normal ones, too.

So I might not have even mentioned my trip, but I've never shaved in McDonald's. Until this morning, at least. The overnight bus ride left me feeling pretty gross, so I just took my dopkit out of my backpack, walked over to the nice sinks, and hygiened myself up.

At least I bought something.

Biking to Baisha

2008-06-21T22:15:00.006-04:00

While I was in Shangri-la, I met two people who knew each other from Shanghai and we traveled together for the last few days. One is Rachid, an ethnically Moroccan Muslim who lives in Amsterdam. The other is Lizzie, a really pretty girl who goes to Yale and is in Shanghai this summer interning at a gay rights organization. (Coincidentally, one of Lizzie's roommates this upcoming year is the daughter of the guy who made the video I learned to juggle from. Weird.)

We had a whole day in Lijiang together before they went back to Shanghai and I moved on to another city around here. We decided that we would bike to a nearby town, Baisha. Lonely Planet, the best travel guide ever, is usually accurate, but we knew that it was not an "easy 15-20 minute" bike ride there. Lizzie and Rachid had already been and told me that it was more like twice that.

The first challenge was getting out of town. Lijiang's streets in the old city all look the same, and they have practically no street signs once you get to the new part of town. There were about five street signs in the entire city (which I think we covered by bike several times before we found the right way), and I took a picture of each of them, because they had the standard Chinese characters and pinyin pronunciation, but the signs also had Naxi at the top, the only living pictographic language.

Once we were definitely biking toward Baisha, Rachid fell behind and called us a few minutes later to say that he was going to stay there because the guy he met said there was about to be a bull fight. Lizzie and I couldn't make sense of that and kept going, but Rachid showed us pictures later of the bull fight and I'm a little disappointed I missed it.

Lizzie and I had enough excitement on our own, though. Halfway there, her bike broke. I knew when we were renting our bikes that they weren't in the best condition, but I didn't expect the crankshaft to fall off. Obviously we didn't have the tools to screw it back in, so after we tried to force it on a few times and have her ride it like that, we gave up and hailed passing vehicles.

A minivan stopped and we explained the situation, mostly by holding up the pedal and crankshaft. The guy told us in Chinese, "You can't fit the bike in here, but I can take the girl and then you can just bike while guiding the other one." So Lizzie hopped in the van, I navigated my bike with one hand and hers with my other, and away we went (Lizzie in the van at a much faster pace than me).

Twenty minutes later, I approached the intersection to Baisha where Lizzie was chilling by the side of the road taking pictures of my sweaty effort.

We walked our bikes the rest of the way, ate lunch in the village while her bike was being repaired, and then slowly started back. We lost the way several more times before we arrived back at the hostel. I was unsurprisingly sunburned and grouchy, but we had done it. We had biked to Baisha. Lizzie's bike was returned without charge.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

2008-06-20T22:04:00.010-04:00

In pictures:

The gorge:

Scenery along the trail:

Mountains on the side opposite our hike:

The five of us who did the hike (do you like my Thai shirt?):

Me, day two:

A waterfall we had to go over:

And while crossing it:

Then I felt like cooling off:

Then we were done and it was on to new friends and fun in Shangri-la:

Travel Strategy

2008-06-17T20:07:00.005-04:00

I arrived in Yunnan province yesterday morning and it's made me reconsider how I'm traveling. Before, I assumed I could see everything there was to see in China in this five week or so summer break. But I'm down to ten days now before I have to show up in Beijing and I don't think that's going to happen any more.

The town I'm in, Lijiang, looks like a page out of a nostalgic old book on China. The narrow cobbled streets twist and turn so that last night we were afraid to leave because we weren't sure we could get back, and seriously contemplated acting out Hansel and Gretel in China. Here's a picture of a woman selling live eels in a bucket, and then one of locals haggling over vegetables (can you tell I have wireless Internet access?):

The scenery is gorgeous here, and I'm beginning to think that in order to "do" Yunnan, you have to sit for a few weeks, relaxing and enjoying the view.

On one hand, I want to see what China has to offer. On the other hand, I don't want to spend a lot of money to gloss over all the best parts. Maybe it won't actually be a problem. We're about to go on a two day hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge, which has been given rave reviews by my friends, and then probably go to Shangri-la, which is supposed to be another place where you can just soak up China.

I say "we" in the last paragraph so naturally; Lijiang is a haven for backpackers and I've already become friends with a group of about six or eight. We have fairly compatible schedules, so we might be together for several days.

Not to describe things too romatically; this is a picture of a bug (not a butterfly, the Chinese woman running things here said) that attached itself to one guy's shirt. This is not a tattoo (although we did tell him that it would make a good "tramp stamp" to commemorate the event).

So hopefully I figure out a good travel strategy.

Having Chinese Friends

2008-06-16T10:55:00.002-04:00

The last few days I've been saying goodbye at rapid-fire pace. I said goodbye to my language partner and gave her my US phone number so she can call me when she gets to America this fall and needs help. I said goodbye to a family here who's moving back to the States. Then I said goodbye to my Chinese family, the Xiongs, and tried to explain how much they had helped me, but I don't know if my Chinese carried the thought. I said goodbye to everyone at the Sunday Fellowship, and to the few people left from my spring program.

And then this afternoon, after I mailed the suitcase I left here to Beijing, I went to say goodbye to the Chinese people James and I met when we climbed Emei Mountain, right before the earthquake. They live in a rural county outside of Chengdu, but after a lot of hard work (and frustration at how inadequate my Chinese is) I met up with them in their home town.

Dinner together was fantastic. The whole spring semester I didn't have many Chinese friends because my Chinese wasn't good enough to have friends who didn't speak English. I was too much hassle for myself and them. I expected my time to be like that, where I would be lost and unhappy and they wouldn't know how to say things that I could understand, but my Chinese is not what it once was!

As much as I feel how bad my Chinese is--and I feel it, like today when someone complimented how good my Chinese was and I didn't understand what they meant--my Chinese is also almost up to the challenge of having friends. I can just imagine arriving in Beijing in a week or two and being able to make friends with people I meet there!

So we had dinner, and they carried the conversation, obviously, but I could keep up pretty well as we talked about the earthquake, and natural disasters in general, and the Euro Cup (learning Chinese keeps you on top of world events). I told them about my travels, and they eventually understood some of my stories. We ate weird food, and I ate some vegetables that were just supposed to be for show, but they just laughed with me. I toasted various things and was introduced to old friends who happened by the restaurant.

If they all jumped off a cliff, I would have too. As it is, I'm the example that kids shouldn't give into peer pressure:

Then they drove me back themselves, and we were talking about things the whole way back. A sunroof is a "sky window" in Chinese, which sounded so logical that I promptly forgot the English word for a few minutes. They told me the names they had given themselves in English. I tried to explain that even though in Chinese any word can be a name, that's not the same in English. So no, Rena and Yook were not suitable names.

We promised to see each other again if we ever happened by Chengdu or Orlando. And then we said goodbye, and it was like when real friends say goodbye. A fitting end for my last day in Chengdu.

Contacting Me

2008-06-15T23:35:00.003-04:00

To make it easier to pump me for information, stalk me, or hawk Viagra, my email address should now be viewable somewhere on this page. I can't see my blog again now that I'm back in China, but my email address should be there. And just so everyone knows it, you can reach me at: wpenman@gmail.com

I thought it would automatically show up, but maybe to protect super-famous bloggers who don't want their inboxes flooded by adoring fans Google set the default not to show your email. I'm not super-famous yet, so email me away.

The O'clock Effect

2008-06-14T12:59:00.003-04:00

When I traveled to Guizhou with Alex during spring break, I noticed that all the hotels had a price board which, in addition to "deluxe suite," "single," "triple," etc., also included the option of an "o'clock room." Alex and I discussed what the o'clock room could be used for, and could only think of prostitution. But now, a few months and many more o'clock-able hotels later, I have discovered how to use the o'clock room.

Before I continue, I just want to wonder for a sentence or two at how all of China has become convinced that "hourly room" should be translated "o'clock room." I think Chinese-English dictionaries should include a special entry for shijian fang.

Here's how it happened. I was in Lanzhou waiting to board my sleeper train to Xi'an. The night before I had taken a sleeper train from Dunhuang, where I climbed sand dunes and explored cave art that survived because in the desert there isn't much moisture. The night before that I had taken a sleeper bus from Turpan. Before I boarded the bus in Turpan I took a shower, but that still left me in Lanzhou two overnight trips on public transportation and two days of sweatiness later. Among other things, the white dress shirt I was wearing had soy sauce spilled on it from dumplings gone wrong.

I thought to myself: I really need to take a shower and change my clothes. I don't need a full-blown hotel, though, because I'm leaving for Xi'an in a few hours. I only need about an hour to get freshened up. That's when I thought of the o'clock room.

I found a hotel, negotiated for a reasonable rate (30 kuai isn't steep when you're desperate), and was the proud owner of an o'clock room—for an hour, at least.

The bathroom light didn't turn on, but that didn't faze me. I took a fantastic shower in the dark and then had energy to consider the rest of my appearance.

I hadn't shaved since leaving Kyrgyzstan, so my whole time in Almaty my facial hairs had time to show me what they could do. I was rather impressed with myself to see that my upper lip had definitively more hairs than I have fingers. And the hairs on my chinny-chin-chin were working to complete a formidable (quarter of an inch long) goatee. The rest of my face was barren except for a small oasis of ambitious mole-hairs, but I think a beard would swallow me, so I'm okay with that for now.

Still, I was overwhelmed by my sudden influx of masculinity and shaved it all off. I did take a picture, though, because I think I'm slowly developing what I hear is called a "tan."

All my efforts to look presentable must have had some effect, because the next morning in Xi'an when I was waiting to take a picture in front of the Terracotta Warriors (along with more foreigners in one place than I've seen since coming to China), there was some pretty American girl there distracted from her picture because, I promise, she was looking at me.

It's all about the o'clock room.

Mercurial China

2008-06-11T23:23:00.003-04:00

I really just wanted to post today to use the word "mercurial" (changeable) in the title. I think it's one of about ten words that I've ever learned from a vocabulary list they gave us at school (another one is "draconian"--isn't it a great word?). I can even use it in a sentence: China's policy on anything remotely having to do with Tiblet is mercurial.

I've been wanting to go to Xiahe, a small town in Gansu province that's a microcosm of Tiblet: prayer wheels, native people, beautiful scenery. The only problem is that China is freaked out.

I'm used to China's paranoia, though. What bothers me is how no one knows what China's official stance on things is. I came by train to Lanzhou last night (and it was a very comfortable ride, by the way) and talked to several people about my plans. Lanzhou is only four or five hours away from Xiahe, so I thought talking to people who lived there would be helpful.

One guy said he thought foreigners weren't allowed, his friend said she thought they were allowed now. There was also a girl who works as a tour guide around the area who was convinced that foreigners are allowed in with no problem. My mom, with magic powers for finding things out, told me that I'd need a permit.

Then I got to Lanzhou this morning and decided to ask the people at the Public Security Bureau. They said, after talking among themselves, that they thought foreigners weren't allowed. I tried to bring up the idea of a permit, but I don't know how to say that in Chinese and I don't think they understood me in English. I asked them what would happen if I bought a bus ticket to Xiahe anyway. They said they didn't know.

All the conflicting views aren't because everyone is wrong; they're because everyone is right. At some point since the Tibletan riots, things have been closed down, tentatively reopened, reopened further, and probably closed some more.

I decided that things were sufficiently unknown for me to try to go to Xiahe. I came to the bus station and finally got a definitive answer on China's atittude today: she said she couldn't sell me a ticket because I'm a foreigner.

So now I'm going straight to Xi'an tonight if I can buy a ticket. And 111 degrees gives a new definition for Mercurial China. I can't believe I made it through that kind of weather in Turpan without my skin peeling again.

The Desert

2008-06-11T00:48:00.002-04:00

Our family moved from Bakersfield, CA about five years ago, so I don't rememeber really well how hot it was. But in Turpan, China, I think Bakersfield was beat. A native said that it was 44 degrees Celsius the day I was there, and if anyone wants to work out what that is in Fahrenheit, it would make my claim more impressive.

I prefer to give the more personal explanation of how hot it was. After a day of seeing the sights there (including ruins to a city which, when destroyed in the 14th century, was already over 1,000 years old), I took a sleeper bus to Dunhuang, where I am now.

The idea behind a sleeper bus, since I don't think we have them in America, is that there are three long rows of bunk beds. Each bed slopes downward so you don't slide back when the bus is in motion. In theory, you have enough room to lie down and sleep, so when they aren't playing Uighur music videos from the TVs hanging at the front, you can let the bouncing of the crappy Chinese roads lull you to bed.

In America, I'm short. In China, I'm too tall. (I can only imagine how difficult it would be for me here if I actually were tall.) I needed another six inches of space. I mentioned that the beds aren't flat; that makes it so that my feet have some pressure against the back of the bed in front of me.

Oh, and there was no air conditioning. Or it broke, or something. I only caught the gist of it in Chinese: things were not the way all the Chinese expected them to be.

I would lay on one side for an hour or two, half sleeping, then roll over and feel much cooler because the side of my body now exposed had been sweating. I think my neck was sweating the entire night.

Sleeping on my side worked the best since then I could bend my legs a little. If I laid on my back, my knees splayed out to the side and it looked like I was trying to do yoga without sitting up.

I'm still in a desert-y area, about to go see the best Buddhist cave art ever and then tonight slide down sand dunes or something before getting on a sleeper train (which are much better, but more expensive) to Lanzhou.

For those paying attention, my sleeper bus experience did mean that I sweated all night, am sweating today, and will board a train tonight. My plans after that are tentative but likely won't include much sitting around; I will definitely take a shower when I get back to Chengdu in a few days, though.

Being Interrogated

2008-06-09T11:18:00.002-04:00

The interrogation was in Chinese. I was still in the giddy, "I know what you're saying and want to prove it" thrill of hearing Chinese spoken again. I might have been even more excited except we spent six hours at the Kazakh border and that wore me out.

Six hours. What could they possibly do for six hours, you ask? I'm not really sure, but it involved a bunch of military guys taking all of our passports, putting them in a briefcase, and driving away. We eventually got our passports back so maybe they came back. There was also a lot of waiting. I listened to some passengers speak Chinese for a few hours and felt totally exhausted afterward. Luckily, all I did that day in the train was sleep, so I had energy to be awake for the whole visa process. (Incidentally, I was also lucky that all I didn't do that day in the train was drink water, because the toilets didn't work when the train was stopped...)

Six hours also gives enough time for the military people to hassle us. I don't know why they were so particular about people leaving their country.

But at 11 that night (give or take two hours; when we crossed into China we were officially on Beijing time, which was two hours later) they let us get to the Chinese side of the process. The Chinese put the Kazakhs to shame in terms of paranoia. You would think that some of the old USSR spirit would linger, but the Chinese had them beat. I'm just glad I wasn't carrying anything that was actually private.

First they started on the French woman in my cabin. She was into some kind of Tibletan (now that I'm back in China I should censor myself) religion and had some documents in French with suspicious writing. She's French, though, and so no one could understand what it said. I acted as informal translator from her passable English into my bad Chinese for the beginning of the questioning about that, but when I was unable to translate phrases like "the divinity of justice" the Chinese got frustrated and found someone else. The first guy in charge called in his boss, who called in his boss, who called in his boss. Each time they went through the same questions, and the only thing that changed was her answers became more and more simplified until it got to "Daoist stuff."

Finally they let her off.

Then they came through and made us unpack our bags and show them everything. I had to open my computer and show them my videos (they enjoyed my juggling). Suprisingly, my Bible made it through without incident.

We thought it was over and started to repack, but then another guy told us to collect all of our things to go be questioned. They asked us all the questions I know how to answer now in Chinese: where are you from, what are you doing here, etc. Then they started up my laptop and looked at all of my pictures. They saw a lot of Melanie, because if Melanie touches a camera and my computer, hundreds of almost identical pictures of herself magically pop up. I said it was indeed my little sister.

Eventually they let us into China and we passed the next 12ish hours asleep. Going out of the country hasn't killed my ability to speak Chinese. The Vietnamese-American guy in our cabin was going to go to Shanghai, but the French woman and I realized we both wanted to see the same city next, so we're in Turpan already seeing ancient city ruins. I am happy to be somewhere I can take a shower, though. I only managed one when I was living in Almaty's train station, and even though I brushed my teeth this morning on the train, it's not quite the same.

Friendly Central Asians

2008-06-07T08:55:00.003-04:00

I'm not in a good mood right now because I've logged onto my bank account for the first time in a month and found that Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan have been nipping away at my balance every time I've walked near an ATM. So maybe now my mood fits my topic.

People here are weird. (Can you tell I'm still in cultural adjustment?) My first day in Kyrgyzstan I was exposed to it, but I didn't know how to classify my story and have held back until now, when I've just had it happen for the third time.

Here's what happens: I met someone, and after about ten minutes, they ask me to buy them things. I don't know why they do it; at this point I'm so tired of all the differences that I don't really care. But it does make me confused.

The first time it happened I was trying to find a place to change money. I met a guy who took it upon himself to help me. He didn't know any better than I did, of course, but it was nice to have someone who spoke the language and a little English. Eventually we found a bank, and once he saw I really was rich, he started directing us to stores. We bought a drink (I paid for both), then we went to a convenience store and he picked out something for me and him--which I would pay for, of course. When I figured out what he was doing, I told him I had to go home. I didn't know how far I was supposed to recompense him, but he hadn't been that helpful.

I thought it was a tit-for-tat thing.

Then a few nights later on my way home I ended up playing soccer with some local kids against a group of military guys. After we were done playing, the guys asked me to buy them something to drink.

"Why don't you buy something yourself?" I asked him nicely.
"We don't have any money. We spent it all on drinks on our way here, and now we're really thirsty."

I was hesitant, because there were a lot of guys, but they kept talking to me. ("Will," they would say before every phrase, to give it extra punch, "we're not, like, robbers or something. We're good guys.") Finally I agreed to buy us all a liter of Coke (not water--"Will, we drink Coke"), which they said wouldn't be enough but didn't complain after that.

I figured maybe it was something that new friends did for each other.

Then today I bought some water and sat down at the stall to drink it. After a few minutes, a middle-aged guy sitting there motioned for me to sit next to him. We proceeded to have a conversation for the next fifteen minutes. This was a remarkable feat since he didn't speak English and I didn't speak whatever he spoke, but it happened. When I looked about finished, he motioned me up and away.

I started walking with him down the street, not sure where he was leading me. Then me motioned to himself. "Money," he said in an undertone. I played dumb for a few seconds, but he was quite able to communicate his desire for me to buy him something. I talked to him in English about why I wasn't going to give him money.

"No," I said patiently. "I don't have any money to give you. I know I showed you some American money; that's not to buy beer with. I have to use all this money--Almaty is expensive." He said something in Russian. "Not even one. I'm not going to give you money just because I just met you." Eventually we came back to the train station and I told him I had to go back to the bed I'm renting.

So this whole way of doing things is weird. I don't know if it's just because everyone is convinced that Americans are rich, or if it really is something that has to do with friendship here, or whatever. It's just strange and I'm glad I'm going back to China (although when I land in Xinjiang it'll still be foreign until I take another 40 hour train ride to Xi'an).

Just Say "No"

2008-06-06T05:31:00.002-04:00

All the motherly advice I've ever received in 20 years came into play last night, and although I wouldn't have passed Mom's inconspicuous nightly sniff test, I still returned to my bed in Almaty's train station sober and not-high. (Incidentally, I've found that the best way to sleep on an uncomfortable bed is to start sleeping at 4:30 in the morning.)

Maybe I should explain how I went from being depressed and bored last post to being at a party for rich graduating Kazakhs until almost dawn. As soon as I finished yesterday's post, I went back to my room where I met Nick, a guy from Australia here for a week or so while he gets his India visa set up. We talked for a while, went out for a beer (because I'm pretty sure Kazakhstan doesn't have a law about being 21), and then decided to have dinner. While we were eating some amazing doner (like a Turkish taco), some people happened by speaking English. We started talking to them.

One girl was from Australia, but her multi-national parents also qualified to have a Kazakh and Swiss passport. One guy had missionary parents but was only working himself as a translator. The other girl had just been traveling through when she decided to stay in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) and learn Russian, and had just popped up to see the guy, who she was kinda involved with.

Nick and I played pool with the Australian girl, then she talked about how her friend was having a party at which she really needed to make an appearance. We accompanied her, and from there I was introduced to a side of society that I've never seen before.

The kids, around my brother's age, were the richest of the rich. They know Russian, but go to the Baccalaureate school in English because English is powerful. One girl's family is hosting a party at the most exclusive club in town after paying $10,000 for the table. Needless to say, the most exciting thing for them to do is dabble in drugs a bit. At the party a few people were already passed out on the likely-expensive alcohol. Soon after when the weed was passed around, everyone compared their experiences of favorite drugs. Friendly, airy debates were had about the advantages and disadvantages of disassociatives versus stimulants. Much information was disseminated about the availability of drugs in other countries in Asia, since the kids travel whenever they want and we've been traveling through nearby countries ourselves.

I didn't have much to contribute to the conversation, but it was very educational. One girl tried to convince me that having control of my body wasn't what God wanted (they had discovered I was a Christian) because whenever we try to control things we end up with Nazi Germany and other societal evils. I was unpersuaded.

Eventually Nick and I got tired and we left. Then I realized that I forgot my camera and phone there, so my plans for today (which if you recall, were unformed yesterday) consist of me getting my stuff back. I think that's a full day; when you wake up at 2 pm there's a lot less time you have to figure out what to do with.

Will goes to Kazakhstan

2008-06-05T02:14:00.002-04:00

And lives in a train station there.

If I thought that I went into Kyrgyzstan with too little information, I'm surprised I'm not huddled on my bed in the train station now crying in the fetal position. Although, actually, I was close last night since I put my bag at the end of the bed and didn't have enough room to stretch out.

When I went to Kyrgyzstan, to review, I didn't know Russian or Kyrgyz, I didn't know anyone, and I didn't have any plans. When I went to Kazakhstan by taxi yesterday, I didn't know Russian or Kazakh, I didn't know anyone, and I didn't have any plans. I also had all the pages for Almaty, the city I'm at, ripped out of my guidebook, leaving me without a map, without any idea where to stay, and without knowing where to go to eat.

So I'm in Almaty until Saturday night when I take a 40 hour train back to China. Yes, 40 hours. Initially, I was going to get to Almaty, then take a train somewhere, spend a day or two there, and come back in time to go to China. The nearest cities are 15 hours by train, though, and the idea of spending a whole day riding in a train each way as preparation for a 40 hour train ride didn't sound appealing. I also was intimidated by the schedule board that I couldn't read, and the fact that no one speaks English.

Before I came to Kazakhstan, every time I mentioned Almaty I heard "It's very expensive." When I arrived, the other guy riding the taxi with me wanted to be helpful, and told me that I shouldn't go directly to the train station to buy a train ticket and check out the rooms they had there, I should go to a travel agency he knew where they spoke English. I followed his advice, because I was new to the country and thought he might know best, but he didn't. We rode a bus for an hour, trekked around looking for the travel agency, only to find that it didn't do anything international. The hotel nearby was asking more than $200 for one night's stay.

So I went to the train station, worked out a train ticket for Saturday, checked into one of the rooms for a reasonable $12, and even timed my dinner with the rest of the country's so that when I went to a restaurant I could point at others' dishes to order.

I got some money changed into the local currency, Tenge ($1 to 120T), which is much easier to convert in my head than som, which exchanged at an awkward 37. I always found myself converting back to Chinese money in Kyrgyzstan, which only frustrated me at how much more it was. Now, though, I divide by 100 and another fifth and I have the American equivalence. Food seems to cost about the same as it would in America.

My room is in the International Hall of the train station. The room has three beds and a hatrack, and no air conditioning. The door doesn't close very well, but that's okay, since there's another room that attaches to ours and when those people want to leave they have to go through ours. The train station has a bathroom that we can use, and they have a plug where I can charge my laptop. My stuff isn't really safe, but it's unlikely to be stolen since this hotel wing isn't by the rest of the train station.

Today I've walked around looking for Internet and eating. I hope I can find my way back. Tomorrow I don't have plans. On Saturday I can go to a canyon with 50 other tourists and a Russian guide; it might be fun.

My whole situation here kinda sucks. I think it's a bad sign that I'm looking forward to a 40 hour train ride across Kazakhstan.

Kyrgyz Culture Shock

2008-06-03T01:07:00.002-04:00

No, I haven't had another run-in with the shower bucket; that's just what they call it when you've been in a foreign country long enough to realize that it really isn't like what you're used to and that you really aren't that open to new things. I've been in Kyrgyzstan for a week and a day now, and I've hit that point, something I've managed to skip in China. So this is me reacting to everything that seems stupid about society here right now. Don't take me too seriously; if I was going to live here for years I'd get over it and then laugh off this post.

First, I hate it how people here grab your arms. I was going to get a taxi once, a competing guy wanted me to look at his car ("Audi" he was probably repeating to impress me with his wheels) and he grabbed my arm. I was ready to fight him. I stopped, shook him off in likely a very unpolite way, and then kept walking all mad.

I hate how everything is so far apart here, and how they have stores where you have to buy things instead of hole-in-the-wall places like they do in China where you can just look in and see if it has what you need.

And I hate the feeling of being ripped off. I don't always know if I am, because I can't ask a native about every transaction I make, but it feels like it. I'm only shielded if I already know what the price should be: a kg of laundry costs 45 som here, otherwise the lady at Karakol wouldn't have gone below 100. The taxi from the bus station to the place I'm staying should have been 150; they started at 700! And despite me repeatedly saying "Don't rip me off because I'm a foreigner" (in English, let's remember where I am), they refused to go below 200. And I hate how you have to negotiate for taxis instead of just reading the meter, and I hate how an 8 hour drive costs 250 som but a drive anywhere in town costs at least 200 round trip. And then I see the minibuses that you ride in for 8 hours, and I realize how they can be so inexpensive when you have 18 people in one van, and I hate that too. I don't like it how little kids ride in these buses, too, and then throw up in the seat in front of you.

And I don't like how everyone here is ugly. I'm finally in a land with white people; give me some beautiful ones to remind me of home. And I don't like how they speak more than one language here, so I don't even know which one I should be trying to learn, or which one to speak, as if I knew overlapping words. So I don't like how I say "thank you" in Kyrgyz, "hello" in Russian, "five" in Kyrgyz and all the other numbers in Russian, and that's it. I should order vodka just because I know what I'd be getting.

Speaking of that, I hate how none of the restaurants have picture menus. And how they eat so much bread here, and how expensive food is. Where are the fruit sellers like in China?

A lot of my frustration has come not from this being different from America, but from it being different than China. It's like I managed to totally accept what goes on there, and now I expect that every foreign country is like that. I wish Kyrgyzstan was like China, because I understand the way things work there, even the things I don't like.

In China they freak out over foreigners and make you show your passport every time you check into a hotel. Here, they don't, and I was wondering how I had gotten away with not showing my passport the whole time I've been staying here. My passport is at the Kazakh embassy now, so I wanted them to sign my photocopy so that when I have to show it, they'll know that my real one is actually with the Kazakhs. They said that wasn't necessary, but I didn't trust them and had the girl here write it in Russian so they would understand if anyone hassles me.

The only people who hassle you, though, are crooked cops looking for trouble or a bribe, and I don't know who those cops are and what to do about them. I don't like how all the cars drive here without concern for the people--it's fine if they want to speed, but if I'm crossing the street, swerve a little instead of making me run for my life. And I don't like how it's not safe at night.

I think that covers most of it. I'm sure I've forgotten something, but you get the idea. So what should I do? Leave the country, of course. Really. I need to head back to China sometime, and it's not like I'd have the time to adjust if I stuck around for another week. I'm not even retreating to America, I'm just going back to a different foreign country. That's totally fine, I think.

And I don't like how often they use the word "no."

Skin Balls

2008-06-01T01:17:00.003-04:00

The Sunburn Saga lives on. First, let me set the scene.

I'm in Kyrgyzstan, still on break in between semesters in China. After a few days in Bishkek, I took some time off while my Kazakh visa is being processed to go to Karakol. So yesterday I went for an easy hike in Karakol National Park, met some Kyrgyz boys and had fun with them, and then came back to my room exhausted since I was recovering from the flu. I go to take a shower, but the water wasn't getting hot, so I go back to my room ready to sit there until hot water is available. I notice that my left arm has started to peel (surprisingly late--I was sunburned more than a week ago), so I help it along and skin comes off in rather big strips. I didn't want to just throw it on the floor, and there wasn't a trashcan within reach, so I rolled up the first piece.

Once I had a little ball, it was natural to add the next piece on, and the piece after that, and the piece after that. It was a little addictive: the edge of dead skin was just begging to be pulled off.

My skin ball became larger and larger until it was full-grown:

This is a picture of the ball I made from the skin of my left forearm (approximately 10 sq. inches). I'd estimate it to be about the size of a large spitwad, but as straws are scarce here, I couldn't test this hypothesis.

I know what you're all wondering: how do I make a skin ball of my own? Be patient, and I'll give you some tips.

First, it's important to have a large area of skin to work with. If you've only sunburned the back of your neck, for instance, you likely won't have enough skin to make a satisfying ball. I found that my arm skin works the best because the arm is less sensitive than other areas. When my face peeled, the exposed skin underneath really hurt, but when skin came off my arm, it didn't even sting (despite the horrified looks of the Kyrgyz boys as I patiently peeled the skin off my right arm earlier in the day).

Second, the size of the strips of skin is important. This is what was lacking when my face peeled: the skin came off in flecks, and slowly. It took a whole day or two for my face skin to come off, and a lot of that came from just rubbing my forehead in the shower. Water is a killer for skin balls.

Here is an example of the ideal size for adding to your skin ball:

You'll notice in the picture that the extracted skin is directed toward my (apparently emaciated) wrist; this is common. Skin peels forward from the elbow to the wrist and inward from the pinky to the thumb.

Now that I've explained how to harvest the skin, let me give some advice on actually making the ball.

It's important to touch the newly gathered skin as little as possible: hold the strip by the edge with one hand and bring the skin ball to it, wrapping the ball with the skin as evenly as possible. As you roll the strip onto the ball, feel free to press the ball to give it added firmness. Small pieces of skin (ones that don't cover the whole surface area of the ball) can be difficult to add.

When your skin ball is finished, you can sit back and admire your handiwork. Sell it on eBay to help fund cancer research--that's what I'm going to do with mine.

Good luck, and send me pictures of your efforts. You might have to provide a link, since I don't think pictures are allowed in the comments.

Bishkek Taxis

2008-05-30T23:43:00.001-04:00

In Chengdu, taxis comprised a significant proportion of the traffic, but nothing like in Bishkek. In Bishkek, most cars will act as taxis. Some people just sit there by their cars and that's the signal that they're taxis. Others have taxi signs that they'll put up when they want to be available.

Since anyone who wants to can be a taxi driver, none of the cars are metered. You have to negotiate a price before you leave (which invariably includes complaining about the cost of fuel), and hope you don't rip yourself off too much. I find that when I first come to a new place, I'm most likely to get ripped off, since I don't know what a reasonable price is. In China, my guidebook is helpful with that, but the one I have that covers Central Asia is from 2003, so all the prices are different now.

One interesting thing about taxis in Bishkek is that the cars themselves come from all over. Some of the cars have the steering wheel on the left, but some have it on the right.

What made me want to devote a whole entry to taxis, though, is how things go after you get in. In Bishkek, most of the streets are unmarked. Houses usually have their street address, so when I'm walking around, I'm okay, but in a taxi you don't have time to examine all the houses. What this means is that sometimes you have to argue with the taxi driver about which street you're on. One night I was taking a taxi with the British jugglers and we had to argue about which street our house was at. Our driver wanted to turn two or three streets too early, and we had to repeatedly call him off until we got to the right one. Luckily, the city is organized in a grid, so I usually knew where I was. Otherwise I would've been lost and the taxi driver would have been foggy about which way to go.

Now I'm in Karakol, a small town by a huge lake and great mountains. I haven't figured out the taxi situation here yet, but I think it might even be worse--they change the street names when the names are too politically incorrect (like after the election a few years ago replacing a dictator-like leader), so many people don't know what any streets are called.

Brides and Bureaucracy

2008-05-29T04:29:00.003-04:00

America is the best country in the world. This statement goes in tandem with one that Kyrgyzstan, China, and likely Kazakhstan are not. I've beens slowly acclimating myself to China's problems, but since I'm only in Kyrgyzstan for a week or two, I'm getting a fast-track course.

The girl who's helping me learn Russian (who's name is something impossibly close to "Allah") tutored me again last night. After I felt too discouraged from not being able to pronounce the word for "three", I let the conversation drift to whatever she wanted to talk about. She told me that she had been to the hospital today to see her friend who was having a baby. Allah is my age, so I expressed surprise that a friend of hers was already married and having a baby.

Casual as can be, Allah explained that her friend had been kidnapped. This didn't seem to be an explanation of the situation, but after she came up with a few more synonyms, my understanding still hadn't improved. Then I remembered a short passage in my guidebook about an ancient Kyrgyz practice: bride kidnapping.

As this might be unfamiliar to you, I'll explain it. A young man who has his eye on a girl but doesn't have the money (or reciprocated affection) for a proper wedding kidnaps the girl (by horse, I think, in the old days) and she becomes his wife. Divorce is impossible because no one wants someone who isn't "whole", to use Allah's expression.

When I read about bride kidnapping in my guidebook, I figured it belonged to the same part of Kyrgyz history that moats and dragons belong to in Western tradition, but here I was talking to a girl whose friend had been married by the process of what we would call "rape."

The girl, Allah told me, had known the guy for a month before she was kidnapped. At first it was difficult, Allah said in the perfectly heartbreaking way non-native English speakers sometimes manage, but then "she got used to him."

After I sat stunned for a few minutes trying to wrap my mind around this, tons of related questions poured forth. Kidnappings were rare in Bishkek, so Allah wasn't afraid. She thought it was just the way things were done, "horrible", but not about to change. Some girls dreamed about being kidnapped, but usually girls didn't look forward to it.

All of Allah's juicy stories about bride kidnapping had to do with extra twists: one girl who betrayed her friend by helping a man kidnap her friend, and so on. For me, the amazing part was the reality of the stories at all.

Kyrgyzstan also has a really corrupt legal system organized by wealth and connections, and an infuriating process for getting a Kazakh visa (which is why I implicated Kazakhstan in my list even though I haven't been there yet). God bless America.

Being Electrocuted

2008-05-28T05:23:00.002-04:00

Another day has passed in Bishkek with me in it. I've found an ATM so I can stop exchanging precious US dollars at a bad rate. And now that my cashflow has improved (I was down to 20 som, the price of a stick of gum) I can be happy about the tourist-y shirt I bought at a mall yesterday.

Today I've been hunting down Internet access. Sometimes they have it, sometimes they don't. You just have to prowl around ready to pounce. Once you've caught your prey, though, the rewards of civilization are fantastic. I'm blogging, checking my email, and being advertised to on Facebook by online dating services in Dutch.

Despite me conquering the Internet right now, last night the shower conquered me. As far as I understand the situation, Kyrgyzstan is suffering from a shortage of power and various cities are doing their part to help. Osh has cut the power citywide every third day. In Bishkek, they've stopped providing hot water (it was centralized under the Soviets, which is how they can limit it). This means that you have to heat your own water here.

The house I'm staying at has two large metal buckets you can fill with water and then heat up with these electrified metal tongs. When the water starts steaming, you take out the tongs and use the water to take a shower.

The only part I didn't understand was how exactly to remove the tongs. The bucket had a lid on it, which I thought I would remove. As soon as I touched it my whole arm was sent buzzing and became numb. This would be trickier than I thought. I used a plastic bowl to move the lid and thought I was safe, but when I touched the bucket again, I was electrocuted again. I soon found the power switch on the tongs, but even after I was pretty sure it was safe to touch, I still was hesitant to touch it. A shocking state of affairs here, I know, but I think I've learned how to do it.

I've also started learning Russian. My reactions are interesting after studying Chinese: it feels so blunt to have a word that means "no"; it's so self-centered to say "I" every sentence you're talking about yourself.

Some of the sounds give me problems (I quit Spanish because I can't roll my r's, but here they are again), but having an alphabet is so luxurious! The girl teaching me Russian helped me make a little text so I wouldn't feel like an idiot walking outside. Hello, I say. My name is Will. I'm an American. I just came to Kyrgyzstan. This is all I can say. I'm a third of the way through my goal of repeating this to 30 people today. Most have sociably replied with something in Russian, at which point I just nod, smile, and wave goodbye.

I'm gradually feeling more comfortable here, especially now that I don't have to fear for my life every time I want to take a shower.

Will goes to Kyrgyzstan

2008-05-27T01:33:00.002-04:00

In the last few days my life has been relatively uninteresting. There's only so much you can say about a sunburn. (Although I will add that after I posted, my face peeled, and the skin that has emerged looks like it might peel too. I'm twice-baked Will.)

So I decided to go to Kyrgyzstan. To make things more exciting, I didn't bother with the normal procedure of actually getting a visa; instead, I relied on the Internet to inform me that I should just fly to Bishkek and get the visa there in the airport. My mom was not excited about this plan, but I went ahead with it anyway. It was one of the scariest times in my life to be waiting in the Passport Control room in Bishkek's airport having spent over $200 to fly there without a word of Russian in my vocabulary and hope that I wouldn't be turned back to China. The good news was that if I did, I would be able to get back in to China (which is what my mom was really nervous about). The bad news was that in the Urumqi airport the Chinese guy made me sign something saying that if I got turned back in Kyrgyzstan, it wasn't his fault.

I made it through without a problem. After being summarily ripped off by a taxi driver taking me into the city, I found a place to stay, negotiated a price (I think), and relaxed on my bed. I was in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, chilling in a house somewhere and free to do whatever I wanted.

Since then, I have been ripped off buying lunch, met a group of British jugglers, passed a 7 club 3 count, been talked into drinking fermented mare's milk (under the auspice of "Kyrgyz Coca-Cola"), been approached by a guy wanting me to give him directions (and when I replied with the name of the street we were on--I had Lonely Planet open and knew--he thought I spoke Russian and walked away to find someone else), accidentally talked to people in Chinese, wasted 20 som on water because they drink the carbonated stuff here, eaten a cheeseburger, and successfully found an Internet cafe. Now that I think about it, the great Firewall of China doesn't hold me back here and I might actually be able to visit my own blog.

The British guys have been helpful. I'd like to go into Kazakhstan because from there I can take a cheap train back to China. This morning I started on the visa process, which the British guys are on the brink of finishing after having spent a week here working on it.

The buildings are ugly; the people are diverse (it might just be my authentic Kyrgyz camel hair bag, but people don't think I'm a foreigner until I give them my practised blank stare); the food is amazing; the cost is more than China. If I understood the keyboard better here, I could type in Russian.

I'm off to have more adventures, my som are going fast the longer I type.

Oozing Orange

2008-05-23T22:59:00.004-04:00

After spending seven and a half hours hiking a mountain at high altitude, my face (and my arms up to about my elbows, where I had my sleeves rolled up) was bright red. Alex and I can barely buy food here, let alone moisturizer, so I basically just decided not to touch my face until it stopped hurting.

Yesterday during lunch I realized that I could do a cool trick. I give you the Sunburned Forehead Trick.

Being a forehead chamelion wasn't the most exciting result, though. Yesterday my face started oozing. At first it was just this orangish crust on the outside of my nose, and after I got it off there was some liquid.

Then my condition progressed to other parts of my face. Alex and I stood in front of the mirror late last night and tried to figure out what was going on. His nose is a little sunburned, but he wore a hood for most of the hike, so he wasn't in very bad of shape. My forehead and cheeks, on the other hand, are bubbly and tinted orange. We determined that our skin was oozing because there was some kind of fluid trapped underneath, and if I smiled too hard (or otherwise compressed my skin), orange fluid would leak out and stream down my face like a bad Gatorade commercial.

I admit that sweating orange was a little disconcerting, but there wasn't anything we could do, so we went to bed. I woke up once or twice to scrape some of my face off my face, and in the morning I looked a little more normal. Alex found some moisturizer and since I've put it on I haven't oozed very much, so it's too bad he didn't know he had some before.

If anyone wants to diagnose me, please do so. I'll just be riding a train for the next 24 hours, and if it's anything like the bus on the way here, I'll be recovering to the sound of Uighur music pumped through the speakers at an unreasonably high volume.

Not Being Gored by Grazing Yak

2008-05-23T10:51:00.000-04:00

Alex and I were on a sanddune looking down at a herd of grazing yak. We actually didn't notice the yak as much as we noticed that there wasn't any snow. Alex told our tour guide as we set out from the village this morning that before we came back to Kashgar, we wanted to hike a little bit, and since most of the mountains reached a point where there was snow, we really wanted to climb up to the snow. Our tour guide thought that was a fine idea (and if he thought we were crazy Americans, he didn't say anything). Every time we saw a mountain he would estimate how long it would take us to climb and return--two and a half hours; four hours; five hours.

Alex and I were standing on a sandy hill because he had told us that that would be the closest place. We couldn't see any snow from the bottom, but he had given us reasonable estimates at other points and we thought we would trust his judgment. We hiked up the dune for about forty-five minutes before realizing that the only snow was far in front of us. And by far, I mean we would have to climb down the sanddune, walk up the foothills, and then start climbing in earnest at what looked like an impossible slope. Naturally, we decided that we would do it.

The yak worried us only as huge animals with large, sharp horns and an impressive running speed would. We walked around them without incident.

Our tour guide told us that the sanddune route would only take us three hours round trip, so all we had with us was a chocolate bar, Chapstick, and three bottles of water.

It took us an hour to hike up the easy, barren terrain (scattered with rocks) leading up to the mountain itself. Then we transitioned into hiking over rocks. The average rock was the size of my fist, medium ones were the size of my head, and large ones were the size of my body. At first it wasn't steep, but we could see that we weren't very close.

Soon the slope increased drastically, and we really had to watch our step or rocks would start to shift. We took more breaks to compensate for the increased difficulty.

Then we reached the point at which when standing by the yak I had predicted we would be unable to continue. From the sand hill it looked like silt, close up it was small pebbles mixed with bigger rocks.

And the slope of it. I'd say the slope was about the height of my body to the length of my arm--I make that comparison because when I stood up to climb, I used my arms because the mountain was right there. It was a good thing I was using my hands and feet. We felt like we slid one foot for every three that we climbed.

The last hundred feet were brutal. There was a little gully that we thought might be serviceable. Alex took a step down into it, slid, and couldn't climb back up, so we had to rondezvous further up. The snow was so close. Bright, white (although from so close we could see the dirt that was on it, too), and massive! The snow continued up to the peak and was a shining mass of unimitable beauty.

Then after four and a half hours of hiking, we arrived. It was about lunch time, so Alex and I feasted on snow and chocolate (water was too precious; we only had half a bottle left).

The descent down was crazy. We had clambered up, but you couldn't step down without sending a huge pile of pebbles and rocks clattering down the mountain. So we surfed down. Alex squatted and pushed himself, I rode like I was skateboarding (and for those who understand, I slide down a mountain switch). It was incredibly exhilarating and very fast, since we had to balance, make sure we weren't causing a landslide, and keep moving since we couldn't stop. We descended uncomfortably fast. Even taking frequent breaks to check for injuries, we still descended the bulk of the mountain in half the time it had taken us to ascend.

About that time we started to worry about our driver, who would have been naively expecting us back before we had even reached the snow. We were out of water, really tired, and still had the yak to pass--but we took a different route and avoided them.

Finally we returned, seven and a half hours after. Our driver was excited that we weren't dead, we were excited he was still there, and it culminated in a cross-cultural bearhug. He told us that he had talked to the police, and either they were going to or they had (tense is difficult in Chinese) come after us on horseback.

Everything turned out okay, though. I snapped a bad picture of the mountain before we left, because we hadn't brought our cameras, but I think that my bruises, sunburn, and excitement from climbing a random mountain near the border of Tajikistan would outlast even the best picture.

Dinner with a Kyrgyz Family

2008-05-21T22:08:00.005-04:00

I never thought I would say, "My guess is that this is yak." The idea that I wouldn't be able to instantly ascertain what I was eating, and that my best guess would be something as exotic as yak, certainly never came to mind when I thought about how China might broaden my horizons.
But there I was, in a small building by Lake Karakul (a few hours from Kashgar, which is several hours from Urumqi, which is a province in China that's practically a different country) sitting next to Alex, our driver, and a family of Krygyz eating a fantastic dinner which I couldn't see because the house was only lit by a single lightbulb powered by a battery.

Alex and I signed up to take a two-day trip to Lake Karakul because we thought it sounded fun, but we didn't know how great of a time it would be. By the end of the first day (and just wait until I describe what happened on the second) I was already saying that with the exception of my heater fan, this trip was the best 350 kuai I'd ever spent.

We essentially rented a driver and a car for two days, and luckily, our driver spoke Mandarin, so we could talk to him. We got to the lake by mid-afternoon and it was a beautiful day. The scenery was amazing at the lake, because there was water, and right by it was a mountain covered in snow, and right by that was a series of rocky mountains. Here is one of the pictures I took.

I took it from a camel's back. We toured the lake for an hour by camel and I got that picture. Doesn't it look like it came from a postcard?

As evening came, the view changed a lot and I got this other amazing picture. In the foreground are the yurts that the families stayed in.

We ended up staying in a family's small house because our driver said staying in the yurt that they'd rent us would be too cold. So after dinner (which was capped off by yak milk tea, of which I was pressed to have thirds) they unwrapped some blankets, toned down the stove, and we went to sleep. It seemed like it was the day that was the dream, though.

Trying to Eat Dinner

2008-05-20T01:27:00.002-04:00

Alex and I rode a bus for 24 hours yesterday (and the day before) to get to Kashgar, a remote city in Xinjiang. We both think that we're practically in another country. Xinjiang is officially an "autonomous region", but when the people in the second largest city in the region don't speak Mandarin, I think it's a weak grasp on statehood.

We checked into a hotel, put down our stuff, and headed out to find some dinner. We hadn't had much to eat on the bus, so we were pretty hungry. We went into the first place that looked like a restaurant, where we were greeted by a guy. I said "Hello" in Uighur, using a full fifth of my Uighur vocabulary in the effort. He didn't speak Mandarin.

We mimicked a menu; he said they didn't have one. We were out of options for selecting food, but we were hungry, so we sat down and looked at him. After a few seconds, he must have decided that we wanted to eat there regardless. He went into the kitchen and returned a few minutes later with a bowl of broth and some kind of meat. We weren't very excited about that, so he came back with some pasta. That seemed safe. He went back to the kitchen and we had ordered.

After a few minutes, some soup came out. The noodles were thin, but the flavor was good. There were little balls of some kind of meat (probably lamb) which I thought looked pretty good, but Alex thought looked really fatty. He had better instincts, because fifteen minutes after that I was hit with a huge urge to run to the bathroom in our hotel and barely made it in time.

Our dinner also included rock-hard bread. The bread here is fantastic, but when the bread clanks (literally) as you put it on the bowl, it's less tasty.

We figured out how much he wanted for the meal, paid, and left. That was our wordless dinner in Kashgar.

Right now Alex and I are leaving for a two-day trek to a lake where we might be able to ride camels. We were too impatient to get into a foreign country, and since our flight was delayed into Xinjiang, we wouldn't have had much time. Instead, we're trying to maximize fun things to do within China.

We've run into a hitch because Alex is having a difficult time getting flights out in time for his flight from Beijing to America, so right now we're sitting in the travel agent's office, with the driver for our car anxious to start driving us into the middle of nowhere, but being held up by ticket prices and availabilities.

Thankfully, though, breakfast went okay this morning and I feel full.

Being Kicked out of a Village

2008-05-19T11:24:00.002-04:00

Alex and I are in Xinjiang now. We were really surprised that the flight wasn't delayed, but that's only because they didn't tell us there was a delay. We sat in the plane for four hours before taking off. When we got to Urumqi, we checked into a hotel that a friend recommended.

In the morning we decided to go to Heavenly Lake, but it was more like the day from hell. We're in the far-west part of China, but all of China runs on the same time zone (Beijing time). In Xinjiang, though, the sun doesn't come up until 9, people don't eat lunch until 2 and dinner until 8, so they have local, unofficial Xinjiang time. I woke up three times thinking that we were late, but it was only because I got confused about which time everything was. We quickly checked out of the hotel, found the bus station, and negotiated a reasonable-sounding price. Our tour book said the trip would take two and a half hours, the guy we bought the tickets from said it would take one and a half, but the bus seemed to circle around town looking for more people and we didn't get there until five hours had passed.

Alex and I started to hike up to the lake, and this part of the story was okay. We saw really pretty scenery and had time to decompress from not being able to use our Chinese (all the natives in this province speaking Uighur, which is in a different family of languages from Chinese). They had yurts at the top which we rented for the night.

Then the real adventure started. That morning on the bus we realized that the hotel hadn't given us our passports back. Alex hadn't wanted them to keep them in the first place, but we figured that since Urumqi is famous for pickpocketing, that maybe it was safer to have the hotel keep them. We were already out of town, though. I called the guy who had helped us find the hotel. He said that we didn't have to worry because nobody checked passports at Heavenly Lake.

The day Alex and I went, they checked passports at Heavenly Lake. We pleaded in our most polite Chinese (which the guy may or may not have understood) to let it by, but he was unswayed and evicted us with instructions to go back to Urumqi. All the tour buses had left, so we had to take a taxi that charged us each five times the bus fare.

But then when we got back to Urumqi, the taxi driver couldn't find the hotel that had our passports. Even my friend, who spoke English, Uighur, and Chinese couldn't give him instructions because our taxi driver didn't speak any of those (maybe he was Tajik, my friend speculated). Alex and I were tired and told him to forget it. Getting out and walking didn't help, though, and we wandered the roads looking for the hotel for maybe an hour.

Of course, I was still used to have language skills available, so I went up to a group of people and asked in Chinese if they could tell me where to go. They looked at me for a few seconds and then said roughly, "Ruska?" For all I knew, that meant "left", "right", "straight", "I don't understand", or "I don't know." I figured out later that he thought I might be Russian and wanted to try that out.

I was so frustrated. I told Alex as we wandered some more that this was the most frustrated I'd ever been in China. We picked up this guy who spoke a lot of English, but he didn't know where to go either, and couldn't help us much.

We walked and walked, with our hiking packs on and no way to talk to people and no answers to be had and no passport in our hands and no lake out our yurt window, and much fewer kuai in our pockets. Eventually my friend talked to this guy and we got it all worked out.

It was a good thing I wasn't paying attention when we got our passports back, because the lady just looked at us and asked why we hadn't gotten them this morning. After being kicked out of a village that day, I think that would have set me over the edge.

Being Attacked by Wild Monkeys

2008-05-16T23:52:00.000-04:00

It's true. I went to Mt. Emei last weekend with my friend James. We didn't know what we were getting into, except that it was a long, tough hike. We got off the bus without knowing where we were, were shuffled into a van without knowing where we were going, and happened to meet an amazing group of five Chinese. They invited us to have lunch with them, and then when we all enjoyed ourselves, to come with them. I didn't even know their names and they just invited us to come with them.

That was Saturday morning. We were to hike Saturday afternoon, spend the night halfway up the mountain, hike all of Sunday to the top, spend the night so we could see what we heard was a spectacular sunrise, and then get a bus back Monday (and everyone knows what happened on Monday after I got back).

I'm including lots of pictures because I'm traveling now and am unlikely to find reliable wireless. Internet bars are fine for blogging, but they don't have USB drives, so pictures from my travels in the next few weeks might be rare.

I should introduce the people I was with. This is James, my travel buddy, throwing up a waterfall.

This is one of the guys we were with. He was fascinated by the idea of the trick photos James and I were taking and was trying to make it look like he was grabbing a huge tree.

This is all five of the Chinese people we were with with James and me at the top of the mountain.

This is me looking gangster by a strange sign.

And now, to the moment I've been waiting to tell for three days... how I was attacked by wild monkeys.

Mt. Emei is famous for its wild monkeys. Tibetan macaques, actually, which look like this.

They're familiar with humans because they demand a toll of some kind before they let you pass. Usually, they have specific places where they stay and there are people to help you make it through without getting freaked out. After an easy day of climbing Saturday, we checked into a hotel and went to an area where the monkeys prowl. I forgot my walking stick, which I brought mostly to fend off the monkeys, so I was helpless.

Luckily, the monkey areas are guarded by old women with bamboo sticks. They hobble around hitting their sticks on the ground to let the monkeys know that if they don't back off, it'll be them getting hit next.

Entering the area, we bought packets of food for the monkeys. I thought it was a rip-off, like buying food for the ducks when you go to a park, but I bought one packet anyway. I gave James my camera and slowly approached a monkey.

I didn't have my technique down, though, because I held out my food before James was ready to take the picture. The monkey grabbed it, and all I could think about was how he couldn't have it yet because I needed a good picture of me taming the monkey. So I grabbed at the packet.

The monkey thought I wanted to take the packet back permanently and retaliated by grabbing me. Meanwhile, the old ladies standing guard are yelling at me not to provoke the monkeys by touching them, and I would have said I wasn't trying to, except I was so freaked out.

That was when James snapped the picture. I'm not joking in the picture, this is sudden, intense, undisguised fear. Strangely, my eyes look blank, but seriously, I'm alarmed.

The old women beat back the monkey and I resolved to lay low after that.

Wrapping up my Earthquake Coverage

2008-05-15T21:00:00.001-04:00

I have this cool little counter set up to record how many people visit my website. After my first post that was found by as cool people as a random Daniel's parents and NBC, hits have decreased exponentially. Monday got me a month's-worth of hits in one day, and I expect everyone to drop off soon once they see how unexciting my stories usually are compared to talking about national disasters.

That said, this is the last post I anticipate talking about the earthquake. It's been fun to play a reporter, but this is the fourth post I've been distracted from talking about my awesome time at Mt. Emei. The city is settling down nicely and all of our attention is going to the small cities nearby that have been devastated.

Yesterday I went to the airport because I was supposed to leave with a friend for northwestern China the day after the earthquake, and that obviously didn't happen. First I had a run-around trying to call people. The travel agency said I had to get the airline to change my ticket, the airline said it was the travel agency's responsibility.

I went to the airport and it was a madhouse. A friend of ours, Liz, had been at the airport when the earthquake happened, and went back the next day to try to fly out. The good news was that I didn't see her. The bad news was that for all I knew, she could have slept on the airport floor like several of the people I saw (as evidenced by the flaps of cardboard they scavenged and used as beds).

The airport was open, though, so it looked like flying out was at least feasible. I eventually found the booth I was supposed to stand at and started to check out the scene.

China only lines up if it's an emergency (like buying water or Snickers bars, but not, we noticed, Gatorade). Flying is not an emergency, and therefore the booth I was supposed to receive help from featured a swarm of Chinese people waving their tickets to get the clerk's attention.

I noticed that the people at the front of the booth weren't being helped and that the clerks were focusing on people who had walked around all the booths and sneaked through the back. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

I went back, a guy helpfully told the attendant to help the foreigner, and less than half an hour after I entered the airport I had tickets rescheduled to fly out Friday, today.

Another anecdote about lines in the wake of the earthquake. I foolishly went to a strip of camping supply stores nearby to shop for one of those cool travel pillows that let you sleep even without a window seat.

But the stores were all closed. Not closed in the normal way stores are closed, but closed with a guy standing outside keeping a horde of people from going in. I thought this effort could be taken care of by just locking up, but it turns out they weren't closed. They were monitoring how many people were in the store, only letting another person in if someone came out. I picked this up gradually as I watched what was happening. If someone could point to a hat or something specific and say they wanted to buy it, they were let in. But the hundred or so people standing there (and sitting on the rail without the appearance of an order) were held back. I asked why and got the obvious answer: the owners were afraid of everyone storming in and there being chaos.

I can't even imagine what it would have been like if everyone in their panic had access to all the gear they would need to live outside for the next few months. Luckily, I don't need to sleep on a bus enough to navigate that line.

Flow of Information After the Earthquake

2008-05-14T00:57:00.003-04:00

I wasn't on Good Morning America. My mom called and told me that they interviewed some girl fresh into Chengdu who had perfect phone reception. I wonder if now that people realize that Chengdu was hit lightly with few or no deaths that us students are less exciting to talk to. Alas, I'm not famous.

In the interview I recorded with Good Morning America, though, one of the things I mentioned was the total lack of authoritative people telling everyone what to do. After the earthquake, everyone stood outside, gaping at the buildings. Anyone who dared went back inside, anyone who didn't chatted outside. I think in America there would be policemen instantly on the scene, reassuring people to back off until it was declared safe by whoever knew about earthquakes and structural integrity of apartments. On Monday, though, no one really had any information.

That kind of looseness of communication has continued. I read a really interesting NYTimes article about how China's news coverage of the earthquake has been surprisingly similar to the way catastrophes are covered in the West. Since the earthquake, though, I haven't heard anyone tell people what's going on, only what has gone on.

Despite a lack of reliable information, information has continued. The earthquake happened around 2:30pm Monday, the Chinese all became convinced that at 4:33, or some time equally precise, there would be a major aftershock. Accordingly, the guards to our apartment didn't let us back in from 4:30-5:00. There was no aftershock.

After that, a rumor spread that at 8:00 there would be an aftershock. This expectation was also happily disappointed.

After that, our Chinese friend told us that at 3:00am there would be an aftershock. We were highly skeptical, and asked how anyone could predict something like that. "My dad is a reporter," she said. "But how does he know?" "He's a reporter."

That night, nothing happened until 4am.

There may be more to all this than I know, since I'm not Chinese. Information seems to distribute itself horizontally, though, and to us Westerners we wonder how any information that doesn't have a clear origin can be true.

The latest example happened only a few minutes ago. Our former program director (since our semester ended last week, she doesn't have to take care of us, but does anyway) called me and said very urgently, "You need to go buy water." This seemed like a strange request, since we've had water for the past two days, and gas and electricity to purify it with, but I assented. "I don't know why," she continued, "but I hear that everyone is supposed to buy water, because there might be a need for it soon. I'm not sure why, but I just wanted to let you know."

I assured her that I was grateful not to be out of the frenetic loop, but took her advice very casually. We have water in our apartment, and as long as water comes out of the tap, we can boil it and have water to drink. In fact, we can boil up a pot now and be set for a few days. I dutifully went to the store next door to buy some water, though, and saw that they were sold out. So was every store until the large convenience store at the end of the block. There people looked like they were preparing for a siege, and it wasn't just water that was sold out. Lines were 20 people deep, and when there are lines in stores in China, you know it must be serious. I wonder if these people heard a different directive that instructed them to buy everything they could lay their hands on; I don't know.

But it sure is different trying to respond to an emergency in China. The lemming strategy that I see makes for quite a community united in response, which feels very powerful, even if water is being bought out for little reason.

EDIT: And sometimes there's validity in rumors. We just heard that the water supply is somehow contaminated from the earthquake... I don't know how that could have just happened, but I hope it doesn't stay this way long. I accidentally just washed my hands and hope it doesn't make me die.

Earthquake Aftermath

2008-05-12T19:48:00.002-04:00

Wow, there's been a huge response to my entry about the earthquake. I don't have a lot of time (I can only get Internet outside, and it's raining), but I can update everyone on what's going on.

It's about 8 AM here, not many people around. I hear that most of the Chinese tried to sleep outside (and for those who live on the 22^nd floor, it's no wonder!), but it's raining heavily now and that must be brutal.

Everyone I referred to in my post is with USAC's program. The Daniel I mentioned is Daniel Scallon; he's safe and taking a shower in my apartment if that's who you're looking for. If not, I hope you find your Daniel.

We ended up having a huge sleepover in my apartment with the ten or so USAC kids (and Brant's mom) who are still in town. There were a few minor scares, but nothing that lasted beyond running out of the apartment.

I was woken up several times to respond to the press. My mom called me to say that NBC wanted to talk to me. As you can imagine, that got me up even if it was 2 AM. I sounded shaky on the phone, since I had never been pumped for information internationally by a major news corporation. They had already found someone to do an interview with by phone.

By the time I talked to Jason I felt comfortable. We scheduled for me to be on Good Morning America Tuesday morning, which airs at 7 AM EST. You should watch it if you can. I'm not sure if things have changed while I slept, though, because when I just checked my email I had one saying that they wanted to talk to all the kids in our program. That would be a little disappointing not to have it all to myself, but I don't want to be selfish.

As far as how the city looks, it looks like normal. Dreary, with a few people walking or driving. I haven't heard of any buildings falling down, but I'm sure there's been structural damage that we can't see.

Take care.

The Earthquake

2008-05-12T07:20:00.001-04:00

I was really looking forward to talking about my trip to Mt. Emei, but less than half an hour after James, the guy I was traveling with, and I got back, Chengdu suffered a major earthquake. First things first: I'm safe and no one is hurt.

James and I had just settled down for a late lunch around 2:00 at a little place nearby my apartments when we felt the table shake. I thought James was bumping it with his legs, he thought I was shaking it, but then we realized that neither of us could shake the ground like that. We ran outside along with hundreds of other screaming Chinese as the earthquake grew worse.

My primary concern then was getting somewhere where falling buildings wouldn't hit me. Luckily, the hot pot place across the street just had its windows shaking, and the building we had just exited, with a bottom row of businesses and another six or seven floors of apartments, was shaking menacingly but didn't collapse.

We occasionally had earthquakes in California, but none this severe. I had trouble focusing my eyes as I surfed the pavement standing there. The road didn't crack, but it swayed. The cooks, waitresses, and nearby tenants had evacuated.

After maybe a minute the earthquake stopped. People were still flowing outdoors, and once I confirmed that it didn't look like anyone was dying, I didn't feel bad about my observation that this was the most number of people I'd ever seen at one time just in their underwear.

A slight tremor passed a few minutes after, but there wasn't any more further excitement. I worked up the courage to go back to our apartment, where I saw our mirror dramatically shattered and a bit of plaster on the floor, but nothing serious.

All the USAC kids who were left in town started congregating, and it was like someone had taken a snapshot of life in Chengdu at that moment: Andrew was on the ninth floor and just hid under the table; Brant was with his mom, who had just come to Chengdu to visit; Colin was in the bathroom; Megan was teaching elementary schoolers and everyone panicked; I was eating; Daniel was leaving for the train station (so he looked like he was the foreigner fleeing from the scene); Alex was on the twelfth floor of the student dorms and said he never descended them faster.

The worst story was Liz. She was at the airport ready to leave China, and had just handed over her passport to check in her luggage. Then the earthquake hit, she grabbed her bags and ran, the airport closed, and her passport was somewhere in the airport. She came back here to our apartments and doesn't know when to go back to the airport or what time her flight is supposed to leave. For that matter, Alex and I don't know what to think about our flight to Xinjiang tomorrow morning.

I gathered information from other foreigners with brief Internet access. The earthquake registered 7.8 about 90 km from Chengdu and was felt as far as Beijing. Apparently American media is picking up the story, so it must be serious. The Chinese president is coming to Chengdu to look appropriately concerned.

We hear that we shouldn't sleep inside tonight because they're expecting an aftershock. I certainly wasn't expecting this much excitement when I came to China!

The Semester is Over!

2008-05-09T20:23:00.002-04:00

I took my final final yesterday. It went horribly. Well, it started horribly and ended decently, but when you open the test and the first question asks for a character you learned a long time ago and haven't used since, you feel dumb not knowing the answer.

I'm still going to be in China until nearly the end of August, so I'm in a different frame of mind as everyone else. I'm ready to go climb a mountain, explore China, and study more in Beijing; they're ready to fly out of the country.

We had our end of the semester banquet last night. None of us likes the banquets because when they serve us fancy food we don't really like it. The best thing they offered us last night was some little cake type of thing made with durrian (not sure how to spell that, though). It's a really smelly fruit, but the cake was good.

I have to go finish up packing, I just wanted to announce that I have finished three years worth of Chinese.

Here's a picture from last night of me and my awesome Chinese teacher:

Chinese Newspapers

2008-05-08T10:20:00.002-04:00

Since coming to China, I've been well shielded from Chinese newspapers by my illiteracy. Today, though, I went to a western restaurant and they gave me the official paper to read in English while I waited for my food.

The good news is that the articles were written (or translated) by native English speakers. The bad news is pretty much everything else. I had heard of propaganda, but I never really knew what it looked like. Reading the front page, though, taught me as much as I want to learn. All the headlines that had to do with China were positive ("Grain Supply is Sufficient to Keep Costs Down"), and even the headlines that would normally be negative had a positive slant to them ("Gang Trials Evidence of Major Crackdown on Corruption"). Anything related to a different country was negative.

I saw that there was an article about official Chinese policy on visas. This is something that I, as someone studying abroad, am very interested in. I've heard recently that with the Olympics coming to China, they've stopped issuing multiple-entry visas and have made it really difficult to get even a single-entry visa unless you can find a school or job to back you up. The article was about a press conference that denied this (since that would make China look bad), then proceeded to redefine the situation with more positive words.

Since I'm an English major studying Chinese, I'd like to practice this new form of writing, gleaning all the technique I could from that article. If China Daily doesn't work out, I can always try working for the Onion.

USAC Students "Following Global Practices"

Will Penman

In a statement issued today, the rumor that beginning tomorrow May 9th University Studies Abroad Consortium (USAC) students studying in Chengdu will leave was denied. "USAC students are simply seeking the best paths for themselves as this summer approaches," one representative said. Citizens are reminded that this approach is "just for a period of time."

"What will not change is USAC's continued support for students learning Chinese, their instruction of available students, and the safety of said students."

This rumor has been spreading due to information from the participants' mothers. "I'm definitely going to keep studying Chinese," Sol Lee said as he happened to pack a suitcase. "And I think Chengdu is a good place to study."

The statement noted that students are modeling their habits after previous USAC groups. It isn't that students will leave Chengdu; in fact, more students will arrive in the summer. "I hope the kid living in my bedroom this summer hates the bed as much as I have," said Will Penman, the unbiased author of this article, showing much enthusiasm to have common experiences with more students.

Students point out that they have been in Chengdu for several months, much longer than some other programs.

There have been reports that students will spontaneously leave beginning May 9th for various academic reasons. "Summer school", "job", "a break from Chinese" have all been cited.

Getting Visas

2008-05-06T11:18:00.000-04:00

My spring semester ends this Friday. Next Tuesday Alex and I leave for northwest China, to a province that borders eight countries. I really hope that we can go visit one of them. Our most likely options are Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, or Pakistan. I went on a wild goose hunt to figure out what an American needs to do to get into one of those.

It turns out that next door to the American consulate is the office for the Pakistani consulate, so with a little trepidation (since I didn't actually know how to say "Pakistan" in Chinese) I went to go talk to him. Surprisingly, when I greeted him in Chinese he gave me a blank stare and then said in English that he didn't speak Chinese. That set the tenor of our talk. He said obviously I would need a special passport, and began giving me instructions that included more than a $100 fee and a month wait. Pakistan was out.

I next went to find out information about Kazakhstan. There are travel agencies by the American consulate, but they all acted like it was obviously that an American could go wherever he wanted. One guy was ready to book me a plane flight to Kazakhstan, but since I had gotten the same line about Pakistan, I wanted to figure out what was what.

I decided to go ask people at the American consulate. That was an interesting experience. The building is guarded 24 hours a day by Chinese guys trying to look intimidating (but no one carries guns in China). You're not allowed to walk on the sidewalk, and there's always a line of Chinese people trying to have something to do with America. Turns out I just had to walk up and show my passport and they let me in.

I went through some security procedures, walked to a different building, and went to the window for Americans. The girl had passable English, but a really annoying habit of nodding her head as she talked so that it seemed patronizing. I gave her my spiel about wanting information on how to get in to Kazakhstan, then disappeared behind the counter. When she came back, she told me, in as matter-of-fact a voice as everyone else I had talked to, that of course they wouldn't know about America's relationship with Kazakhstan, but she had pulled up the phone number for the Kazakh consulate in Beijing and I could call them.

I left a little miffed at how the American consulate didn't know about American visas, but decided I might as well call the Kazakh office in Beijing. The lady answered in English, so I started talking, and before I finished my sentence she had hung up on me. I called again a few times today with the same result.

If anyone can tell me offhand what America and Kazakhstan think of each other, I'd appreciate it. I bet Alex and I are just going to have to wait until we get to the province that's near those countries to have any solid information, though.

On a positive note, my language partner got her visa to go to college in the States this fall. I thought this was interesting: apparently, Chinese people need to make an appointment about visas, and to do that they have to call ahead, and they have to call with a special calling card that you can only buy at one bank in town, and that card costs more than $5 for 8 minutes. Hao mafan, my language partner said. I agree, visas are way too much trouble.

Watching Ironman

2008-05-04T11:02:00.001-04:00

I know, pretty boring since going to see Ironman is probably the thing to do in the States right now. Does it help that I don't know when it came out and that when we bought our tickets, I didn't know how to say which movie I wanted to see? The title is three characters long, and I only knew the last one...

Maybe I should post another picture of my shorts (I'm wearing the black pair today and people tell me they like it better than the khaki one). That seemed to elicit all kinds of comments. I'm so happy you commented, Mich! And TC, Grandad told me you were going to Dickenson; I hope you love college. I haven't met anyone named Tony, though, but if I do, I'm sure I'll remember him for his normal name. I just saw a picture of a Chinese girl named "Win" with her brother "Earth." Mom, I'm glad you didn't try for slang in public. Katie, I think the lol undid some of the compliment... :)

As I said, I went to see Ironman tonight. I happened to be in the happening apartment when Sol, Sofia, and Jess were planning, and since I didn't have anything else to do tonight, I went along too. The movie, if you haven't seen it, was pretty sweet. We managed to go to a showing that was in English with Chinese subtitles, so we understood all of it. (This was in contrast to me watching the movie about Jane Austen a few months ago, which was boring and in Chinese, with no subtitles.) I think I'm starved for real English here, so listening to a whole movie of witty dialogue was fantastic.

When the movie was over, the credits started to roll, the Ironman theme song came on, and we went to get out of our seats—and I remembered I was in China. For a flittering moment, I thought I was in America, but then I was back halfway around the world, faster than Ironman can fly.

It was the first time I actually forgot I was in China. It made me a little sad to be here. In general I'm pretty happy (especially with my trip to Xinjiang coming up next week). I was really craving pretzels today, and all I could find were saltine knockoffs, but that's how things go. My brain's never been fooled.

Well, that's all the sentiments I can stand to write now. Actually, it brings me to the topic I was planning on writing about before I began writing: I hung out with a different Chinese family yesterday.

This family lives in our apartment complex. The dad takes a walk every evening, so he sometimes sees me stealing Internet access and wants to talk. He lived in America for a while, but always says that it was a while ago, so his English is rusty. He continually suggested that we work out a tutoring situation for his daughter, and since my education has taken a break while China celebrated the first of May, I eventually acquiesced.

I came to his house to see two kids, which wasn't surprising since they often have a friend. We taught each other for a while, then they invited me to lunch. The one who I knew was a daughter kept calling the other one Little Sister, but again, that's not that unusual because after the One Child Policy, everybody wants to still feel like they have siblings.

And then I said in English to the one girl that the other one wasn't really her sister, was she? The girl said no. That was pretty convincing proof, so I turn to the younger one and ask her where she lived. She said she didn't understand. I soon found out that she actually was the younger sister (which, in retrospect, explained why I thought they had the same last name), that the mom just loved children enough that they sucked it up and paid the fine to have a second one. And I was the jerk who said it couldn't be. They laughed it off, and I was glad that we had just talked about taboo topics in our respective cultures. Americans don't talk about money or politics, Chinese talk about everything. Everything? I asked. Everything but feelings, they said.

Tailor-made Shorts

2008-05-02T11:52:00.001-04:00

When my parents were in town, we went to a huge market where you could buy almost anything you can imagine. My mom was looking for material so she could have a qipao made for my sister, so we walked down aisles and aisles of little stalls selling hundreds of kinds of fabric. I began to realize that given how cheap fabric is, and how cheap labor is, that having clothes made would be really fun.

I wanted to have some shorts made because summer is almost here (it seems like just a few weeks ago I was complaining about a scarf not being enough, and now I wish I had an air conditioner in my room).

My goal was to have shorts that would make people in America say, "Cool shorts. Where'd you buy them?" And I'd say, "I didn't, I had them tailored." Finally I found the perfect shop and bought one pattern that had black Chinese characters written in cursive on a beige background, and other with white, old pictographic characters on black material.

I took them to the tailor, brought along the one pair of shorts that I had as a model, and that was that. I don't even know where you would find a tailor in America.

I went to pick up my shorts yesterday with a certain degree of trepidation. It's not expensive, but I still didn't want them to look horrible. I'm really glad that the shorts I showed her were ones that were really expensive (imagine, the only pair of really nice shorts I've ever bought, and I end up making two copies of it and adjusting it slightly to perfectly fit my build). The shorts look so sweet.

Check out the black on beige:

Here's the final tally:

Material for shorts: 18 kuai

Employing a tailor: 35 kuai

Having custom-made shorts that you think look really awesome: way more than $8-worth

Snape Kills Dumbledore

2008-04-30T22:41:00.001-04:00

I think that pretty much sums up my life right now. I'm catching up on Harry Potter, and it's about the only thing I'm accomplishing. My parents brought me the first three, the family they were staying with has the rest, and I only have until next Friday before my semester's over and I start traveling for the summer. All the rest of the kids in my program are getting sad because they're leaving China soon; I'm just getting nervous that I might not be able to finish Harry Potter.

After last night, though, I think it's possible. I had my one day of language class Tuesday, try to get a bit of studying done yesterday, but spent most of it spending money and reading. I bought a sweet backpacking backpack (bright orange since I am a Florida Gator, even no one here has heard of Florida). I went to a going-away party at a Turkish restaurant for a guy who has to leave tomorrow.

And I read Harry Potter. The sixth one is by far the most exciting. I am continually amazed at how planned out J. K. Rowling had everything. It's not as apparent in the first few books, but the further you read, the more stuff there is to tie in, and everything works out perfectly. And then out of nowhere, Snape kills Dumbledore! I'd heard, of course, since I'm two or three years late reading the book, but I completely forgot until I read it.

I finished the sixth book late last night, then went to sleep in which I had a nightmare where I woke up (I'm pretty sure I screamed as loud as I could when I woke up, too, but one of my roommates was sitting outside on her computer finishing a paper and she didn't react, so maybe I didn't) and was convinced that the little red light coming from my power strip was the eye of some kind of monster Voldemort was going to attack me with.

I sat there in my bed, rigid, trying to figure out what to do. I figured that if I were Harry Potter, I'd be able to send a spell at it and blow it to smithereens, and even tried a spell in my mind to see if it worked. Unfortunately, it did not send my power strip reeling. Now, I knew that I wasn't really Harry Potter, but I also knew that Voldemort wouldn't bother with me if I wasn't powerful, so I just sat there, hoping it wouldn't notice me. After a few minutes the dream setting wore off and I remembered that I did have something in my room that always sent out a little red light.

On the upside, we just learned in this chapter how to say "nightmare." And, most helpful, I learned that in Chinese you don't "have" a nightmare, you "do" a nightmare. So now I'll be able to impress my language partner with a discussion about what happened to me at 4 am last night. I don't know the right adaptation of Harry Potter, though... maybe Ha Li Pa Da.

So now I have a week to read the last book. I don't have class until Tuesday, which means if any of the other people in my program had any money left, we could do a little traveling. If not, I might actually study Chapter 4 more and marvel at how useful my orange backpack is. And shake my head... Snape killed Dumbledore.

What I've been Learning Recently

2008-04-27T21:16:00.001-04:00

We just took our last midterm on Friday. We have two weeks of school left officially, but since the end of this upcoming week is a national holiday, I only have one day of language class this week, two next week, and then our final. After that Alex and I will be flying to Xinjiang (in northwest China), exploring the culture there (since the language isn't related at all to Chinese), hopefully pop into Kazakhstan (that's right, "pop into" Kazakhstan), and then circle back to Chengdu before I continue my travels. By mid-June I'll be in Beijing ready to start studying again.

A big online high-5 goes to Katie, for correctly guessing that I gave my brother a Chinese brand of cigarettes for his 18^th birthday. My mom, who delivered the package, was not amused.

I'd like to share some of the things I learned to take the midterm.

There were a random collection of words. We know so few words that almost anything is helpful. A smattering of words from one recent chapter included "to stuff", "thief", "to marry", "pity", "idol", "parallel", and "so-called." We learned a word that means "to complain/blame", which I thought was interesting, since I don't know if we have a word in English that means both of those.

We also learned several measure words. Measure words in Chinese are words that specify what kind of something a noun is. For example, in English you can't say "a sunglasses", you have to say "a pair of sunglasses". You used to not be able to say "five waters", you'd have to specify what kind of waters: five cups, five glasses, five pitchers, five gallons. In Chinese it's the same, but any time you want to specify how many of a noun, you need a measure word.

I think sometimes it gets a little ridiculous. I mean, how else are you going to measure people except in people? But when you go to a restaurant you can't say wu ren (five people), you HAVE to say wu wei ren (five people's-worth of people).

So, different nouns go with different measure words. One measure word is roughly for long, thin things, so you use it on roads, pants, etc. Another is for large flat things like pictures. But this chapter we've learned a measure word, gu. Here's the definition: (a measure word for strength, smell, or a long, narrow thing, etc.)

What drives me crazy about that definition is the "etc." at the end. As if strength, smell, or long, narrow things constitutes a category I can add to. I asked our teacher what in the world we're supposed to use gu for and she just paused, said, "Oh," and then said that it's used for some abstract nouns.

I've also been learning about Chinese culture from our book. There was a dialogue we had to read in which one person was asking the other person how to deal with Chinese people asking really personal questions. Here are his answers:

"Where are you going?" If you don't want to say, just make something up or saying you're going home. No one will mind if it's not true. They're just being polite.

"How much money do you make?" / "How old are you?" Just lie.

"Are you married?" Just change the topic.

Buying a Birthday Present

2008-04-24T23:23:00.000-04:00

Today was by brother Andrew’s 18th birthday. My parents just flew out of Chengdu a few days ago, but it wasn’t until the night before they left that I realized that they would be able to take back any present I bought him. It was already 9 pm, but Carrefour didn’t close for another hour and a half, so I figured I would be able to find him something. The problem was that Andrew has already been to China, so I couldn’t get him a random trinket, and my parents already bought him everything he asked for as a souvenir. And I only had an hour or two to find him something.

I had a great idea before I got to Carrefour, though, and after I bought his present, found a little wrapping paper and a box to put it in, I was set. I thought to myself that I could give Andrew a page of hints and he still wouldn’t be able to guess, so I’m going to, and you can see if you can guess his present.

What’s funny is that Andrew could have bought my gift when he was here, but when he went back he wouldn’t have been able to. I didn’t buy him something rare, though, because now he could buy them if he wanted to. I’m not sure if they are used more in China or in the US; I bought him a Chinese brand.

In fact, it was the cheapest kind I could find. There are whole stores dedicated to them, so I could have spent a lot of money, but Andrew won’t even use his, so I thought it wouldn’t matter. If somebody gave one to me, I don’t think I’d use it either, although several people here in China have asked if I’d like to. It’s a favorite among taxi drivers, although some foreigners don’t like it.

It’s a small package, really light, and easy to carry, but using it will set you puffing. My wrapping was superfluous, since most of it is wrapping, but the important part is quite potent. They are used year-round, for all occasions or no occasion. Some people use them to relax, kids use them because they’re exciting.

You need something else to make them work, but it’s not nearly as complicated as electricity or Internet access. We’ve had the tools to make them practically since Prometheus’ time, but they haven’t existed in their current form for more than a hundred years or so.

You can find a picture of them on every plane and in most establishments. You can’t eat or drink it; it’s not a rock; it’s not alive. I hope he laughed when he saw it, although they’re no joking matter. I assume it went through fine at customs on the way to the US, because my parents didn’t say anything. I didn’t tell them what it was either.

Andrew’s gotten my present now. Can you guess what it was?

Becoming Fluent in Chinese

2008-04-22T11:37:00.000-04:00

Becoming fluent in Chinese is difficult. Now that my parents have left, I have nothing to distract me from the grind of class, so this entry is devoted to trying to explain why I am still not fluent in Chinese.

Aside from the obvious reasons (tones and characters stick out) I've developed a sense of the differentness of Chinese. People always talk about how learning different languages is supposed to make you think different ways, but I've never understood what they were talking about. I took Spanish for four years and only learned that "extraterrestrial" (with an accent on the last 'a' if I remember right) is the word for... "extraterrestrial." But don't get me started on my Spanish experience.

In Chinese, they put ideas into different categories than we do. Some categories we don't have. For example, in English we just use "carry" to mean almost every kind of carrying. In Chinese, there's standard carrying, but then there's "carry with both hands up in front of you (like a server in a restaurant)" and "carry across your shoulders on a pole."

It's easy to adjust to extra categories. What's difficult is when categories overlap, because then it's not as easy to sort out.

We just learned a few words for "memory." One is jixing, the other is jiyi. They have the same first syllable because that means "to remember." If I want to be cute, I can say I ji the character ji. Now, jixing in English means "memory," but it really means "the ability to memorize." For example, I can say I have a bad jixing, because whenever I take a test, I freak out and can't remember the answers.

Jiyi in English also means "memory," but this is more memory of something. I have memories of UF, I have memories of eating lamb skewers, etc. So far in this explanation, the two words just separate ideas that we use the same word for in English.

But then I asked my language partner if you could count jiyi. She laughed and said of course you couldn't. I told her that in English we could say, "I only have two memories of when I was a kid: whatever, and whatever." She said that was silly, and that you can't do that in Chinese. Apparently, in Chinese, you can ask "What jiyi do you have from when you were a kid?" just like we would in English, but Chinese memories can only be described, not counted.

Another example has to do with the word for "emotion." In English, we either say that we "feel" sad, or that we "are" sad. We describe the sadness as either an emotion or a feeling, using both to mean exactly the same thing.

In Chinese ne, (sorry, I couldn't help putting it in. It would be perfect if we had a word for ne in English) there are several. All I've got figured out is that gan has to do with emotion, and any compound words probably have to do with that idea. The problem is that our teacher wants us to actually understand Chinese, and so we have to sort through ganshou (emotion), gandao (emotion), and ganqing (emotion). Ask me in a semester how to use which one and I might be able to tell you.

So that's why I'm not fluent in Chinese yet. I can't accurately say that sometimes I just feel frustrated at my slow progress.

Tasting America

2008-04-20T10:22:00.001-04:00

With Mom and Dad in town, I've gotten more than just parental attention. Last night Mom said she would cook for me. At first I thought she meant some Chinese dish, but then she clarified that she wanted to make something that she would make at home. I was skeptical that this was possible in China, but the friends my parents are staying with have an oven, so it wasn't as out of reach as I thought.

Of course, I chose spaghetti and meatballs, only the best dish ever. Mom went shopping all day to buy ingredients and talk to people in Chinese, but Dad was interested in something cultural, so we went to Dufu's Cottage.

Dufu's Cottage is where I recited my poem at the beginning of the semester, so I'd been there several times. When I went, though, it was the dead of winter, and I think it happened to rain every time I went. Yesterday was a beautiful day, though. The sun was out, there was a slight breeze, the air was warm. Dad and I enjoyed all the scenery. Dufu's Cottage is in memorial of Dufu, one of China's most famous poets. He lived around 750 AD, spent a few years in Chengdu where he built a thatched-roof cottage, and now they've reconstructed it and made it into a huge park.

And when I say huge, I mean it. Dad and I wandered leisurely for about half an hour, looking at one little museum after another, and gradually learned about Dufu through the signs in fairly good English. The park was not big on signs on the map, though, and we had a difficult time finding the main deal: Dufu's Cottage.

Eventually we got tired and wanted to find the cottage, but we couldn't. I tried to ask some people, but since the whole park is called "Dufu's Cottage," asking where Dufu's cottage was didn't get me anywhere.

Dad and I finally started to leave without even seeing Dufu's cottage, but as we got lost on our way to the right exit (there were three), we stumbled onto the right path and finally found it.

When we got back home, I ate spaghetti and meatballs with my parents. Tonight we went out to the new Papa John's pizza place, and after that we walked to the city square and I ate Dairy Queen. It's a good thing I got to taste so much of home, because once Mom and Dad leave Tuesday, I'll have an even longer time of not seeing them than I did before they came. I don't come back to America until late August, which is still four months away. It's a good thing I can hug my parents now.

Having Fun like Crazy

2008-04-18T22:12:00.001-04:00

With Mom and Dad here, excitement has abounded. A few nights ago we had dinner with my Chinese family and their friends. Mom held up the conversation and charmed them all, so we planned to hang out with them again last night. Thursday night I went to a birthday party at an Indian place. Yesterday we did so much that by nine at night we were all exhausted.

First, in the morning I didn't have class because there was an athletic event going on that they wanted us to attend. I didn't really understand the significance of it until we were already part of it, but the opening ceremony that we had to march is a huge deal to colleges in China. I took video of it the whole time and will shortly be posting it to YouTube, where you can get the condensed version.

After we stood on the field for a few hours, we took a bus back to our campus (we were at the new campus, which is far away), and then I ate lunch with Dad. Then my Chinese mom picked the three of us up and we went to go teach.

We were assigned three classes of 5-6 year olds. The problem with doing kids that old (I know, thinking that 5-6 year olds is old is crazy) is that they've learned so many words the teachers can't keep track. We were assigned to teach the kids the body parts so they could sing "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes." They already knew those words, though, so we had to make stuff up on the spot. I was glad that as we were coming in to the class, I predicted it to Mom, though.

Mom used to be a teacher, though, so she knew all the techniques to make the kids pay attention, laugh, and learn. Tina, the girl who helps me, was so impressed that she got Mom's email address so she could ask her about her teaching methods later.

Since there were three foreigners yesterday, they had to take lots of pictures next to the graduating kindergarten kids. Then we had tea with the principal, then we were off with my Chinese mom to have Chengdu specialties.

We drove for quite a long time, since there was bad traffic. Mom talked to Mrs. Xiong herself while Dad and I talked to Tina. She speaks a little English, since she's an English teacher at the kindergarten, so it was a strange mix of Chinese and English. If felt weird to have her there because then Mom and Dad and I couldn't talk in English without her hearing some of what we were saying. Finally we came to this place that's kinda like a Chinese mall. Mom and Dad were amazed at the affluence of the plaza, since when they were here, Chinese people couldn't afford to go to them.

We ate spicy food and tried to make conversation with everyone there. Then, karaoke was on the docket, but Dad said he was too tired. We had already driven out to a nearby town to teach, worked our way through Friday night traffic, and had dinner--all in Chinese. I stood in a field all morning, so I wasn't far behind them in feeling exhausted. Mom and Dad collapsed and I recovered from thinking for so long in Chinese.

Seeing Pandas Again

2008-04-15T23:07:00.004-04:00

I've been to see all the "historical" and "cultural" places, and except for the museum with shoes for women whose feet were bound, I wasn't very impressed. I have a fairly low tolerance for appreciating stuff just because I'm supposed to.

My main outing, then, with Mom and Dad here, was to go see the pandas. The friends they're staying with recommended a guy who could drive us, wait around for a few hours, and then drive us back, so we decided to do that.

The three of us combined managed to have a reasonable conversation with the guy. He looked to me for pronunciation, I looked to mom for listening comprehension, and she looked to Dad for grammar help when she wanted to say something. It was a team effort. The guy who was driving us was very nice and spoke reasonably standard Chinese. Best of all, he had a great sense of humor and laughed when we were trying to be funny, showing off his rotten, yellow teeth (it did seem like he had a full set, though).

Seeing the pandas was fantastic. All of us USAC students went in the first few weeks, and I thought we were lucky to see a panda climb a tree and then the trainer have to follow him because he wouldn't come down, but something was different this time. There are several enclosures, designated by age of panda. We found one pen of adults to be the most active.

At first, one ate sugarcane while the others meandered over.

Then the first went over to a different part and started munching on bamboo. Despite there being a huge amount of bamboo piled up, a second panda started eating the other end of the same stalk. Eventually, the other pandas came over and each ate with careful consideration for how their body was angled for all the tourists' cameras. This picture gives you a good idea of what we saw for several minutes.

Mom and Dad were really impressed. Pandas are so much more magnificent than I had thought of before coming to China. And, in honor of my parents actually being in China right now, here's a third picture with them in it. Actually, there isn't, because the Internet isn't happy with me now.

Giving my Parents the Tour

2008-04-13T11:19:00.001-04:00

Saturday morning I picked up my parents at the airport. It was nice to see them. They said when they saw me they thought it was somebody else (claiming my hair has gotten darker), and it was only my persistent waving in their direction that convinced them that it was me until they got closer.

We took a taxi back to the family's house that they're staying at. A taxi should cost about 35 kuai, so when I noticed that it was 32 and we were only halfway, I started wondering what was wrong. It turns out the guy's meter was set for more than twice the rate. I asked him about it, he said something that we didn't really understand. Dad asked him about it, he grumbled about it and stopped the meter. When we arrived, Dad only had a 100 to pay him, which is really risky because you should never ask a taxi driver to give you a 50 since they're almost all fake. I had heard stories of people getting ripped off that way, so I started checking to make sure the 50 he gave us back was real. I'm not an expert at determining counterfeits, but it didn't feel real to me. I asked him about it, the guy grumbled again, and said if I thought it was fake I could have two 20s and a 10.

I thought I was really helping us out but it looks like the taxi driver had the last laugh: we were eating out today and when Dad tried to pay with the 20s, they said one was fake.

It's strange having them in China. They lived in China for four years long ago, so they used to speak Chinese. Their vocabulary hasn't been accessed in seventeen years, though, and their tones, which Mom claims were never very good, have gone down the drain. Nevertheless, they can understand conversations that Chinese people have, which I can't do.

Today we were walking through Carrefour, the French bigger-than-Super Walmart chain in China. It's two floors of everything you could need in life, from perfume to pork to imported cheese. Mom wanted to buy an electric tea pot for when she goes to Spain once a year, except we didn't know how to say "tea pot." They're game for talking in Chinese, so she got the salesclerk to understand what she meant and then tried to talk with her for like five minutes about how she wanted a cheap one and she didn't really care about the quality because she's only going to use it once a year.

I gave them a tour of my apartment yesterday. It's hard to complain about the hole in our ceiling when they were happy to have hot water back in the day. We had lunch at a small place nearby and Mom thought the food was way too spicy, even though it was barely spicy at all. We relaxed (they took a jet lag-induced nap), went to dinner with some family friends, talked with them for a while. This morning they came to church with me and this afternoon I did my own thing, so I don't know what they've been up to.

We're headed to the panda reserve tomorrow, so we might get some cute pictures. Here's one we took today, though, during lunch.

Looking Forward to Awesomeness

2008-04-11T09:06:00.000-04:00

I was going to write about how strange it was to think that my parents were flying to China while I was in class, but I took too long and got a call from them an hour ago saying they were in Beijing conquering jet lag now. Tomorrow morning I'll pick them up at the Chengdu airport, and then we'll have a week and a half to do fun things before they leave. I can't wait to see them.

The reason I waited until this evening to blog instead of this afternoon is because I got caught up playing cards. I rode a bus until I got tired, got off, and started looking for excitement. I found too much excitement at first when I walked down one street and saw more than five brothels in one block. I went down a different street and saw something much more to my liking: people playing cards.

I've mentioned before how fascinated I am by the three-person card game they play called Beat the Landlord. The people I found playing today were perfect. They were really friendly (they even had stools so onlookers could relax while watching), they played with low stakes (50 cents as a unit instead of a whole kuai), and they were interested in the foreigner. I watched them for quite a while. In between hands they asked me the usual questions about where I'm from and how long I've been in China.

Then I asked if I could play and they were very patient. Everybody is so fast at getting their cards organized. You get one third of the deck and you have to sort them to figure out how good your hand is. Then they expect you to make decisions lightning-fast, and I was more like the speed of sound than I was the speed of light. I expect that the more I play—or maybe the more money I spend—the better I'll get at it. I noticed that by my tenth hand I wasn't fumbling to get my cards in order as much as I was at the beginning. There's light at the end of the tunnel.

Language-wise, we've just started into our third semester's worth of Chinese. We finished our old book and are now working on a ridiculously hard book. It's frustrating to have to answer a question when you have to look up more than half of the words in the question, let alone figure out the answer. Our teacher encouraged us today by saying that she thinks once we get through this, it'll be downhill from here. I'd like that to be right. I think if I could get a feel for the hundreds of new words they slide in (literally, just in the text for this first lesson there were over fifty words that weren't on our vocab list that we hadn't seen before) I'd really know what I was doing. I'm looking forward to being really awesome at Chinese.

To show that I am making some progress, I just learned how to say "looking forward to": pan (fourth tone, for those interested, with mu as the radical and fen as the rest). But here's an interesting linguistic note: Chinese has words that get attached to verbs that tell you what happens with the verb. One of them is dao, which means "to arrive." For example, I can say that tomorrow my parents will dao Chengdu. If I'm on the phone and I can't hear you, I can say that I didn't hear dao your voice. Okay, so here's the phrase that I can't translate: pan dao. "Looking forward to something until it came true" sounds awkward, and so does "my looking forward paid off." I think the best we can do in English is to say "I was looking forward to something, and then it happened." In Chinese it only takes one clause, though. Isn't that cool?

Well, now I'm looking forward to trying out my new microphone by Skyping Dan and Mallory. My next post will have a picture with my parents in it!

A Day in Guizhou, part 4

2008-04-09T20:26:00.002-04:00

We were pretty tired by this point, but still in relatively good spirits. Now that I had money, we could be lavish enough to hail a taxi to take us to the hotel the couple on the train had told us about. This time we were going to make sure that it was the right place. One eye on the taxi, one eye on the hotel, we eased toward it and found that it was closed.

The taxi driver made up for the other one. He left his car in the street and came over to figure out what the problem was. No one was there. No problem, he said, I know this other hotel nearby. In Guiyang taxis are a flat rate for anywhere in the city, so if he would take us somewhere else he'd be doing it for free. We drove to the one he was thinking of--too expensive. We drove to another one--no availability. I didn't mention that Friday was a national holiday and it seemed like all of China was traveling, so hotels were scarce.

We drove to three or four more, and each one was either too expensive or all full. Finally we arrived at one that seemed appropriate, said goodbye to the taxi driver, and started to pay for the room. Then we discovered that the price was for one person, and that we would have to pay double for both of us to have somewhere to sleep.

It was 1:30 then and we just wanted to go somewhere. As far in the past as it seemed, we had woken up in Guiyang that morning, so we did know of one hotel that wasn't too expensive. We took our third taxi of the night to get there and discovered that they had rooms available! The first night we stayed there it was 139 kuai, but now they only had 159 kuai rooms. The extra 20 kuai got us a sitting room and larger bathroom. The shower wasn't as good, and since we weren't planning on having guests over to our hotel room, the sitting room seemed superfluous. But we had finally found somewhere to sleep.

We woke up in Guiyang, went to Anshun, the waterfall, the caves, and back to Guiyang, had an ATM card eaten, and then past 2 am we went to sleep. Needless to say, I don't like Guiyang very much. What a day.

When Alex went to the bank the next morning, they happened to be open, and we could fly home like normal. This is a picture of me and him at the caves pretending to be bridge-guarding dragons.

A Day in Guizhou, part 3

2008-04-08T01:44:00.000-04:00

Alex and I found a bank before we found a hotel, swiped our cards to enter, and then started trying to plead with the ATM machines to accept our cards. Sure, our cards are supposed to work in China, but some days the ATMs decide that we shouldn't feel at ease so much and gives all kinds of error messages. Out of the four machines, one was out of service, one would tell me my card wasn't authorized for transactions, and one didn't have the option to withdraw. Alex was working the fourth machine, which gave the impression that it would give him money, but the seconds would tick by, no money would come out, and when the internal timer reached 100 it would give him an error message and return his card.

Alex tried two or three times, and then started reading our guidebook while he waited for his withdrawal to fail. What he didn't realize was that the machine had a "safety" feature where, if you didn't take your card within fifteen seconds, the machine would suck it back in so no one else would taken. Alex finishes reading his sentence and reaches for the card right as the machine pulled it back. "Sorry," it said. "You took too long to get your card." His bank card had just been eaten by the ATM.

We were in China, in a different province than usual, planning on leaving the next day, late at night. Moreover, it was a Friday night, so the bank probably wouldn't open until Monday. He started calling all the Chinese people he could think of who would still be awake and could speak English so we could figure out what to do.

I joked about just sleeping on the floor of the bank, but then a bum forced his way inside the sliding glass doors and did just that. After that I didn't suggest sleeping in the bank.

It looked like Alex had three options: a) report the card as "lost or stolen"--that takes six to eight weeks to get a new card even in the States; b) stay until Monday--that would mean paying for a new flight and missing his teaching engagement which he had on Sunday; c) hoping that someone in Guiyang could get his card on Monday and mail it to him--that might not be allowed for security reasons.

Things were looking pretty bleak, and we still didn't have any money. We considered whether we had enough cash to afford staying in a hotel. Since we couldn't get his card, we figured nobody else would be able to steal it, so we would leave and he would come back in the morning.

We started walking and eventually found an ATM that accepted my card, so our money problem had gone away. Alex was still sans-ATM card and we hadn't found somewhere to sleep yet. It was about 1 in the morning.

A Day in Guizhou, part 2

2008-04-07T06:26:00.001-04:00

That's right, quite a cliffhanger. Check out what happened next.

Alex and I decided that if there were still trains running, we might as well ride back to Guiyang that night so we would have all of Saturday free before we had to fly out. The taxi driver dropped us off at the train station and we went in to ask about tickets to Guiyang. The lady said there weren't any, so I went to the bathroom before we left.

Alex called me while I was in the bathroom, though, (that's right; I'm so good at the squatty potty now that I can even answer the phone while going to the bathroom) and told me to hurry up because we might miss our train. When I got out, he said that he asked someone else and they said that even though the train didn't have any tickets left, you could still board the train and hope for standing room.

We took a train on the first night we got to Guizhou, and it was pretty packed, so Alex and I were preparing ourselves to stand amidst tons of sleeping/smoking Chinese people for the hour and a half ride to Guiyang. When the train approached, we and about seventy others all rushed on and found to our delight that the train was practically empty. Alex and I sat next to each other opposite this cute young Chinese couple.

Gradually we started chatting with them. They were from Guiyang but worked somewhere else. They knew all the places to go, though, so they gave us recommendations which hotel to stay at. We talked for the whole ride there, and then when we were getting off the train I think we were supposed to pay for having ridden it, but the guy said something to get Alex and me through. We were feeling pretty good because we had not only found a train to take, but had also found some friendly people to talk to, had a comfortable ride, and didn't have to pay anything. It was only midnight.

The couple told the taxi driver which hotel he was supposed to take us to and off we went.

But as it turns out, the taxi driver didn't know where the hotel was and dropped us off in front of a random hotel. Alex and I didn't know any better, so we paid the guy and got out. When we discovered the hotel was out of our price range, we started off, half looking for a hotel, and half looking for an ATM, since we realized we were both dangerously low on cash.

A Day in Guizhou, part 1

2008-04-05T01:16:00.001-04:00

(The font on this post might be a little funky, since I'm in an Internet bar in Guizhou province. I think my font problems just add to the flavor of blogging from China, though.)

Alex and I are on the last day of our trip to Guiyang, but I have to interrupt our fun to blog about our day yesterday.

We woke up in Guiyang at around 10, since we were tired from the night before. There's nothing to do in Guiyang itself, but a few hours away is Anshun, a town that has a famous waterfall and cave system nearby, so we decided to see those during the day.

We didn't realize that it was a Chinese national holiday and that everyone and their nai-nai were trying to travel. Alex and I got to the bus station (which was a task in itself, but I'm compacting the story) and there were swarms of people. Buses leave to Anshun every 20 minutes, but from how many people were in line you would think a bus left every 20 seconds. Alex and I split up. I did it the American way standing at the back of the line, he did it the Chinese way standing at the front. Half an hour later I had moved ten feet forward and he had tickets for us.

We rode a few hours to Anshun, and as soon as we got off the bus a guy starting persistently asking us if we wanted to go to the waterfall and caves, because he would take us. We did want to go to the waterfall and caves, and couldn't think why we shouldn't let him take us, so we agreed. He said that somehow we wouldn't have to pay the entrance fee, which sounded good to us. He drove at 140 km/h to the waterfall, which felt nice compared to the slow bus. Soon we pulled up to a house, where he led us up a few flights of stairs to his own backyard view of the waterfall. We had to admit that it was a great view, and that saving 80 kuai on the entrance fee was worth it. It was really beautiful and once I get back to Chengdu I'll upload some pictures.

Next he drove us to the caves and said that if we couldn't find a ride back, we could call him and he would come pick us up. We got talked into a guide, explored the caves, and then when we were done it was about 7:00 and we needed a way home. I hadn't eaten since breakfast, so we paid an exorbinant rate for an attendant's bowl of rice. I called the guy who said his friend would come pick us up, we tried to communicate where we were, and then we started waiting.

After I finished the rice, we wanted to move up to the parking lot nearby, but the guy who gave me the rice kept telling us that we shouldn't. We couldn't understand why not, though, so we moved to the parking lot which was right by the road.

It was dark and a little cold, and soon after we came we saw headlights that headed right toward us. They kept coming, slowly, slowly toward us, and we couldn't see what the lights belonged to, so we kept backing up and wished we had listened to the guy's advice not to come up here. But then the truck stopped, and it turned out that it was just a trash truck having engine problems.
We laughed it off, the guys got out to fix the engine, and then as the truck left I saw that one of the tires had a huge lump. We were just wondering about the lump when the tire exploded and the car started rolling down into the side of the mountain.

Before we could figure out what that was all about, five or six pre-teen locals came by. They were intrigued by the foreigners and tried to chat with us for a while, which was difficult because their local accent made it difficult for us to understand them, and our horrible Chinese made it difficult for them to understand us. They laughed in between everything that was said, so that slowed the pace of the conversation, too.

By this time we had been waiting 20 minutes longer than the guy told us we would have to, and started to think maybe we should confirm that he really was coming. I called him and had a frustrating time. I kept telling him that the guy wasn't there, he kept telling me that he had arrived, but when I said that he wasn't there he thought I hadn't understood, and repeated in r-e-a-l-l-y slow Chinese that the guy was in fact there. I finally managed to explain where we currently were and we hung up.

Then a group of adults walked by who the kids didn't know. I thought it was so weird that anyone was there because all there was in the area was the entrance to the caves and a vacant hotel. The trash guys were still fixing the truck in the background.

Then the guy found us around 8:00 and we were picked up, on our way back to Anshun.

But our night wasn't even halfway over.

Eating Tibletan

2008-04-01T03:50:00.001-04:00

I was going to cover up that I'm talking about Tibet in this post, but then I realized that China is already blocking my blog. What do I care if their computer robots see the word Tibet? I still liked the sound of "Tiblet", though, so I kept it in the title.

A few days ago we decided to go to a Tibetan place for dinner. I think that says a lot about the current state of things here. Sure, there are cops cars with their lights flashing that just sit along Tibetan street outside of school, and they didn't use to be there, but that's the only change and it's just to be an impressive display. I haven't even seen official-looking people in or around the cop cars. Although I do have to say, now that I'm in a place where I'm above the average in terms of size, seeing Chinese policeman without even guns (policemen don't carry guns here) makes me much less intimidated than if they were the size of the guys on UF's football team. I'm not going around being rebellious just because I'm taller than the policemen, but it is kind of fun to observe.

Well, we decided to go to a Tibetan restaurant because it was Collin's birthday and the birthday person always decides. We didn't make up our minds until about 8:00, though, so after casually disregarding the idea that the restaurants might already be closed, we made our way to school.

When we got there, we happened to run into two people we knew who were hanging out with a Tibetan. Since none of us knew where to go (I'd been to a Tibetan place, but I didn't remember how to get there) we asked them for directions to a good restaurant. Somehow the person leading our group heard that we were supposed to turn right at a certain intersection instead of left, though, and we wandered about fifteen minutes the wrong way.

When we finally found the place we had been told about, it was closed. We wanted to give up, but that wouldn't leave us any less hungry, so we kept walking and happened to find a different Tibetan place that was open.

There were a few Tibetans eating when we came in, so they led us upstairs to the table or two they had there. After we ordered, Collin set in on his birthday beer and the other five of us drank whatever we had asked for. I didn't know that Sprite had been ordered for the table, so I submitted my small glass to something alcoholic, which I was forced to finish before I could have some Sprite.

After waiting for a while, we noticed the TV set in the corner playing Tibetan music videos. There were lyrics in a slanted Tibetan script and laments over lost Tibetan lovers—or at least that's what it looked like.

The longer we watched, though, the more of a difference we noticed between American music videos. There are all kinds of music videos out there, but the ones we saw took the cake: as the Tibetan pop star faded out, you could see them slaughtering yak. Each scene was a different animal. One woman grabbed a little furry cat-like animal by the tail, swung it around to get some momentum while it tried to resist, and then whacked its head on the ground. During all this peaceful Tibetan songs were being sung.

The food itself was amazing. Everything you order at a Tibetan place has yak in it, but they cook it a different way. The yak slivers they had was seasoned particularly well, and we all really liked it. And then we left, and that was our experience with Tibetans recently.

Tonight Alex and I fly to Guiyang, and I don't know if we'll be able to find hotels with hot water on our trip, let alone places where I can get online, so count yourself lucky if there are any posts before Sunday.

Juggling for Deaf Chinese Kids

2008-03-29T06:10:00.005-04:00

A lot of the American families here home school their kids, so they have time to go do fun service projects. I was invited to go with them to visit a deaf school. The idea was basically just to go and make the kids feel loved, and since I could juggle, I would give them a show.

Our class tried to take our final that morning and failed miserably. Our teacher had included tons of words that we had never seen before, which she hoped we would just be able to ignore without missing much from the passage. Our panicked stares convinced her otherwise, and she spent the time we were supposed to be taking the test reading out loud all the passages and telling us what it meant.

I was in the mood to do something else, then, and so I did. We took a charter bus to the school, since there were about thirty American kids going total. I sat amid a large group of middle-aged Western moms—something I don't think I've done before in China.

The firsts were just beginning. When we got to the school we were told that if we enunciated clearly, the deaf kids would be able to lip-read our Chinese. I thought it was so strange that I didn't have to think about my pronunciation that I don't think I really talked to them all that much. The kids didn't need much verbal communication. They were all younger elementary kids who just wanted to hold your hand and run around while you tried to play games with them and paint their faces. Here's a picture of me and this one kid. In the background you can see we were trying to play dodgeball, but the kids didn't quite understand and thought they were supposed to catch the ball, not dodge it.

Eventually it was time to gather them all in the cafeteria and let them see me juggle. Afterward they were going to get a snack, so I was lucky to have their attention. It was really interesting juggling for an audience that I couldn't talk to, but having to be so dramatic when I do my teaching job had worked up the actor in me and I did all kinds of goofy gestures and expressions.

I also got the audience involved as much as I could. Here's a picture of me about to unicycle around the five kids I had arranged into an obstacle course. The kid in the front was concentrating so much on standing rigidly that it looked like he was facing death itself. It was just me, though, in a pink shirt.

And then our time was over, we said goodbye to all the little kids we had met, and boarded the buses again. It was a pretty good time.

感冒了

2008-03-27T04:40:00.000-04:00

Military time still gives me trouble. In Chengdu people will always verbally say "five in the evening" instead of "17:00", but everything official, including the clock on my phone, is in military time. Yesterday after teaching a whopping six classes I wanted to come home, sleep until 9:00 because I felt myself getting sick, do some homework, and then go to bed for the night. Somehow, though, I managed to set the alarm on my phone for the wrong time and woke up at 11:00. I should have done some homework then, but maybe I only think that because of how rough the rest of the night was.

I had been getting sick all of yesterday. I took some Sudafed that I brought from the States before I left to teach, and that kept me doing okay, but I thought that it would be good to sleep extra. After I woke up at 11:00, I took a shower and tried to go back to sleep, but I felt like I had had tons of caffeine. Plus, my skin was irritable and just lying there under the covers was uncomfortable.

I dozed in and out of sleep for the rest of the night. I wouldn't have gone to class this morning except that we have a test tomorrow and I didn't want to miss her review. Plus, ever since we covered a chapter on getting sick, our teacher is always asking us if we have a cold. She only asks if we're out of it that day, though, so that her asking if you're sick is close to a reprimand for not being on top of things. I wanted to be in class, though, so when she asked me, I could say, "Yes, I am sick. I did not sleep well last night. I caught a cold." The last bit, in Chinese, is the title of this post. Unfortunately, she didn't ask me in class and I had to anticlimactically tell her during the break that I wasn't feeling well.

I had a cool moment when I was teaching yesterday. We were playing all these fun games to help the kids learn the new words. One of the games was where I had a cutout of each word plus one cutout of a bomb. When I showed each cutout, the kids would say the word, but when I showed the bomb, everybody went crazy hiding themselves. I got into it, too, and all the kids laughed a lot.

Afterward, one of the kids asked me in Chinese, "Are you going to come back?" I felt proud, because that meant that I had done a good job. I was also excited that I understood his question.

One other thing I wanted to say. It's really too bad that in Chinese, the word for "actually" isn't used the same as it is in English. I used to say it all the time, but my language partner told me that I was using it in the wrong situation, and now I don't know when to use it.

For example, last night I was having dinner with Mrs. Xiong. She asked me to pass the paper towels, and when I didn't understand her (although I did know the word--gah!) she asked what it was called in English. What I wanted to say was, "Actually, in America we would never use toilet paper as napkins." My language skills aren't quite up to that sentence, though, since they don't distinguish between paper you use in the bathroom and paper you use at the table. The high point of my sentence is "actually, but that's been cut out from under me, too!

This post isn't very cohesive, but I'm sick, so that's how it goes.

Plans

2008-03-25T10:50:00.002-04:00

Is my contact info really not on here at all, Alex? I'm surprised Google hasn't told me to give it to them. My email address is wpenman@gmail.com and I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.

As I mentioned before, I was rejected from the program in Harbin I wanted to go to. After a lot of searching, I found a program in Beijing that I've signed up for. It runs from mid-June to mid-August, which cuts it close getting back to UF for the fall semester. It will give me more than a month to travel or do whatever, though, so that should be good. I'll be at the Beijing Language and Culture University, which is a really respected university. (It makes the HSK, which is the Chinese version of TOEFL, which is the English assessment test that foreign students have to take to do anything with English.)

Best of all, this program offers the chance to do a homestay, so I'll be able to live with a Chinese family for two months! Since I'm already in China, I don't feel as nervous about the lack of information for the program. I figure that as long as when I show up in Beijing I can take classes and have somewhere to sleep, I'll be okay. The program is a little sketchy--they have a nice website, but now that I've signed up, I'm not sure how to pay the balance of tuition, or when I need to, or whether I will be able to have a homestay or not. I'm excited about it, though.

On a related note, Giblin was accepted to the Harbin program. She doesn't know if she's going to go, though. I already promised to visit her in Harbin one weekend if she did do it. It would be so much fun to have one of my good friends in China with me.

I just finalized plans for our spring break. Since we cover three semester's worth of Chinese in this semester, we take our second final this Friday. They're giving us five days of vacation soon after that, so everybody is scattering to travel. USAC students change plans until they're already committed to something. I considered going to Hainan, China's Hawaii, but tanning isn't really my thing (although I know that if it were it wouldn't hurt).

Alex, one of my friends here, was in Chengdu last spring, so he knows what's what. He also likes to practice his Chinese, so when he told me that he was going somewhere and I could come with him, I said yes. It was only today that I actually learned where we were going, because we had to buy our tickets.

It turns out that we're flying in to Guiyang, which is south of Chengdu. Then we'll start adventuring toward Guilin, which is in the next province south. The scenery is supposed to be amazingly foreign and beautiful, so we'll see.

Time for a geography lesson. For those privileged people who can access Wikipedia, check out this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi

It has a large map of Chinese with the province Guilin is in. Sichuan, the province I'm in, is the second province diagonally up and left (next to Tibet). It's difficult to be precise, since I'm not connected to the Internet while composing this, and China doesn't even want me to be on Wikipedia. It should still give you a general idea of where I am and where I'm going this semester.

Alex and I haven't bought a return ticket yet because we're not sure if we'll make it to Guilin in the time we have or if we'll go to a different airport. Also, ticket prices change drastically daily, so we got this one to Guiyang for a measly $40 and we're hoping that by the time we're ready to fly home we'll spy tickets that aren't too much more expensive.

Almost related to plans: I went shopping today and saw a line of people waiting for a bus. I was so confused. Why were people in a line? Why was a crowd not sufficient? There were no railings that made people be in a line; plus, the line extended into the sun when there was shade nearby. It was so strange. I think it was the first time I'd seen a line since I've come to China. Even buying movie tickets they don't really use lines.

Gambling

2008-03-23T05:51:00.001-04:00

Had I not received an email from my mom a few days ago, I wouldn't have known that it was Good Friday. As it is, it was hard to convince myself that today really was Easter. China doesn't know about Easter, although I predict in a few years the non-religious parts of the holiday will seep in, just like Santas are ubiquitous during Chistmas season. (As a side note, I hear that during Christmas, the Chinese have invented what they think is an American tradition during Christmas: hitting each other with blow-up hammers. One American went to the town square and said that he almost felt in danger when the crowd of Chinese realized there was a real American that they could mob with their hammers.)

Our Sunday fellowship was good. I was so happy to be able to say, "He is risen!" and "He is risen indeed!" I met a few people from the international Sound of Music cast who came. I signed up to help stage a Steven Curtis Chapman concert in Chengdu in early May. Pretty standard stuff for a Sunday morning in China.

I ate lunch with a few people, including a guy recently out of college named James who was going to some park after lunch to meet some other professors at the university he teaches at. He was unsure of the bus routes, and I didn't have anything else to do in the afternoon and thought he might like some company, so I decided to join him.

We boarded the 111 and waited until we got to Jinsha Station. We expected that we would be able to take the 366 from there, but then we realized that we had to take the 305 first. All of the 305, from start to finish. The 305 is so long (or popular) that it even has an express bus, and then once we finished with that, we would still have to sit through ten stops or so on the 366. It was already 2:00 and we decided it wasn't worth the effort, so we went to look around the stores near the station.

We stopped into an English school because James was interested in supplementing his job at the university with a part-time job teaching English. He got their contact info and said that he would get in touch once he had his work visa. This must be a really legit teaching place, because no one cares about official work permits. All of us who work at the university are paid under the table, I think.

Then we came to some guys who were supposed to be selling plants all playing cards. I explained the rules of Beat the Landlord to James while we observed their strategy: you deal out the whole deck, one guy gets to be the landlord and gets three extra cards, and the other two play against him. If the landlord gets rid of his cards first, he collects, if one of the other guys do, they win. I said that I was just waiting for a chance to play for money with people. Only three or four minutes after I said that, the guy we were watching stood up and left to go check on something. This was my chance. I sat down, picked up his cards, and played his hand. That's just how it works here. You don't ask to play, you just wait until there's an opportunity.

I thought I had lost the first hand and started to get out my wallet, but the guys said I didn't have to. It turned out my partner had won for us. I was the landlord the next hand, and with some help from the guy who's place I had taken, worked a really good hand to my advantage and won. Then I was on a team with one of the other guys and we won again. I had a little stash of kuai at this point, and felt a little more confident. Half of the fun is slapping the cards onto the table and yelling something in Chinese when you have a great play, and I didn't quite get the slap down perfectly, but I was improving. My hands weren't shaking with exhilaration as the hands went by.

After maybe ten minutes and seven or eight rounds, James said he was ready to leave, so I finished up that hand (we won) and then left, leaving my winnings behind for the guy who had been playing.

I gambled on Easter, but at least I practiced my Chinese doing it.

Getting Directions in Chinese

2008-03-22T10:02:00.001-04:00

This morning I wrote an essay, so by this afternoon I was ready to try to engage with the Chinese. One time recently when I was talking to Mrs. Xiong she told me that if I was ever free on the weekend, I should give her a call and come over.

When I called, she asked if I wanted to come over. I said sure, and she asked if I could come by myself. She had already told me that I could take the bus, so I was prepared for this question. I said sure, as long as she told me how to go. She said to take the 79 to--somewhere--and then change to the 56 until--somewhere else. I was a little fuzzy on the places that she wanted me to change to, but I had gotten as much information on the phone as I thought I could get. From there, it was the people of China who helped me get to the Xiongs.

I walked to the bus station near our apartment and started looking for the street that she had said I should change at. (I didn't actually need to know the street name, I just needed to know the direction, and then once I saw that the bus stop had 56 I could get off and change, but still.) This was a double difficulty because I wasn't confident that the name I repeated was the name she had said, plus I had to find characters that looked like they would match those sounds.

Examining the stops for route 79 didn't yield any results, so I had to ask somebody. I asked a kid standing there if he knew where I needed to go. He didn't, but a helpful businessman also at the stop decided to look. He couldn't find the name of the street either, so he asked if I could call my friend. I called Mrs. Xiong, he talked to her for a minute or two and determined which way I needed to go. He even scribbled directions down on a piece of paper for me.

When I got to the stop I needed to get off at, I realized why I hadn't been able to find it on the map. The stop wasn't the name of the street we were on. I then had to determine which stop to get off once I took the second bus. Again, the directions I had didn't match up to the stops on the board. I later realized that this was because I had the name of their complex and not the name of the stop. I asked a businessman, hoping he would be as helpful, and even though he didn't know, he shouted that there was a foreigner enough that somebody came to help me.

I rode that bus, got off, and walked across the street to their complex. I called Mrs. Xiong and tried to describe that I was at the front, but I wasn't really at the front because it was spread out pretty well and I didn't know where the entrance was. I described things enough that she could guide me. I was really happy that I had recently solidified which word was "right" and which was "left."

Finally I made it to their apartment, without a single word in English. After I had dinner at their house and watched the news in Chinese with Mr. Xiong, I decided to come back. Mrs. Xiong was really impressed that I thought I could get back by myself, but I thought that compared to going somewhere without instructions I understood, getting back was simple.

When it came time to change buses, I even got daring and took the number 12 because I knew it came back to our apartments. I freaked out for a minute during the ride because I thought maybe I had managed to catch it on its way out, but eventually I recognized where I was and everything was okay. I made it back home safe and sound, and even called Mrs. Xiong like she had asked to let her know I didn't get lost.

This was better than my ability to get around with clear directions in Orlando.

Being Laughed At

2008-03-20T05:59:00.001-04:00

I had my third week of teaching English yesterday. When Mrs. Xiong picked me up, there was another woman in the car, so I sat in the backseat. It's really difficult to talk in Chinese when there are two people and only one of them is engaged. It's especially difficult since here in Chengdu, people naturally speak Sichuan dialect (named after this province), which, although similar in structure to Mandarin, has a totally different feel with a totally different vocabulary. I have picked up a few words, and since my tones aren't great, it doesn't phase me when their tones aren't standard either, but in general I have no idea what they're saying. That means that when people are in a group, they're either talking to me in Mandarin, or they're talking normally. I'm not good enough to follow a conversation, so them speaking in Mandarin while talking just so I'll be able to understand some parts doesn't get the reaction they want, and they just talk to themselves in Sichuan dialect.

While I was in the car, then, they talked in Sichuan dialect and I looked out the window. It didn't bother me too much, because I like to look out the window, but it was unfortunate that I couldn't spend the time trying to talk to Mrs. Xiong.

Teaching went pretty well, I thought. The kids were really rowdy, and I was teaching really little ones (3-4 year olds) so they were even more lost than normal. I tried to get them active, like teaching them "stand up" and "sit down" and "clap your hands" by having them do the motions, but either they were too young or they were too tired, because my tactics only had limited effect. I taught three classes, and then I was supposed to head back to Chengdu immediately, because I think Mrs. Xiong had planned to eat dinner with the woman.

Once I was done teaching, though, Mrs. Xiong and the woman had to talk for a while about something, and then they got my assistant, Tina (Mrs. Xiong's cousin) and a few other girls and talked to them privately too. I asked what was going on, and Tina told me that the woman thought Tina had been too harsh to the kids and had a few words for her. I didn't think Tina had acted out of the usual, but she told me that the woman's kid had died a few years ago and now that she had another kid maybe she was too involved in making sure everything went right. The woman is on the older side of middle-aged, with lots of wrinkles and a naturally critical look.

They talked for at least half an hour, so that by the time they were done, they abandoned plans for their dinner and stopped somewhere with me on their way back. Over dinner, the woman explained in patronizingly slow Chinese (I admit, my Chinese isn't good enough to tell definitively that her tone was patronizing, but I'm pretty sure it was) how I could have done a better job. I didn't understand everything she said, but she wasn't very patient with me and I wasn't going to stop her to hear a more detailed critique. I hadn't paid attention to whether she had been watching me teach or not, but if she had she would have seen that everything she was recommending to me was stuff that I did.

On the way home, Mrs. Xiong and the woman were talking for a while about something, and since I heard "Pan Wei said..." a few times I thought that maybe Mrs. Xiong was telling the woman things about America that I had told her. I was thrown off, then, when Mrs. Xiong asked me a question that didn't seem like it had to do with anything. It took me several repetitions for me to interpret her questions as, "You don't like going places alone, do you?" I wasn't sure how I was supposed to answer, since this seemed like the kind of question that would follow from the conversation I hadn't been following.

The woman was not helping. Every time one of them asked me a question with a word I didn't know, the woman would shake her head, laugh, and say, "He doesn't understand." This bothered me so much that by the end of the hour and a half car ride I was clenching my fists and was tempted to try to say, "I don't feel like talking any more." She had laughed like I was an amusement, like communication was an accidental by-product of her fun. It's like when you see an old computer and start to test it out just to see how badly it performs, so you can be so grateful about the capabilities of your own computer.

It was the first time I've gotten really mad at somebody in China. I'm so glad I haven't met more people like that.

An Unexpected Day Off

2008-03-18T10:10:00.002-04:00

I have the pictures up from our trip to the Dazu Rock Carvings. I think Facebook lets non-Facebook users comment on pictures, if anyone is interested. I appreciate all the comments my recent post got. Here's the link to the photo album I made:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2486536&l=8da53&id=2061111

Today we were supposed to have class, but our teacher had some stuff she had to do, so we didn't have class. I met with my language partner instead, and after a brief session where I complained (in Chinese) that I couldn't speak any Chinese and she tried to reassure me that I wasn't too bad, I wrote a long assignment about a time I got sick. In Chinese you can say "my four limbs" to mean your whole body, so my story was about how I repeatedly was injured and one by one had to have my arms and legs amputated, so that when I got a cold after I had had four surgeries, I told the doctor "My four limbs aren't feeling well" and I said that he didn't understand... because I didn't have four limbs, of course. It was like a Chinese joke, I think. My language partner thought it was so cute that she made a Facebook note out of it so all her Chinese friends could see what it's like having a crazy American as a language partner.

Then tonight I went to see National Treasure 2 with my Chinese family. It turned out to be the perfect movie, because I already understood the plot, and with the exception of complicated dialogue about why they needed to go to London or whatever, the phrases were pretty simple. I understood a huge amount, partly because I knew what it was they would be talking about if it were in English.

For example, when there's a flood coming out of nowhere and Ben and the bad guy have to work together to push a conveniently-placed mill so that a stone lever will raise and everyone can get to safety, I knew that the bad guy would work it so that Ben would have to hold the lever while he escaped. And then, when a rock came crashing down and Ben was almost out and the bad guy was the one left, I understood that he was talking about how Ben should just go, because the bad guy had discovered the treasure and that's all he was after. It's not like I understood everything. I thought Ben and the girl had gotten married, so I never really understood their dynamic. And I didn't know why the bad guy was chasing him, and it was a good thing I had seen the previews. Overall, though, I was pretty happy with how well I fared.

A Short Post Concerning, in Part, the Weather

2008-03-16T08:36:00.000-04:00

I’ve been feeling worn out recently. We just went on a field trip to a place world-famous for its rock carvings. The rock carvings were pretty cool (I’ll upload some pictures once my computer starts getting the Internet again), but mostly I enjoyed getting out of a day of school to ride on a bus and read.

The worst of winter has passed, and I’d say we’re honing in on summer. When the weather heats up some days, I can see why people don’t like Chengdu in the summer. It will be just like Orlando, except I don’t think it’ll have as much rain. It’s humid, I hear—after living in Florida, nothing feels humid to me—and surprisingly hot. Maybe having the sun out is just a fluke, though.

I’m in a pretty suibian mood. I don’t know how to translate that in English, and actually, I don’t know if you can say that in Chinese either. It means “casual,” but you can’t say in English that you’re in a casual mood. To show you what I mean, though, I haven’t deleted this paragraph.

I’ve also noticed that people have stopped commenting on my posts. I’m still trying to figure out the whole blogging things, so maybe there’s an ebb and flow that I haven’t figured out yet. Comments are a really nice way to let me know that I’m not typing to myself, though.

I think that’s about all I have energy for for this post.

Getting a Job: the lesson

2008-03-13T09:15:00.001-04:00

The idea was for me to teach the kids a few animal words. The cousin, Tina, had brought horse, monkey, and panda cut-outs and a panda puppet. Then she told me that games would be good for keeping the kids' attention. What confused me was that the games didn't have to do with the animal words. The games were songs with actions and vocabulary, like "Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes." I tried to think of some activities to interact with the audience, but it was tough.

As you can tell from the word "audience," I half saw this as a performance, only I didn't have any of my juggling equipment. When the time came to do the lesson, though, that's what it looked like.

We were in the playground, because the school was shaped like a horseshoe and the playground was right in the middle. There was a row of chairs that they formed into an arc, each one with a little kid sitting in it. And then I was told that since it was so late in the day, and this was like an extra-curricular activity (or something like that) for the kids, that their parents would be there too. So now only did I have a ton of kids who I couldn't talk to and their stern, Sichuan parents in the background carefully watching to make sure the foreigner did a good job instructing little XiaoXiao. Moreover, Tina, who acted as my helper, and I were both equipped with wireless mics so everyone could hear us.

Tina started warming up the crowd by giving them familiar instructions in Chinese. I led them in a song about their nose and mouth, trying to make sure that they could understand it and not just mimic it. All the kids were really good at mimicking, so if I said something, they could repeat it back pretty well. That level of knowledge seemed to satisfy Tina, but I wanted them to actually know the words. When we started going over the animal names, a few of them already knew the words for horse, panda, and monkey, but others weren't as knowledgeable. I tried to do this game where I laid the cut-outs on the ground, closed my eyes, and as I walked around had them tell me which one I was near, but it was only mildly successful.

I kept making up games, trying to drag out three words into half an hour's-worth of instruction. I was in full performance mode at this point, so when I thought of acting out the part of the animals, and started scratching at my armpits pretending to be a monkey, it didn't even bother me that all the well-off, respectable parents were standing there with their arms crossed attentively watching me leap around the stage.

Finally the lesson was over and I said goodbye to the kids. I asked Tina how I did, and she said, "Pretty good, but next time best job," or something like that. Mrs. Xiong also said I had done okay, and tried to tell me how to improve, but I didn't understand what she was saying. I feel a little stressed out going into it again not knowing what they want out of me, but there's nothing really I can do but keep trying and observe how Tina does it. They said that the parents thought I had done a good job, though, so hopefully I'm not too much of a drain on everyone's resources.

Getting a Job: a Chinese interview

2008-03-12T09:44:00.002-04:00

The Chinese mom (who I think I'll refer to from here on as Mrs. Xiong) picked me up around noon and we started driving. Our conversation in the car was strained, but it was only because I had no idea how to talk about anything. I couldn't quite remember the word for lawyer, and I don't know how to say, "I have pretty much no idea what I'm going to do with my life," I was left for a few minutes trying to explain the concept of a lawyer without knowing the words for "crime," "jail," or "trial."

When we got to the school, it turned out that I was not the only one who was out for a job: five girls and one guy were also going to be interviewed to teach English. Mrs. Xiong's cousin, Tina, the one I played cards with during Chunjie and who speaks passable English, is apparently pretty high up in the school, because she was the one conducting the interview. We all sat in some teacher's office, found enough chairs, and then one by one the applicants had to stand up, hand in their resume, and be quizzed about their interests and abilities.

Tina, who is usually very friendly and easy to talk to, assumed an intimidating air of authority that even I as as American could understand. I followed the Chinese part of their interview pretty well. It helped that they all said about the same thing, so if I didn't understand what one person did after college, I might for the next one.

Then it came time for the English portion of their interview. The applicants' English seemed to be about the level of my Chinese, so they tensed up before answering a question, and sometimes got a blank look when they missed a word or two, and generally had pretty poor pronunciation. It made me feel uncomfortable to be there, because I wasn't the interviewer but had more knowledge about English than everyone else in the room put together.

What made me particularly unsettled was when Tina would ask questions in English. Her voice made it clear that she was still in charge, but she was questioning them in broken English. The only part I remember clearly was when she asked one girl why she applied for the job. The girl managed to say, "I like little childs. And, I think they are nice and so I want be a teacher." The girl, it seemed, had gone to college far away, or something like that, so Tina was interested in why she had chosen this school specifically. "Can you give me some excuses?" she demanded. I was alarmed that she was speaking wrong, but luckily no one looked at me. The girl didn't quite know how to answer, so Tina repeated herself. "Can you give me some exact excuses? About why you choose this school?" Finally she explained herself in Chinese and the girl said something.

It was agony to me to watch this process, but finally they all finished. I wanted to ease the mood a little, so I pretended to be the next one to be interviewed. They laughed, and said I could be if I wanted. I said sure, but for me the Chinese part would be harder than the English part. That was in English, though, and I don't think they understood what I meant. I started telling them why I was in Chengdu, and how long I was going to be there, and that while I was here I figured it'd be fun to get a job. With the high pressure of the interview, though, I forgot that they didn't actually speak English, and didn't slow down very much. They were all suitably impressed at my fluency and native accent, and were then herded off to take some kind of tour of the school.

Tina herself personally took me on a tour of all the classrooms for the little kids. She kept calling the school a kindergarten, but I think it was more like an elementary school. There were several stories, with maybe ten classrooms for each grade. We toured the pre-K age group, where each class had thirty or fourty grimy kids around short circular tables. The calmer kids were sitting down, but a large proportion of them were in the halls, or going to the bathroom, or something. I couldn't tell if this was organized, or was just a symptom of there being too many kids.

We toured the classes in the early afternoon, so most of the classes were watching a movie. Interestingly, the teacher was always combing girls' hair while they watched the movie.

When we came in, the kids were amazed to see a foreigner. I might have been the first one they had seen. They gasped, and giggled to each other, and pointed. Tina would introduce me and then when I said anything in Chinese or English, it was too much for them. Their giggles became uncontrollable laughter, and the classroom would look like it was about to erupt with discussion of everyone's impressions. We would leave then, followed by fascinated stares until we were out of sight into another classroom.

So much excitement, and I hadn't even done any teaching yet.