In one week I will be going to the airport to get on an airplane to Guangzhou, which will then take me to L.A. and finally back to Boston. I tend to think that denial is the best way of dealing with this type of insane transition, and that as long as I keep myself extremely busy when I get back, it might even be several months before I even begin to process the fact that I have left China, its people and pollution and food and noise and a level of absurdity that keeps me constantly entertained.
I have really enjoyed myself these last 6 months or so, working and learning in a very concrete, sometimes tedious, but overall really fundamentally useful way. I have met amazing people that I will be really sad to leave. I have already said many goodbyes, as the place I am living is a place where people are constantly passing through, bitten by the travel bug and driven by the inability to sit still in any one place for too long.
This last week I took students to the airport 3 times, and each time my brain was like "is it time to leave? am I leaving? oh! no! not quite yet." I came back early from Lashihai to help out with a group who had one instructor leave about 5 days early, and so I got to take part in the various and painful goodbye ceremonies that take place when a group of students and instructors that have really bonded have to separate from each other, not knowing when they will meet again.
A lot of people have been asking me what my plan is. When will I be back in China? Will I work for Dragons next summer? What will I do after I graduate? How do I feel right now? etc,etc. One of the most interesting things for me this semester have been the friendships that I have made with people who are 5,10, or 15 years older than me. Before living in Kunming, I thought that my brother (who is 2.5 years older than me) was old. But, then he came to visit me and many people we met along the way could not figure out who was the older sibling (something that gave me much satisfaction). Everything has just been put into perspective a lot more. Talking to people who are 25 or 35 or 50 and are still dabbling in many things and figuring stuff out, has made me realize that I don't have to have definite answers for any of those silly questions about the future. I mean, I definitely have ideas about things, but I think that anyone who has a strict plan for life is soon going to find out that it will probably not work out in exactly the way that they have planned. So my friends in the states can send me as many emails about Grad schools and the GRE's and impending doom as they like, while I will continue to dream about my own crazy path in life that does not include taking any 3 letter tests anytime in the near future.
If you want anything from China, let me know in the next couple of days. In the meantime I will be busy wrapping up work stuff, spending time with friends, and getting my fill of rice, noodles, and Dali Pijiu. I will see you all soon!
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Life in the Chinese Countryside
I am now sitting in the courtyard of my home in the countryside in southwest China, in a village that is predominately Naxi minority people. My "grandma" is sitting in the center of the courtyard with another woman, both wearing big round hats to protect them from the sun, peeling little apricot like fruits and laying them out in the sun on a big round woven basket to dry. From behind me, I hear my little homestay brother (a-li-li) who is three years old and his little friend chattering away and flinging their little bodies in every direction as the TV sings cartoon-y songs in the background. Their fathers have their own conversation, unbothered by the little boys carrying on.
I just finished hand washing all of my clothing and hanging them up in the hot hot sun to dry. It was about time. In Kunming a while ago, I met this Irish traveler who had just finished a month or so in India, and he liked to talk about how much he enjoyed hand washing clothing because he loved to watch the water turn black. He found this very satisfying, knowing how dirty he had made them, and watching as the water eventually turned clear. At that time I made fun of him ceaselessly and (somewhat) jokingly offered him my clothing to wash. But I am beginning to see the appeal. I am also maybe even beginning to enjoy the dry feeling in my hands after they have been in and out of soapy water for a while, and the fact that the whole cleaning process happens slowly.
I have been in Nan Yao village in Lashihai, a small group of towns outside of Lijiang, a city in Northern Yunnan Province for something like 3 weeks now. I am living in a home that consists of a Grandma and Grandpa, a grown son, his wife, and their 3 year old son.There are also 2 dogs (one big and one small) several pigs, chickens that roam about, a water buffalo, a new baby kitten that meows constantly, fruit trees, vegetable gardens, fields filled with corn and rice, and small little canals filled with water that flows down from the mountain, through the villages, and eventually down to the lake at the bottom. Travelers from Europe and the States pass through every now and then, because the families grown daughter, a woman named Lily Zhang, runs an eco-tourism company that takes people hiking and biking and horseback riding, as well as bringing them into her home. And, ofcourse, for the last 10 days or so, one of the Dragons summer program groups has been hanging out up here.
For the first week that I was here, I was basically on my own, responsible for visiting the homestay families that the dragons students would be living with in the village, but not much else. During this time I read 4-5 books (Three Cups of Tea, Love in the Time of Cholera, Train to Pakistan, Tuesdays with Morrie, and part of Karma Cola) and went for long walks and bike rides up and down the mountains, through villages, and around the nearby lake. I also played a lot with my new three year old best friend whose hobbies include toy cars, computer pinball, watching me draw a superhero named aotoman over and over again, farting, playing with fire, dancing, and brushing his teeth with me. It was a really relaxing week, but for the first couple of days I was a little bit lonely, mostly due to the fact that I was having trouble communicating in a meaningful way. The people in this village mostly speak Naxi language, which is completely different language from Mandarin, and while most also speak atleast a little bit of Mandarin, general rule of thumb is that the older the person is, the less likely it is that I will be able to understand. This was pretty frustrating to me at first because I have gotten used to being able to understand a lot of what is going on, and so it was humbling for me to be put in many situations with people where there was not much I could do but nod and smile. It took a few days for me to really start feeling comfortable here, but after about a week, my nainai (grandma), one of the few old people in the village that I can usually understand, said to me, "Cushy! (my name), you seem really happy here now! The first couple of days you seemed a little sad, but now you seem really happy and it is like you are my own daughter!" It made me really happy when she said this.
For 10 days 12 students (aged 15-17) and 4 instuctors (aged 23-34) came to hang out in Lashihai with me. It was really lovely having them all here and spending time together. They were a really amazing group that I genuinely enjoyed spending time with. While they were here, each student lived with a different family in the village. In the morning they studied Chinese for 4 hours and in the afternoons they had lessons on Chinese culture and society, went hiking and biking, and played ping pong, basketball, ultimate frisbee, and majong. Three days ago they left the village and we all went trekking at a place called Tigers Leaping Gorge, which is one of my favorite places in all of China because you can see these crazy towering cloud covered peaks for most of the hike and because these amazing little guest houses keep popping out of nowhere along the trail. Now this group of students has gone back to Kunming to start a second city homestay there, and I will remain here in Lashihai, where this afternoon a second group of students is going to show up. Never a dull moment.
I am nearly finished with a book called China Road written by Rob Gifford, who was an NPR correspondant in China for 6 years and has been in and out of this country for about 20 years. This book records his farewell journey across China, from Shanghai to Xinjiang by road, and all of the people he talks to along the way. He touches on anything and everything: politics, economics, development, culture, minority issues, the environment, history, humanitarianism, philosophy and religion, and the endless humor of being a foreign person in China. I may just like this book because it echoes a lot of my own opinions on what I have observed during my time in China, and also because I would really like to write this book myself. It is also possible that the average person (who has not been in China for almost a year) wouldn't really get it. All the same, I recommend it to anyone who wants a really interesting peak into modern China, written in a really funny, easy-to-read way.
I will be back in the states in less than 3 weeks. I don't really feel like reflecting on this right now, but in general I am trying to continue to enjoy my remaining days, while at the same time mentally pumping myself up for all the things that I am looking forward to at home. Like Crescent Ridge Ice Cream. And Veggie Slop.
Editor's Note: Lexi e-mailed this post to me since she could not access blogspot at her current location. Being the kind brother that I am, I proofread bits and pieces and made between 1 and 275 grammatical corrections. When she gets back to America, I think we all should help her transition back to our society by continuing to call her "Cushy." Who's with me?
I just finished hand washing all of my clothing and hanging them up in the hot hot sun to dry. It was about time. In Kunming a while ago, I met this Irish traveler who had just finished a month or so in India, and he liked to talk about how much he enjoyed hand washing clothing because he loved to watch the water turn black. He found this very satisfying, knowing how dirty he had made them, and watching as the water eventually turned clear. At that time I made fun of him ceaselessly and (somewhat) jokingly offered him my clothing to wash. But I am beginning to see the appeal. I am also maybe even beginning to enjoy the dry feeling in my hands after they have been in and out of soapy water for a while, and the fact that the whole cleaning process happens slowly.
I have been in Nan Yao village in Lashihai, a small group of towns outside of Lijiang, a city in Northern Yunnan Province for something like 3 weeks now. I am living in a home that consists of a Grandma and Grandpa, a grown son, his wife, and their 3 year old son.There are also 2 dogs (one big and one small) several pigs, chickens that roam about, a water buffalo, a new baby kitten that meows constantly, fruit trees, vegetable gardens, fields filled with corn and rice, and small little canals filled with water that flows down from the mountain, through the villages, and eventually down to the lake at the bottom. Travelers from Europe and the States pass through every now and then, because the families grown daughter, a woman named Lily Zhang, runs an eco-tourism company that takes people hiking and biking and horseback riding, as well as bringing them into her home. And, ofcourse, for the last 10 days or so, one of the Dragons summer program groups has been hanging out up here.
For the first week that I was here, I was basically on my own, responsible for visiting the homestay families that the dragons students would be living with in the village, but not much else. During this time I read 4-5 books (Three Cups of Tea, Love in the Time of Cholera, Train to Pakistan, Tuesdays with Morrie, and part of Karma Cola) and went for long walks and bike rides up and down the mountains, through villages, and around the nearby lake. I also played a lot with my new three year old best friend whose hobbies include toy cars, computer pinball, watching me draw a superhero named aotoman over and over again, farting, playing with fire, dancing, and brushing his teeth with me. It was a really relaxing week, but for the first couple of days I was a little bit lonely, mostly due to the fact that I was having trouble communicating in a meaningful way. The people in this village mostly speak Naxi language, which is completely different language from Mandarin, and while most also speak atleast a little bit of Mandarin, general rule of thumb is that the older the person is, the less likely it is that I will be able to understand. This was pretty frustrating to me at first because I have gotten used to being able to understand a lot of what is going on, and so it was humbling for me to be put in many situations with people where there was not much I could do but nod and smile. It took a few days for me to really start feeling comfortable here, but after about a week, my nainai (grandma), one of the few old people in the village that I can usually understand, said to me, "Cushy! (my name), you seem really happy here now! The first couple of days you seemed a little sad, but now you seem really happy and it is like you are my own daughter!" It made me really happy when she said this.
For 10 days 12 students (aged 15-17) and 4 instuctors (aged 23-34) came to hang out in Lashihai with me. It was really lovely having them all here and spending time together. They were a really amazing group that I genuinely enjoyed spending time with. While they were here, each student lived with a different family in the village. In the morning they studied Chinese for 4 hours and in the afternoons they had lessons on Chinese culture and society, went hiking and biking, and played ping pong, basketball, ultimate frisbee, and majong. Three days ago they left the village and we all went trekking at a place called Tigers Leaping Gorge, which is one of my favorite places in all of China because you can see these crazy towering cloud covered peaks for most of the hike and because these amazing little guest houses keep popping out of nowhere along the trail. Now this group of students has gone back to Kunming to start a second city homestay there, and I will remain here in Lashihai, where this afternoon a second group of students is going to show up. Never a dull moment.
I am nearly finished with a book called China Road written by Rob Gifford, who was an NPR correspondant in China for 6 years and has been in and out of this country for about 20 years. This book records his farewell journey across China, from Shanghai to Xinjiang by road, and all of the people he talks to along the way. He touches on anything and everything: politics, economics, development, culture, minority issues, the environment, history, humanitarianism, philosophy and religion, and the endless humor of being a foreign person in China. I may just like this book because it echoes a lot of my own opinions on what I have observed during my time in China, and also because I would really like to write this book myself. It is also possible that the average person (who has not been in China for almost a year) wouldn't really get it. All the same, I recommend it to anyone who wants a really interesting peak into modern China, written in a really funny, easy-to-read way.
I will be back in the states in less than 3 weeks. I don't really feel like reflecting on this right now, but in general I am trying to continue to enjoy my remaining days, while at the same time mentally pumping myself up for all the things that I am looking forward to at home. Like Crescent Ridge Ice Cream. And Veggie Slop.
Editor's Note: Lexi e-mailed this post to me since she could not access blogspot at her current location. Being the kind brother that I am, I proofread bits and pieces and made between 1 and 275 grammatical corrections. When she gets back to America, I think we all should help her transition back to our society by continuing to call her "Cushy." Who's with me?
Friday, June 26, 2009
An Abridged version of all of the blogs that I have thought about writing over the past 2 weeks
Sometimes I go and check my blog and realize that I haven't written in a really long time. Then, I try to think about what I have been doing with myself for all that time. At first, I can't think of anything that seems blog-worthy, but eventually I realize that there are about 7 different blogs that I could write about the last 2 weeks of my life.
Blog Number 1: Chinese Ultimate Frisbee is amusing, but Shanghai is a gross place.
In this blog I would describe my trip to Hangzhou and Shanghai that happened June 10-15. I got to see all of my old friends and eat at my favorite places in Hangzhou. While in Hangzhou, (a city of 7 million people) I also randomly ran into 2 people that I had not seen in a long time. The first was my friend Alyssa's "older brother" (which is China just means good friend), who climbed out of a cab right in front of me, after which, we proceeded to look at each other for a few seconds before realizing both of us were just like "what the hell? hey!". The next day, my Chinese friend Peipei led me to her favorite doughnut shop where my residential director from last semester (an American woman named Su Aimei who used to work for Dragons for about 5 years)was sitting and drinking a cup of tea with her friend. I don't know what is was about being back in Hangzhou, my home in China, that made all sorts of weird people appear miraculously in front of me.
The Shanghai tournament was really fun, despite the fact that Shanghai is a smoggy, smelly, humid, grey, and overall miserable city where it takes 2 hours to get anywhere and half of the buildings are under construction. Our Frisbee team was made mostly of people living in my city (kunming, yunnan province) but we also picked up a few other friends from other places. We are called S.W.A.T. or South West All-star Team (西南名星队）A.K.A "Colonies of Sparkle." (supported by the sparkly hats and skirts that got passed around throughout the day. Since it was our first tournament as a team, we were put in the lower pool, also known as the kiddie pool, which allowed us to win all four games on the first day. The second day we rose up to the Power pool and had one wonderful victory on a universe point against Shanghai B, before we were somewhat crushed by Singapore Freakshow (who would go on to play in the finals.) It was a really fun team to play on, so despite the fact that the sky never even got close to the color blue, I really enjoyed myself.
Blog Number 2: Homestay Family Finding Marathon of Fun
As I have talked about in many blogs before, one of my main jobs in Kunming is to organize the homestays, meaning find and visit the families that Dragons summer students will live with for a week or two over the summer. This has been a very rewarding job in many ways, as it has allowed me to be invited into the homes of many Chinese families, where I am treated extremely well and repeatedly complimented on my Chinese abilities and natural beauty. In other ways, it has been a bit bothersome, since it means that Chinese families feel the need to call me at 9 o'clock on Saturday mornings after my last call on Friday night at around 11:30pm. There is either very little common courtesy, or they just don't fully understand how much I like my sleep. It got to the point where I would be haunted by the sound of my cell phone ring in my sleep, and when I was swimming in the pool I kept on thinking that I was hearing it when I was underwater. One of the reasons for all of this telephone communication was that last weekend I host two dinners on Saturday and Sunday nights for homestay families. Each night had 15-20 people, and together we went to a fancy restaurant and chatted and allowed new families to benefit from the experiences of the families that have hosted before. I was slightly intimidated by the idea of a room with just me and 20 Chinese people (who would be all looking at me), so each night I brought a long a friend to keep me company and help me to entertain the families. It also happened to work out that the two friends who agreed to come with me are both half Chinese Americans who speak excellent Chinese. For those of you who are unaware, Chinese people LOVE half-Chinese people. They think they are the most beautiful people ever and pretty much create the Chinese standard of beauty: still Chinese, but almost white. In fact, the only group that Chinese people love and admire more than Jews are probably the halfies. Both dinners went pretty well, and I was happy when they were over and the pre-planning phone calls subsided a bit.
Blog Number 3: Chinese Pop Concert
Last Friday night I want to a Chinese pop concert with two American friends (who both weirdly happen to be Oberlin grads) and a Chinese friend. I knew relatively little about the artist performing (a man by the name of Xu Wei who I was told sang typical poppy Chinese rock music), but I was pretty excited at the opportunity to attend my first pop concert in China.
Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. (Everyone else who I went with was, but that may be because they do not appreciate absurdity as much as I do.) I was so amused by the whole thing. It was everything I could have wanted and more. This is why:
First, I was sitting by myself for most of the concert. My friends had bought their tickets before hand where as I bought my "yellow cow" (or scalped) ticket on the street a half an hour beforehand for $3 more and got a much better seat then the rest of them. This also allowed me to just observe the excited fans singing along around me and get a better view of what was going on on the stage. Basically the concert consisted of 4 parts: Xu wei singing, scantily clothed average Chinese people hip-hop dancing, quiz-bowl type competitions where random fans got up on stage and answered questions about the artist, and silly advertisement based conversations between the Shuaige (handsome man) and Meinu (beautiful woman) MC's. I should also mention that Xu wei was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, standing on a white stage, not moving at all except for when he walked from one side of the stage to another so people could snap pictures with their camera phones, and he pretty much looked like he was kind of depressed and did not really want to be there. He would sing two songs at a time and then practically run off the stage as fast as he could. When the perky MC's would try to ask him questions, he would basically just mumble three or four incoherent words into his microphone before sprinting off the stage. I had already been warned by Chinese friends that Xu Wei is not known for being handsome, but people like him anyway. Sometimes he would almost smile, when the crowd was being particularly enthusiastic, but then he would remember that he is a sad and over the hill sell-out and his somber facial expression would return. The whole event lasted about an hour and a half. They gave out glow bracelets and boom sticks. My Chinese friend brought binoculars. I really enjoyed myself. As I said before, my other friends were not as easily impressed.
Blog Number 1: Chinese Ultimate Frisbee is amusing, but Shanghai is a gross place.
In this blog I would describe my trip to Hangzhou and Shanghai that happened June 10-15. I got to see all of my old friends and eat at my favorite places in Hangzhou. While in Hangzhou, (a city of 7 million people) I also randomly ran into 2 people that I had not seen in a long time. The first was my friend Alyssa's "older brother" (which is China just means good friend), who climbed out of a cab right in front of me, after which, we proceeded to look at each other for a few seconds before realizing both of us were just like "what the hell? hey!". The next day, my Chinese friend Peipei led me to her favorite doughnut shop where my residential director from last semester (an American woman named Su Aimei who used to work for Dragons for about 5 years)was sitting and drinking a cup of tea with her friend. I don't know what is was about being back in Hangzhou, my home in China, that made all sorts of weird people appear miraculously in front of me.
The Shanghai tournament was really fun, despite the fact that Shanghai is a smoggy, smelly, humid, grey, and overall miserable city where it takes 2 hours to get anywhere and half of the buildings are under construction. Our Frisbee team was made mostly of people living in my city (kunming, yunnan province) but we also picked up a few other friends from other places. We are called S.W.A.T. or South West All-star Team (西南名星队）A.K.A "Colonies of Sparkle." (supported by the sparkly hats and skirts that got passed around throughout the day. Since it was our first tournament as a team, we were put in the lower pool, also known as the kiddie pool, which allowed us to win all four games on the first day. The second day we rose up to the Power pool and had one wonderful victory on a universe point against Shanghai B, before we were somewhat crushed by Singapore Freakshow (who would go on to play in the finals.) It was a really fun team to play on, so despite the fact that the sky never even got close to the color blue, I really enjoyed myself.
Blog Number 2: Homestay Family Finding Marathon of Fun
As I have talked about in many blogs before, one of my main jobs in Kunming is to organize the homestays, meaning find and visit the families that Dragons summer students will live with for a week or two over the summer. This has been a very rewarding job in many ways, as it has allowed me to be invited into the homes of many Chinese families, where I am treated extremely well and repeatedly complimented on my Chinese abilities and natural beauty. In other ways, it has been a bit bothersome, since it means that Chinese families feel the need to call me at 9 o'clock on Saturday mornings after my last call on Friday night at around 11:30pm. There is either very little common courtesy, or they just don't fully understand how much I like my sleep. It got to the point where I would be haunted by the sound of my cell phone ring in my sleep, and when I was swimming in the pool I kept on thinking that I was hearing it when I was underwater. One of the reasons for all of this telephone communication was that last weekend I host two dinners on Saturday and Sunday nights for homestay families. Each night had 15-20 people, and together we went to a fancy restaurant and chatted and allowed new families to benefit from the experiences of the families that have hosted before. I was slightly intimidated by the idea of a room with just me and 20 Chinese people (who would be all looking at me), so each night I brought a long a friend to keep me company and help me to entertain the families. It also happened to work out that the two friends who agreed to come with me are both half Chinese Americans who speak excellent Chinese. For those of you who are unaware, Chinese people LOVE half-Chinese people. They think they are the most beautiful people ever and pretty much create the Chinese standard of beauty: still Chinese, but almost white. In fact, the only group that Chinese people love and admire more than Jews are probably the halfies. Both dinners went pretty well, and I was happy when they were over and the pre-planning phone calls subsided a bit.
Blog Number 3: Chinese Pop Concert
Last Friday night I want to a Chinese pop concert with two American friends (who both weirdly happen to be Oberlin grads) and a Chinese friend. I knew relatively little about the artist performing (a man by the name of Xu Wei who I was told sang typical poppy Chinese rock music), but I was pretty excited at the opportunity to attend my first pop concert in China.
Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. (Everyone else who I went with was, but that may be because they do not appreciate absurdity as much as I do.) I was so amused by the whole thing. It was everything I could have wanted and more. This is why:
First, I was sitting by myself for most of the concert. My friends had bought their tickets before hand where as I bought my "yellow cow" (or scalped) ticket on the street a half an hour beforehand for $3 more and got a much better seat then the rest of them. This also allowed me to just observe the excited fans singing along around me and get a better view of what was going on on the stage. Basically the concert consisted of 4 parts: Xu wei singing, scantily clothed average Chinese people hip-hop dancing, quiz-bowl type competitions where random fans got up on stage and answered questions about the artist, and silly advertisement based conversations between the Shuaige (handsome man) and Meinu (beautiful woman) MC's. I should also mention that Xu wei was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, standing on a white stage, not moving at all except for when he walked from one side of the stage to another so people could snap pictures with their camera phones, and he pretty much looked like he was kind of depressed and did not really want to be there. He would sing two songs at a time and then practically run off the stage as fast as he could. When the perky MC's would try to ask him questions, he would basically just mumble three or four incoherent words into his microphone before sprinting off the stage. I had already been warned by Chinese friends that Xu Wei is not known for being handsome, but people like him anyway. Sometimes he would almost smile, when the crowd was being particularly enthusiastic, but then he would remember that he is a sad and over the hill sell-out and his somber facial expression would return. The whole event lasted about an hour and a half. They gave out glow bracelets and boom sticks. My Chinese friend brought binoculars. I really enjoyed myself. As I said before, my other friends were not as easily impressed.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tibetan Horse Races and Suckling Pig Roasts
Part 1: Racing Horses
Considering the fact that my last post contained no real or substantial information about the things that I have been doing lately, I figured I would update once more before I take off for Hangzhou and Shanghai tomorrow.
The past couple of weeks have been pretty busy because it is crunch time for summer program preparations. This means that I have been going on fun homestay family visiting marathons all over Kunming (4 families in 36 hours) and then sitting inside staring at my computer and practicing my copying, pasting, and resizing skills (slightly less fun.)
Still, I would not even try to pretend that my life is all work and no play. Not even close. A few weekends ago, during Dragon Boat Festival (for which we get time off from school and work), I went with a few friends up to Shangrila (aka Zhongdian...the Chinese government changed the name to attract tourist, and it worked.) for a few days to watch the Tibetan Horse Racing Festival that takes place there every year. After a 12 hour overnight bus ride, of which I probably slept about 11 hours, I arrived in cloudy and rainy Zhongdian, not really knowing what to expect. Was the festival going to be touristy and gross and make me uncomfortable with its flashiness and fakeness? I mean, in the states I am not a huge horse racing fan, and China isn't really known for being so nice to animals (or Tibetans, for that matter.)
I ended up being pleasantly surprised by the whole experience. To get to the stadium you had to walk along a road filled with all sorts of interesting vendors and carnival games. However, carnival games in China are a bit different than in the states, meaning they include such games as "ring around the cigarettes" (guess what you win!) and the "chuck-the-ball-at-bottle-of-beer-and-knock-it-over" game, as well as a good old fashion one liter bottle of beer chugging contest (which my male companions participated in at the bright and early time of 11am). Once we finally got to the stadium, the horse races had already started. The stadium itself was huge and I am told that it was built exclusively for the purpose of hosting this festival, and that during the rest of the year it sits empty or people learning to drive go there to practice. The crowd around us was mostly Tibetans and some Han Chinese tourists. The first couple races were pretty ordinary horse races. We entertained ourselves by places bets, more for pride or bragging rights than anything else, since the winner only got 1 kuai (about 15 cents). It is possible that this was culturally inappropriate, but when the Tibetans started playing our game with us, it made me feel like it was alright.
The coolest event that we witnessed (we missed the crossbow events that took place at 8am) involving 20 colored ribbons being laid out on either side of the track, and then the rider, going at top speed, leaning off of the side of his horse and trying to pick up as many ribbons as he could off of the ground. This is not as easy as it sounds. Basically, these guys would have one leg on the horse and the rest on their body hanging completely over the side while they rode at break neck speed. Another fun part was that the horses were all pretty wild, they did not really do what they were supposed to do all of the time. There was an announcer of the loud speaker that I really enjoyed listening to because they said funny things like, "The person must control the horse, the horse should not control the person." And, when one guy completely fell off of his horse, did a few rolls on the ground, and then did not succeed in picking up any ribbons the announcer said, "This guy is kind of old. But he's got personality." When another rider was pissed because his horse swerved away from the ribbons at the last minute and started punching his horse in the face, the announcer said, "There is no need to hit the horse."
It rained the whole time that I was in Zhongdian. Therefore, I was left no choice but to spend my time playing cards, eating obscene amounts of Yak meat dumplings and Yak milk yogurt, and lounging in outdoor hot springs under a crazy limestone bridge rock formation. Not a bad way to spend Dragon Boat Festival.
Part 2: Roasting Pigs
(disclaimer: for all vegetarian, vegan, and vegetarian friendly people who are reading this, I would like to say: I am sorry.)
Yesterday, around noon, I got a call from my friend Jono saying that they were planning to go to a restaurant where you could order an entire roast pig for dinner and asking if I would like to come. I said yes.
It is interesting because before I came to China I had not eaten Beef or Pork in years. I was even a bit uncomfortable with eating things that had bones in them (chicken, fish, etc) and I drank soy milk and ate few dairy products or eggs. Last semester, when all of my friends would complain about the lack of cheese in China, I would feel pretty apathetic. I definitely wasn't vegetarian, but I wasn't an avid meat eater either. I think that if you have asked me a year ago to attend a pig roast, I would have politely declined.
But now I am in China, where you see meat carcasses hanging from store windows (my mother did not like this) and where just about everything has meat added (for flavor, ofcourse.) I am also obsessed with Chinese yogurt, and have come to appreciate how delicious fresh fish can taste, so good that it is worth the hassle of navigating around the bones.
I am not sure what all of this will translate into when I get back to the states, but for now, I pretty much will eat whatever is put in front of me, including a roasted suckling pig.
As we drove out to the restaurant, it became increasing clear to me that I was about to take part in a weird sort of male bonding ritual involving the sacrifice and tearing to pieces of a dead animal with your own two hands. When the pig was actually placed in front of us, all pink and glazed and covered with spices, everyone's first comment was "that's not a very big pig," followed by "if it is too big than it is not as tasty." Hmmmm. Interesting.
As soon as everyone arrived, the feasting began. We were given packages of plastic gloves to put on, (so we weren't actually tearing it apart with our bear hands) and some people also chose to use their chopsticks to break off pieces of meat, so as to be more civilized. It was already pretty late by the time we started eating, and everyone was pretty hungry, and so the pig that had been sat in front of us all disappeared at a somewhat alarming rate. It was delicious, and I feel also somewhat educational. We all learned, for example, that pig ears are not very tasty, pig faces are somewhat fatty, and baby pigs in general do not have much meat on their bones.
It was probably only about a half an hour from the time the pig was sat down in front of us until all that was in front of us was a pile of bones.
Afterward, we sat around drinking beer and having guy conversation, leading me to comment that "It is not a big roast until you start talking about prostitutes." We also had some excitement when my friend Stew decided that it would be a good idea to mess with the course of nature and see what would happen if the giant moth on the wall of our room faced off with the Giant Spider on the web above us. Well, what happened was that the moth hit the web, the spider lunged toward the moth, but finding him to be twice his size, ending up losing and taking a near fatal fall into my lap. Or at least the space where my lap would have been if my survival instincts had no kicked in, causing me to dive into the lap of the person next to me.
Considering the fact that my last post contained no real or substantial information about the things that I have been doing lately, I figured I would update once more before I take off for Hangzhou and Shanghai tomorrow.
The past couple of weeks have been pretty busy because it is crunch time for summer program preparations. This means that I have been going on fun homestay family visiting marathons all over Kunming (4 families in 36 hours) and then sitting inside staring at my computer and practicing my copying, pasting, and resizing skills (slightly less fun.)
Still, I would not even try to pretend that my life is all work and no play. Not even close. A few weekends ago, during Dragon Boat Festival (for which we get time off from school and work), I went with a few friends up to Shangrila (aka Zhongdian...the Chinese government changed the name to attract tourist, and it worked.) for a few days to watch the Tibetan Horse Racing Festival that takes place there every year. After a 12 hour overnight bus ride, of which I probably slept about 11 hours, I arrived in cloudy and rainy Zhongdian, not really knowing what to expect. Was the festival going to be touristy and gross and make me uncomfortable with its flashiness and fakeness? I mean, in the states I am not a huge horse racing fan, and China isn't really known for being so nice to animals (or Tibetans, for that matter.)
I ended up being pleasantly surprised by the whole experience. To get to the stadium you had to walk along a road filled with all sorts of interesting vendors and carnival games. However, carnival games in China are a bit different than in the states, meaning they include such games as "ring around the cigarettes" (guess what you win!) and the "chuck-the-ball-at-bottle-of-beer-and-knock-it-over" game, as well as a good old fashion one liter bottle of beer chugging contest (which my male companions participated in at the bright and early time of 11am). Once we finally got to the stadium, the horse races had already started. The stadium itself was huge and I am told that it was built exclusively for the purpose of hosting this festival, and that during the rest of the year it sits empty or people learning to drive go there to practice. The crowd around us was mostly Tibetans and some Han Chinese tourists. The first couple races were pretty ordinary horse races. We entertained ourselves by places bets, more for pride or bragging rights than anything else, since the winner only got 1 kuai (about 15 cents). It is possible that this was culturally inappropriate, but when the Tibetans started playing our game with us, it made me feel like it was alright.
The coolest event that we witnessed (we missed the crossbow events that took place at 8am) involving 20 colored ribbons being laid out on either side of the track, and then the rider, going at top speed, leaning off of the side of his horse and trying to pick up as many ribbons as he could off of the ground. This is not as easy as it sounds. Basically, these guys would have one leg on the horse and the rest on their body hanging completely over the side while they rode at break neck speed. Another fun part was that the horses were all pretty wild, they did not really do what they were supposed to do all of the time. There was an announcer of the loud speaker that I really enjoyed listening to because they said funny things like, "The person must control the horse, the horse should not control the person." And, when one guy completely fell off of his horse, did a few rolls on the ground, and then did not succeed in picking up any ribbons the announcer said, "This guy is kind of old. But he's got personality." When another rider was pissed because his horse swerved away from the ribbons at the last minute and started punching his horse in the face, the announcer said, "There is no need to hit the horse."
It rained the whole time that I was in Zhongdian. Therefore, I was left no choice but to spend my time playing cards, eating obscene amounts of Yak meat dumplings and Yak milk yogurt, and lounging in outdoor hot springs under a crazy limestone bridge rock formation. Not a bad way to spend Dragon Boat Festival.
Part 2: Roasting Pigs
(disclaimer: for all vegetarian, vegan, and vegetarian friendly people who are reading this, I would like to say: I am sorry.)
Yesterday, around noon, I got a call from my friend Jono saying that they were planning to go to a restaurant where you could order an entire roast pig for dinner and asking if I would like to come. I said yes.
It is interesting because before I came to China I had not eaten Beef or Pork in years. I was even a bit uncomfortable with eating things that had bones in them (chicken, fish, etc) and I drank soy milk and ate few dairy products or eggs. Last semester, when all of my friends would complain about the lack of cheese in China, I would feel pretty apathetic. I definitely wasn't vegetarian, but I wasn't an avid meat eater either. I think that if you have asked me a year ago to attend a pig roast, I would have politely declined.
But now I am in China, where you see meat carcasses hanging from store windows (my mother did not like this) and where just about everything has meat added (for flavor, ofcourse.) I am also obsessed with Chinese yogurt, and have come to appreciate how delicious fresh fish can taste, so good that it is worth the hassle of navigating around the bones.
I am not sure what all of this will translate into when I get back to the states, but for now, I pretty much will eat whatever is put in front of me, including a roasted suckling pig.
As we drove out to the restaurant, it became increasing clear to me that I was about to take part in a weird sort of male bonding ritual involving the sacrifice and tearing to pieces of a dead animal with your own two hands. When the pig was actually placed in front of us, all pink and glazed and covered with spices, everyone's first comment was "that's not a very big pig," followed by "if it is too big than it is not as tasty." Hmmmm. Interesting.
As soon as everyone arrived, the feasting began. We were given packages of plastic gloves to put on, (so we weren't actually tearing it apart with our bear hands) and some people also chose to use their chopsticks to break off pieces of meat, so as to be more civilized. It was already pretty late by the time we started eating, and everyone was pretty hungry, and so the pig that had been sat in front of us all disappeared at a somewhat alarming rate. It was delicious, and I feel also somewhat educational. We all learned, for example, that pig ears are not very tasty, pig faces are somewhat fatty, and baby pigs in general do not have much meat on their bones.
It was probably only about a half an hour from the time the pig was sat down in front of us until all that was in front of us was a pile of bones.
Afterward, we sat around drinking beer and having guy conversation, leading me to comment that "It is not a big roast until you start talking about prostitutes." We also had some excitement when my friend Stew decided that it would be a good idea to mess with the course of nature and see what would happen if the giant moth on the wall of our room faced off with the Giant Spider on the web above us. Well, what happened was that the moth hit the web, the spider lunged toward the moth, but finding him to be twice his size, ending up losing and taking a near fatal fall into my lap. Or at least the space where my lap would have been if my survival instincts had no kicked in, causing me to dive into the lap of the person next to me.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
20+ Signs that you have been in China for a while
Every time that I sit down to write a blog, I am never sure where to start. I have been in China for over 9 months now, (crazy!) and it seems to me like I constantly go back and forth between feeling completely comfortable, at home, and maybe even a little bit settled, and then something as simple as walking down a crowded and bustling street can bring on feelings of utter awe at the fact that this is my life, these are my surroundings, and there is Chinese coming out of my mouth. Being 21 years old, it is pretty crazy that I have been given this opportunity to spend so much time in China. Of course, you can't spend time in a place like China for this long without it having definite side effects. I am not saying that these side effects are in any way negative. They are just things that I have been noticing about myself lately. And they are kind of funny (at least to me).
You know you have been in China too long when...
1.Given the choice between Western Toilets and Chinese Toilets, you opt for the Chinese ones because they are more sanitary.
2. You have mastered the comfortable there-is-no-chair-so-I-will-squat-and-be-as-comfortable-as-I-am-in-a-chair position.
3.You never put anything on the ground because they ground is dirty. Bags (no matter how large) must always be kept in your lap or on the seat next to you because the ground is covered with unspeakable things.(see numbers 4 and 5)
4.You are not at all phased when you see small children peeing or pooping on the sidewalk and even have began to see the logic behind it. (so many babies in china....that would be a lot of dirty diapers.)
5.You don't even bat an eyelash when an old man, old lady, young man, young lady, or overly adapted foreign friend spits on the ground dangerously close to your leg, arm or face.
6.You think tank tops are inappropriate.
7.You no longer crave Western food. Instead, you feel unsatisfied if your meal does not include rice or noodles. (Don't even talk to me about fork and knife wielding abilities.)
8.You begin to think that the latest Chinese fashions of wearing short shorts with tights and high heels is kind of cute and you are considering investing in some.
9. You take your female friends hand when you cross the street and do not assume that the guys walking in front of you with their arms around each other are gay.
10. You are beginning to become convinced that you are, in fact, the most beautiful person in the world, because of how many times you have been told this by random Chinese people.
11. You find it completely appropriate to throw a few elbows while waiting in line for the bus, bathroom, etc. (All the old people do it!)
12. When you speak English, you generally speak slowly, all in the present tense and use simple words. This is partially so that non-English speaking friends can understand and partially due to the fact that you forget how to use big words and how to correctly use complicated things like past participles.
13. You drop words like "qingkuang" and "mafan" into your everyday speech and assume that everyone around you understands what you mean. (they usually do)
14.You are in love with green tea.
15. Chinese sounds normal to you. When you try to explain English words to people you get very angry because English makes no sense.
16. You are pretty well informed on the situations in Tibet, Taiwan, and Xinjiiang. (from the Chinese perspective, of course.)
17.You are considering getting a choppy, asymmetrical Chinese hair cut. Possibly one that involves a rat tail, looks like a mullet, or seems to be lacking in all logic. (Just kidding, I would never actually do that.)
18. You like China textured things. Let me described China texture: not solid, but not liquid either. Jiggly, but more firm than jello. Generally either an unattractive brown-black color or bright and pastel pink, purple, or green. Not really sweet, and with no real distinct flavor. Utterly delicious.
19. You think that spending more than $3-4 on a meal is absurdly expensive.
20. You have forgotten about the existence of tax and tip.
Additional things that I have thought of over the past 24 hours:
21. You are shameless about asking people how much things cost, how much they make, how much their house cost, how much their car cost, and just about anything else involving money. When you get something new, you automatically tell everyone how much it cost.
22. You drink yoghurt with a straw.
23. You are no longer offended or made even the least bit upset when people tell you that you are fat. Because, in comparison to them you are fat. You are huge.
24. You have adopted Chinese noises. For example instead of saying 'wo' or 'yikes' when something bad happens, your natural response is to say 'ai-ya' or 'oi-yo.' And you think that sentences sound completely impolite and unfamiliar if you don't end them with 'ah' 'ma' 'ba' or 'ga'.
25. You only curse the government a few times when they block gmail, youtube, blogger and many other sites that are crucial for your survival during the weeks surrounding the anniversary of Tiananmen (and then you discover the magic of proxy servers).
You know you have been in China too long when...
1.Given the choice between Western Toilets and Chinese Toilets, you opt for the Chinese ones because they are more sanitary.
2. You have mastered the comfortable there-is-no-chair-so-I-will-squat-and-be-as-comfortable-as-I-am-in-a-chair position.
3.You never put anything on the ground because they ground is dirty. Bags (no matter how large) must always be kept in your lap or on the seat next to you because the ground is covered with unspeakable things.(see numbers 4 and 5)
4.You are not at all phased when you see small children peeing or pooping on the sidewalk and even have began to see the logic behind it. (so many babies in china....that would be a lot of dirty diapers.)
5.You don't even bat an eyelash when an old man, old lady, young man, young lady, or overly adapted foreign friend spits on the ground dangerously close to your leg, arm or face.
6.You think tank tops are inappropriate.
7.You no longer crave Western food. Instead, you feel unsatisfied if your meal does not include rice or noodles. (Don't even talk to me about fork and knife wielding abilities.)
8.You begin to think that the latest Chinese fashions of wearing short shorts with tights and high heels is kind of cute and you are considering investing in some.
9. You take your female friends hand when you cross the street and do not assume that the guys walking in front of you with their arms around each other are gay.
10. You are beginning to become convinced that you are, in fact, the most beautiful person in the world, because of how many times you have been told this by random Chinese people.
11. You find it completely appropriate to throw a few elbows while waiting in line for the bus, bathroom, etc. (All the old people do it!)
12. When you speak English, you generally speak slowly, all in the present tense and use simple words. This is partially so that non-English speaking friends can understand and partially due to the fact that you forget how to use big words and how to correctly use complicated things like past participles.
13. You drop words like "qingkuang" and "mafan" into your everyday speech and assume that everyone around you understands what you mean. (they usually do)
14.You are in love with green tea.
15. Chinese sounds normal to you. When you try to explain English words to people you get very angry because English makes no sense.
16. You are pretty well informed on the situations in Tibet, Taiwan, and Xinjiiang. (from the Chinese perspective, of course.)
17.You are considering getting a choppy, asymmetrical Chinese hair cut. Possibly one that involves a rat tail, looks like a mullet, or seems to be lacking in all logic. (Just kidding, I would never actually do that.)
18. You like China textured things. Let me described China texture: not solid, but not liquid either. Jiggly, but more firm than jello. Generally either an unattractive brown-black color or bright and pastel pink, purple, or green. Not really sweet, and with no real distinct flavor. Utterly delicious.
19. You think that spending more than $3-4 on a meal is absurdly expensive.
20. You have forgotten about the existence of tax and tip.
Additional things that I have thought of over the past 24 hours:
21. You are shameless about asking people how much things cost, how much they make, how much their house cost, how much their car cost, and just about anything else involving money. When you get something new, you automatically tell everyone how much it cost.
22. You drink yoghurt with a straw.
23. You are no longer offended or made even the least bit upset when people tell you that you are fat. Because, in comparison to them you are fat. You are huge.
24. You have adopted Chinese noises. For example instead of saying 'wo' or 'yikes' when something bad happens, your natural response is to say 'ai-ya' or 'oi-yo.' And you think that sentences sound completely impolite and unfamiliar if you don't end them with 'ah' 'ma' 'ba' or 'ga'.
25. You only curse the government a few times when they block gmail, youtube, blogger and many other sites that are crucial for your survival during the weeks surrounding the anniversary of Tiananmen (and then you discover the magic of proxy servers).
Thursday, May 21, 2009
KTV, Hutongs, Frisbees, the Great Wall, and Censorship
This past Thursday-Tuesday I went to Beijing. It was really fun. The original reason that I decided to go was because there was a frisbee tournament (actually China Nationals) and I was lead to believe that the city that I am living in now was going to bring a team to compete and that if I didn't go I would be in Kunming all alone crying while everyone else got to have frisbee fun in Beijing. Unfortunately, we Kunming people were a bit slow getting our acts together and so we ended up scattered amongst three different teams. I played for Shanghai.
The night before I left for Beijing I went to Karaoke with some friends in Kunming. As always, it was absurd, entertaining, and a good time was had by all. Until the majority of us snuck out of the room around 3am and left Mark singing by himself. When he eventually realized that we were gone (he was very focused on his singing) we were already in a cab halfway home. The next day I flew to Beijing and met up with my friend Patrick from Macalester who is doing an internship there. He was generous enough to take me in for a couple of days and also to arrange a KTV outing with some of his Chinese friends. Yes, two nights in a row. The place we went to in Beijing was super-fancy and expensive. Which made me realize that living in Kunming has turned me into a country bumpkin because everything in Beijing is so much more expensive. We sang until our throats hurt and then got in a cab and went home. Well my trip to Beijing this weekend made me appreciate some of Beijing's good qualities, I still think that one of the worst things about this city is how long it takes to get anywhere. It is generally a walk to a bus to the subway to either another bus or a 15-20 minute walk to get anywhere. Places that are relatively 'close' take 45 minutes to an hour to get too. I am just spoiled because I either walk or bike most places and it never takes more than 20-30 minutes. Also, in Beijing, the subway and buses stop running at night, meaning if you are out late you are going to have to pay for an expensive cab ride to get home.
Anyways, on Friday I slept in and Patty woke me up to the words do you want zhou (porridge)? do you want baozi or jiaozi (dumplings)? Not a bad place to stay at all. After a delicious breakfast we left the house and started our Beijing hutong (old neighborhood) wanderings. Patty was determined to make me like Beijing, since I am generally a little bit negative about this huge city (often based on my limited ability to breathe, the 10 lane streets, and the endless lines of sky-scrapers that are lacking in personality). We decided that instead of taking a bus to the subway station, we would ride on his bike. Meaning, we would do the very Chinese 'boy peddles and girl balances elegantly and effortlessly on the back'. Let me tell you, not so easy. I have a lot of respect for all those talented Chinese girls out there. For me, the scariest part of the experience was that I could not see where I was going, which required me to trust Patty with my life. Don't worry, he only almost killed me once, and we got to the station with all of our limbs still attached. (I did opt to walk myself across the last 10 lane road).
We spent the rest of the day wandering around quaint old Beijing neighborhoods. Hutongs have one floor courtyard style houses and narrow roadways that give them a charming and lived in feel. Some smelly, some dirty, but all bustling with people going about their daily business. We also ate my new favorite thing in China, which I had had before, but never quite as good as it was in Beijing. It is called a Jian Bing and there are carts for it on almost every corner. It is made on a big round grill where they put a pancake of dough covered by an egg covered by cilantro and scallions and sesame seeds. Then it is flipped over, painted with sauces and spices and a crunchy noodle is put in the middle, before it is folded up in an almost burrito-like fashion. Soooo delicious. I am drooling as a write this. I ate one almost everyday that I was in Beijing. For 3 kuai (less than 50 cents) it is a cheap and scrumptious meal.
After walking around lakes and through neighborhoods for another few hours we found a nice hutong restaurant to have dinner in. The food was pretty good, but what was really memorable about the meal was the company. Four old retired teachers wandered into the restaurant and started chatting us up. One old man in particular was telling us his life story. The only problem was that he spoke really quickly and mumbly with a strong accent, making it so I understood maybe half of what he said. His friends kept telling him to slow down and speak clearly, but he would look at us smiling and nodding along with him and say, they understand! And then continue on with his stories. At one point they were trying to figure out the relationship between me and Patty. When we said we were friends their response was to point to Patty's upper lip and say, "He has a beard [read:one days worth of scruff], so he is a boy. She does not have a beard, so she is a girl."
After dinner we road public transportation for another hour (double decker buses are great) and went to meet some of Patty's friend at a music festival that was going on at the club called Soho. It was outside, which was nice, but no one seemed all the into being there and the bands wanted to be punk rock but were more cutsy-pop than anything else. All in all, an interesting cultural experience.
On Saturday, I played 5 games of frisbee. It was really fun, especially because I felt that I played pretty well (for me) and earned the respect of my teammates, the majority of whom where from Shanghai and I had never met before. We lost more games than we won, but only the last one was really a frustrating lost, and by that point the Beijing air pollution was beginning to get to me and my teammates were all starting to crash, since most of them had taken an over night hard-seater train ride from Shanghai the night before. Saturday night there was a nice dinner with good food and people hung out for a long while toasting eachother and chatting.
On Sunday, my team only played about two games and then spent the rest of the time watching the Chinese teams fight it out for the title. In the end, after some crazy turns of events due to huge amounts of wind, Hong Kong came out on top. The rest of the afternoon was spent drinking beer and playing frisbee based drinking games, leading me to come to the definite conclusion that frisbee is a frat.
On Monday, Patty and I got up at 7 am and took various public transportation out into the countryside where we went on a crazy hike to the wild, overgrown, and crumbling part of the great wall. It was a really intense hike, made even more intense by the fact that I was wearing Patty's Puma sneakers that were a size or two too big for me and had all the grip of ballet slippers. The scariest part was a ladder that went to nowhere...meaning you got to the bottom and realized that the rocks that the ladder used to be cemented into had crumbled away. Your choices were either to slide down a slippery pole or jump onto the rocks on the side and hold on for dear life. Even with its scary moments, it was a gorgeous (and strenuous) 7 hour hike. Afterwards, we ate delicious roasted fish that was literally scooped out of the water and beaten to death right before our eyes. It was probably the most delicious fish that I have ever eaten.
Tuesday I had time for one last meal with some frisbee friends and drank one last Yangjing beer while sitting by a river before I got on the train to the airport.
Now I am back in Kunming dealing with homestay setup, moving houses, preparing course area guides, and as always, making the guanxi (connections).
The night before I left for Beijing I went to Karaoke with some friends in Kunming. As always, it was absurd, entertaining, and a good time was had by all. Until the majority of us snuck out of the room around 3am and left Mark singing by himself. When he eventually realized that we were gone (he was very focused on his singing) we were already in a cab halfway home. The next day I flew to Beijing and met up with my friend Patrick from Macalester who is doing an internship there. He was generous enough to take me in for a couple of days and also to arrange a KTV outing with some of his Chinese friends. Yes, two nights in a row. The place we went to in Beijing was super-fancy and expensive. Which made me realize that living in Kunming has turned me into a country bumpkin because everything in Beijing is so much more expensive. We sang until our throats hurt and then got in a cab and went home. Well my trip to Beijing this weekend made me appreciate some of Beijing's good qualities, I still think that one of the worst things about this city is how long it takes to get anywhere. It is generally a walk to a bus to the subway to either another bus or a 15-20 minute walk to get anywhere. Places that are relatively 'close' take 45 minutes to an hour to get too. I am just spoiled because I either walk or bike most places and it never takes more than 20-30 minutes. Also, in Beijing, the subway and buses stop running at night, meaning if you are out late you are going to have to pay for an expensive cab ride to get home.
Anyways, on Friday I slept in and Patty woke me up to the words do you want zhou (porridge)? do you want baozi or jiaozi (dumplings)? Not a bad place to stay at all. After a delicious breakfast we left the house and started our Beijing hutong (old neighborhood) wanderings. Patty was determined to make me like Beijing, since I am generally a little bit negative about this huge city (often based on my limited ability to breathe, the 10 lane streets, and the endless lines of sky-scrapers that are lacking in personality). We decided that instead of taking a bus to the subway station, we would ride on his bike. Meaning, we would do the very Chinese 'boy peddles and girl balances elegantly and effortlessly on the back'. Let me tell you, not so easy. I have a lot of respect for all those talented Chinese girls out there. For me, the scariest part of the experience was that I could not see where I was going, which required me to trust Patty with my life. Don't worry, he only almost killed me once, and we got to the station with all of our limbs still attached. (I did opt to walk myself across the last 10 lane road).
We spent the rest of the day wandering around quaint old Beijing neighborhoods. Hutongs have one floor courtyard style houses and narrow roadways that give them a charming and lived in feel. Some smelly, some dirty, but all bustling with people going about their daily business. We also ate my new favorite thing in China, which I had had before, but never quite as good as it was in Beijing. It is called a Jian Bing and there are carts for it on almost every corner. It is made on a big round grill where they put a pancake of dough covered by an egg covered by cilantro and scallions and sesame seeds. Then it is flipped over, painted with sauces and spices and a crunchy noodle is put in the middle, before it is folded up in an almost burrito-like fashion. Soooo delicious. I am drooling as a write this. I ate one almost everyday that I was in Beijing. For 3 kuai (less than 50 cents) it is a cheap and scrumptious meal.
After walking around lakes and through neighborhoods for another few hours we found a nice hutong restaurant to have dinner in. The food was pretty good, but what was really memorable about the meal was the company. Four old retired teachers wandered into the restaurant and started chatting us up. One old man in particular was telling us his life story. The only problem was that he spoke really quickly and mumbly with a strong accent, making it so I understood maybe half of what he said. His friends kept telling him to slow down and speak clearly, but he would look at us smiling and nodding along with him and say, they understand! And then continue on with his stories. At one point they were trying to figure out the relationship between me and Patty. When we said we were friends their response was to point to Patty's upper lip and say, "He has a beard [read:one days worth of scruff], so he is a boy. She does not have a beard, so she is a girl."
After dinner we road public transportation for another hour (double decker buses are great) and went to meet some of Patty's friend at a music festival that was going on at the club called Soho. It was outside, which was nice, but no one seemed all the into being there and the bands wanted to be punk rock but were more cutsy-pop than anything else. All in all, an interesting cultural experience.
On Saturday, I played 5 games of frisbee. It was really fun, especially because I felt that I played pretty well (for me) and earned the respect of my teammates, the majority of whom where from Shanghai and I had never met before. We lost more games than we won, but only the last one was really a frustrating lost, and by that point the Beijing air pollution was beginning to get to me and my teammates were all starting to crash, since most of them had taken an over night hard-seater train ride from Shanghai the night before. Saturday night there was a nice dinner with good food and people hung out for a long while toasting eachother and chatting.
On Sunday, my team only played about two games and then spent the rest of the time watching the Chinese teams fight it out for the title. In the end, after some crazy turns of events due to huge amounts of wind, Hong Kong came out on top. The rest of the afternoon was spent drinking beer and playing frisbee based drinking games, leading me to come to the definite conclusion that frisbee is a frat.
On Monday, Patty and I got up at 7 am and took various public transportation out into the countryside where we went on a crazy hike to the wild, overgrown, and crumbling part of the great wall. It was a really intense hike, made even more intense by the fact that I was wearing Patty's Puma sneakers that were a size or two too big for me and had all the grip of ballet slippers. The scariest part was a ladder that went to nowhere...meaning you got to the bottom and realized that the rocks that the ladder used to be cemented into had crumbled away. Your choices were either to slide down a slippery pole or jump onto the rocks on the side and hold on for dear life. Even with its scary moments, it was a gorgeous (and strenuous) 7 hour hike. Afterwards, we ate delicious roasted fish that was literally scooped out of the water and beaten to death right before our eyes. It was probably the most delicious fish that I have ever eaten.
Tuesday I had time for one last meal with some frisbee friends and drank one last Yangjing beer while sitting by a river before I got on the train to the airport.
Now I am back in Kunming dealing with homestay setup, moving houses, preparing course area guides, and as always, making the guanxi (connections).
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Language, Food, Friends, Absurdity
Once again, it has been awhile. But it takes a very specific mood to write a good blog, and I do not like to attempt it unless I am in that mood (or it is very late at night), because otherwise I am left feeling unsatisfied. Which probably means that my loyal readers are also unsatisfied. And that is not what I want.
I have also been busy with seemingly endless social engagements. People to see, things to eat. I continue to visit Chinese families. As much as I complain about it when it is 7 o'clock and I have to leave my friends (and whatever delicious thing that I may be eating) and get on a bus to visit a family of strangers in an unknown part of town, I actually love it. This is mostly because of how much they instantaneously love me. (in the very unlikely chance that they do not love me from the first moment, I can always pull out the 'I'm a Jew' card which makes them tell me that all Jews are extremely smart and incredibly rich, which I of course deny. But I know that I have won them over.)
This country and its people seem to like me a lot. Some would call that a lack of judgment on their part. Others would say that they only love me because I am white (ironic since they never believe I am American because I do not have blond hair, blue eyes, and pale skin). But I think they love me most because I confuse them. They look at me, and are completely flabbergasted when I can convey somewhat coherent thoughts to them in their language. They say, you are so young, and they laugh at my improving comedic timing and at the inevitable moments when my thoughts get ahead of my language skills and I end up mumbling something incoherent, taking a big gulp of tea, and trying to start over.
I was nervous when I started visiting families because I thought that they would judge me, misunderstand me, and that it would just plain be uncomfortable. I have not had a single meeting like this. It was also hard at first because I wasn't really given a criteria for what makes a good family. I was told, you know, they are nice, they want cultural and language exchange, they don't live too far away, they don't do or say anything weird or uncomfortable, and they don't use our program as their own personal English teacher service. But mostly, I was told, it is more of a feeling.
My bar at this point has pretty much become, if I would feel comfortable living with this family (based on all of my deeply rooted snap judgments that I make within the 1 and a half to two hours that I spend with them) then I would feel comfortable putting a student with them. Not a perfect system, but not completely flawed either.
It is also very interesting because the majority of the families that I have visited are EXTREMELY wealthy. It is pretty out of control. For example, today while visiting a family, I was shown the room that the student could live in, and I said to the mother that the room was probably nicer than the student's room in America. She thought I was just being polite. I was being serious.
Today was also interesting because I went to visit this family with my boss because they are an important family that will hopefully help us set up an internship for one of our summer students. I was giving my talk [side note:I just looked at on an online yiddish dictionary for the way to spell the word that means talk and would finish the following sentence :to give a (shpeel?schbeel?shpiel?) and I could not find it. The first person who can give me a spelling that seems reasonable gets a prize] and my boss had basically told me to do my introductory thing that I can pretty much do in my sleep at this point, and then afterward if she had something to add or some comments to make about my performance she would chime in. About 10 minutes in she was just kind of like...your Chinese has gotten a lot better. To which I pretty much replied, you have never heard me speak Chinese before. Which is kind of absurd. When they hired me, I assumed that there would be some sort of basic language requirement. Yet, it seems that I have gone for 3 months in Kunming without ever speaking Chinese to or in front of my boss. It's just weird. As we were leaving the visit she corrected herself and said that my Chinese was better than she thought. I wonder how bad she assumed it was.
Other recent events in my life besides visiting homestays include going shopping with the 40-60year old ladies from my Chinese class, attending various and sundry going away, birthday, and normal parties, having interesting conversations with taxi drivers who try to convince me to marry and settle down in Kunming, and shocking Chinese friends with my knowledge of random words such as "cheerleader" "fate" and "camel." Learning language is so fun.
I am also excited because this summer I will be mostly hanging out in a rural and beautiful village called Lashihai, that is up in the north of Yunnan. Multiple dragons groups spend time up there and I will basically get to go up early, scout it out, make lots of friends, set up homestays, eat delicious and fresh food, wander in the woods, and maybe even study some of the minority language:Naxi. Yes, my job is the best.
In other news, I am going to Beijing on Thursday and I am slightly embarrassed to admit that the main reason for going is to play in the 3rd annual China Nationals Ultimate Frisbee Tournament that is taking place this weekend. It should be a lot of fun. Many of my friends from Kunming are going and many of the friends that I made at the Kunming tournament in February should also be there.
As soon as I get back to Yunnan I will be moving houses (down the street) because the lease is up on dragons current apartment that I am living in, which is absurdly and unreasonable beautiful and equally as expensive. The place that I am moving into is also beautiful, but much cheaper and in a nicer area that still feel like China, instead of feeling like a country club.
I am also beginning to think about the fact that I will be back in the states in a matter of months (assuming Swine Flu has not caused colossal human destruction by then). Don't worry, I will bring lots of gifts to bribe you all into being my friends again, but I will only give them to you after you listen to me talk for hours about my crazy experiences in the middle kingdom, and after you allow me to teach you at least one useful Chinese word.
I have also been busy with seemingly endless social engagements. People to see, things to eat. I continue to visit Chinese families. As much as I complain about it when it is 7 o'clock and I have to leave my friends (and whatever delicious thing that I may be eating) and get on a bus to visit a family of strangers in an unknown part of town, I actually love it. This is mostly because of how much they instantaneously love me. (in the very unlikely chance that they do not love me from the first moment, I can always pull out the 'I'm a Jew' card which makes them tell me that all Jews are extremely smart and incredibly rich, which I of course deny. But I know that I have won them over.)
This country and its people seem to like me a lot. Some would call that a lack of judgment on their part. Others would say that they only love me because I am white (ironic since they never believe I am American because I do not have blond hair, blue eyes, and pale skin). But I think they love me most because I confuse them. They look at me, and are completely flabbergasted when I can convey somewhat coherent thoughts to them in their language. They say, you are so young, and they laugh at my improving comedic timing and at the inevitable moments when my thoughts get ahead of my language skills and I end up mumbling something incoherent, taking a big gulp of tea, and trying to start over.
I was nervous when I started visiting families because I thought that they would judge me, misunderstand me, and that it would just plain be uncomfortable. I have not had a single meeting like this. It was also hard at first because I wasn't really given a criteria for what makes a good family. I was told, you know, they are nice, they want cultural and language exchange, they don't live too far away, they don't do or say anything weird or uncomfortable, and they don't use our program as their own personal English teacher service. But mostly, I was told, it is more of a feeling.
My bar at this point has pretty much become, if I would feel comfortable living with this family (based on all of my deeply rooted snap judgments that I make within the 1 and a half to two hours that I spend with them) then I would feel comfortable putting a student with them. Not a perfect system, but not completely flawed either.
It is also very interesting because the majority of the families that I have visited are EXTREMELY wealthy. It is pretty out of control. For example, today while visiting a family, I was shown the room that the student could live in, and I said to the mother that the room was probably nicer than the student's room in America. She thought I was just being polite. I was being serious.
Today was also interesting because I went to visit this family with my boss because they are an important family that will hopefully help us set up an internship for one of our summer students. I was giving my talk [side note:I just looked at on an online yiddish dictionary for the way to spell the word that means talk and would finish the following sentence :to give a (shpeel?schbeel?shpiel?) and I could not find it. The first person who can give me a spelling that seems reasonable gets a prize] and my boss had basically told me to do my introductory thing that I can pretty much do in my sleep at this point, and then afterward if she had something to add or some comments to make about my performance she would chime in. About 10 minutes in she was just kind of like...your Chinese has gotten a lot better. To which I pretty much replied, you have never heard me speak Chinese before. Which is kind of absurd. When they hired me, I assumed that there would be some sort of basic language requirement. Yet, it seems that I have gone for 3 months in Kunming without ever speaking Chinese to or in front of my boss. It's just weird. As we were leaving the visit she corrected herself and said that my Chinese was better than she thought. I wonder how bad she assumed it was.
Other recent events in my life besides visiting homestays include going shopping with the 40-60year old ladies from my Chinese class, attending various and sundry going away, birthday, and normal parties, having interesting conversations with taxi drivers who try to convince me to marry and settle down in Kunming, and shocking Chinese friends with my knowledge of random words such as "cheerleader" "fate" and "camel." Learning language is so fun.
I am also excited because this summer I will be mostly hanging out in a rural and beautiful village called Lashihai, that is up in the north of Yunnan. Multiple dragons groups spend time up there and I will basically get to go up early, scout it out, make lots of friends, set up homestays, eat delicious and fresh food, wander in the woods, and maybe even study some of the minority language:Naxi. Yes, my job is the best.
In other news, I am going to Beijing on Thursday and I am slightly embarrassed to admit that the main reason for going is to play in the 3rd annual China Nationals Ultimate Frisbee Tournament that is taking place this weekend. It should be a lot of fun. Many of my friends from Kunming are going and many of the friends that I made at the Kunming tournament in February should also be there.
As soon as I get back to Yunnan I will be moving houses (down the street) because the lease is up on dragons current apartment that I am living in, which is absurdly and unreasonable beautiful and equally as expensive. The place that I am moving into is also beautiful, but much cheaper and in a nicer area that still feel like China, instead of feeling like a country club.
I am also beginning to think about the fact that I will be back in the states in a matter of months (assuming Swine Flu has not caused colossal human destruction by then). Don't worry, I will bring lots of gifts to bribe you all into being my friends again, but I will only give them to you after you listen to me talk for hours about my crazy experiences in the middle kingdom, and after you allow me to teach you at least one useful Chinese word.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Making some Guanxi
I have been pretty busy lately. I am not sure what I have been really doing though that makes me so busy. Mostly socializing, which could technically be classified as studying and working, since a lot of the socializing takes place in Chinese. In fact, I would even go as far as to say that the central part of my job is to create guanxi（关系）or make connections. This is not quite as devious as it sounds. Really, I spend my time making friends. Chatting. Sharing stories. Listening to the crazy things that people have done with their lives thus far, and taken part in communal musings about what we are all going to do in the future. Ofcourse, these conversations are usually accompanied by various and delicious food or drink. Lately, I have been indulging in fresh fruit juice:pineapple,watermelon, strawberry, orange, mango. As you can see my life is tough. Filled with adversity.
Besides (sometimes) going to class, my biggest project right now is finding homestay families that Dragons' students will live with for a week or two this summer. It was kind of a slow process starting out for a number of reasons. The person who did this job last year has been helping me out a bit, but she is really busy with her new job and so I have kind of been left to go at it alone. Although, not completely alone because I have a Chinese friend who is also going to be working with Dragons this summer helping me out. She is mostly helping with translating applications and finding new families.
In the week or so leading up to me going to visit a family by myself for the first time, a talked with a bunch of people, who when I told them what I was actually going to be doing, they were like, "oh! that sounds like it would be really hard for you." Not exactly words of encouragement. It is also intimidating that the person who did this job last year is not only Chinese (helpful for both language and culture), but she is also extremely chatty and bubbly, and she always knows exactly what to say to make people feel comfortable. I It is also one of those projects that the more you sit around thinking about it (and not actually getting started) the more scary and impossible it seems.
Fortunately, in this past week it has all started to come together. I have visited a few families on my own, and I feel pretty good about my ability to communicate and make a good impression. The first family I visited was really warm and welcoming. They helped me finish sentences when I could not think of the right word, and referred to me as "Teacher Lexi"(in Chinese). At the second family I visited, the mother kept complimenting my Chinese, saying how well I spoke. In response to which, the father said "she's okay. there still seem to be a bunch of words that she doesn't really know how to use." Fair point. I still have a long way to go. But the fact that I can pretty much always get my point across one way or another (sometimes after a series of mumbles, restarts, and hand gestures), means that my main objective (communication) is being accomplished.
Chinese kids are also really funny and honest. The little girl in the family I met last night was slightly appalled by the density of my arm hair. She told her mom, "Mama, you can see foreigner's arm hair, but you can't see ours." She also noticed that our noses were different and our hair different colors. Her mother asked me if it was true that in foreign countries families could have more than one kid. When I said yes, she said something like, "well, that's nice, isn't it."
So I have gotten a nice start on this daunting task. Hopefully as I get more and more comfortable with this process I will stop saying so many silly sounding and grammatically incorrect things and work on my comedic timing when telling cultural misunderstanding anecdotes. For example, there is a great one about a Chinese mom heating up a cup of milk for her foreign student (Chinese people like to drink warm milk) and then the student being puzzled, and putting the milk into the fridge to cool it off (as American custom dictates) and then the mother being confused and reheating the milk, and the American in turn putting it in the fridge again.
I will probably be visiting 3-4 families a week for the next 2 months. While it is much harder for me to do this job than it would be for a Chinese person, I also think that there are some positives for both sides. For the Chinese family, they get to have a foreigner come visit their home and get a little taste of what it will be like if they end up hosting a student this summer. They get to stare at me and ask me questions and have me explain why I do not have pale skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. For me, I get to practice speaking Chinese with people who really want to understand, who compliment my language skills, even when I may not deserve it, and I get to hang out with really interesting Chinese families in their homes. I might have a different perspective on this whole process after I have visited 20-30 families (instead of my current 3). Either way, it is crazy that this is my job. It is also crazy that I have been in this country for 8 months, that I only have about 3-ish months left, and that before I know it I will be back in the good 'ol US of A...
Besides (sometimes) going to class, my biggest project right now is finding homestay families that Dragons' students will live with for a week or two this summer. It was kind of a slow process starting out for a number of reasons. The person who did this job last year has been helping me out a bit, but she is really busy with her new job and so I have kind of been left to go at it alone. Although, not completely alone because I have a Chinese friend who is also going to be working with Dragons this summer helping me out. She is mostly helping with translating applications and finding new families.
In the week or so leading up to me going to visit a family by myself for the first time, a talked with a bunch of people, who when I told them what I was actually going to be doing, they were like, "oh! that sounds like it would be really hard for you." Not exactly words of encouragement. It is also intimidating that the person who did this job last year is not only Chinese (helpful for both language and culture), but she is also extremely chatty and bubbly, and she always knows exactly what to say to make people feel comfortable. I It is also one of those projects that the more you sit around thinking about it (and not actually getting started) the more scary and impossible it seems.
Fortunately, in this past week it has all started to come together. I have visited a few families on my own, and I feel pretty good about my ability to communicate and make a good impression. The first family I visited was really warm and welcoming. They helped me finish sentences when I could not think of the right word, and referred to me as "Teacher Lexi"(in Chinese). At the second family I visited, the mother kept complimenting my Chinese, saying how well I spoke. In response to which, the father said "she's okay. there still seem to be a bunch of words that she doesn't really know how to use." Fair point. I still have a long way to go. But the fact that I can pretty much always get my point across one way or another (sometimes after a series of mumbles, restarts, and hand gestures), means that my main objective (communication) is being accomplished.
Chinese kids are also really funny and honest. The little girl in the family I met last night was slightly appalled by the density of my arm hair. She told her mom, "Mama, you can see foreigner's arm hair, but you can't see ours." She also noticed that our noses were different and our hair different colors. Her mother asked me if it was true that in foreign countries families could have more than one kid. When I said yes, she said something like, "well, that's nice, isn't it."
So I have gotten a nice start on this daunting task. Hopefully as I get more and more comfortable with this process I will stop saying so many silly sounding and grammatically incorrect things and work on my comedic timing when telling cultural misunderstanding anecdotes. For example, there is a great one about a Chinese mom heating up a cup of milk for her foreign student (Chinese people like to drink warm milk) and then the student being puzzled, and putting the milk into the fridge to cool it off (as American custom dictates) and then the mother being confused and reheating the milk, and the American in turn putting it in the fridge again.
I will probably be visiting 3-4 families a week for the next 2 months. While it is much harder for me to do this job than it would be for a Chinese person, I also think that there are some positives for both sides. For the Chinese family, they get to have a foreigner come visit their home and get a little taste of what it will be like if they end up hosting a student this summer. They get to stare at me and ask me questions and have me explain why I do not have pale skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. For me, I get to practice speaking Chinese with people who really want to understand, who compliment my language skills, even when I may not deserve it, and I get to hang out with really interesting Chinese families in their homes. I might have a different perspective on this whole process after I have visited 20-30 families (instead of my current 3). Either way, it is crazy that this is my job. It is also crazy that I have been in this country for 8 months, that I only have about 3-ish months left, and that before I know it I will be back in the good 'ol US of A...
Monday, April 13, 2009
Things that have happened recently
I have had lots of visitors lately. Also, many people have left Kunming. I am living in this crazy city where many people are just sort of passing through, here for a month or two or six and then off on the next adventure. Of course, there are also many people who have been here for years. There is a whole contingent of somewhat strange older white men who came to Kunming 30 years ago and just never left. They sit around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee all day until evening time when they exchange their coffee cup for a cold beer.
However, these guys are not the majority. The majority of people in Kunming are passing through...for a week or a semester or a couple of years. It is an interesting mindset among foreigners. You find a group of people you like and then they disappear for a month to go traveling through Vietnam or Laos or to go back to their native land. And then you meet more cool new interesting well-traveled people and make friends with them for a while. And yet, somehow it seems that all the foreigners in Kunming know each other.
Exactly two days after my brother left China my friend from Macalester who is currently working in Beijing came to visit for a couple days. During this time we visited a bunch of the Buddhist Temples around Kunming that I had yet to get to. I also educated him on the wonders of the Kunming dining experience, we attended a photography club meeting at the botanical gardens with a bunch of Chinese college student who met on a website (something that is much more common and less sketchy here than in the states), and spent some time discussing our experiences thus far in China.
For example, my friend put out an add for a language exchange partner in Beijing where he lives. He got a response from a Chinese woman who expected him to be a big strong handsome rich successful white guy and potential husband. When they met to practice speaking together she seemed rather disappointed that he was so young (she was 27) and that he was therefore not a potential future spouse. She patted him on the head and bought him the Chinese equivalent of a lollipop or a cookie.
After eating his way through Kunming, my friend returned to Beijing. The next day passover started, and I have to admit that I skipped out on a huge seder of 50 or so people that was being organized by the Israeli population of Kunming in order to go to the Hot Springs with my fellow Dragons colleagues. All of the semester program instructors have been working really hard and were leaving the next day to go traveling for a month and somehow I got to tag along on this crazy China Spa experience.
For 170 kuai ($25...which is A LOT of money in China) we got to wear huge comfy terri-cloth bathrobes, lie around in pools of hot water that had been infused with various Chinese medicinal or beneficial herbs, relax in a sauna, play around in a huge swimming pool filled with various water-using massage devices and ball-pit balls (for throwing at each other), get a 1.5 hour Chinese Massage, eat noodles, and have our toenails clipped for us while eating a jello-like substance that tasted a bit like charcoal. My favorite part though was the matching shorts and t-shirt pajama set that we all got to wear (I very nearly stole mine because they were that awesome) and the identification bracelets that made us all feel a little bit like we were in some sort of mental hospital. So, you see, I have an excuse for missing the passover seder.
This past Thursday the Dragons semester group took off for their month of travel, on Saturday my friends who are studying with the S.I.T. program in Kunming hit the road for the next six weeks, and while I will miss these people for a bit, lets just say that I have not been sitting at home moping about it.
I spent my weekend reading and relaxing, going out for meals and chatting with friends. I ate my first da-pan-ji (literally big plate chicken), a food that comes from Xinjiang which is in the northwest part of China that has a heavy Muslim influence and incredibly delicious food. This dish is literally an entire chicken (it serves four) cooked up with potatoes and some green peppers in a rich tangy sauce. When I say an entire chicken, I mean the ENTIRE chicken. Evan would not have liked this very much because when he was here I 'accidentally' ordered him chicken feet instead of chicken wings and he nearly cried and asked if we could remove them from our table. I said no, and started to attack him with them. He liked this a lot.
I also have a Chinese friend who offered to teach me how to cook. She is a great cook, and an incredibly nice and generous person. The problem is that she is too nice and doesn't actually let me help so much, I chop a few vegetables here and there and carry the dishes from the kitchen to the table. However, the lessons so far have done little to actually make me feel more comfortable with cooking in China. I have, however, gotten to eat some amazingly delicious homemade food and so I am okay with it.
Today I spent nearly the entire day speaking Chinese. This really shouldn't be a big deal because last semester I spent every day all day speaking, but since I have come to Kunming I have been speaking too much English. I went to class in the morning (the old Japanese men entertained me by teasing each other about drinking too much alcohol)had lunch with a Chinese friend, then went to chat with a potential Chinese teacher for dragons summer programs, and then this evening went to visit a family that will host dragons students this summer in order to learn how to interview and screen families. I have that I-have-spoken-a-lot-of-Chinese-today feeling in my mouth where forming the sounds of the English language becomes a bit difficult. I should probably make it my goal to get this feeling more often.
Also today, a random friend who I worked with two summers ago showed up in Kunming. He contacted me because he is studying in Beijing and came down to my province for a visit. We had a nice meal where I got to introduce yet another person to the amazingness that is Yunnan food. It is pretty weird and at the same time not weird at all to have random people continuously appear in this city.
Note to the reader: I just went through and proofread and found about 10-15 problems with my grammar and ability to speak in the past tense. -has-have-had was a particularly large problem. I am sorry for any more problems that exist that might make reading this blog a little painful, or make you think that the author is not a native English speaker.
However, these guys are not the majority. The majority of people in Kunming are passing through...for a week or a semester or a couple of years. It is an interesting mindset among foreigners. You find a group of people you like and then they disappear for a month to go traveling through Vietnam or Laos or to go back to their native land. And then you meet more cool new interesting well-traveled people and make friends with them for a while. And yet, somehow it seems that all the foreigners in Kunming know each other.
Exactly two days after my brother left China my friend from Macalester who is currently working in Beijing came to visit for a couple days. During this time we visited a bunch of the Buddhist Temples around Kunming that I had yet to get to. I also educated him on the wonders of the Kunming dining experience, we attended a photography club meeting at the botanical gardens with a bunch of Chinese college student who met on a website (something that is much more common and less sketchy here than in the states), and spent some time discussing our experiences thus far in China.
For example, my friend put out an add for a language exchange partner in Beijing where he lives. He got a response from a Chinese woman who expected him to be a big strong handsome rich successful white guy and potential husband. When they met to practice speaking together she seemed rather disappointed that he was so young (she was 27) and that he was therefore not a potential future spouse. She patted him on the head and bought him the Chinese equivalent of a lollipop or a cookie.
After eating his way through Kunming, my friend returned to Beijing. The next day passover started, and I have to admit that I skipped out on a huge seder of 50 or so people that was being organized by the Israeli population of Kunming in order to go to the Hot Springs with my fellow Dragons colleagues. All of the semester program instructors have been working really hard and were leaving the next day to go traveling for a month and somehow I got to tag along on this crazy China Spa experience.
For 170 kuai ($25...which is A LOT of money in China) we got to wear huge comfy terri-cloth bathrobes, lie around in pools of hot water that had been infused with various Chinese medicinal or beneficial herbs, relax in a sauna, play around in a huge swimming pool filled with various water-using massage devices and ball-pit balls (for throwing at each other), get a 1.5 hour Chinese Massage, eat noodles, and have our toenails clipped for us while eating a jello-like substance that tasted a bit like charcoal. My favorite part though was the matching shorts and t-shirt pajama set that we all got to wear (I very nearly stole mine because they were that awesome) and the identification bracelets that made us all feel a little bit like we were in some sort of mental hospital. So, you see, I have an excuse for missing the passover seder.
This past Thursday the Dragons semester group took off for their month of travel, on Saturday my friends who are studying with the S.I.T. program in Kunming hit the road for the next six weeks, and while I will miss these people for a bit, lets just say that I have not been sitting at home moping about it.
I spent my weekend reading and relaxing, going out for meals and chatting with friends. I ate my first da-pan-ji (literally big plate chicken), a food that comes from Xinjiang which is in the northwest part of China that has a heavy Muslim influence and incredibly delicious food. This dish is literally an entire chicken (it serves four) cooked up with potatoes and some green peppers in a rich tangy sauce. When I say an entire chicken, I mean the ENTIRE chicken. Evan would not have liked this very much because when he was here I 'accidentally' ordered him chicken feet instead of chicken wings and he nearly cried and asked if we could remove them from our table. I said no, and started to attack him with them. He liked this a lot.
I also have a Chinese friend who offered to teach me how to cook. She is a great cook, and an incredibly nice and generous person. The problem is that she is too nice and doesn't actually let me help so much, I chop a few vegetables here and there and carry the dishes from the kitchen to the table. However, the lessons so far have done little to actually make me feel more comfortable with cooking in China. I have, however, gotten to eat some amazingly delicious homemade food and so I am okay with it.
Today I spent nearly the entire day speaking Chinese. This really shouldn't be a big deal because last semester I spent every day all day speaking, but since I have come to Kunming I have been speaking too much English. I went to class in the morning (the old Japanese men entertained me by teasing each other about drinking too much alcohol)had lunch with a Chinese friend, then went to chat with a potential Chinese teacher for dragons summer programs, and then this evening went to visit a family that will host dragons students this summer in order to learn how to interview and screen families. I have that I-have-spoken-a-lot-of-Chinese-today feeling in my mouth where forming the sounds of the English language becomes a bit difficult. I should probably make it my goal to get this feeling more often.
Also today, a random friend who I worked with two summers ago showed up in Kunming. He contacted me because he is studying in Beijing and came down to my province for a visit. We had a nice meal where I got to introduce yet another person to the amazingness that is Yunnan food. It is pretty weird and at the same time not weird at all to have random people continuously appear in this city.
Note to the reader: I just went through and proofread and found about 10-15 problems with my grammar and ability to speak in the past tense. -has-have-had was a particularly large problem. I am sorry for any more problems that exist that might make reading this blog a little painful, or make you think that the author is not a native English speaker.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Bringing My Blog Back
Hello Everyone! I have decided that is it time for my blog to be mine again. While we have all enjoyed Evan's unique writing style and endless musings on China and the NCAA, he has now fled the country and I think it is time for him to get his own blog.
As always, it has been a long time since I lost wrote, and I am not quite sure where to start. It was really fun having Evan here. Not only did we have a great time, but it was really fun for me to show my brother (who had never ventured outside of North America) another part of the world. Obviously,my first goal of having him here was for him to enjoy himself, but I also thought it was really important to put him in situations where he was a little bit uncomfortable, surrounded by foreign people speaking languages that he could not understand, on dirty, smelly, buses and having to listen to me have conversations with cab drivers and Chinese friends during which he constantly asked, "are you laughing at me?" Sometimes we were. Usually we were talking about something that had absolutely nothing to do with him.
For the first entire week that Evan was here we stayed in Kunming in my beautiful apartment with all of the comforts of home. (meaning I don't think he had to use a squat toilet once.) We went on some day trips, a put my brother on a bike in China (something that requires considerable guts and even greater reflexes), and I fed him a lot of spicy, foreign, and in general "strange" food (although he rejected my offer to buy him a pig foot.) We also played some basketball and frisbee, Evan enjoyed spreading the wonders of BeerDie, and I got to introduce my brother to the good people of Kunming that I have come to know and love. It was really cool for me to have Evan dropped into my world for a little while.
But he was a little bit too happy and comfortable in Kunming. It was not quite weird enough or hard enough for him (except for a bit of gastro-intestinal distress that he chose not to write about in his blogs for fear that his readers did not want to know.) So we went to the long distance bus station and got on a bus. For those of you who have not been to a bus station in China, it can be a bit overwhelming. As soon as you pull up in front of the station people start yelling at you, thrusting papers at you, trying to get you to buy what they are selling or go where they want to take you. For me, I expect this, I know how to walk straight ahead and get them to leave me alone. Evan was a bit more frazzled. However, we got tickets and got on an average China bus with tiny China sized seats, surrounded by average Chinese people. Evan was in China at last.
Vendors got on and off the bus, peddling newspapers and maps, eggs and corn, announcing their products in country-side accented Mandarin. Evan, feeling overwhelmed for maybe the first time since he found me at the airport, asked me if all Chinese bus stations were this crazy. I told him that this was just a small city of 6-7 million and therefore this is a small, relatively-mellow station. Welcome to China. At this point, I told Evan that seeing him uncomfortable makes me happy. Yes, this may sound cruel, but it is true. Because it is not pointless discomfort, it is a feeling that is productive and that he overcame and learned a whole lot from. (Even if he doesn't know it.)
Dali was awesome. When I told the taxi driver on the way to the old town that my brother was a sports broadcasters, he asked if Evan had ever seen Yao Ming, and was disappointed when Evan's answer was "only on T.V." We went on a crazy biking adventure in which Evan's bike rebelled against him from the very beginning and we made our way through small villages and open fields where local farmers (mostly) smiled at us as we passed. We also hiked a 4,100m peak (really high) and stayed in a small guesthouse on a mountain.
We eventually made our way back to Kunming. We spent Evan's last Saturday in China mountain biking with a few of my hardcore biker friends up and down the foothills of Kunming. The entire ride took about 4-5 hours (including the time spent fixing bike chains with the sophisticated tools of rocks, pliers, and the washers that happened to be in my backpack because I was planning to make earrings out of them). Evan only fell down/crashed into strangers/nearly killed himself and others a handful of times. It was a great ride that challenged us both.
The last night that Evan spent in China was phenomenal. We had dinner with a few friends and then eventually made our way to Karaoke, where we sang our hearts and souls out for nearly four hours. I KNEW my brother would love KTV. It is possible that he liked the sing-along slightly more because of the Baijiu that he was peer pressured into drinking. It was a great group of people and the perfect way to spend Evan's last evening/early morning in China.
On Tuesday morning, I brought Evan to the Kunming Airport and he put himself on a plane to take him back to the land of forks and ice water. He was worried about culture shock and readjusting after being in China for only 2 weeks. I don't even want to think about what it is going to be like for me after an entire year.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Evan's Reeducation -- Dominating Dali
Lexi and I returned to Kunming last night after spending four days in and around the city of Dali. We journeyed north on a 4-5 hour bus ride on Monday evening, setting the stage for a true test of how I could handle the Chinese wilderness. The week included a day-long bike ride through endless fields of crops and an array of tiny villages, mostly ridden on terrain not meant for bicycles. In addition, my rented bike was more broken than Lexi's NCAA Tournament Bracket (0 for 8 among the elite 8 for Lexi Rae). But despite the challenges of the grueling ride, it was a very rewarding experience.
The basic plan was to bike around the lake, Erhai Lake, supposedly the 7th largest freshwater lake in China. It was not a small body of water, yet we were determined. Unfortunately, we did not really know where we were going, and in China, asking for multi-step directions, according to Lexi, is entirely unacceptable (more on this ridiculously inefficient cultural method and my other issues with China in another post). So anyway, despite the fact that there was something wrong with my bicycle (mainly, but not limited to, the fact that peddling did not necessarily move the vehicle), we began to traverse absurd obstacles in our quest to venture around this lake. We carried our bikes over rock piles, down steps in villagers' backyards, and during stretches where the "path"--interpret that term loosely-- was no more than a foot wide and veering inches left or right may have meant a 5-6 foot leap into a cliff of crops. We drove past hundreds of farmers working on their land, some who waved as we passed by. We sped past elephant-size piles of manure accompanied by ungodly swarms of flies who seem to like poop a lot more than I do. We would arrive at a dead-end and try something else. It was the ultimate exploration ride, with the caveat that we were mainly trying to go around this lake. And although we felt like roaming nomads at times, we almost always had the view of the city in the distance, probably no more than 3-5 kilometers away at all times. We eventually decided to turn towards the city, as we had been enduring for about 5 hours and were tired and hungry. We found some food, explored some more, and searched for a hotel to spend the night. We ended up staying at a place that was way too nice for us, but we were tired and felt we had earned it.
The following day, we had planned on riding our bikes on the road back to where we rented them from (probably 25-30 kilometers away), but it was not meant to be. After about 5 minutes, I declared that I had had enough of my crappy bicycle. Right around that same moment, Lexi tried to break. It broke, but not in a slowing down the bike kind of way. It was more of a dropping a glass plate from a rooftop onto pavement breakage. And just like that, her bike was semi-unrideable as well. Fortunately, we did find a taxi that put both pieces of junk in the trunk so we could get our substantial deposit back from the orginal rental place.
Back in Old Dali, where we stayed the first night, we walked around a bunch, found some fantastic western pizza for lunch (The establishment was called "Bad Monkey" and the sign out front red "the most pimped out pizza in China"-- Yes, there is photographic evidence of said sign and slogan), and began our trek into the mountainess wilderness. Friends of Lexi's had recommended a place called the HigherLand Inn, which is a very small place for hikers to stay on a nearby mountain. To get to the Inn, we hiked about 90 minutes up a fairly steep trail in the late afternoon (it was still scorching hot), and we discovered this incredibly awesome place (Link for anyone interested: http://www.higherland.com/eabout%20us/index.htm) I think there are only seven rooms available, yet there is basic electricity and a shower and bathroom. Everyone kinda ate together in the main cabin, where the food was almost always very tasty. At our first dinner, we shared some great conversations with travelers from all over the world. During our two days there, we had enjoyable chats with folks from Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, France, Quebec, Scotland, and England.
After a peaceful night's rest snuggled in a few different blankets to stay warm during the chilly conditions, we embarked on, quite possibly, the greatest hike that either of us have ever experienced. In majestic terms, this was not close to the Grand Canyon or Bryce Canyon or perhaps even some of the magnificent climbs we've conquered in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. However, never before had we started a climb at 2,600 meters, with a goal of ascending to a peak of 4,100 meters, or over 12,000 feet. Acting as our own sherpas, we began our journey a little before 9am. Despite encountering steep challenges, snow/ice covered sections of the trail, gargantuan winds near the peaks that nearly blew us away, and somewhat excruciating headaches due in large part to the elevation/lack of oxygen, we returned to the HigherLand Inn around 7:20PM. We were victorious. We summitted two separate peaks higher than 12,000 feet during our approximately 10.5 hour trek. It was an exhaustingly satisfying accomplishment, and we both slept around 11 hours the ensuing night.
The next morning, nearly afternoon following our late sleep, we descended back down the mountain and said farewell to the HigherLand Inn. With sore legs, we strolled the few kilometers back to the main town where we'd be able to find a bus ticket back to Kunming. I doubt many reading this blog will ever have the chance to bike around Erhai Lake or summit the nearby mountains that overlook it. But the entire adventure was a pretty crazy experience.
The legs are still sore. But that's ok.
The basic plan was to bike around the lake, Erhai Lake, supposedly the 7th largest freshwater lake in China. It was not a small body of water, yet we were determined. Unfortunately, we did not really know where we were going, and in China, asking for multi-step directions, according to Lexi, is entirely unacceptable (more on this ridiculously inefficient cultural method and my other issues with China in another post). So anyway, despite the fact that there was something wrong with my bicycle (mainly, but not limited to, the fact that peddling did not necessarily move the vehicle), we began to traverse absurd obstacles in our quest to venture around this lake. We carried our bikes over rock piles, down steps in villagers' backyards, and during stretches where the "path"--interpret that term loosely-- was no more than a foot wide and veering inches left or right may have meant a 5-6 foot leap into a cliff of crops. We drove past hundreds of farmers working on their land, some who waved as we passed by. We sped past elephant-size piles of manure accompanied by ungodly swarms of flies who seem to like poop a lot more than I do. We would arrive at a dead-end and try something else. It was the ultimate exploration ride, with the caveat that we were mainly trying to go around this lake. And although we felt like roaming nomads at times, we almost always had the view of the city in the distance, probably no more than 3-5 kilometers away at all times. We eventually decided to turn towards the city, as we had been enduring for about 5 hours and were tired and hungry. We found some food, explored some more, and searched for a hotel to spend the night. We ended up staying at a place that was way too nice for us, but we were tired and felt we had earned it.
The following day, we had planned on riding our bikes on the road back to where we rented them from (probably 25-30 kilometers away), but it was not meant to be. After about 5 minutes, I declared that I had had enough of my crappy bicycle. Right around that same moment, Lexi tried to break. It broke, but not in a slowing down the bike kind of way. It was more of a dropping a glass plate from a rooftop onto pavement breakage. And just like that, her bike was semi-unrideable as well. Fortunately, we did find a taxi that put both pieces of junk in the trunk so we could get our substantial deposit back from the orginal rental place.
Back in Old Dali, where we stayed the first night, we walked around a bunch, found some fantastic western pizza for lunch (The establishment was called "Bad Monkey" and the sign out front red "the most pimped out pizza in China"-- Yes, there is photographic evidence of said sign and slogan), and began our trek into the mountainess wilderness. Friends of Lexi's had recommended a place called the HigherLand Inn, which is a very small place for hikers to stay on a nearby mountain. To get to the Inn, we hiked about 90 minutes up a fairly steep trail in the late afternoon (it was still scorching hot), and we discovered this incredibly awesome place (Link for anyone interested: http://www.higherland.com/eabout%20us/index.htm) I think there are only seven rooms available, yet there is basic electricity and a shower and bathroom. Everyone kinda ate together in the main cabin, where the food was almost always very tasty. At our first dinner, we shared some great conversations with travelers from all over the world. During our two days there, we had enjoyable chats with folks from Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, France, Quebec, Scotland, and England.
After a peaceful night's rest snuggled in a few different blankets to stay warm during the chilly conditions, we embarked on, quite possibly, the greatest hike that either of us have ever experienced. In majestic terms, this was not close to the Grand Canyon or Bryce Canyon or perhaps even some of the magnificent climbs we've conquered in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. However, never before had we started a climb at 2,600 meters, with a goal of ascending to a peak of 4,100 meters, or over 12,000 feet. Acting as our own sherpas, we began our journey a little before 9am. Despite encountering steep challenges, snow/ice covered sections of the trail, gargantuan winds near the peaks that nearly blew us away, and somewhat excruciating headaches due in large part to the elevation/lack of oxygen, we returned to the HigherLand Inn around 7:20PM. We were victorious. We summitted two separate peaks higher than 12,000 feet during our approximately 10.5 hour trek. It was an exhaustingly satisfying accomplishment, and we both slept around 11 hours the ensuing night.
The next morning, nearly afternoon following our late sleep, we descended back down the mountain and said farewell to the HigherLand Inn. With sore legs, we strolled the few kilometers back to the main town where we'd be able to find a bus ticket back to Kunming. I doubt many reading this blog will ever have the chance to bike around Erhai Lake or summit the nearby mountains that overlook it. But the entire adventure was a pretty crazy experience.
The legs are still sore. But that's ok.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Evan's Reeducation -- Good times in Kunming
Once again I say ahoy to all and one from the great city of Kunming. It is Monday morning here in the east, and I have a plethora of stories from the past 4 days, some that can be told in this space, others that you will have to hear from me directly at a later date.
Quick hits from the past 96 hours:
On Thursday, Lexi rented me a bike and we rode about 8 kilometers to the Golden Temple. It was a cool place to explore, and at one point the following exchange occurred.
Lexi: "Do you want to sit on a camel?"
Evan (speaking approximately 0.000012 seconds later): "YES"
For 5 yuan (about 70 cents), I sat on a camel roughly the size of Rhode Island. The monstrous animal smelled horrible, but hopefully the stenge won't carry through into the pictures that Lexi took. I'm sure she will post them with embarrassing captions at some later date.
On Friday, Lexi actually had some work to do (trying to convince me that she's here for an internship rather than simply playing ultimate and creating memories). She met a few people for an informal interview at a cafe nearby her apartment. I tagged along with my computer and followed as much basketball as I could. (At this point, the unfortunate shellacking of 84-69 had not occurred yet and I was somewhat excited for the NCAA Tournament... Red was right, hope can drive a man insane.) On Friday night, Lexi and her roomate Jess hosted a dinner party, which was a lot of fun. My friend Todd, who graduated from Wake in 2005 and now lives in Shanghai, came to Kunming for the weekend. It was completely absurd seeing him for the first time in a year and a half in this small city in southwest China. It was also completely awesome. Along with some of Lexi's friends we went out to see some live music after dinner. Tribal Moon was the moniker of the rock quartet that blared their sounds into the streets. They actually weren't terrible. I think jetlag finally caught up with me a little bit, as by around 11:30 or 12 I was totally and completely exhausted. Good times, though.
On Saturday, it was Lexi's 21st birthday, and as a present to her, I let her continue paying for everything. I'm quite the giver. As you might expect, she wanted to do what anyone else would want to do on their birthday: go to the zoo. And as luck had it, there was a zoo basically across the street from where she lived. Todd joined us for a stroll through some pretty interesting habitats. We saw giraffes, zebras, lions, tigers, bears, stegosaurasas, and peacocks. Lots of peacocks. It was a dandy time that was cut short when Lexi received a call asking if we all would be interested in free massages at this new massage place that is opening in Kunming at the end of the month. Basically, they needed live bodies to practice with. And after the experience, I was phenomenally grateful that I was a chosen live body. The three of us all received sensational massages, and afterwards were thanked repeatedly for letting them massage us. It was totally and utterly ridiculous. As someone who had never had a professional massage before, I am officially a huge fan.
Lexi's birthday dinner (Others payed for her, she payed for me of course) featured a diverse hodgepodge of her American and Chinese friends here in Kunming. The solid meal paved the way for other shennanigans amidst an array of card games at another venue nearby. I think she had fun. I know I did.
On Sunday, we slept in, and Lexi basically woke me up with the following words: "Do you want another free massage?" Like Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams, I was confused whether I was in heaven, Iowa, or Kunming. Around 1PM, we walked back to the magical massage place for our aromatherapy oil massage, in which we were forced to remove most of our clothing and be slathered with hot sweet almond oil. It was a completely different experience than the day before (twice as long -- two hours versus one) and it was much more intense. I'm now conditioned to expect a free professional massage every day. One of my best friends from high school is now dating a masseuse back in the states, and he's told me that it is not terrible. No kidding. Any single female professional massage therapists in Salem, Virginia reading this blog right now, give me a call. I'll be joining you in the Roanoke Valley in early April.
After having our muscles worked for two hours, we quickly sped home, collected our frisbee attire, and jolted over to the game of pickup ultimate. It wasn't exactly the thrill of Atlantic Coast regionals, but ultimate is ultimate, and I met a lot of other good people. The few hours of disc were followed by another large dinner, and then a gathering at the nearby apartment inhabitated by the aforementioned duo of frisbee playing twins from Atlanta (Padeia HS). It was an evening filled with plunks. That's right, plunks. Once again, very good times.
I think Lexi and I are off to another city to traverse and explore for the next few days. We miss everyone back in the states and hope that things are well.
One final thought: I watched pretty much the entire Wake-Cleveland State game on streaming video here in China on Saturday morning. It was an abysmal, pathetic, and disgraceful effort, that, after the fact, was not that suprising. For the past few weeks I'd been saying that Wake would either lose to a double-digit seed in the first round or advance to the final four. I had thought the odds were around 50-50. Either was possible. Crash. Burn. Destruction. Finality. Hopefully the trio of immature future millionaires stay in school for another year with a certain fire in the belly that'll transform Wake into a top 5 team in 2010. Wake fans who are calling for Dino's job are embarrassing. They sound like NC State fans who hated Herb Sendek or Kentucky fans who drove away Tubby Smith. I hope that there are better days ahead. I take back me previous statement; Red was wrong. Hope is a good things, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
Thank you, Andy Dufresne.
Quick hits from the past 96 hours:
On Thursday, Lexi rented me a bike and we rode about 8 kilometers to the Golden Temple. It was a cool place to explore, and at one point the following exchange occurred.
Lexi: "Do you want to sit on a camel?"
Evan (speaking approximately 0.000012 seconds later): "YES"
For 5 yuan (about 70 cents), I sat on a camel roughly the size of Rhode Island. The monstrous animal smelled horrible, but hopefully the stenge won't carry through into the pictures that Lexi took. I'm sure she will post them with embarrassing captions at some later date.
On Friday, Lexi actually had some work to do (trying to convince me that she's here for an internship rather than simply playing ultimate and creating memories). She met a few people for an informal interview at a cafe nearby her apartment. I tagged along with my computer and followed as much basketball as I could. (At this point, the unfortunate shellacking of 84-69 had not occurred yet and I was somewhat excited for the NCAA Tournament... Red was right, hope can drive a man insane.) On Friday night, Lexi and her roomate Jess hosted a dinner party, which was a lot of fun. My friend Todd, who graduated from Wake in 2005 and now lives in Shanghai, came to Kunming for the weekend. It was completely absurd seeing him for the first time in a year and a half in this small city in southwest China. It was also completely awesome. Along with some of Lexi's friends we went out to see some live music after dinner. Tribal Moon was the moniker of the rock quartet that blared their sounds into the streets. They actually weren't terrible. I think jetlag finally caught up with me a little bit, as by around 11:30 or 12 I was totally and completely exhausted. Good times, though.
On Saturday, it was Lexi's 21st birthday, and as a present to her, I let her continue paying for everything. I'm quite the giver. As you might expect, she wanted to do what anyone else would want to do on their birthday: go to the zoo. And as luck had it, there was a zoo basically across the street from where she lived. Todd joined us for a stroll through some pretty interesting habitats. We saw giraffes, zebras, lions, tigers, bears, stegosaurasas, and peacocks. Lots of peacocks. It was a dandy time that was cut short when Lexi received a call asking if we all would be interested in free massages at this new massage place that is opening in Kunming at the end of the month. Basically, they needed live bodies to practice with. And after the experience, I was phenomenally grateful that I was a chosen live body. The three of us all received sensational massages, and afterwards were thanked repeatedly for letting them massage us. It was totally and utterly ridiculous. As someone who had never had a professional massage before, I am officially a huge fan.
Lexi's birthday dinner (Others payed for her, she payed for me of course) featured a diverse hodgepodge of her American and Chinese friends here in Kunming. The solid meal paved the way for other shennanigans amidst an array of card games at another venue nearby. I think she had fun. I know I did.
On Sunday, we slept in, and Lexi basically woke me up with the following words: "Do you want another free massage?" Like Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams, I was confused whether I was in heaven, Iowa, or Kunming. Around 1PM, we walked back to the magical massage place for our aromatherapy oil massage, in which we were forced to remove most of our clothing and be slathered with hot sweet almond oil. It was a completely different experience than the day before (twice as long -- two hours versus one) and it was much more intense. I'm now conditioned to expect a free professional massage every day. One of my best friends from high school is now dating a masseuse back in the states, and he's told me that it is not terrible. No kidding. Any single female professional massage therapists in Salem, Virginia reading this blog right now, give me a call. I'll be joining you in the Roanoke Valley in early April.
After having our muscles worked for two hours, we quickly sped home, collected our frisbee attire, and jolted over to the game of pickup ultimate. It wasn't exactly the thrill of Atlantic Coast regionals, but ultimate is ultimate, and I met a lot of other good people. The few hours of disc were followed by another large dinner, and then a gathering at the nearby apartment inhabitated by the aforementioned duo of frisbee playing twins from Atlanta (Padeia HS). It was an evening filled with plunks. That's right, plunks. Once again, very good times.
I think Lexi and I are off to another city to traverse and explore for the next few days. We miss everyone back in the states and hope that things are well.
One final thought: I watched pretty much the entire Wake-Cleveland State game on streaming video here in China on Saturday morning. It was an abysmal, pathetic, and disgraceful effort, that, after the fact, was not that suprising. For the past few weeks I'd been saying that Wake would either lose to a double-digit seed in the first round or advance to the final four. I had thought the odds were around 50-50. Either was possible. Crash. Burn. Destruction. Finality. Hopefully the trio of immature future millionaires stay in school for another year with a certain fire in the belly that'll transform Wake into a top 5 team in 2010. Wake fans who are calling for Dino's job are embarrassing. They sound like NC State fans who hated Herb Sendek or Kentucky fans who drove away Tubby Smith. I hope that there are better days ahead. I take back me previous statement; Red was wrong. Hope is a good things, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
Thank you, Andy Dufresne.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Evan's Reeducation -- It's a Small World
First full day in China included good food, good people, and good hoops.
In the late morning, we began our tour of the city, with Lexi guiding me around town. Few observations: horn beeping is out of control. Both cars and motor scooters are constantly blaring their horns. Perhaps this is because people kind of just walk out in the road as vehicles are moving towards them. I was amazed that people don't get hit more often. Lexi says that the horn isn't an impolite 'get out of my way,' it's more of a 'just realize I'm coming,' but regardless, the shrilling horn is a ubiquitous feature of strolling through the city. Also, I found it kind of strange that a very decent percentage of the girls here are holding hands or interlocking arms when walking around. They weren't gay, or so Lexi said, but many of the girls walk in twos. That's just how friends stay together, I guess.
We had a really cool lunch, my initial meal in China, and my first attempt to conquer chopsticks. In America, my General Gao's chicken or Beef w/ Pea Pods are always consumed with forks. Here, not so much. Lexi ordered four dishes for the two of us: a sizzling beef dish, Grandma's potatoes (a type of mashed potatoes I have never had before), fried red beans, and a plate of broccoli. (These total cost: 42 yuan, or about 6 dollars!!! Food is crazy cheap!) To make my father proud, I stayed clear of the broccoli, but everything else was good/interesting. The gargantuan plate of fried beans was a strange concoction. I liked them at first, but they were very salty and it seemed strange to eat a crunchy bean, almost like a chip. The beef dish and mashed potatoes were both good. The potatoes were a world apart from typical American mashed potatoes though, seasoned w/ very different spices and other stuff. You think of mashed potatoes always containing some butter, but not these. They were really tasty though. My chopstick travails made quite a mess in front of me, and eventually I was either trying to use the chopsticks as more of a shovel-type utensil, or simply using my left hand to place the morsel of food inside the chopsticks that were in my right hand. I hope people were staring. I'm sure it was entertaining.
After lunch, we walked around the city more, browsing in and out of some shops, the most intriguing of which is a store that sells lots of American DVDs for ridiculously cheap prices. I may come home with Seasons 1-4 of Lost for less than 10 bucks. It was also cool to see The Wire, The West Wing, Mad Men, and other shows I liked available for cheap with Chinese writing on the front.
We eventually, at my urging, meandered over to the nearby university, or more specifically, the six outdoor basketball courts on that campus. Arriving mid/late-afternoon, there were tons of kids shooting around and playing pickup games. Despite my attire, jeans and running shoes, I was eager to play, and Lexi was nice enough to ask someone what the protocal was. I was encouraged to go shoot around, and about 15 minutes later, I was involved in a game of 3-on-3. Somehow, I was fortunate enough to end up on a team with two kids who could really play, and it was fantastic. At 5'10'', I was one of the tallest kids there, and really the only one who consistently boxed out. In addition, the biggest thing I saw from the Chinese players was the need to almost always double-pump when going up for a shot or layup. But it was an awesome time. With people waiting, they played very quick games to 5, winners take except when it's game-point. So if you score to go up 4-1, the other team gets the ball up top. My team won the first 6 or 7 games we played, and probably 17 out of 19 games we played overall. It helped that I was playing with the Ray Allen of China, who just kept draining outside shots. It was a really awesome time, despite our inability to communicate. We'd high-five after nice passes and good finishes, take responsibility for our mistakes, and overall the sportsmanship was excellent by everyone there. Definitely a really cool experience; I'm sure I'll play again before I leave.
For dinner, we met up w/ a very cool crew of Lexi's American friends who live here, mostly folks who she met playing frisbee. Included in the crew of 7 kids were twins who both played at Padeia in Atlanta (the top HS for ultimate in the country), one of whom played at Boston University, a team I played against when I was a freshman at Wake. He remembered the game: "I think we beat you guys," he said. Yea, you did. But we beat Duke the following game 13-11, so I remember the day fondly. I was not involved at all in the ordering of the food, but gradually a smorgasbord of dishes arrived at our table. Now, I want to be adventurous and try new things, so I was pretty open to tasting everything. My lasting perspective from the evening was how, at a single meal, there might be 8 different clashing flavors. They all were good and interesting, mostly unlike anything I've had before with differing levels of spicyness. But in China they don't give you water at a meal. They give you tea, in a cup the size of basically a double-shot glass. So at times I was reluctant to really delve into something I thought would be spicy, since I had very little to drink at the table. Following dinner, we proceeded to a trivia night at some bar. It was led by a crew of New Zealanders, and it seemed that there were "white people" from many different parts of the world in attendence. The beer was good, the trivia was challenging (particularly the questions exclusively about Kunming or China, I was completely worthless).
One day down, lots more to see. Stay tuned.
In the late morning, we began our tour of the city, with Lexi guiding me around town. Few observations: horn beeping is out of control. Both cars and motor scooters are constantly blaring their horns. Perhaps this is because people kind of just walk out in the road as vehicles are moving towards them. I was amazed that people don't get hit more often. Lexi says that the horn isn't an impolite 'get out of my way,' it's more of a 'just realize I'm coming,' but regardless, the shrilling horn is a ubiquitous feature of strolling through the city. Also, I found it kind of strange that a very decent percentage of the girls here are holding hands or interlocking arms when walking around. They weren't gay, or so Lexi said, but many of the girls walk in twos. That's just how friends stay together, I guess.
We had a really cool lunch, my initial meal in China, and my first attempt to conquer chopsticks. In America, my General Gao's chicken or Beef w/ Pea Pods are always consumed with forks. Here, not so much. Lexi ordered four dishes for the two of us: a sizzling beef dish, Grandma's potatoes (a type of mashed potatoes I have never had before), fried red beans, and a plate of broccoli. (These total cost: 42 yuan, or about 6 dollars!!! Food is crazy cheap!) To make my father proud, I stayed clear of the broccoli, but everything else was good/interesting. The gargantuan plate of fried beans was a strange concoction. I liked them at first, but they were very salty and it seemed strange to eat a crunchy bean, almost like a chip. The beef dish and mashed potatoes were both good. The potatoes were a world apart from typical American mashed potatoes though, seasoned w/ very different spices and other stuff. You think of mashed potatoes always containing some butter, but not these. They were really tasty though. My chopstick travails made quite a mess in front of me, and eventually I was either trying to use the chopsticks as more of a shovel-type utensil, or simply using my left hand to place the morsel of food inside the chopsticks that were in my right hand. I hope people were staring. I'm sure it was entertaining.
After lunch, we walked around the city more, browsing in and out of some shops, the most intriguing of which is a store that sells lots of American DVDs for ridiculously cheap prices. I may come home with Seasons 1-4 of Lost for less than 10 bucks. It was also cool to see The Wire, The West Wing, Mad Men, and other shows I liked available for cheap with Chinese writing on the front.
We eventually, at my urging, meandered over to the nearby university, or more specifically, the six outdoor basketball courts on that campus. Arriving mid/late-afternoon, there were tons of kids shooting around and playing pickup games. Despite my attire, jeans and running shoes, I was eager to play, and Lexi was nice enough to ask someone what the protocal was. I was encouraged to go shoot around, and about 15 minutes later, I was involved in a game of 3-on-3. Somehow, I was fortunate enough to end up on a team with two kids who could really play, and it was fantastic. At 5'10'', I was one of the tallest kids there, and really the only one who consistently boxed out. In addition, the biggest thing I saw from the Chinese players was the need to almost always double-pump when going up for a shot or layup. But it was an awesome time. With people waiting, they played very quick games to 5, winners take except when it's game-point. So if you score to go up 4-1, the other team gets the ball up top. My team won the first 6 or 7 games we played, and probably 17 out of 19 games we played overall. It helped that I was playing with the Ray Allen of China, who just kept draining outside shots. It was a really awesome time, despite our inability to communicate. We'd high-five after nice passes and good finishes, take responsibility for our mistakes, and overall the sportsmanship was excellent by everyone there. Definitely a really cool experience; I'm sure I'll play again before I leave.
For dinner, we met up w/ a very cool crew of Lexi's American friends who live here, mostly folks who she met playing frisbee. Included in the crew of 7 kids were twins who both played at Padeia in Atlanta (the top HS for ultimate in the country), one of whom played at Boston University, a team I played against when I was a freshman at Wake. He remembered the game: "I think we beat you guys," he said. Yea, you did. But we beat Duke the following game 13-11, so I remember the day fondly. I was not involved at all in the ordering of the food, but gradually a smorgasbord of dishes arrived at our table. Now, I want to be adventurous and try new things, so I was pretty open to tasting everything. My lasting perspective from the evening was how, at a single meal, there might be 8 different clashing flavors. They all were good and interesting, mostly unlike anything I've had before with differing levels of spicyness. But in China they don't give you water at a meal. They give you tea, in a cup the size of basically a double-shot glass. So at times I was reluctant to really delve into something I thought would be spicy, since I had very little to drink at the table. Following dinner, we proceeded to a trivia night at some bar. It was led by a crew of New Zealanders, and it seemed that there were "white people" from many different parts of the world in attendence. The beer was good, the trivia was challenging (particularly the questions exclusively about Kunming or China, I was completely worthless).
One day down, lots more to see. Stay tuned.
Evan's Reeducation -- A Two Week Experience
Greetings from Kunming, China...
Already, in about 18 hours in this faraway land, I am incredibly grateful to be here, and thankful to have a cultured native guiding me around. Sure, Lexi has only been reeducated for about seven months, but she seems to grasp everything around her. I, meanwhile, am like an infant again when it comes to communication. I look around, watch, listen, and rarely speak. I've never done anything like this before; it's an overwhelming but incredible experience.
The adventure began when I arrived at the Raleigh airport around 6:30 AM on Monday morning. From there, a smooth flight to Newark set the stage for a 13+ hour intercontinental journey to Beijing. Though the endless travel may have been challenging to some, after riding a bus through the South Atlantic League this past summer, it was a peace of cake, particularly with the individual touch-screen devices on the back of every single seat. With over 300 movies, dozens of tv shows, and about 25 arcade games to play, it really wasn't that bad of a time. I devoured three hour-long episodes of The Wire (the most important show ever made -- watch it if you have never seen it), an episode of Flight of the Conchords, two movies (Catch Me If You Can and Meet the Fockers), and a good portion of a Lewis Black HBO special. Combine all that with a few games of Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Mini-Golf, tell me that's not a fun way to spend to 13 hours when you can't move. Sure, you're a little confined in terms of space, but it is not hard to avoid boredom. Plus, they bring you decent food every few hours. The weirdest part was waking up the Chinese guy next to me to be able to get to the bathroom, an underratedly difficult thing to do.
I spent about five hours in the Beijing airport, including a stint in a nice coffee shop. I was planning on eating something, but on the menu everything looked more expensive than the 75 yuan that I possessed (about 10 bucks). I tried to watch Monday's episode of 24 using the wireless internet that was available, but right after hulu loaded it told me that it was not available in this part of the world. In the words of Jack Bauer, dammit.
Despite the fact that I was remarkably sleep deprived, I remained energized. Lexi's talked a lot about everyone staring at her all the time. Me, I felt like I was staring at everyone else. Not in a rude way, but just looking around and trying to understand what was going on around me.
I finally got on my flight to Kunming around 7 PM China team, or 7 AM eastern time (approximately 25 hours since I began the journey). With not much sleep in that duration, I completely passed out on the ensuing flight. I remember putting my headphones on right after we took off, and seemingly moments later my leg was tapped by an attractive Chinese stewardess, asking me to remove them cause we were landing. Fastest three and a half hour flight ever.
That was my journey. Lexi was waiting for me behind the glass with a devious smile on her face. Some might claim her smile is friendly, but I know better. This is the first time we've seen each other since one day last June. Before that, it was for two days the previous Thanksgiving. Now we got two weeks. It's pretty exciting. Much to see. More to experience.
Time to go to dinner, which will apparently be followed by trivia and drinking. Cheers!
I am a wordy blogger I know, but I will try to post more details soon about my first day in China, which included a sensational Chinese lunch, a lengthy walk around town, as well as an awesome bunch of pickup basketball games with no one else who spoke English.
My reeducation continues...
Already, in about 18 hours in this faraway land, I am incredibly grateful to be here, and thankful to have a cultured native guiding me around. Sure, Lexi has only been reeducated for about seven months, but she seems to grasp everything around her. I, meanwhile, am like an infant again when it comes to communication. I look around, watch, listen, and rarely speak. I've never done anything like this before; it's an overwhelming but incredible experience.
The adventure began when I arrived at the Raleigh airport around 6:30 AM on Monday morning. From there, a smooth flight to Newark set the stage for a 13+ hour intercontinental journey to Beijing. Though the endless travel may have been challenging to some, after riding a bus through the South Atlantic League this past summer, it was a peace of cake, particularly with the individual touch-screen devices on the back of every single seat. With over 300 movies, dozens of tv shows, and about 25 arcade games to play, it really wasn't that bad of a time. I devoured three hour-long episodes of The Wire (the most important show ever made -- watch it if you have never seen it), an episode of Flight of the Conchords, two movies (Catch Me If You Can and Meet the Fockers), and a good portion of a Lewis Black HBO special. Combine all that with a few games of Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Mini-Golf, tell me that's not a fun way to spend to 13 hours when you can't move. Sure, you're a little confined in terms of space, but it is not hard to avoid boredom. Plus, they bring you decent food every few hours. The weirdest part was waking up the Chinese guy next to me to be able to get to the bathroom, an underratedly difficult thing to do.
I spent about five hours in the Beijing airport, including a stint in a nice coffee shop. I was planning on eating something, but on the menu everything looked more expensive than the 75 yuan that I possessed (about 10 bucks). I tried to watch Monday's episode of 24 using the wireless internet that was available, but right after hulu loaded it told me that it was not available in this part of the world. In the words of Jack Bauer, dammit.
Despite the fact that I was remarkably sleep deprived, I remained energized. Lexi's talked a lot about everyone staring at her all the time. Me, I felt like I was staring at everyone else. Not in a rude way, but just looking around and trying to understand what was going on around me.
I finally got on my flight to Kunming around 7 PM China team, or 7 AM eastern time (approximately 25 hours since I began the journey). With not much sleep in that duration, I completely passed out on the ensuing flight. I remember putting my headphones on right after we took off, and seemingly moments later my leg was tapped by an attractive Chinese stewardess, asking me to remove them cause we were landing. Fastest three and a half hour flight ever.
That was my journey. Lexi was waiting for me behind the glass with a devious smile on her face. Some might claim her smile is friendly, but I know better. This is the first time we've seen each other since one day last June. Before that, it was for two days the previous Thanksgiving. Now we got two weeks. It's pretty exciting. Much to see. More to experience.
Time to go to dinner, which will apparently be followed by trivia and drinking. Cheers!
I am a wordy blogger I know, but I will try to post more details soon about my first day in China, which included a sensational Chinese lunch, a lengthy walk around town, as well as an awesome bunch of pickup basketball games with no one else who spoke English.
My reeducation continues...
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Absurd Chinese Bars
The past week or two of my life has been a nice mix of class, work, frisbee, making new friends, reading books, and eating delicious (and often times way too spicy) food. I have also gone out to a few loud and smoke filled bars, and have been thinking about how interesting it would be to study Chinese Bar/Club culture in more depth, since it is a very bizarre thing. It is a relatively new phenomenon, in which extremely wealthy, young Chinese people go out to dark, sleek clubs that have a lot of neon lights and music that is so loud that it actually physically hurts your heart (and soul) and kind of bounce around to the music and look uncomfortable. The really high rollers get their own private booths (you have to buy a certain absurd amount of alcohol in order to earn this right) and the music is generally somewhere on the "techno" spectrum. What I am describing is the "Chinese" club atmosphere. Meaning, these places are usually filled with mostly Chinese people. However, recently a lot of these clubs have created racist policies where they give free alcohol to any foreigners who show up, because they think that having white people in their bars is good for business and makes them look cool. My friend who is half Chinese and grew up in the states thinks that bars that have this type of deal are racist (white supremacist) because she is just as much of a foreigner as anyone else, but she doesn't look as much like one, and therefore the deal does not apply to her.
I am still not really comfortable with being treated like a celebrity in China (having small children point and stare, having old men greet me on the street and tell me that I should find a Chinese husband, having people ask to take my picture and having random strangers tell me that I have a really nice nose, eyes, hair texture) and so in the bar environment I try to attract as little attention to myself as possible. It is ironic though, because I know that when I go back to the states and there is no one saying these things to me or paying attention to me and yelling "hello" on the street I will definitely miss it. In the states I won't be special anymore, I will just be like everyone else.
But going to Chinese bars is a really interesting study in the surface relationship between Chinese and Foreigners. The first time that I walked into a bar with a few other white girls in China and we were given a complimentary fruit plate and a special booth just because we were foreigners, it really made me think; about what these young Chinese people think when they see a group of young white women and about what I may or may not be doing to reinforce or change their preconceived notions about who I am and what I am doing here.
A lot of the clubs are so loud that you literally have to pretty intensely scream into a persons ear in order to be heard. Speaking Chinese in such situations is hard, and can lead to some interesting misunderstandings. However, there is a "dice game" that people play that I happen to really like that doesn't involve any speaking, you just hold up different fingers and it is a fun way to bond with new Chinese friends.
I am not really sure what my point or message is in talking so extensively about the Chinese clubbing scene. I usually don't go out more than once a week, but every time I do it is generally a worthwhile, entertaining, and ridiculous experience. I am learning that dancing to techno can be fun and that people in Kunming are friendly and interesting. Plus, I never make any new friends if I just stay home.
For example, this Saturday night I went to a Purim Rave at a club across the street from Kunming's art college. It was pretty weird, in an entertaining way of course. The place had the feel of a drafty warehouse with creepy surrealist paintings on the wall, there were glow-stick Jewish stars hanging from the ceiling, Israeli flags over the walls, a bunch of Israeli men running the bar, and eerie music playing. Many people were in costumes and it was an interesting mix of Chinese and foreigners, mostly non-Jews. My favorite part of the evening was when an Israeli guy got up on stage and told the story of Purim in Chinese, especially since his Chinese was spoken with a Hebrew accent. Most of the people I was with didn't speak much Chinese and did not know the story of Purim, so they could not fully appreciate the absurdity of the situation, but I loved it.
Let the absurdity continue. In two days my brother will be here to share it with me, and I hope that by the time I send him home he will have a few bizarre stories of his own to share. Of course, they won't all be about going to bars.
I am still not really comfortable with being treated like a celebrity in China (having small children point and stare, having old men greet me on the street and tell me that I should find a Chinese husband, having people ask to take my picture and having random strangers tell me that I have a really nice nose, eyes, hair texture) and so in the bar environment I try to attract as little attention to myself as possible. It is ironic though, because I know that when I go back to the states and there is no one saying these things to me or paying attention to me and yelling "hello" on the street I will definitely miss it. In the states I won't be special anymore, I will just be like everyone else.
But going to Chinese bars is a really interesting study in the surface relationship between Chinese and Foreigners. The first time that I walked into a bar with a few other white girls in China and we were given a complimentary fruit plate and a special booth just because we were foreigners, it really made me think; about what these young Chinese people think when they see a group of young white women and about what I may or may not be doing to reinforce or change their preconceived notions about who I am and what I am doing here.
A lot of the clubs are so loud that you literally have to pretty intensely scream into a persons ear in order to be heard. Speaking Chinese in such situations is hard, and can lead to some interesting misunderstandings. However, there is a "dice game" that people play that I happen to really like that doesn't involve any speaking, you just hold up different fingers and it is a fun way to bond with new Chinese friends.
I am not really sure what my point or message is in talking so extensively about the Chinese clubbing scene. I usually don't go out more than once a week, but every time I do it is generally a worthwhile, entertaining, and ridiculous experience. I am learning that dancing to techno can be fun and that people in Kunming are friendly and interesting. Plus, I never make any new friends if I just stay home.
For example, this Saturday night I went to a Purim Rave at a club across the street from Kunming's art college. It was pretty weird, in an entertaining way of course. The place had the feel of a drafty warehouse with creepy surrealist paintings on the wall, there were glow-stick Jewish stars hanging from the ceiling, Israeli flags over the walls, a bunch of Israeli men running the bar, and eerie music playing. Many people were in costumes and it was an interesting mix of Chinese and foreigners, mostly non-Jews. My favorite part of the evening was when an Israeli guy got up on stage and told the story of Purim in Chinese, especially since his Chinese was spoken with a Hebrew accent. Most of the people I was with didn't speak much Chinese and did not know the story of Purim, so they could not fully appreciate the absurdity of the situation, but I loved it.
Let the absurdity continue. In two days my brother will be here to share it with me, and I hope that by the time I send him home he will have a few bizarre stories of his own to share. Of course, they won't all be about going to bars.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
I like weekends
Kunming has been really windy lately, and it rained on Sunday for the first time since I moved here at the beginning of February. It rained for maybe 15 minutes, I was playing frisbee at the time, and it was really fun, except for the slight problem of not having cleats and therefore not having any grip at all on the slippery wet grass.
On Friday I finished two big projects that I had been working on all week long. It was very satisfying. My boss also was preparing to leave to go back to the states for 6 weeks, so it was kind of a crazy day. I also went out on Friday night, which is always an absurd, silly and extremely amusing thing to do in Kunming. There is always techno music, many people creatively dancing mostly with themselves, cheap Chinese beer (大里啤酒）， and just a lot of interesting characters. Kunming is bursting with people who make me laugh. Of course, often times they are not trying to be funny. But that is not the point.
The other thing about going out in Kunming is that the "metaphorical party" does not start until midnight or so. Leaving me to always have that moral dilemma around 11:45pm when I am faced with the decision of going out or going to bed. However, interesting things tend to happen when I leave my apartment, and so I try to remember this fact when sleep seems too tempting. On Saturday I met up with a Chinese friend who I met when I was registering for my class. He is a really interesting kid. He is half Han Chinese and half Bai minority, one of his grandfathers is Russian, his parents are both artists, and he is studying Spanish. Also, each time we meet up he brings along another interesting friend for me to meet. On Saturday I met his half Chinese half Thai friend who is studying English and loves Hannah Montana. Most of the day was spent with them speaking English and me speaking Chinese. Which is nice because it puts everyone at a disadvantage, everyone sounds silly together, and therefore everyone is on an even playing field. They both speak English really well though, and like to use corny English sayings like "Know yourself" (认识自己). We also spoke some Spanish, which made my brain hurt. Some German was thrown into the mix as well. My very very limited Thai is also pretty rusty, so I embarrassed myself a fair amount with that. Then there is the local dialect of Kunming (kunminghua) which basically sounds like Mandarin that has been put through a food processor. Also, when my new friends pick up the phone, they greet eachother in Japanese. If you are curious what this sounds like, it is something like "mohshy mohshy" where the 'oh' sound is similar to the sound that seals make. I can't think of any other (possibly less offensive) way to describe it.
So all in all it was a very interesting day. We sat in a smoke filled coffee shop for many hours (nearly every male in China smokes along with the girls who think that they are particularly cool) before venturing down the street to eat some Kunming specialty "across the bridge noodles." There is a cute story about a girl carrying these noodles across a bridge to her husband who was working on the other side. They are also a fun and interactive eating experience because you are given a bowl of boiling broth, a bowl of cold rice noodles, a plate of raw meat and vegetables, and a little thing of spices and then you mix them all together yourself. They are delicious and 12 yuan (less than 2 dollars).
On Saturday night I slept 12 hours. I just wanted to brag about that.
On Sunday I played Frisbee pickup in the rain and then we all went to eat dinner together, which is so much more fun than eating in a small group, because you order lots of dishes and eat all together and you get lots of variety of deliciousness.
Now it is the work week and I am getting up early for class and running errands and getting stuff done.
Soon my brobro will be here. Who votes that I put him on a 15 hour overnight bus ride? What about a 40 hour hard seat train ride? Oh the possibilities!
On Friday I finished two big projects that I had been working on all week long. It was very satisfying. My boss also was preparing to leave to go back to the states for 6 weeks, so it was kind of a crazy day. I also went out on Friday night, which is always an absurd, silly and extremely amusing thing to do in Kunming. There is always techno music, many people creatively dancing mostly with themselves, cheap Chinese beer (大里啤酒）， and just a lot of interesting characters. Kunming is bursting with people who make me laugh. Of course, often times they are not trying to be funny. But that is not the point.
The other thing about going out in Kunming is that the "metaphorical party" does not start until midnight or so. Leaving me to always have that moral dilemma around 11:45pm when I am faced with the decision of going out or going to bed. However, interesting things tend to happen when I leave my apartment, and so I try to remember this fact when sleep seems too tempting. On Saturday I met up with a Chinese friend who I met when I was registering for my class. He is a really interesting kid. He is half Han Chinese and half Bai minority, one of his grandfathers is Russian, his parents are both artists, and he is studying Spanish. Also, each time we meet up he brings along another interesting friend for me to meet. On Saturday I met his half Chinese half Thai friend who is studying English and loves Hannah Montana. Most of the day was spent with them speaking English and me speaking Chinese. Which is nice because it puts everyone at a disadvantage, everyone sounds silly together, and therefore everyone is on an even playing field. They both speak English really well though, and like to use corny English sayings like "Know yourself" (认识自己). We also spoke some Spanish, which made my brain hurt. Some German was thrown into the mix as well. My very very limited Thai is also pretty rusty, so I embarrassed myself a fair amount with that. Then there is the local dialect of Kunming (kunminghua) which basically sounds like Mandarin that has been put through a food processor. Also, when my new friends pick up the phone, they greet eachother in Japanese. If you are curious what this sounds like, it is something like "mohshy mohshy" where the 'oh' sound is similar to the sound that seals make. I can't think of any other (possibly less offensive) way to describe it.
So all in all it was a very interesting day. We sat in a smoke filled coffee shop for many hours (nearly every male in China smokes along with the girls who think that they are particularly cool) before venturing down the street to eat some Kunming specialty "across the bridge noodles." There is a cute story about a girl carrying these noodles across a bridge to her husband who was working on the other side. They are also a fun and interactive eating experience because you are given a bowl of boiling broth, a bowl of cold rice noodles, a plate of raw meat and vegetables, and a little thing of spices and then you mix them all together yourself. They are delicious and 12 yuan (less than 2 dollars).
On Saturday night I slept 12 hours. I just wanted to brag about that.
On Sunday I played Frisbee pickup in the rain and then we all went to eat dinner together, which is so much more fun than eating in a small group, because you order lots of dishes and eat all together and you get lots of variety of deliciousness.
Now it is the work week and I am getting up early for class and running errands and getting stuff done.
Soon my brobro will be here. Who votes that I put him on a 15 hour overnight bus ride? What about a 40 hour hard seat train ride? Oh the possibilities!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Long Time No Blog
Why has it been almost the entire month of February since I last wrote? Well, there is really just one reason: and that is that I have been sick. Generally my blog is the place where I get to brag about how much fun I have been having, how much I am learning and experiencing everyday, and how phenomenal and thought-provoking China can be. Unfortunately, when you are sick, life is slightly less exciting. I spent a week lying around, watching movies and sleeping 18 hours a day, annoyed by my own weakness and sickness, but feeling unable to do anything about it. After a week of gastro-intestinal distress, I finally faced the fact that I would have to make a scary trip to the scary China hospital. I don't know how many details of that trip my more squeamish readers can handle, but I will just say that America has a pill based medicine culture, and China has a needle based medicine culture. Another important cultural difference is that Americans value privacy, wanting to see their own doctor in their own private room, without five or ten other sick strangers standing over them. China is not this way. In China, there are too many people to care about privacy. All sorts of doctors were touching my tummy and asking me about my poop (which I can now discuss in Chinese!) in the middle of crowded rooms.
But I survived! I am feeling much better now, and I promise that my next blog will not be about Chinese Hospitals. In other news, I have started class at the Kunming College of Eastern Languages and Culture. My class is every morning from 8:30-10:10 and has five students. Three of the students are Japanese men in their sixties and seventies. There is one women who is kind of from Canada, but originally from Egypt, who is in her thirties, I think. Then there is me. It is a very interesting educational environment. My job is also going well, I am not sure if I have bragged about my bilingual business cards yet, but they are sweet, and make me feel like a big kid. My daily duties generally range from running errands to making photo copies and organizing readings that will go into collections for semester and summer programs. Soon, I will also start screening homestay families, which means going to the homes of Chinese families, having dinner with them, asking questions about the family, and answering the questions that they have about Dragons and hosting foreign students. I am excited to start meeting families. I am sure it will be really good for my Chinese. Although, the Kunming accent is really hard for me. I am not used to it, and I have made silly mistakes like not understanding numbers and giving a shopkeeper 3 yuan when he just told me I owe 12. On top of the accent, Kunming also has its own language which involves saying "ga" a lot. That is about all I understand right now.
After not really being able to eat for a week, I am pretty excited to start delving deeper into the amazing world of Kunming food. So much good food. Tonight I ate Xinjiang (Muslim influenced region in Northwestern China) noodles for the first time and they were amazing. Some other local specialties are deep fried red beans, stir fried broccoli and goat cheese, and spicy mashed potatoes. There are a lot of ethnic groups in Yunnan Province, and this means lots of interesting food that is very different from the rest of China. And, since it is warm and sunny all the time, the tropical fruits and fruit juices and the spicy cold noodles dishes are amazing and refreshing. I can't wait to feed my brother, who is coming to China in less than 3 weeks!
But I survived! I am feeling much better now, and I promise that my next blog will not be about Chinese Hospitals. In other news, I have started class at the Kunming College of Eastern Languages and Culture. My class is every morning from 8:30-10:10 and has five students. Three of the students are Japanese men in their sixties and seventies. There is one women who is kind of from Canada, but originally from Egypt, who is in her thirties, I think. Then there is me. It is a very interesting educational environment. My job is also going well, I am not sure if I have bragged about my bilingual business cards yet, but they are sweet, and make me feel like a big kid. My daily duties generally range from running errands to making photo copies and organizing readings that will go into collections for semester and summer programs. Soon, I will also start screening homestay families, which means going to the homes of Chinese families, having dinner with them, asking questions about the family, and answering the questions that they have about Dragons and hosting foreign students. I am excited to start meeting families. I am sure it will be really good for my Chinese. Although, the Kunming accent is really hard for me. I am not used to it, and I have made silly mistakes like not understanding numbers and giving a shopkeeper 3 yuan when he just told me I owe 12. On top of the accent, Kunming also has its own language which involves saying "ga" a lot. That is about all I understand right now.
After not really being able to eat for a week, I am pretty excited to start delving deeper into the amazing world of Kunming food. So much good food. Tonight I ate Xinjiang (Muslim influenced region in Northwestern China) noodles for the first time and they were amazing. Some other local specialties are deep fried red beans, stir fried broccoli and goat cheese, and spicy mashed potatoes. There are a lot of ethnic groups in Yunnan Province, and this means lots of interesting food that is very different from the rest of China. And, since it is warm and sunny all the time, the tropical fruits and fruit juices and the spicy cold noodles dishes are amazing and refreshing. I can't wait to feed my brother, who is coming to China in less than 3 weeks!
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