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).
Thursday, May 21, 2009
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.
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