The Mysterious Cultural Practice that is "Ka-La-OK"

I have decided that today, instead of trying to write about everything that I have done in the past two weeks in Beijing, it will probably be better for everyone if I just pick one particular experience or phenomenon and attempt to really get to the root of its cultural meaning.
Today's topic: Ka-La-OK (Karaoke)
It is very hard for a person who has never been to Asia, who has never taken part in this unique cultural experience, to understand the complex and fascinating tradition that is Ka-La-OK. Ka-La-OK in China does not resemble Ka-La-OK in the U.S. Yes, Chinese Ka-La-OK does involve singing songs off-key, but besides this one small coincidental similarity, they are completely different animals. I will explain.
In China, Ka-La-OK does not take place in seedy bars where people (usually under the influence of alcohol) embarrass themselves in front of a room full of annoyed strangers. To get an idea of the mainstream nature of Ka-La-OK, on a Friday night it is a perfectly ordinary and not at all weird for a group of friends to decide to go sing together. In fact, they think it is weird that we think this is weird.
Ka-La-OK establishments are often either themed, (Hello Kitty, House on the Prairie, A Small German Village) or decorated for the holidays, (Halloween, Christmas) and usually their employees are wearing especially interesting costumes that coincide with the surrounding decor. There are all levels of Ka-La-OK places, ranging from cheap hole-in-the-wall places that are possibly offering services above and beyond a sing-along, all the way up to really fancy expensive places that are decked out with huge sparkling chandeliers, sweeping stairways that are straight out of the Sound of Music, and beautiful well-dressed people waiting to open the door for you. These are the types of places that the rich business men go when they have want to sing. And that isn't a joke.
Once you are inside a Ka-La-OK venue, you are escorted to your own private (sound-proof) room that is equipped with your own personal big screen T.V., Ka-La-OK computer screen, two microphones, and usually either a tambourine or a few maraccas, so that even if you are not participating in the singing, you can still add your own artistic style choices. Atleast at the high-end places, your personal touch computer screen means that you have thousands of Chinese and various other language songs at your fingertips. I was particularly impressed by there English Language selection, which allowed me to sing songs such as "Cecilia" by Simon and Garfunkel, "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia, "The Piano Man" by Billy Joel, "Wannabe" by The Spice Girls, and of course "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne. Besides this excellent selection, possibly more important, was the videos that were playing in the background while I sang my heart out. To give a general idea, they usually involved average looking white people, often from the 80's, doing such exciting things as walking on the beach, going to the country fair, or driving in a car. There was an entire video of a desert. There were no people. Just pictures of a random desert while I sang "The Piano Man." This aspect of the evening really helped to elevate the experience to the next level.
Something that I haven't mentioned yet is that my most favorite Ka-La-OK outing involved my friend Yan, his mom and dad, and I. I have been told in the past that the ideal number of people to go sing Ka-La-OK with is 4-6, because if you have too many people you just don't get to sing enough. I would have to agree. I would also strongly reccomend bringing people who speak at least two languages and have an age range of at least 30 years, because it really increases the variety of songs that you can sing. For instance, you can sing Chinese Revolutionary songs , modern Chinese pop songs, heartfelt Taiwanese love ballads, and if you have an American, she might even sing you some Third-Eye-Blind.
In addition to dscussing the endless choices that Ka-La-OK presents, I think it is also really important to at least try to explain the Chinese Ka-La-OK attitude. Because this is what makes the experience truly different from Ka-La-OK in other places. Ka-La-OK is not a joke. It is serious business. Yes, it is entertainment, but the Chinese friends that I have gone to Ka-La-OK with approach it with almost an academic energy. They give it their all, they don't feel self-conscious about their less than perfect pitch, and singing without holding the microphone firmly in their hand is not an option. (and these are relatively small rooms, making the microphone not exactly necessary.)
In conclusion, Ka-La-OK in China is ubiquitous, it is enjoyed by people of all ages, and it is very serious business that is not to be mocked or questioned. Even when you are forced to get up at 8 a.m. on a Tuesday morning to go sing Ka-La-OK when the rooms are the cheapest.

Reflections

There is a lot going on in my head right now, which has made it hard to sit down and write a coherent and entertaining blog that will leave my many loyal readers feeling satisfied. I have just finished my 4 months of study in Hangzhou. I have finished exams, graduated, put on a butt-kicking kungfu performance (see above), packed up my things, said goodbye to the many good friends that I have grown to love and depend on in the past few months, and then I got on a plane to embark on my next great adventure. It is truly a case example of one of those times when your head is in many places all at once.
I am someone who loves traveling, the excitement of going new places, facing new obstacles and overcoming those obstacles. Yet somehow, everytime it is time to leave a place that I have grown to love, and more importantly, to leave people that I have grown so close to, there is that inevitable tug in my stomach. Sometimes it feels so nice to be comfortable.
It is amazing to me how Hangzhou so quickly became a home to me. When I first arrived in this foreign city after way too many hours of travel, I felt displaced and unconnected. The relationships that I made with my teachers, friends, roommate, and random people in restaurants, shops, and on sidewalks all have played a part in turning this strange city into a place that it was always nice to come back to, even after only a weekend of traveling.
The start of this program was really hard for me. I came knowing no one, with a relatively low level of Chinese. I think the most difficult aspect of the whole thing was feeling like I was losing my ability to be independent. Chinese turned me into a small child, I needed to hold my roommates hand when I crossed the street, and I often asked questions like " How do you say orange?" I did not know how to eat or what to eat or what I was eating.
At first I was afraid that I might always be a child in China, that it was just too hard, that I would never be able to do this impossible task that I had so romanticized in my mind. But somehow I have come out of this semester a happy, relatively-self sufficient person who speaks Chinese pretty well, has made some life-long friends, and has also learned an important life lesson that doesn't really have anything to do with China. I have learned that it is okay to let people help you. I don't have to do everything by myself.
I am currently in Beijing staying with my good friend Yan and his family, and I am letting them help me a lot. I am not yet sure how I feel about Beijing and I have been having a lot of trouble trying to understand the Beijing accent, as I have been studying in the south all this time. Still, I am really enjoying being here and getting to know a new city.

My Haircut

Yesterday I had my first Chinese haircut. This may seem like a small, unimportant, humdrum event, but many weeks of thought went into this decision and many hours were spent agonizing over whether this choice would have positive or negative effects on my personal well-being (and my appearance). I eventually decided that my rats nest, broom-like, super-long hair was not going to make it a whole year without being cut. So, I figured that it was safest to take my friend Pei-Pei up on her offer to take me to the place that she gets her haircut. It was on the pricier side for China (80 kuai or $12), but I figured that it was the safest bet to go with my friend so she could help translate my hair needs.
The first part of my haircut experience was great. I got a head massage, an ear massage, I had my hair washed with shampoo (but no water) and sculped into various troll like sculptures. He went through several cylces of foaming up, removing foam, replacing foam, using foam to wash my ears, etc. All very good. Then I got to lie down while the foam was washed from my hair and then I returned to my chair for a full upper body massage. Shoulders, back, arms, hands. I also had my ears cleaned for me (a personal first), which involved sticking a long piece of cotton down into my ear until I starting laughing hysterically because it tickled so much and he stopped. I think it helps to picture the whole scene if I tell you that my Chinese friend was switching back and forth between playing her PSP and taking embarressing pictures and videos of me at various soapy-wet stages. I would try to describe the unique style of hair that the person who was massaging me was sporting, but I just don't think I could do it justice.
After about an hour of washing and massaging, I moved to another chair where the actually cutting was to take place.
My stylist was dressed stylishly, and his hair was also styled in typical assymetrical, poofy, kind of sticking up asian punk boy style. I guess this should have been some sort of warning about the type of haircut that I was about to get, but at the time I thought nothing of it. I merely sat down, tried to communicate a little bit of what I wanted, and then just let him do his thing. It's just hair right?
Everything was going fine for a while. He was really an artist, pulled my hair in all sorts of directions to achieve the layering and slanting that he desired. It felt much more like an artistic process than previous haircuts that I have had in the States (there also may have been a little bit more guess and check involved). I really felt that he was trying to create a thing of beauty. Unfortunately, sometimes Chinese standards for what are beautiful do not coincide with what I see as beautiful. This became very evident to me when he started teasing my hair in sort of an 80's punk rock fashion, hacking off random chunks of hair about two inches from my head, and pulling my hair up into a little poodle pony tail on the top of my head. Fortunately, my Chinese is good enough at this point to communicate the fact that these style choices were not okay with me, and that they must be stopped at once before I was turned into a 80's punk, poodle, female mullet, or anything equally horrifiying.
In the end, I think I have come out of this experience with a deeper understanding of how cultural our own standards of beauty are, and how even if I say that I am open to Chinese culture and traditions, this does not necessarily mean that I am ready to sport modern day Chinese styles, especially when they involve my own head.

Adventures in Shanghai

It is about 6 o'clock in the evening on the most gruelingly academic day that I have had so far and China, and I am very glad that I have gotten through it alive and with minimal injuries. Because last Thursday was Thanksgiving, they decided it would be a good idea to move our normal Friday tests to Monday. So in addition to 5 hours of normal classes, I also had two hours of testing, not to mention I had to hand in about 3,000 characters of essay today.
Okay, really, I should stop complaining, but all day what I was thinking was that I am a soft American whose relaxed work-ethic cannot keep up with the intense Chinese standards that are expected of me.
But don't think that I let the insane amount of work that I had ruin my weekend. Oh no. That would not be in character at all.
On Friday morning I had a wonderful video chat session with my family who were all gathered together on Thursday night. Then I went to Shanghai. I am only about an hour an a half away from Shanghai, but until this weekend had yet to spend anytime there. It was great. It has a completely different feel from Hangzhou, at times I felt like I was back in the states, at times I felt like I was strolling down a European street, and at times I was in Latin American. It is a truly international city, and it has a fabulously convenient subway system. On Friday night we went to a Club that has a live Latin band and dancing, something that I have been missing and craving for some time now. The musicians were mostly from Cuba, and the audience was from various far-off Spanish speaking countries. I am pretty sure I did not hear any Chinese spoken the whole night. It is really too bad that I don't speak any Spanish anymore because Chinese has taken over my brain. I'm hoping that someday maybe I can get it back.
After the music and dancing was over we ended up hanging out with some of the band members and some of them were guys who had been in China for years and years. It was really fascinating to hear about how they all got here, and the reasons why they stayed for so long.
On Saturday I got to have lunch with an old friend of my friend Kayla. Kayla lived in Shanghai for eight years and this woman knew her as a little girl. It was lovely to be in a home and eat home-cooked dishes and chat.
So I definitely had my fun in Shanghai, and then it was back home to Hangzhou, where I had piles and piles of work awaiting me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It is beginning to hit me that only 2 weeks remain in my program here in Hangzhou, and this is important because I really like the people here and also because I have a lot of work to do before I leave. It may only be two weeks, but I am expected to write thousands and thousands of characters. It is weird because most of my friends here are mentally preparing to go back to the states, they are making lists of the things that they are going to miss and wondering how they are ever going to live without dumplings for breakfast, or how they are going to ever readjust to paying more than $2 for a delicious meal. But not me. I have none of these problems because I am staying here in this lovely, strange, and fascinating country for a very long time.
While my classmates' brains are drifting back to the states, mine is already thinking about the 7 weeks of traveling that I have ahead of me, during which I will be accompanied by various and wonderful travel companions. I am also thinking about my new home in Kunming and starting over in the beautiful city where everything will be completely new again.
But really, I have no need to live in the future because right now is pretty great. I spent this past weekend spreading my time between a tea house and a jazz club. On Friday night my friends and I "won the tea house," meaning we spent seven hours there, drinking tea, eating food, playing games, collapsing on the floor of our private room in fits of laughter, until they kicked us out at 1a.m. On Saturday and Sunday we spent many many hours listening to live music and chatting with the musicians at JZ jazz bar, where the band consists of a singer and bassist from Mauricius, a drummer from Portugal, and one of the best Jazz pianists in China. Random people end up in China. We all wish that we found this club months ago, but we acknowlegde that it is probably better for our budgets and grade point averages that we did not.
This week is our last week of weekly tests. Next week we have a review week, and then the following week is finals. And somewhere in there we are expected to write thousands of characters, no big deal.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we are all going together to have a "traditional" thanksgiving feast at an Irish Pub in Hangzhou called "the shamrock."
These last two weeks will probably fly by.
Oh, and my internet in my room has decided to suddenly stop working, so if you have not had any contact with me for a while, that is probably the reason why. Having an apple computer in China is extremely mafan.

Useful Chinese Phrases

Two weekends ago I traveled to Suzhou with two good friends and then this past weekend I went to Nanjing with about 50-60 people from my program including Chinese roommates and teachers. I have also spent time browsing at markets, eating delicious foods, and having fascinating conversations with my Chinese professors, most of whom are Chinese women in their mid-twenties who enjoy getting completely off topic almost as much as I do. While my ability to present myself in a somewhat intelligent way improves a little bit everyday, I fear that my english also gets a little worse. Or rather, every day my "chinglish" gets a little bit better.
I would like to introduce a few useful chinglish phrases that will help my friends and family to understand me when I (eventually) return home to the states, or if I happen to slip these seemingly nonsensical words into our skype conversations. My friends and I all agree that some Chinese words are just plain better than their English equivalents.
1. 麻烦 "ma fan" (mah-fahn) both a noun and a verb!
meaning: troublesome, annoying, bothersome, or to trouble, annoy, or bother; used to describe situations, people, and really just about anything.
Examples (in Chinglish): This essay is so mafan. I don't want to write it.
(an actually conversation excerpt) Boys like it when girls mafan them.
2. 比较 "bi jiao" ( bee-jee-ow)
meaning: relatively or kind of; used in basically every sentence ever
Examples: This book is bijiao interesting. That class was bijiao long. He is a bijiao good person. That food is bijiao delicious. It has been a bijiao long time since I showered.
3. 差不多 "cha bu duo" (chah-boo-dou)
meaning: literally more or less, often used to mean good enough or close enough.
Examples: When a professor asks if you have prepared well for class the answer is often: chabuduo.
So, maybe these words aren't applicable to anyone else's life except mine. But they are much more commonly used than their English counterparts and they have become integral parts of my everyday life. like chopsticks. and green tea.
A few other things of note that have happened recently:
1. I was approached by a person speaking Spanish only to discover that I no longer speak Spanish. My brain space that was previously filled with 8 years of Spanish study is now completely blocked out by Chinese. I think I am speaking Spanish, but Chinese comes out.
2. I went to a hot springs outside of Nanjing where they have a pool filled with small fish that nibble on your dead skin. It felt weird.
3. My friends and I have gotten into the habit of referring to eachother as "Mei nu" and "Shuai ge" meaning pretty lady and handsome guy. You can also call waiters in restaurants by screaming these words across the room.
That's all for now. I will try to not wait almost two entire weeks before writing again.

奥巴马！ （Obama)

First, I would like to say that following the election from China was a weird and surreal experience that definitely gave me a unique perspective on this huge event in American history. The timing was bizarre for us folks who are 12 hours ahead because I woke up Wednesday morning (which is Tuesday night in the States) and then spent the morning rushing back to my room in between classes, checking to see if a president had been chosen yet. The average Chinese person really does not care about the American President, however I did have quite a fun time trying to describe what the electoral college is to my some Chinese friends who were curious as to how the U.S. could have so few people (they mistook the electoral vote, which at the time was about 207-103, for the popular vote.) Nevertheless, the energy among the foreigners in China is mostly one of celebration, hope, and awe. I spent many hours on Wednesday reading newspapers online, and all I can say is that Obama seems too good to be true. I hope this is not the case, and when I read his speeches I am awestruck by his ability to say extremely intelligent things in humble and honest ways. I am very excited to see what he can do. I will be watching from afar. I am also excited by my ability to discuss my opinions on politics, the U.S. economy (crisis) and other important current events in Chinese.
But enough politics! It has been rainy and wet and kind of gross lately which does not inspire me to get out as much. I have also been recovering from our crazy week of traveling, which means catching up on correspondence with the outside world and with friends here. It also means lounging, reading, doing kunfu, running, swimming, making earrings, and eating...always eating. I don't know what I am going to do when I have to go back to the states and there are no vegetable and red bean dumplings at breakfast and chinese style eggplant and tofu served over delicious rice for dinner.
This Wednesday we went to a Chinese elementary school and and made some "xiao pengyou" (literally little friends). It was a really interesting experience because Chinese elementary school is very different from my own experiences. Let's just say Chinese children are very well trained, from a young age. We learned about insects with one group of students and then did a craft project and tried to talk with the students. I am not sure whether it was because they did not understand our less than perfect Chinese, or because they were intimated by us foreigners, or some other reason, but it was really hard to get them to answer our questions with more than a grunt. They were also very focused on their construction paper bug making. There were also about 8 photographers sticking cameras in our faces, which made the whole experience a little fake. However, we went to a second classroom where the children were a little older and much more friendly and silly. They performed songs for us and asked us questions in english and giggled whenever I said anything in Chinese, and made us all sign our names in english and chinese about 50 times. I think we were equally amused by eachother.
Another part of my week that I really enjoyed was my one on one class where we have fantastic and fascinating discussions about various aspects of life in China and the U.S. that usually have little to do with the topic of our reading for the day. For example, on Monday we spent quite a bit of time discussing prostitution and pornography, and on Wednesday we drifted from palm reading to body image to plastic surgery and marrying for money to shampoo and hairstyles. I think we both equally enjoy sharing the parts of our own cultural standards that we know will truly shock the other. For example, when I told her that my mom went back to work after having children and I went to daycare, she told me that you cannot do this in China. If a mom goes back to work, her parents or her husbands parents will watch the kids, because in China if you leave your children with a stranger you risk them selling your kids. Especially sons. So watch out.
One final bit of exciting news is that I have gotten an internship in Kunming, Yunnan, China for next semester and so I will be staying in China for a wicked long time, probably until August or so. I am very excited, but ofcourse I will miss all of you, so if you feel like you ever in your life might want to come visit China, this is the time. I will welcome you with open arms and help you order delicious food in restaurants.