I'm writing this in a 24 hour teahouse in Beijing that I often went to over the summer to cram before tests. Teahouses are not serene. They are loud. They are filled with poker and mahjong games, people watching movies, televisions, loud conversations, laughing, etc. I've adopted a "When in Rome..." attitude and am blasting Bob Dylan from my laptop. I'm a pretty big Dylan fan anyway, but maybe because of homesickness I think he sounds better in China than in America. Perhaps to his discredit, I feel the same way about McDonald's.
I had lunch with one of my professors from the summer. Over the summer she was very blunt with students, so I should have mentally prepared myself before talking with her. She told me that, while my Chinese had improved, it hadn't progressed as much as she had expected. I think she was hoping for fluency. Such is life.
To my dismay my coworker and neighbor both gave me gifts on my last day in Shanghai. I hadn't really been expecting that - it didn't happen in Beijing -, so I was caught off-guard and a little embarrassed. My mom had given me Spurs gear to give as gifts, but I confess I began wearing it for basketball when I found that there were few size L people in China. I managed to scrounge up make-shift gifts, but their ad hoc nature was probably obvious. Luckily I've grown used to being inadvertently impolite.
My office gave me 2000 RMB when I left. It was kind of a strange bonus because I only had/have 2 days to spend it. In a way it was nice because I got to go to a market and buy some guilt-free gifts for people (and will probably buy some guilt-free books tomorrow for the plane). I've found that I'm really not a big fan of bargaining anymore. The mock drama of it all is fun, but the bargaining process pretty good at minimizing your consumer surplus, especially when you're a foreigner and merchants peg the range of potential prices by stating much higher starting offers.
Tomorrow afternoon I fly out. I am sure I will miss China, but I'm ready to leave, at least for a while.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Beijing
This Friday I left work about 30 minutes early, took the subway to the Shanghai train station, and boarded an overnight train for Beijing. A dry business book and a mediocre meal of overpriced train food with half a loaf of bread I had bought that morning put me right to sleep, and I slept relatively soundly until our arrival in Beijing.
People – in both cities – like to ask me whether I like Beijing or Shanghai more. If the conversation is in Chinese, I draw on stock, stilted textbook vocabulary to say that Shanghai is more commercial and has better architecture, while Beijing is China’s cultural and political center (my classmates know how unoriginal this response is). If asked in English, however, I will admit that – objectively – Shanghai is a better city in almost every aspect, but I have a strange, sentimental nostalgia for “The Capital of Dust”, as a lawyer at my law firm called Beijing. I love Beijing, and I had a my-plane-has-just-touched-down- in-the-San-Antonio-airport-after-a-term-at-Dartmouth kind of feeling in my stomach as the train reached the Beijing train station just a little before 7am.
Because it was still very early and I didn’t want to wake up Dartmouth and Beijing friends just yet, I walked aimlessly around the train station neighbourhood, eventually wandering into an internet café to check my email. At 7am, there were still people – mostly younger men - there from the night before intensely playing internet games.
After my email and NY Times fix, I took the subway toward Beijing Normal University. The walk from the subway station is about 20 minutes, but I still had some time to kill – the rest of the weekend I took 5 yuan, ~70 cent, rides in what a guess could be called modern rickshaws, little passenger cars somewhat haphazardly built around 3-wheeled motorcycle frames. In preparation for the Olympics, everything in Beijing is under construction, so I found the university neighbourhood familiar, but changed. A giant construction project near the foreign student dorm had progressed significantly, and a building was starting to appear under what had before been mostly scaffolding.
I spent a lot of the weekend going to my favourite restaurants from this summer, more to see the waiters and waitresses again than to eat the food (though I do miss Beijing food while in Shanghai). Some recognized me, some didn’t. A group of waitresses at a Japanese restaurant my classmates and I often visited remembered how we had, inexplicably, all broken our disposable chopsticks on our heads during our last meal there (I can’t actually explain why we did this either); but at another restaurant, I got an unexpectedly cool reception from Zhou LiHua who was by far our group’s favourite waitress.
On Saturday, I also went to Hong Qiao, a massive indoor market, under the auspices of souvenir shopping, but mostly just to practice my bargaining skills. Later I played basketball at the Beijing Normal courts with a mixture of Dartmouth and Chinese students. Unfortunately, it took me a while to remember how to play Beijing Normal ball – fast-paced, chaotic play that takes place almost entirely in the key with only an occasional outside shot – and we lost a few games before ending with a winning streak. That night, I borrowed sheets from the Dartmouth TA and slept on the floor of two Dartmouth students’ room. I know: I’m cheap.
The highlight of my trip was definitely a Sunday lunch with one of the 3rd year teachers from the summer, Jiang Laoshi. It was really fun to reminisce, complain about jobs, and joke over dumplings and tea at 太平饺子馆, another of this summer’s staple restaurants. She said my Chinese had improved, but scolded me for picking up a bit of the Shanghainese accent (I’ve lost some of Beiing’s stressed “sh”, “zh”, and “ch” sounds). I hope to meet up with her again the weekend before I leave from Beijing for the States.
Before leaving for Shanghai, I spent some time tooling around Wangfujing, a Beijing shopping area, mostly looking for a good English language book for the train ride home (in typical fashion, I bought 4). Early Monday morning, I arrived back in Shanghai, took a taxi home, picked up my dry-cleaning, showered, and went to work. This weekend certainly wasn’t restful, but I had a lot of fun, and I look forward to a last weekend in Beijing this December before flying out of China.
People – in both cities – like to ask me whether I like Beijing or Shanghai more. If the conversation is in Chinese, I draw on stock, stilted textbook vocabulary to say that Shanghai is more commercial and has better architecture, while Beijing is China’s cultural and political center (my classmates know how unoriginal this response is). If asked in English, however, I will admit that – objectively – Shanghai is a better city in almost every aspect, but I have a strange, sentimental nostalgia for “The Capital of Dust”, as a lawyer at my law firm called Beijing. I love Beijing, and I had a my-plane-has-just-touched-down- in-the-San-Antonio-airport-after-a-term-at-Dartmouth kind of feeling in my stomach as the train reached the Beijing train station just a little before 7am.
Because it was still very early and I didn’t want to wake up Dartmouth and Beijing friends just yet, I walked aimlessly around the train station neighbourhood, eventually wandering into an internet café to check my email. At 7am, there were still people – mostly younger men - there from the night before intensely playing internet games.
After my email and NY Times fix, I took the subway toward Beijing Normal University. The walk from the subway station is about 20 minutes, but I still had some time to kill – the rest of the weekend I took 5 yuan, ~70 cent, rides in what a guess could be called modern rickshaws, little passenger cars somewhat haphazardly built around 3-wheeled motorcycle frames. In preparation for the Olympics, everything in Beijing is under construction, so I found the university neighbourhood familiar, but changed. A giant construction project near the foreign student dorm had progressed significantly, and a building was starting to appear under what had before been mostly scaffolding.
I spent a lot of the weekend going to my favourite restaurants from this summer, more to see the waiters and waitresses again than to eat the food (though I do miss Beijing food while in Shanghai). Some recognized me, some didn’t. A group of waitresses at a Japanese restaurant my classmates and I often visited remembered how we had, inexplicably, all broken our disposable chopsticks on our heads during our last meal there (I can’t actually explain why we did this either); but at another restaurant, I got an unexpectedly cool reception from Zhou LiHua who was by far our group’s favourite waitress.
On Saturday, I also went to Hong Qiao, a massive indoor market, under the auspices of souvenir shopping, but mostly just to practice my bargaining skills. Later I played basketball at the Beijing Normal courts with a mixture of Dartmouth and Chinese students. Unfortunately, it took me a while to remember how to play Beijing Normal ball – fast-paced, chaotic play that takes place almost entirely in the key with only an occasional outside shot – and we lost a few games before ending with a winning streak. That night, I borrowed sheets from the Dartmouth TA and slept on the floor of two Dartmouth students’ room. I know: I’m cheap.
The highlight of my trip was definitely a Sunday lunch with one of the 3rd year teachers from the summer, Jiang Laoshi. It was really fun to reminisce, complain about jobs, and joke over dumplings and tea at 太平饺子馆, another of this summer’s staple restaurants. She said my Chinese had improved, but scolded me for picking up a bit of the Shanghainese accent (I’ve lost some of Beiing’s stressed “sh”, “zh”, and “ch” sounds). I hope to meet up with her again the weekend before I leave from Beijing for the States.
Before leaving for Shanghai, I spent some time tooling around Wangfujing, a Beijing shopping area, mostly looking for a good English language book for the train ride home (in typical fashion, I bought 4). Early Monday morning, I arrived back in Shanghai, took a taxi home, picked up my dry-cleaning, showered, and went to work. This weekend certainly wasn’t restful, but I had a lot of fun, and I look forward to a last weekend in Beijing this December before flying out of China.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Zhoushan
On Friday right after work (ok, I left work 30 minutes early), I took a taxi to Shanghai Maritime University, where I met Kevin. Using Kevin’s car, we drove around Shanghai picking up the rest of the group. At about 8:30, all 6 of us had piled into Kevin’s 5-seat Kia Sportage and were ready to go. I lucked out and got to sit in the front the whole trip. I kept offering to switch, but I think no one really wanted to share the backseat with the biggest person on the trip – as they told me, “with Americans you are skinny, but with Chinese people you’re fat” (this was also the explanation throughout the trip for why I didn’t think it was as cold as they did).On the way, we watched the show Friends with Chinese subtitles. I’m not exactly sure why they like the show because it seems like most of the humor comes from silly puns that probably don’t translate well, but Kevin had several DVDs worth of episodes in his car. The girls said they were also fans of Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives, while the guys preferred Prison Break.
We arrived at our hotel in Zhoushan at 3:30am and checked into our rooms (two 3-bed rooms for a total of 160 Yuan, a little over 22 dollars), which were Spartan but comfortable. On Saturday morning, we snuck under a fence into a nearby beach and walked around – it was pretty cold so none of us swam. We stumbled upon an intense-looking sand sculpture contest. Here’s a picture of one of the more impressive ones:
There were also bigger sand sculptures, including some that you could walk on.
For lunch we ate 海鲜面, seafood noodles. These were essentially an assortment of shelled things thrown into a boiling pot of water (shells and all) with noodles, seasoning, and vegetables added. Here’s a picture:
For 15 Yuan, about 2 dollars, the noodles were pretty good after I got over their initial strangeness. We visited a Buddhist temple in the afternoon. It was pretty, but I think I’ve seen more than enough Buddhist temples while I’ve been in China. Dinner was much stranger than lunch – there were things I ate that I didn’t even know existed in the ocean.
On Sunday, we took a pretty long ferry north towards Shanghai. I taught them how to play Egyptian Rat Screw because I was tired of losing at their card games; however, in the very first game we played, I was the first to lose. Next time I’m bringing a Scrabble board; that’ll get ‘em (joking).
I got home exhausted at about 8:30, picked up my dry-cleaning, ate dinner, and crashed.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Packing
I'm currently getting ready to go on a weekend trip to an island in China with some friends. I don't actually know what the island is called or what we'll be doing there, but I'm excited about exploring some more of China. Because I seem to get sick in China whenever it is the most inconvenient to do so, I'm bringing plenty of Immodium and toilet paper. I leave right after work tomorrow, returning sometime Sunday afternoon.
Monday, October 15, 2007
A Good Weekend
On Saturday, I slept in, went on an outing to buy deodorant, which is annoyingly difficult to find in China, and played basketball at Shanghai Maritime University, 上海海事大学, with a coworker and his friend. The courts were just regular gray concrete, and they were packed; nonetheless, it was a lot of fun to be on a college campus again. My coworker, who was an undergrad at Shanghai Maritime University, said that the 4 floor teaching building was once the tallest building in Pudong. The small campus area is now dwarfed by 50+ floor skyscrapers. I read somewhere that in 2015, 50% of the world's buildings constructed since 2000 will be in China. Looking around the neighborhood where I live, this is not hard to believe.
While we played basketball, my friends' girlfriends made dinner (somehow, I think we got the better end of that deal). Among other dishes, dinner included chicken feet, a first for me. They mostly 'tasted like chicken', except with a definite tendon and ligament texture to them (which I guess makes sense). I learned by watching the others at the table that the way to eat chicken feet is just to bite off the fingers and spit out what you can't chew, which is surprisingly little if you're good. My main complaint was that the feet were a lot of work for very little meat.
On Sunday after another basketball game with some other people from my office, I met with the Fall FSP kids for dinner. It was fun to talk to them and reminisce a little about what it was like to have been in China for only about 4 or 5 weeks, taking classes and exploring Beijing. I think I might try to visit them in Beijing sometime this fall, but we'll have to see - I'm also planning trips to Hangzhou and Suzhou with my neighbors and coworkers.
I'm getting ready to start some intense exploration of Shanghai. It's very easy to just want to go home and read or nap after work, but I think I will regret doing that too often once I'm back in the States.
While we played basketball, my friends' girlfriends made dinner (somehow, I think we got the better end of that deal). Among other dishes, dinner included chicken feet, a first for me. They mostly 'tasted like chicken', except with a definite tendon and ligament texture to them (which I guess makes sense). I learned by watching the others at the table that the way to eat chicken feet is just to bite off the fingers and spit out what you can't chew, which is surprisingly little if you're good. My main complaint was that the feet were a lot of work for very little meat.
On Sunday after another basketball game with some other people from my office, I met with the Fall FSP kids for dinner. It was fun to talk to them and reminisce a little about what it was like to have been in China for only about 4 or 5 weeks, taking classes and exploring Beijing. I think I might try to visit them in Beijing sometime this fall, but we'll have to see - I'm also planning trips to Hangzhou and Suzhou with my neighbors and coworkers.
I'm getting ready to start some intense exploration of Shanghai. It's very easy to just want to go home and read or nap after work, but I think I will regret doing that too often once I'm back in the States.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
这几天
On Sunday night, I went to a party with one of my dad's former students. The party was another kid named Joe's birthday party. Understandably, I had some difficulty answering the "How do you know Joe?" question:
"Well, I AM Joe, but - uh - my dad's former student, whom I just met tonight, somehow met Joe... - sighs - I don't know Joe."
The party was actually pretty fun. It was definitely the most multicultural event I think I've ever been to: I met people from France, Lithuania, Italy, Germany, Japan, US, and - of course - China.
On Tuesday, I went to Zhouzhuang with my neighbors and their friends for the day. Because this week everyone in China is off of work for the National Holidays, Zhouzhuang was ridiculously packed. Chinese traveling is something I'm not sure I will ever get used to: you're led by a fast-talking tour-guide with a megaphone through hot, crowded tourist attractions, which mostly exist as places for humorous photo-ops (i.e. sit down at this ancient wealthy Chinese person's desk for a picture).
We all had our fortunes read by monks at a temple we visited. This was very bizarre. You "donate" some amount of money to enter a big room lined with people waiting to talk to one of the 7 or 8 monks reading fortunes. They give you one of about 12 possible pieces of paper with Chinese writing that the monk reads to tell you your fortune (mine had the character 上 on it - my neighbor tells me this is good). If you buy a gift for a monk you can go to the front of the line in front of all those who merely "donated". When the monk finally got to me, a lowly donor, he told me in hushed, fast Chinese that I had a stubborn personality and needed to open up to my friends more. I thanked him and wondered how many of the hundreds around me would get the same advice.
"Well, I AM Joe, but - uh - my dad's former student, whom I just met tonight, somehow met Joe... - sighs - I don't know Joe."
The party was actually pretty fun. It was definitely the most multicultural event I think I've ever been to: I met people from France, Lithuania, Italy, Germany, Japan, US, and - of course - China.
On Tuesday, I went to Zhouzhuang with my neighbors and their friends for the day. Because this week everyone in China is off of work for the National Holidays, Zhouzhuang was ridiculously packed. Chinese traveling is something I'm not sure I will ever get used to: you're led by a fast-talking tour-guide with a megaphone through hot, crowded tourist attractions, which mostly exist as places for humorous photo-ops (i.e. sit down at this ancient wealthy Chinese person's desk for a picture).
We all had our fortunes read by monks at a temple we visited. This was very bizarre. You "donate" some amount of money to enter a big room lined with people waiting to talk to one of the 7 or 8 monks reading fortunes. They give you one of about 12 possible pieces of paper with Chinese writing that the monk reads to tell you your fortune (mine had the character 上 on it - my neighbor tells me this is good). If you buy a gift for a monk you can go to the front of the line in front of all those who merely "donated". When the monk finally got to me, a lowly donor, he told me in hushed, fast Chinese that I had a stubborn personality and needed to open up to my friends more. I thanked him and wondered how many of the hundreds around me would get the same advice.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
My neighbors
Today my boss gave me my RMB 2000 prize money, so I attempted to ask my neighbors out to dinner. The wife has been making me dinner every day and - whenever possible - (s)mothering me to no end. Anyway, I figured taking them out for Italian food would be a good way to blow some of the money. As I expected, they said no (I get the sense that 19 is much younger in China than in the US). I think I even offended them by very indirectly suggesting that I wanted to eat something besides her food.
When I got home from work at about 6:30, both greeted me and told me she had made me "Italian noodles". This sounded pretty interesting, so I quickly sat down in their apartment. The dish had noodles that looked a lot like spaghetti, only they were mixed in a typical Chinese sauce with chunks of tomato, onion, and beef. It tasted nothing like spaghetti and was a little strange, but it was very cute.
Meals with my neighbors are always pretty funny: the husband, who only wears boxers at the table, usually just makes puns about me that I don't understand to the wife, who - even as I am shoveling food into my mouth - continuously insists that I "多吃一点“， “eat a little more". After every bite, in between her exhortations for me to eat more, she asks "How does it taste," and then - as if in agreement with my standard response, "good" - says "other places don't make X dish as well as I do." She has said that for every meal except for the spaghetti, which she has somehow decided that my mom can make better.
When I got home from work at about 6:30, both greeted me and told me she had made me "Italian noodles". This sounded pretty interesting, so I quickly sat down in their apartment. The dish had noodles that looked a lot like spaghetti, only they were mixed in a typical Chinese sauce with chunks of tomato, onion, and beef. It tasted nothing like spaghetti and was a little strange, but it was very cute.
Meals with my neighbors are always pretty funny: the husband, who only wears boxers at the table, usually just makes puns about me that I don't understand to the wife, who - even as I am shoveling food into my mouth - continuously insists that I "多吃一点“， “eat a little more". After every bite, in between her exhortations for me to eat more, she asks "How does it taste," and then - as if in agreement with my standard response, "good" - says "other places don't make X dish as well as I do." She has said that for every meal except for the spaghetti, which she has somehow decided that my mom can make better.
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