01
Aug 2004Ruminations on Tianjin
Why the long silence? I’ve been in Tianjin for the past 11 days running a kids’ summer camp for my company. It had been my intention to update from the road, but I decided not to.
For one thing, the internet cafes weren’t the most cooperative. Most of us know that China blocks a lot of websites, like anything on Geocities or any Typepad blogs. Trying to access those pages directly from China yields the browser’s “page not found” error. However, some of Tianjin’s internet cafes have a kind of proprietary software installed that closes all open browser windows if there is any attempt to access a page on the blocked list. Let me tell you, that is really annoying! Sometimes you don’t even know that the link you clicked on is blocked, and then suddenly your e-mail, news stories, etc. that you had open are all closed. Grrrr… Maybe this is becoming more common in internet cafes in China — I haven’t needed to use an internet cafe in a while — but it’s the first time that I’ve seen it.
But anyway… about Tianjin. I’m not going to go into the camp now; there’s a lot to say and I’m going to save that for a separate post. There’s plenty to say about Tianjin itself, so I’ll take a stab at it.
I had hoped that with 10 whole days in Tianjin I would have ample opportunity to meet Adam of Brainysmurf.org in person, but it was not meant to be. (I think he’s avoiding me. He beat a hasty retreat to the USA with some kind of “I’m getting married” excuse. Hehe.) He did, however, leave me some sightseeing tips, which I forwarded to another e-mail account for easy access on the road. Unfortunately, all the Chinese in it went to crap and it ended up being useless. Oh well. Thanks anyway, Adam.
One of my first impressions of Tianjin is that it’s very Chinese. I think to understand what I mean by this ridiculous statement that it’s useful to compare Tianjin to Beijing and Shanghai. Shanghai is very international. Snooty expats in other parts of China like to go so far as to say that it’s “not China.” I disagree with that, but Shanghai is certainly singular in its modern atmosphere. Beijing on the other hand, feels very political and cultural to me. (Like the nation’s capital, even!) The city is steeped in politics, and it tries hard to be the nation’s cultural center. It succeeds.
Sure, Tianjin has its own peculiarities… it’s got plenty of leftover Western architecture from that period of its history, and it’s got its own local dialect and cuisine, etc. But to me, these don’t detract from the overall Chineseness of Tianjin. It would be impossible to thoroughly explain or delineate, as it’s really just a big mass of tiny details. But I’ll share some of my observations.
When the student of Chinese begins studying Mandarin outside of China, northern Mandarin in general (and often Beijing Mandarin in particular) is stressed as the standard. Cultural images of China presented in class are usually of Beijing. The influence is a subtle but lasting one. Even now, after four years of living in China, I immediately recognize Tianjin as meshing well with the “proto-China” images still lodged stubbornly in the recesses of my mind.
Yet the Mandarin of the people of Tianjin doesn’t sound nearly as harsh as that of the Beijingers. I actually liked it quite a bit. The “R” sound (er-hua) wasn’t nearly as pervasive as I remember it being in Beijing. They add in their own little Tianjin words too, and the overall effect is just sort of… homey. (A few quick dialect examples: in Tianjin you can say (not write) 耐 for 爱 and 卧 for 饿, although perhaps the feeling changes slightly. I was also amused by their local word for ice cream on a stick: 冰棍儿.)
This all amounted to the Mandarin of Tianjin sounding unquestionably northern to me, but less assaulted by Beijing’s ego. That seemed to fit more with my “proto-China” impression of Mandarin.
The taxi meters in Tianjin start at 5 rmb. I found that charming. In Shanghai taxis start at 10 (13 at night), and even Hangzhou starts at 10. I’m not sure if Beijing still starts at 5, but there’s something that seems right about a 5 rmb Chinese taxi ride, even in a big city. (Meanwhile in Shanghai we can get a short ride in a Mercedes Benz with a built-in TV for 10 rmb.)
Tianjin is a very large city and thus has its traffic problems, but it’s nowhere near the proportions of Shanghai’s traffic problem. There are still tons of taxis on the road, and taking a taxi at rush hour didn’t result in any notable delays for me. Lots of people bike (and yes, they wear solar visors too). The street scene is just so China.
But enough of this “Tianjin is so China” nonsense. I think you get the point. How is Tianjin different from the proto-China image?
Probably the most notable difference is Tianjin’s huge Korean population. It’s really stunning. I had dinner one night in a sort of “little Korea” area, and virtually every store had Korean hangul lettering in the window. I didn’t know that there were places like that in the hearts of China’s cities. I really wonder what other Chinese cities have such sizeable foreign immigrant populations.
Tianjin also has weird traffic lights. They can’t just have the normal “three circle” kind. All traffic lights seem to be in the shape of arrows or colored bars that shrink to indicate when it will change.
The people of Tianjin are friendly, and old people walk the streets at all hours of the day. I didn’t get the typical Beijing impression of there being only old people on the streets, though. There were lots of young people everywhere I went. I was surprised by the number of attractive girls I saw. They didn’t look terribly different from southern girls to me, although I think they tend to be fuller figured (which is a good thing!) than their southern (sometimes anorexic) counterparts.
I attribue fuller figures of the women to the overall northern tendency to eat more. The people of Tinjin adhere strictly to this policy. Sometimes the 10-year-old kids at the camp would out-eat me! I heard an amusing explanation from one person: In the south they eat soup with their meal. It helps fill them up, so they feel full sooner. We eat our soup at the end of the meal, so we end up eating more. I really had to laugh at this, because it’s just like the kind of thing you might hear from Americans rationalizing American obesity. I wanted to tell that girl: No, actually you all just eat a hell of a lot!
I didn’t take many pictures in Tianjin, and certainly nothing notable. I didn’t feel it was necessary. In many ways, Tianjin just fits images of China I’ve already mentally collected. Now I can attach a place to those images. It is Tianjin.
20
Jul 2004China’s Solar Visor Craze
China is currently in the midst of a new headwear craze. It’s like a typical sun visor with a swivel down piece of dark transparent plastic which shades the face from the summer sun’s harsh glare. The protective plastic can serve as an extended visor (up), or sort of a whole-face “sunglass mask” (down). See the pictures below, modeled by yours truly. I’m not entirely sure what to call the new hat-like apparel.
The Chinese just call them 太阳帽, which could be literally translated as “sun hat” and my (normally awesome) good dictionary lists as “sun-helmet.” The thing is, I’ve been in China nearly four years, and I can assure you that this is an entirely new product, so the dictionary term can’t possibly apply in more than a very general way. Anyway, I can’t call these new “sun-helmet” things “sun visors” because that name is already taken by the traditional sun visors without the crazy swivel-down tinted plastic piece. So I’m calling them “solar visors.”
The whole point of this post is that China is going nuts over these solar visors. Like I said, as far as I know, they weren’t even around before this summer, and now I see them everywhere. They’re particularly popular among the bicycling crowd. Russell just got back from trips to Beijing and Sichuan, and he said they were all over there too. These solar visors are taking the country by storm. And they’re just so tacky. But practical. The Chinese go for practical.
Here are a few shots I took last Saturday of the Solar Visor Madness coursing through the streets of Shanghai these days, and, indeed, possibly all of China:
I hope you’re thinking, “wow, those look really ridiculous.” Because that’s the idea. It’s madness! But it’s kinda fun.
Why do the solar visors look so ridiculous on people in the street? Perhaps they remind you of something? Here are two possibilities:
Of course, it’s not the entire country that has gone mad. A lot of people stick to more traditional (and sometimes quite creative) methods of protecting themselves from the sun:
I just stick to sunglasses, myself. After taking my pictures I gave my own solar visor away to someone who would use it for more than a blog entry. It cost me 7 rmb (less than $1 US).
Have you seen these things before? If not, you probably will soon.
Update: You can buy these on Amazon.
19
Jul 2004Easy End to MT Comment Spam
When I first started getting comment spam, I thought I could delete it manually. I didn’t realize how much I already had. When hours of manual deletions weren’t enough, I googled “comment spam” and found MT Blacklist. It’s a brilliant plug-in that allows MovableType users to deny comments from known spammers as well as easily delete from the database existing comments posted by spammers.
This is all well and good, but it depends on the blogger regularly updating his spammer definitions and then running MT Blacklist to remove newly posted spam. It’s certainly way better than deleting it all manually, but it’s far from automatic at this point, and it’s still a big pain.
I was quite pleased then, to discover another, simpler solution, which when used in conjunction with MT Blacklist should keep your Movable Type blog pretty much spamless:
…Spammers have automated scripts that look for Moveable Type blog sites and they then post to our comments using a direct call to the “mt-comments.cgi” script. If you installed Moveable Type into the default directory (/mt) then they know exactly where the script is and how to call it.
The solution is simple: rename the script to some odd name (ex. qwerty.cgi) and edit your mt.cfg to point to the renamed CGI script. Look for the line that is commented out and reads “# CommentScript mt-comments.cgi”. Uncomment the line and change the name of the script to the new name. You need to rebuild the site before it takes effect. Users will not be able to post comments while you are doing this but the entire process only takes a few minutes.
I made this modification about three weeks ago and have not had a single comment spam since then. [source]
Don’t forget to rebuild! Your comments won’t work until you do.
Granted, this is not a permanent solution, but it has drastically reduced my own comment spam, and I’ll take the break from comment spam as long as I can have it!
18
Jul 2004John X
Frank Yu has been blogging about China as long as anyone I know of. He recently wrote an article titled “A Day in the Life of a China Blogger” for ChinaTechNews, using the life of a “John X” as an example.
There are a few things about this fictional “John X” character which seem vaguely familiar…
Article link via Brainysmurf‘s “The Burbs.”
17
Jul 2004Poll: Young Thoughts — Chinese vs. American
“Rainbow,” one of my former students and fellow bloggers, has recently finished a poll (survey?) of Chinese students. With the help of an American friend, she was able to provide cultural contrast, with the results nicely graphically displayed. Although the sample size was not large, the questions were well-chosen and the results are interesting. Some of my favorite questions were Can you cook, Do you have an idea now about what kind of job to do after graduation, Have you ever had an IV, and How many relationships have you been in so far. There are 20 questions in all. Have a look.
Related: Sinosplice Polls #1 (cell phones), #2 (Who is the greatest person in Chinese history?), #3 (politics, world news), #4 (bicycle, swim, car), #5 (mini-poll mania), #6 (more mini-polls).
16
Jul 2004What Does an Alien Sound Like When it Speaks Chinese?
My company is still busy preparing a bunch of short educational cartoons. They’re supposed to air on CCTV at the end of August, I think. (I’ll let you all know.)
Anyway, I seem to have been typecast. Last time I played the voice of a slow-witted pig named “Dudu” (the Chinese think this name is cute, and even after they found out what “doo-doo” means in English, refused to change his name!). For this recent run of cartoons, the cast has been changed, and I now play the part of a different pig character named “Asta.” (I have no idea where that name came from; a lot of our characters’ names are strange, to my chagrin.)
Why do they keep sticking me with the pig role?? I guess it’s because (1) I do it well; not many of the others can alter their voices much at all, (2) he’s the only character that can feasibly have a relatively deep voice, and (3) he’s dim-witted and speaks slowly, so it’s an easier part for the foreigner to handle. Sad but true.
This time there’s also an alien in the cast. When our parts were assigned, the question arose: what should the alien’s voice sound like? That was an especially tough question for me. Chinese is not my mother tongue — how am I supposed to know what an alien would sound like in Chinese? And yet everyone turned to me, as the “voice-change expert” to come up with something good.
What we ended up doing was making the alien’s voice monotone, like a stereotypical robot’s. The obvious linguistic problem with that is how can you make a tonal language monotone and still keep it intelligible? It was actually a bit of a problem. We managed to fix it, however. None of the alien’s lines were too complex, but in order to keep monotone Chinese readily intelligible, pauses were key. Once again, I don’t know why, but they turned to me for guidance. I seemed to be better at breaking up the Chinese sentences into discrete chunks of meaning than they were*. They all agreed the alien’s lines were easier to understand after my recommended pauses were inserted.
So we have already finished the latest batch of 10 cartoons. My pig lines were a snap, and I think I’m actually getting better at it. The alien’s voice, once altered by Cool Edit Pro, actually sounds pretty cool. And it’s always a real joy (in an educational way, of course) to see native speakers screwing up Chinese lines, even on such fundamental issues as tones. (And I’m not talking about the alien’s lines, either.)
This job of mine remains very interesting.
* One reason this was especially interesting was I was just reading about this kind of thing in The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker, my current read. It is really a fascinating read for anyone at all interested in language. A lot of the linguistics in it I have already studied, but it’s still not boring (except maybe for Chapter 4). It was published in 1994, but is hardly dated at all yet.
14
Jul 2004Get Paid for Reading Chinese News!
I seem to remember some hype a while back about a company that wanted to pay people for surfing the internet. It seems to have faded into obscurity since then. What I never expected is that now a Chinese company seems to be trying something similar! It’s called “NewsBar” (or something). [Note: As China is still happily suckling at Bill Gates’ bosom at least as far as browsers are concerned, this page is not Mozilla friendly.]
It works like this. You download the site’s “newsbar” and install it on your computer. Then you can accrue “news points” by reading Chinese news online (3-4 hours per day, max). At the end of the month, all “news points” are converted to RMB based on that month’s conversion rate (which varies, but has a guaranteed minimum value). The example they gave in the FAQ was someone earning 200 RMB in one month for 4,750,000 “news points.” I have no idea exactly how newspoints are calculated, and the FAQ doesn’t say.
The money can either be electronically deposited into one’s account or a money order can be sent by mail. 30 RMB is the minimum balance to cash out.
I just never would have imagined something like this would be attempted in China at this point. What’s next? Private websites earning real revenue through internet advertising in China??
14
Jul 2004Being a Good Citizen Online
Recently I signed up with a Chinese Flash-centered site called Flash8.net. Just like with American websites, when you go through the free registration process you have to choose a username and a password, supply an e-mail address, etc. And then there are the terms of use. I was almost too lazy to read them before clicking on ÎÒͬÒâ, but something made me go ahead and read it through.
There was nothing in it that I wouldn’t agree with, but some of the terms would never appear on an American website, and the terms are indicative of the current state of the internet in China.
My slap-dash translation:
In order to uphold online public order and social stability, please conscientiously abide by the following terms:
I. You must not use this website to harm national security or to divulge national secrets. You must not violate national collective social rights or citizens’ legal rights. You must not use this website to create, duplicate, or propagate information that has the following effects:
- Incites resistance to or destruction of the consitution and law or administrative regulations in effect;
- Incites subversion of the state or overturn of the socialist system;
- Incites secession or destruction of national unity;
- Incites ethnic hatred or prejudices, or destroys ethnic unity;
- Concocts or distorts facts, spreads rumors, or disturbs social order;
- Propagates feudal superstition, obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, murder, terror, or abetment of criminals;
- Blatantly humiliates others, slanders others, or carries out other malicious personal attacks;
- Hurts the nation’s reputation;
- Otherwise violates the consitution, law, and administrative regulations;
- Conducts commerical advertising.
II. Respect others, and be responsible for your own speech and actions.
Anyway, that gives you an idea. I don’t want to give the impression that internet discussions here are bogged down in an oppressive 1984-esque atmosphere because they really don’t seem to be, but clearly people have to be more careful about what they say.
This article also made me think: even though it’s kind of disturbing for a Westerner to see so many limitations on freedom of speech written out in black and white, how different is the USA, really?? Especially considering the events surrounding the current “war on terrorism,” the American government would probably take notice and respond pretty quickly to a lot of that kind of online behavior as well. But they don’t warn you beforehand.
Don’t get me wrong, though. Freedom of speech is good. It’s a good thing I hate writing about politics or I might have more to say on this.
(Also, if anyone wants to take a look at the original and suggest improvements to my clumsy translation, feel free.)
Speaking of “being a good citizen,” Edward Abbey once said, “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.” Pablo Casals said, “The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?” Take a look, then, at how Richard of Peking Duck has recently been pronounced beyond splendid by the China Daily.
09
Jul 2004Being a Foreigner in a Small Chinese Town
Being a foreigner in a smallish Chinese town is quite an experience. Wherever you go, whatever you do, you’re a spectacle. Everything is difficult for you. Nothing goes as expected. If you can speak any Chinese, your (near-constant) audience will be amazed and enthralled. Frequently being the center of attention of a group of non-English-speaking people can really spur one to improve one’s Chinese. A foreigner in a smallish Chinese town who can speak Chinese fairly well can quite quickly become a local celebrity, even getting newspaper writeups and TV spots. A big fish in a small pond, so to speak.
My friend and ex-co-worker Shelley is one such big fish. After living in Beijing for a year, then Shanghai for over a year, his Chinese skills are impressive. He decided to take those skills and head over to Shandong province to direct an English school in Dongying, a town which certainly qualifies as “smallish.”
Shelley recently put up a website. Reading the Dongying section, I couldn’t help but be especially amused by what he wrote about the bars there:
> Dongying has a bar street that looks …interesting. Pick your favorite place, teach them how to make your drinks the way you like them, then walk in like you own the place. They’ll remember you because you’re their foreign regular, and they’ll be sure to treat you right because you’re better than a neon sign for attracting more patrons. If we make a bar our group favorite, we can tell them what music to play… and kick people out we don’t like. Does that sound imperialistic to you? Then get out of my bar.
Hangzhou was nowhere near as small as Dongying is, but the phenomenon is nevertheless very familiar to me (and very absent in Shanghai). It looks like I’ll be heading to Dongying soon on business, so I’ll have an opportunity to visit Shelley and then check out that bar street myself and relive the imperalism a bit.
(Also take a look at the nice map Shelley made of all the places he’s visited in China. Although he has done some traveling, a lot of the places were visited working for Melody, where I now work. I don’t think I’m very far behind him in number of places visited, and my job is sure to send me to more soon…. I need to make my own map!)
03
Jul 2004Network Update
There have been a lot of changes recently in the Sinosplice Network.
You might have noticed that long-time member Derrick of Derrick in Dalian, AKA The Chinese Bazaar is no longer in the network. Well, it’s for a happy reason. Derrick decided that he was ready for his own domain and his own hosting, to move onto bigger things. I, for one, am happy that he’s come so far. I think his site’s recent redesign at the new location, Maskofchina.com, is a nice improvement. Check it out.
The other two to depart are Andrea of T-salon and Wayne of A Better Tomorrow. It was a hard decision to come to, but I basically decided that it was too risky to host blogs that touch on sensitive political issues. I just moved onto a new host that I really like, and while I feel pretty certain that my last host’s slowdown was not at all related to internet censorship, I just want to do what I can to steer clear of that potential hazard altogether. I have plans for my site that require it to be accessible in China, and I have no desire myself to write about those issues online.
Fortunately both of them were cool and understanding about relocating. I was able to find Andrea a supportive host through Adopt a Blog*. You can access her new location at T-salon.net.
Wayne opted to move onto some of Brendan‘s space. (Unfortunately, since Brendan is using the same hosting as I was before my recent switch, that means Wayne’s site may now be difficult to access from mainland China, as mine was for a while and Brendan’s is now.) You can access A Better Tomorrow at its new location via ABTom.net.
The newest member is Australian Matt of Chabuduo. I’m glad to have him aboard. He’s actually learning to use Blogger now, instead of doing straight HTML editing. Pay the new Chabuduo a visit (but you may want to give him a little more time to get settled).
So those are the changes. Update your bookmarks.
*Adopt a Blog is not dead, but it did run into some unforeseen technical difficulties involving PHP mirroring for Typepad sites. It’s still a viable solution to blocked bloggers running on platforms like Blogger, but the “adoptees” were outnumbered by the volunteer hosts by about 20 to 1. Basically, not enough people came forward to be adopted! Solutions?
30
Jun 2004You, Too, Could Have My Shanghai Job!
My company has decided that there’s too much work here for me to handle on my own, so they’ve asked me to find a second. Another person that can do my job. Only problem is, since I am quite busy, I don’t have a lot of time to look for someone. I just got back from Dezhou. Tomorrow I go to Fuzhou for 3 days. When I get back the next day I’ll go to Wuxi for 5 days. Then I’ll be in Shanghai for a week, after which it’s off to Tianjin for 10 days. You get the idea. School’s out now, so it’s the busy travel season for this job.
So let me tell you a little about the job. The pay is not bad (about 12,000rmb), but it doesn’t come with benefits, so it’s not exactly the most wonderful package in the world. (On the other hand, you won’t be hurting for money on that salary, even in Shanghai.) What is good about the job is that you can use Chinese (and, indeed, must use Chinese) on a daily basis. Also, the company pays for you to travel all over China. Yes, you have to work, but often your host will pay for you to do a little sightseeing, and even if they don’t, you could take a vacation day or two in that location before returning to Shanghai.
So you have to live in Shanghai. You have to deal with me on an (almost) daily basis. You have to be able to speak Chinese. You have to like to travel. And you have to be a native speaker of English, of the North American variety. If this sounds like you, please head over to Sinosplice Jobs, take a look at the information there, and then give me an email.
(For other entries I’ve written about my job, check out the “Work” category in the archives.)
28
Jun 2004德州电话
前不久我出差到山东德州去了。因为我是此行同事中唯一的男士，所以我一个人住了一个房间。星期五晚上11点多的时候有电话：
[我:] 喂？ [她:] 您好，打扰一下。您需要小姐为您服务吗？ [我:] 不需要。 [她:] 打扰了。
我听说过中国宾馆有这样的服务，但这是我第一次亲自接这样的电话。
星期六晚上10点多又来了这个电话。对话也是一模一样的。令我惊讶的是星期六晚上11点多她又打电话给我了！难道她以为过了一个小时我会寂寞起来而改变主意吗？
28
Jun 2004Impressions of Dezhou
This past weekend I went on a business trip to Dezhou, a city in northern Shandong province. It’s funny — before heading off to Dezhou, any person I told I was heading to Dezhou had one of three reactions:
- Had never heard of it. (Not surprising, really.)
- “Texas??” (The American state of Texas is Dekesasi-zhou in Chinese, and often abbreviated to De-zhou.)
- “Paji!” (That’s the name of Dezhou’s one claim to (relative) fame: a chicken dish called paji.)
Unfortunately, right before leaving for Dezhou I came down with a terrible cold. The fact that it’s my second time being quite sick in Shanghai in only six months of living here alarms me somewhat. I like to think I’m a pretty healthy individual, and these new statistics aren’t jiving with that. (Why could this be? My imagination takes the idea and goes with it. Maybe I’m an example of a rejected transplant. You know how sometimes a transplanted heart doesn’t take in a new body? Well maybe I’m not taking in a new city. Or maybe the city views this foreign body as a threat and is trying to knock me off with its defenses. The Chinese, however, invariably offer the same explanation: “bu xiguan.” I’m not used to life here in Shanghai. Well, there might be something to that, but really, Shanghai has got to be the easiest Chinese city to get used to. Plus that’s a pretty boring explanation.)
And so it was that Thursday I found myself on a 14-hour train ride to Dezhou, a city in northern Shandong province with no convenient airport. We left at 10am, which made for a looong day on the train. Fortunately I had my cold medicine, a big box of tissues, and my sleeper bunk. I was unconscious for most of the way there.
I woke up around 10pm and decided I had better stay up. All the lights in the train were out, save for a few floating downturned faces bathed in the ghostly illumination of a cell phone’s display screen. I climbed out of my bunk and took a seat by the window. It was storming outside. Every few seconds lightning lit up the desolate countryside for an instant. Farmland, ditches, crude buildings, lonely trees. It all seemed so foreign and yet so China. I thought about how four years of effort to “get to know China” had been successful, but only in my one little corner.
Dezhou is a wholly unremarkable city. It has no famous mountain, or lake, or park, nor is it the “ancestral home” of any famous figure that the locals could boast about to guests. All it has is paji, a chicken dish. Which is very good, by the way.
But Dezhou is a city in Shandong province, and as such, it is populated with Shandong-ren, a much-discussed group in China. I found them to be warm and generous, and although they all had that northern accent, it wasn’t nearly as strong as I expected. One might even call it pleasant. There was only one guy with whom I came into contact whose Mandarin level was sub-par. But holy crap, was he hard to understand! I never thought a speaker of a northern dialect could be as difficult to understand as a speaker of a southern dialect, but I was sorely mistaken. There was no “s/sh c/ch z/zh” pronunciaiton issue like you find in the south. I don’t even notice that anymore, anyway. This time the issue was strictly tones. The man spoke without a shred of respect for the established tones of the words that make up Mandarin Chinese. Foreigners learning Chinese do much the same thing, but they generally have the decency to speak slowly and simply, and they radiate uncertainty. This man had the gall to speak quickly and confidently in his abominable Chinese. Talking with him was certainly an experience.
I went on the business trip with three female co-workers, so I got a cheap hotel room all to myself. Friday night around 11pm the phone rang, and the following conversation ensued in Chinese:
[Me:] Hello? [Woman:] Hello, sorry to disturb you. Do you need a girl’s services? [Me:] No. [Woman:] Sorry to disturb you. click.
This kind of Chinese hotel service is well documented, but it was the first time it had been offered to me. Apparently my female co-workers got a call as well, but as soon as the caller heard a female voice, she hung up. The thing is, this exact same exchange repeated itself Saturday night at 10:15pm, and then again that same night at 11:15pm! It was the same woman calling. Did she think in the hour that had passed I had gotten lonely and changed my mind?? [Telephone conversation in Chinese]
Dezhou was not so bad. It wasn’t as polluted or as poor as I thought it might be. The people were nice, and I actually kind of liked their accents, to my surprise. But it’s still good to be home in Shanghai.
23
Jun 2004To Stay
This last time that I went home for a visit was a special one. Not because of who I saw or what I did, but because of the message I bore with me that time. It was a message that was a long time in the making, slowly gaining substance and taking on a concrete form. It was a message that had to be shared with my family, and I wanted it to be done in person.
In the very beginning, when I first decided to go to China, I told people that I planned to stay for a year or two, to get a feel for the language. In reality, I knew it would be longer than a year, and likely longer than two. I had experienced life abroad in Japan, and I liked it. I knew any proficiency in Chinese would take time, but I also had a special feeling about China, even before I had ever been there. Still, I didn’t really expect anyone to understand those things. It seemed best to keep telling everyone that I planned to stay for a year or two.
Well, year two came and went, and as I expected, I was not ready to leave China. Friends back home would ask how long I intended to remain over there. I usually gave an elusive “maybe another year.” I didn’t want to say that I had no idea when I would be ready to leave. That would make it seem like I had no direction. The truth of the matter was that the longer I stayed in China, the more direction I felt I had. But again, I found it hard to explain. “Maybe another year” was an easy answer, and most people didn’t really need to know anyway.
Still, I had conflicts. I knew that my main interest was Applied Linguistics, and the program at UCLA looked appealing. I knew I could get in and do well in that program, and I wanted a Masters from an American university. But what after? It seemed logical that after I had my degree it would be time to settle back down to life in the United States, time to “get a real job.” The only problem was that I was not ready to leave my life in China behind, and that was what going for the degree seemed to represent for me.
The summer of 2003 a friend who was also teaching English visited me from another part of China. We got to talking about our lives in China and our plans for the future. What he said shocked me. “I’m staying here. I’m going to make a life for myself in China.” Up to that point, I had never seriously considered such an option. It was a possibility I would mull over for some time.
Throughout my own confusion, I had no problem giving friends vague answers, because the truth of the matter was that my own plans were still pretty vague too. I longed to share some of my thoughts with my family, but I wanted to sort everything out for myself first. The question I found to be the hardest to bear, though, was one that I really only got when I visited home. It was always asked innocently, yet in complete earnestness, and it pinched my heart every time. It was my mother’s quiet, “John, when are you coming home?”
I think it was that question, more than anything, that put definite pressure on me to adopt a real plan in lieu of a “take things as they come” philosophy. I needed to know for myself too.
I weighed the factors. What did the USA hold for me? Family. Old friends. A miserable job market. What did China hold for me? Passion in my life. Excitement. A society that would never fully accept me. The possibility of a real, promising career in the very field I was into. And a love relationship I was not willing to leave behind.
I think it’s obvious which I chose. Yet to feel good about it, I felt that I really needed my family’s full support. I knew my sisters would support me, and that my parents would tell me they wanted me to follow my dreams, but I wanted more than that. I wanted them to understand why I was doing it, and I wanted them to support me with their hearts, because I already found it so difficult to see them a little older every time I went home. The years before they’re actually old were dwindling, and I couldn’t continue my life in China and be with them at the same time. I didn’t want there to be any resentment or disappointment on anyone’s part that I had spent those years in China.
On my recent visit home I had a talk with my family. It was really hard for me to do. And they gave me the support I hoped for. I know that they’ll miss me as I do them, but they understand what I’m doing, and they would never ask me to do anything other than that which I love.
Now I am ready to confidently proceed with my life and my career in China. I still plan to go to graduate school in Applied Linguistics, but it will be in Shanghai, in Chinese. My life here is more full of promise than ever.
And when people ask me how long I’ll be in China, I know my answer.
Indefinitely.
21
Jun 2004Field Chickens and Bleached Buns
I had lunch with some clients today. One of my co-workers, a teacher for my company, was there with me. She’s a Dongbei-ren recently arrived in Shanghai, so she’s still not used to the south in many ways.
One of the dishes we ate was called tianji, which literally translates as something like “field chicken” (“field” in the sense of “rice paddy” here). I had forgotten what this dish really is, so I was kinda glad when she asked, “what kind of bird is it?” Our hosts laughed. In China, a “field chicken” is actually a frog! I ate it, though. It’s pretty good, it just has a lot of annoying little bones. And it does taste kind of like chicken.
Another dish we had with which my Dongbei-ren co-worker was unfamiliar was suji. Literally, I guess it could be translated as “vegetarian chicken.” It’s a kind of tofu. It doesn’t really taste (or feel) much like chicken.
The clients were surprised that the south had so many dishes with which a northerner would be unfamiliar. They asked her what dishes the north had that the south doesn’t. She listed a few, but then mentioned that one should be wary of the mantou in Liaoning province. She said a good mantou should be a bit yellowish. A mantou that is too white may have had laundry detergent added to make it look whiter and thus more attractive to the consumer!
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Jun 2004Gui Lian
We say, “make a face.” The Chinese say, “make a ¹íÁ³.” Gui lian is kinda hard to translate literally because ¹í can mean “ghost” or “demon” or a bunch of other things. Á³ means “face.” In this case there’s no trouble understanding, though. Below are some of my students’ gui lian. (click on the image for a gallery of cute kids)
There, now some people might momentarily stop nagging for more pictures (you know who you are). I made the “Chinese Kindergarteners” photo album with the very cool Simple Viewer. It uses Flash.
19
Jun 2004China has had its Share of Hard Times
Normally I’d link instead of copying a whole post, but this comes from a blocked site, and we all know how annoying that is. So, with my apologies to Harry, I’ll rape the entire post from Chase me ladies, I’m in the cavalry 
. Not sure where he got the info.
The worst flood in history:
China, 1931; 3.7 million dead.The second worst flood in history:
China, 1887; 900,000 dead.The worst earthquake of the 20th century:
China, 1976; 242,000 dead.The second worst earthquake of the 20th century:
China, 1927; 200,000 dead.The worst earthquake in history:
China, 1556; 830,000 dead (est).The worst famine in history:
China, 1959-61; 20 million dead.The second worst famine in history:
China, 1876-79; 10 million dead.The worst civil war in history (second worst war of any kind):
China, 1850-64; The Taiping Rebellion; 20-30 million dead.China also lost more people in World War 2 (10.45 million) than Germany (5.5 million) and Japan (1.9 million) combined.
I’m not crazy about either history or politics, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s OK to completely ignore them. I’m not going to give any further commentary; I think the figures say enough.
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Jun 2004我最喜欢的书
我最喜欢的书是日本作家村上春树的《世界末日与冷酷仙境》。我知道很多中国人都看过《挪威的森林》但好像没人听说过《世界末日与冷酷仙境》。你听说过吗？在中国大陆有的卖吗？