15
Nov 2003
Doom
All the details of the new China Blog List nearing completion, I spent a few moments the other day reading some of the newer blogs. One of the ones I really liked was Doom in China. His entry entitled “Five Reasons Why I’m the Greatest English Tutor in All of China (and Maybe the World)” was hilarious. I enjoyed his “Big Holes, Monkey Voices, and Chicken Toes” hiking story as well. He summed it up very nicely at the end:
Mr. Quan looked at me and said, “I don’t want to go back to my apartment. I don’t want to go back to work tomorrow. I don’t want this weekend to be over.”
I nodded. I told him there were times in my life in the past when I felt the same thing — the dull ache of daily routine piling up on you. I told him, that is why I was happy to be in China.
Further down the page, in “Chinese Cultural Intricacies” he tells about CCTV’s plans for a miniseries in which he will play the role of an evil foreigner:
The television mini-series is about a country filled with greedy white foreigners (maybe Iceland?) attacking a small helpless Island filled with Chinese people (maybe San Francisco?) for its rich oil deposits. I don’t know where they came up with this script (maybe CNN?), but I think this will be a winner.
Jamie Doom only plans to be in China until next summer.
13
Nov 2003New China Blog List
New CBL logo
It’s something I’ve been meaning to implement for many months, and now it’s finally almost complete. The problem was obvious: as the number of China blogs increased dramatically over the past year, the China Blog List was getting way too long, and there was no order to it other than a loose geographical grouping. My solution: make the list sortable by several fields. I tried to accomplish that on my own with my extremely limited programming skills, but failed. One of the new teachers here, also named John, was willing to do the PHP coding for me, though, so it’s finally done! I didn’t even have to pay him, but I will say that there was an exchange of delicious cheese flown in from Paris.
The new list has a slightly different look, a new URL (https://www.sinosplice.com/cbl/), and a new logo. Anyone who has studied Chinese characters for any length of time should recognize the special arrangement of the “CBL” for “China Blog List” that I came up with. Furthermore, the list is sortable by Name and by Location. Double clicking the filter reverses direction of the listing. It can also be filtered by region. John did an awesome job.
It’s actually still undergoing some fine-tuning. The Chatboard has been removed because it was making the page load really slowly. Instead, there will be a form to submit new blogs. Adding new blogs has been greatly simplified for me, so the new ones will be added much more quickly from now on.
Anyway, the new China Blog List is online. The old one will stay up a little while longer, as the new one is still being worked on, but soon the new one will be complete and the old URL will simply redirect to the new version. The old list will no longer be updated. There are already new additions and corrections on the new list. Happy surfing.
12
Nov 2003Just "Box"
I understand that northern China has already received a fair bit of snowfall, but it wasn’t until this past weekend that winter finally announced its presence in Hangzhou. Not that it’s really cold now, but it’s beginning.
One of the telltale signs that winter is here is that “iceboxes” become just “boxes.” In restaurants and some grocery stores the Chinese unplug their refrigerators in the winter and simply use them as storage! It makes sense, I guess, but it still seems strange when you come from a country that dutifully wastes that refrigerator electricity all winter long. (Oh yeah, I forgot — we also have the strange custom of keeping buildings warm inside in the winter.)
Of course, drinks often aren’t kept cold even during the summer here. Newcomers from the West — if nothing else — quickly learn the Chinese word “bing de” for when they order drinks. Cold. You know you’ve been in China too long when you forget to ask for a cold beer but then drink the warm one anyway. Or even worse — when you don’t really care anymore whether it’s cold or not.
[shudder]
10
Nov 2003Who's Ed?
A while ago I got an e-mail from a friend teaching not far from Hangzhou, in Shaoxing. Some of the veteran China blog readers might remember her from Shutty.net (R.I.P.). Hers was one of the original 10 or so blogs listed when I first started the China Blog List. Anyway, here’s an excerpt from what she wrote me:
as for me, i learned two new characters this week. ping and yin.
meaning taste and print. only because i like ping. i see it all over and think “3 boxes, now that’s a good character. easy on the eyes. memorable. wonderful.” so i asked the kids and they provided answers. not without taking the piss first of course. and yin is because i always think in certain styles of font, it looks like “ED” which is my dad’s name. and i see that one everywhere too. when i told my kids the reason, it sent one girl into hysterics for the next 15 minutes. is it so hard to believe it looks like “ED”? it does!
I rather agree with her. It does look like “ED.”
A note about “ping” though. Many southern Chinese dialects don’t contain the “-ng” final, so when southerners speak Mandarin they often mispronounce that final. Some southerners know they have the southern accent and don’t care; others actively pursue a more standard accent. Some of them pull it off with flying colors, but others never quite do. In fact, some southerners not only pronounce the “-ng” final as “-n” sometimes, but they hypercorrect as well. They pronounce “-n” as “-ng,” trying to sound more “standard,” when “-n” was the correct sound in the first place. I think this was the case with “ping” above. It should be “pin.”
Despite the nonstandard elements of southern Mandarin (also, s/sh, c/ch, z/zh go undistinguished, all passing as s, c, z, respectively), I still think the south is a good place to learn Mandarin for the conscientious learner. It can be a little annoying to not be able to trust native speakers about the pinyin spellings of characters, but soon you learn that when a southern person says “zi” it could very well be “zhi” in standard Mandarin. Thus, learning Mandarin here — and comprehending Mandarin here — requires a greater deal of mental flexibility. I think it’s worth the extra effort, too. I can understand southern Mandarin easily, and that makes deciphering the full-on dialects easier. The best part is that when I go to Beijing, people sound like their speech came straight out of the audio tapes that accompany Chinese textbooks. It’s so crystal clear and easy to understand. It feels like the training weights strapped to my legs have finally been removed. The less standard elements of Beijing dialect take a little getting used to, but I feel it’s not very difficult.
Despite the relative ease in comprehension of northern Mandarin, though, there’s something comforting about being back south, surrounded by “substandard” speech. It feels realer somehow. To me, anyway, it feels more like home.
06
Nov 2003This is how it is
– I –
A Chinese friend of mine was telling me that she went to see her cousin across town last weekend. He has just moved to Hangzhou to start college. I asked her if he was skinny and loved computer games. She looked surprised. “How did you know?”
– II –
Unusual circumstances caused me to head over to the cafeteria today at 4:45pm for dinner. No, that’s not at all too early. Dinner must start being served at 4:30pm, or even 4. Every meal seems to be eaten earlier than its Western counterpart. Breakfast at 7, lunch at 11, dinner at 5.
Westerners in China usually continue to eat lunch at 12, dinner at 6 or 7, and sometimes even skip breakfast (to the Chinese’s horror). This is actually kind of nice because the crowds are smaller. If you eat dinner at 5, your Western co-workers jibe you with a “you’re not turning Chinese, are you?”
What I gained from eating at 4:45pm was good, hot food. I forgot what a difference it makes when you get it freshly prepared rather than an hour and a half later.
– III –
A co-worker of one of my friends is afraid she’s pregnant. The girl told my friend that she and her boyfriend never use any kind of contraception. They don’t even practice coitus interruptus. The girl is 18, and her boyfriend a few years older. I feel that this is not so uncommon.
03
Nov 2003Adapting
When a foreigner in China talks with Chinese people, one of the major questions he will be asked about his life in China is, xi bu xiguan? — are you used to it? Annoying as it can be at times to be asked this same question over and over, when I give it any thought, I find the question still relevant after over three years here.
Of course, culture shock is certainly an issue, but I’ve always felt that I’m only minimally affected by it. The first time I went to Japan I pranced in like a wide-eyed child with no idea what to expect, rather than with a list of expectations. As a result, I wasn’t so “shocked.” The same principle applied in China, for the most part. I don’t think it’s something I’ve done consciously; it’s just the way it worked out for me.
1st Apartment
When I first arrived in China, I stayed at a Chinese friend’s empty apartment. It was a broiling Hangzhou summer, but the apartment had no air conditioning. At night I slept on a bamboo mat with no cover. An electric fan made sleep just barely possible, and mosquito coils kept the little bloodsuckers at bay. I washed my clothes by hand and cooked most of my own meals. The toilet flush mechanism was broken and had to be flushed by dumping in a bucket of water. The hot water heater didn’t work, so showers were cold. After a week or two, I accepted that “this is China,” and I felt I had pretty much adapted to life in China.
After only a month, I was given an offer to move in with a Chinese guy about my same age. I could stay for free, and the apartment would have fully functional bathroom facilities, washing machine, and air conditioning. More than anything though, I feared the prospect of loneliness and boredom if I stayed at the first place. So I moved.
2nd Apartment
My second living arrangement turned out to be great for language study. That was the whole reason I was allowed to live there for free, but it turned out to be far from one-sided. I ate meals at school in the cafeteria for about 4 RMB ($.050 US), and at home with my roommate in another cafeteria every night for 3 RMB. The food certainly wasn’t great, but it was OK. After I showered, I used the tiny hand towels that Chinese people use to dry off. My social life was practically non-existent. I didn’t know any other foreigners, and my Chinese wasn’t good enough yet to make many Chinese friends who wanted anything more than English practice. I spent a lot of time studying Chinese and hanging out at home with my roommate. I felt I had pretty much adapted to life in China.
ZUCC Apartment
When my roommate decided to move to Canada to study, I moved into ZUCC’s newly finished teacher apartment. The new place not only had all the amenities of my former residence, but it was much bigger and it was all mine. I could cook on my own again. I finally bought a DVD player. No longer content with the Chinese “wash rag,” I bought a large, thick Western-style bath towel. I quickly got used to having my own place, and since I had Chinese friends by that time, it wasn’t so bad being alone. I felt I had already adapted to life in China, so small changes seemed insignificant.
The second semester of my life at ZUCC, Wilson, Helene, Simon, and Ben arrived. It was the beginning of a real foreigner community. Although my Chinese friendships continued, a big part of my free time was shifted to socializing with them. I stopped cooking, and began eating out all the time. We could all easily afford it, and the food was good. We almost always ate Chinese. I bought a desktop computer for my room and started my own website. The little changes continued.
I’ve now been in China for over three years. I’m finding a renewed interest in cooking on my own, applying a sort of fusion approach (cooking Chinese food with olive oil and balsamic vinegar — mmmmm), but I still eat out a lot. I still spend a lot of time with the other foreign teachers. Now my main contacts with the Chinese language are Chinese class and my Chinese girlfriend, although I still occasionally meet my Chinese friends as well. But I’m still adapted to life in China, right?
I find myself wondering what “adapting” really is. At what point in my stay here was I most “adapted to Chinese life”? Is it more important that I alter some part of myself to successfully fit in, or is it more important that I’ve found contentment in a foreign environment? Clearly, adaptation is a process of finding a balance between what you can accept from your new environment and what you must change about your new environment in order to be comfortable. But if that balance keeps evolving, does it mean one has still not adapted?
I guess it’s all just pointless rhetoric in the end, but I enjoy watching the new teachers undergo the process, finding wonder and revulsion in parts of life here that I barely notice anymore. It’s very easy to forget how much you’ve really adapted sometimes. I think it’s equally difficult to be aware of how one is still adapting.
02
Nov 2003Revolted in Shanghai
Three of my esteemed colleagues made a pleasure trip to Shanghai recently. They managed to have a decent time, but they returned somewhat disgusted with the portion of the expat community that they came into contact with. I listened with grim interest to the recountings of their interactions with other foreigners. This is the city I’m moving to soon!
Greg’s account on Sinobling is verbose (and just a bit crude) but hilarious. Carl’s account was more centered on “the facts” but amusing and telling as well. (Alf fans should also check these out.)
A few excerpts:
Carl:
The way I see it, is that all these middle-class, recent college graduates from the western world flood into Shanghai and are instantly flung into the upper echelons of society both socially and monetarily. And how do they react? Like total assholes, that’s how.
Greg:
After leaving the bathroom I joined up with Carl and encouraged him to leave (which for the record took very little cajoling). The price, pomp, and pretension was a bit more than I could stand. Furthermore, if being “seen” means being ignored and looked down upon by legions of charlatans content in wallowing in their own mountebankery I’d just as soon stay home and get drunk in my bathrobe.
Of course, I’ve been to Shanghai, so such accounts come as no surprise to me. But even though Shanghai’s bar scene is not one of the reasons for my move, now that I’m actually going to move soon, such accounts linger in my mind a bit longer….
[NOTE: I’ve got a few good possibilities, but I’m still looking for a job in Shanghai that starts in January. Any leads would be greatly appreciated! Please e-mail me.]
02
Nov 2003Rooftop Halloween Party
So last Friday was the ZUCC teacher Halloween Party at the “Rooftop Bar”:
The teachers in the pictures are (l-r, t-b): Greg as “Bleeding Face Scream Character,” Carl as “Steve McQueen,” Chris as “David Carradine,” and then in the bottom row John B as “Infinite Loop” (AKA “Guy Drinking Beer”), one of the Australians (I’m not sure which one that is — they’re both tall!) as “a KKK member ,” Alf as a “Drunken Cowboy,” me as a “Badass Ninja,” and Russell as a “Crazy Space Ape.”
The costumes were all thrown together pretty last minute, so some of them came out surprisingly well. I was very pleased with my ninja costume which I made myself out of a 30 RMB bolt of black cloth (of which I only used half).
The party was a mix of foreign teachers, Chinese students, a few foreign friends, and various Chinese friends. The bar let us take over the rooftop for free (including the sound system), and we were even allowed to bring our own liquor! They still sold way more beers than usual. Only problem was the Chinese friends didn’t mingle very well. I would have thought that there were enough Chinese-speaking foreigners and English-speaking Chinese that everyone would have enough people to talk to. Oh well.
30
Oct 2003ZUCC: Haven of Exotic Sports
John just got his football! That means there is great fun to be had in the days to come at ZUCC. We played soccer a few times (I can’t believe they got me to play soccer — a sport which I normally can’t stand playing), but now John’s football can sweep away such foolishness.
I use the term “exotic,” of course, because American football does not exist here, and to the Chinese, its rules are still a mystery. That’s OK — I think we’d feel guilty sticking our students hard. Poor little guys. I don’t think any of them have ever played a full-contact sport. We foreign teachers will have fun hurting each other in the name of sports, though.
The other “exotic” to be introduced to ZUCC is baseball. One of the teachers has taken it upon himself to teach his English classes baseball and English baseball idioms every semester. So there’s always a day when you can look outside and see his class playing baseball for the very first time, on a makeshift “diamond.” It’s quite cute, and very amusing. The students seem to enjoy trying something new.
29
Oct 2003Unbelievable
I’ll be the first to admit that Chinese are some of the most caring, dedicated parents in the world, willing to sacrifice anything for their children. But they also go to the opposite extreme as well, from time to time. I took the picture below yesterday, on the streets of Hangzhou, while riding my bike.
Doesn’t this lady realize that any sudden stop will send her precious baby careening into the busy street? There was actually much more traffic than it seems from this picture. She was going through busy intersections like this. Also, what you can’t see is the baby seat on the back of her bike, which she elected not to use in her infinite wisdom.
Later I felt kind of guilty for taking pictures of her but not pointing out how dangerous what she was doing was.
27
Oct 2003"Catch and Kill Bill"
I was pretty sleepy in Chinese class today. I didn’t get enough sleep last night, and the teacher’s explanations of the subtle differences between 4 different Chinese words somehow wasn’t jolting me into the desired state of consciousness. I desperately wanted to yawn, but that would be really rude to the teacher if she saw it, so I kept trying to sneak one in when she’d turn to the board to write, but then she would always turn around just a bit too soon, forcing me to clamp my mouth shut and depriving me of full yawn satisfaction at every attempt.
What did wake me up, though, was the teacher’s explanation of the word pī (劈), meaning “to chop, to cleave.” Somehow she decided a good point of reference was Tarantino’s new movie Kill Bill, in which someone’s head is cleaved in two with a katana, apparently. I was amazed. “You’ve seen it already?” I asked her, forgetting the whole point of the reference. (This was a woman who loved Taiwan’s sappy Meteor Garden — not someone likely to be into such a violent movie.) No, she hadn’t, but she’d seen ads online, and some head-cleaving image had stuck in her mind. Then we went off on a tangent about whether you could buy a pirated copy on the streets of Hangzhou yet. (We decided you could probably find it, but not better than a camcorder copy.)
I’ve never been a Tarantino fan, but this movie sure is creating a stir. It’s even trickled into my Chinese classroom. I’m intrigued.
The English title “Kill Bill” is translated into Chinese as something like “Catch and Kill Bill.” The Chinese tend to prefer a 4-character name over a 3-character name, and since “Bill” gets transliterated into the 2-character Bi’er, the “kill” part has two characters to play with. The translators decided to add the “pursuit” concept that the plot revolves around to the 1-character “kill” word.
So I’ll be watching the streets to catch that DVD release.
26
Oct 2003Chinese Class Report
So sometime in September, when the teaching semester started, I also started studying Chinese full-time at Zhejiang University of Technology (ZUT). After talking with the administration, I was placed directly into the advanced class without having to take the placement test. Before classes started I was a little apprehensive about that decision, but I needn’t have been.
There are only four students in the advanced class. There’s a Korean guy, a Korean girl, a girl from Kyrgyzstan, and me. Everyone is in their twenties, and we all get along fine. All conversation between us, both inside and outside class, is in Chinese (with the exception of the two Koreans).
I have five classes: Intensive Reading, Reading and Writing, Conversation Topics, Survey of Chinese Society, and HSK Prep. I like my classes, and I think they’re just what I’m looking for: extensive and intensive reading practice, and extreme vocabulary acquisition. What’s a little disappointing about my classes is that, the HSK prep aside, all the classes pretty much follow the same format: (1) discuss new vocabulary, (2) read the text, (3) go over any difficult parts in the text, (4) answer the reading comprehension questions, (5) practice the vocabulary and grammar patterns highlighted by the book for that selection.
It’s a pretty typical way of examining a text, and I suppose there’s nothing glaringly wrong with it, but was it naive of me to expect four different classes to have four different class structures? The above pattern seems best fitted to Intensive Reading. So far there have only been two minor writing assignments for the Reading and Writing class. I really like my Conversation Topics teacher, but I was hoping she’d do activities to get us to talk more. Since we’re all advanced, we could really do some fun stuff. But we don’t. The teacher of Survey of Chinese Society is a learned guy with a Ph.D. in ancient Chinese lit. He’s gotten into some different material in the form of poetry and history of the Chinese writing system, but I wish he’d do it more.
The reason I’m so critical of my classes, of course, is that I’m also a teacher of a foreign language. I’ve taken theory courses on how to teach, I’ve been teaching for over five years, I’ve written a little guide on teaching English in China, and I’ve written a book on the topic which will soon be published (but no more details until it is!). So I have certain expectations of my Chinese counterparts. Unfortunately, those counterparts were products of the same educational system which begot the listless Chinese learners I’m faced with in my own classroom. It’s not that these teachers are not enthusiastic or good at what they do — it’s that their methods largely come from a system where the students are all passive note-copying machines.
So what do I do about it? Well, I’m still trying to figure out the best way to suggest some more communication-oriented classroom activities to my Conversation Topics teacher, but I will. I might just take some of my own Spoken English classroom activities and translate them into Chinese and let her take a look. I’m going to be bring in some materials for my Survey of Chinese Society teacher to discuss with us. He’s got a Ph.D. in ancient lit, so next week I’m going to ask him some questions about the Chinese in The Art of War (孙子兵法). He already said it’s OK. I’m going to be writing for my Reading and Writing class, whether or not it’s assigned. (How can she complain about having to correct one student’s compositions, only once a week?) I’m going to be trying hard to stay awake in my Intensive Reading class. One thing that I’ve learned is that even if you already know something that’s being explained, you can benefit a lot by listening carefully to the way it’s explained in Chinese. And, of course, I’m going to show these teachers with all my questions in class just what it means to have an active American in the classroom.
For clarification, I’d just like to note that I’m only studying Chinese formally for one semester, and I paid for it with my own hard-earned RMB, so I intend to get the most out of it. That explains my attitude. Also, what’s both encouraging and annoying is that even though I ask the most questions, it seems that everyone else is really eager to hear the answers as well. So I’m either asking the questions my classmates didn’t think to ask but nevertheless want to know the answers to, or I’m asking the questions that my classmates were too timid to ask. Either way, I feel confident that I’m not the “annoying student who asks too many questions.”
Finally, I’d like to say that I think I made the right decision to study at ZUT instead of the more prestigious Zhejiang University. The number one reason is convenience. I am a 20-minute (harrowing) bike ride away from ZUT, but about an hour away from Zhejiang University, either by bike or by bus. Furthermore, I like my teachers, I like my classmates, I like my class size, and I think these classes are accomplishing my goals of increasing my vocabulary, making me a better reader, and equipping me to kick ass on the HSK which is coming up in mid-December.
[Note: I’m still looking for a job in Shanghai. All leads are greatly appreciated.]22
Oct 2003The Anti-Apple
Recently one of my students presented an interesting gift to me from her hometown, Jiaxing (¼ÎÐË). It’s a kind of “fruit” (?) called líng (Áâ) in Chinese. According to my New Age Chinese-English Dictionary, it’s called a “water caltrop” or a “ling” in English. In any case, when she kindly gave me this plant-like alien-spawn, I had no idea what the heck it was.
Below are some pictures I took of the ling.
The first thing you have to do is get the green outer skin off the ling. It seemed to me that the best way to do that would be breaking the ling in half, and then proceed to peel from the rupture. I promptly did so, which earned me a disapproving frown from my student. Oh well, it worked. (Apparently the Chinese way to start peeling is to bite into the bitter outer skin and begin at that point.)
Once you get the skin off, you’re left with this little white lump. It kind of looks like a piece of peeled apple. Then you pop it in your mouth and chew, and discover it has the exact texture and consistentcy of a crisp apple… but none of the sweetness. So instead of that tart appley flavor, you get an almost water chestnut-like eating experience. It’s rather odd.
Thanks go to my student for introducing me to a new weird food. (I suppose I should mention she’s the same student who once wrote extensively for the now defunct ZUCC Blog and now maintains her own blog.)
22
Oct 2003新的州长
最近我跟我的中国朋友谈论了施瓦辛格*当美国加州新州长的事情。她说（希望我没有搞乱她说的话）：
我觉得很糟糕……
我觉得美国真的是个什么都可以发生的地方。
如果在中国成龙也这样当了政治家你们会怎么想？
我觉得她说得好。但也许，也许施瓦辛格州长真的能够改善加州的情况。他毕竟已经当了州长，只能看他的表现。
* 哎哟，学外国人的“中文名字”真烦！
20
Oct 2003Craptacular Notes
The last performance that the ZUT foreign students will be involved in ended yesterday afternoon. One of the hostesses, Weika (I only know her by her Chinese name, 维卡) from Kyrzygstan, didn’t show. All her lines came right before mine, so they decided to just give them all to me. So not only did I have double the lines, but I no longer knew any of my cues. I did a pretty good job memorizing all my new lines quickly, but when we got onstage some of the other students started screwing up their lines and fudging them, which caused me to do the same. Overall, it came off OK, but the first performance was much more polished. Anyway, we all refused to do another performance, so that’s all behind us now.
After seeing them for the second time, I also remember which numbers were most impressive. One was a Mongolian dance. Really cool. The girl was amazingly limber, and did the whole dance with a stack of bowls on her head, which never fell. Then there was this group of three guys which did a dance number to a Michael Jackson medley. Now, I know that sounds lame, but they were really good! They had moves in perfect sync with every single grunt and squeal that Michael Jackson made. Good stuff. The last one was a dance which was supposedly inspired by a true love story set during the Communist Revolution. The Chinese name is 红色恋人 (“Red Lovers”). I’ll have to look more into that story. Anyway, their dance was really cool because the guy kept picking the girl up and flipping her around and stuff, and at one point the girl even held the guy up in the air! Nice.
Here’s an excerpt from an online chat session I had with a friend who teaches at another campus of ZUT (and didn’t realize I am a student at the same school on a different campus). It kinda relates to the whole craptacular thing:
> She says:
any fun plans for the weekend?
> 潘吉 says:
yeah, like HOMEWORK and being in the 50th ANNIVERSARY CRAPTACULAR at my other school
> She says:
our school has a 50th anniversary too! i was not involved in the craptacular but i was a judge at the equally crappy english song competition last night
> She says:
two guesses for the two most popular songs that were sung?
> 潘吉 says:
there are too many
> 潘吉 says:
big, big world?
> 潘吉 says:
yesterday once more?
> She says:
YES. and YES.
> She says:
damn. you are good.
> 潘吉 says:
really? those are the two??
> She says:
yep!
> 潘吉 says:
wow. Good thing I’ve been here over 3 years or I might not have gotten that!
Anyone living in China is all too familiar with the fact that the same 10 English songs are played over and over in China. Another one that I really hate is Hotel California. I didn’t like it before I came to China, and now I despise it from the depths of my being.
[Note: I’m still looking for a job in Shanghai. All leads are greatly appreciated.]19
Oct 2003Craptaculars
Matt of the Nanjingren blog (one of the newest additions to the Sinosplice Network) came to Hangzhou this weekend with some of his classmates. Unfortunately I was only able to spend one meal with him because my schedule is rather full this weekend. It’s fuller than usual because I’ve been coerced into participating in Zhejiang University of Technology’s 50th Anniversary Craptacular.
I don’t pretend to invent the word “craptacular,” but I’ve noticed it’s already in common usage among foreigners in China for one simple reason: China loves the Craptacular. What do I mean by craptacular? Basically, it’s an onstage event containing a rather long lineup of acts, most of which fall into one of several categories. The defining features of the craptacular are:
- Hosts. They always come in gleaming male-female pairs, overflowing with bubbly super-standard Mandarin and armed with smiles that make your eyes ache.
- Songs. Solos, duos, or en masse. China loves live singing, be it in the classroom or onstage.
- Dances. Minority dances, folk dances, solos, duos, it’s all here. Whoopee.
- Comedy. Short skits and crosstalk (相声), a kind of Chinese two-person stand-up comedy. Comedy has a comparatively small role, song and dance hogging the spotlight.
- Glitz. Everyone wears bright flashy costumes, the lighting is top-notch, and accompanying stage decorations are a big priority. Whenever possible, craptaculars are recorded on video.
Almost without exception, it’s mind-numbingly awful stuff from the foreigner’s perspective, even if he understands it.
The most famous craptacular in China is the nationally televised Chinese New Year Party (春节联欢晚会). Pretty much every Chinese person I talk to agrees that it gets worse every year, ever reaching new depths of raw bore-power. Yet most Chinese households tune in faithfully every year. (This is one reason I’m not a big fan of Chinese New Year, but I won’t go into that now….) There are minor craptaculars going on all the time for various reasons (or no reason), and you can see them on TV in China all the time. If you have a masochistic streak (or if you just get unlucky as I did in ZhouShan) you can even go see them live. Sometimes universities — tools of the state patriotic entities that they are — put on their own craptaculars. Thus we have come back around to the topic of ZUT’s craptacular.
The students in the advanced Chinese class at ZUT that couldn’t come up with an air-tight excuse were forced to get involved in the foreign students’ event in the 50th Anniversary Craptacular. So, yeah, that means me. We have to put on nice clothes and get up on stage in front of a huge audience and speak Chinese into microphones. Some of us even have to try to be funny in Chinese doing skits onstage. Fortunately that’s not me. I’m just a host.
So I was not happy about this because it involves a big time commitment. Memorizing lines, rehearsing, and performing not once, but three times! So this weekend I’m pretty busy performing onstage for ZUT.
All that negative “craptacular” talk and whining aside, there were some good points about being in the performance:
- I got to meet some of the other performers, some of whom are pretty cool people.
- Some of the performances really are very good. In particular, I liked two of the songs and the crosstalk performance. Although the crosstalk comedy kind of wore on after a while, it was really easy to understand and quite entertaining.
- There were so many hot girls involved. Now that’s entertainment!
15
Oct 2003Shanghai-bound
This decision has been a long time in the making, but I’ve finally committed to it. Come January, I will leave my beloved ZUCC and continue my life in Shanghai. I am still looking for a job.
This is a call to all my friends and readers! In China, the best jobs are always found through connections, so if anyone can help me out, I’d be eternally grateful.
My qualifications are basically over 5 years of teaching experience, understanding of linguistics, and high level Chinese language ability. I also have experience working within a Chinese bureaucracy, as I have worked as foreign teacher liaison (and partly as recruiter) for the past year. There’s more in my resume, which is online. I really hope to find something where I can use at least some Chinese on the job.
Thanks to the information on Wang Jianshuo’s site, I had an interview with Microsoft Global Technical Engineering Center on Tuesday, which went well. Unfortunately, they would need me to start in mid-December, and the ZUCC semester runs until January. So I couldn’t take that.
I’ll probably talk about the reasons for the move, etc., later, but for now I just wanted to get it out there. I need a job! Please e-mail me.
12
Oct 2003Overheard
You can tell by listening in on our conversations that we ZUCC teachers are fully dedicated to our ongoing intellectual development.
#1
“The word ‘bomb-ass’ definitely came after ‘the bomb.'”
“No, I was using ‘bomb-ass’ way before ‘the bomb’ was ever used.”
“What?! You’re crazy! ‘The bomb’ obviously came first!”
“No way, dude. ‘Bomb-ass’ came first.”
#2
“But what do you do when the gypsies use the baby throwing trick?”
“You just catch the baby and sell it later.”
“But then they’ve got your wallet!”
“But you can sell the baby.”
“But who’s going to want a gypsy baby?”
“You can always sell a baby.”
The above conversations are real. Names are withheld to protect the poor fools who produced these inane dialogue snippets.