Blog


30

Nov 2003

Movable Type

This past weekend I finally made the switch over to Movable Type. I’ve been meaning to do it for a while, influenced by John B, Russell, Andrea, Brendan, and Adam. I recognized the superior blogging technology and wanted to use it, but I was just lazy.

I didn’t completely relinquish my lazy ways, though. The switchover is not yet total. Although the installation was utterly painless, I haven’t done the archive pages and some other fine tuning. There’s no good way to import the Haloscan comments. (This one looks good, but apparently the plugin is not online!) There are lots of little problems.

Why does my <p> text formatting go awry any time I post a picture, use a blockquote, or use a list? (It’s especially obvious on my Chinese blog; I’ve made some cosmetic alterations on this one.)

Why doesn’t the Textile plugin work even though I followed the installation instructions exactly?

OK, sorry this post is incredibly boring. Everything should be squared away soon. In the meantime, the old Blogger archives are still there.


28

Nov 2003

Thanksgiving and Melancholy

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and ZUCC teachers and friends had a great meal at the Holiday Inn. 148 rmb per person is pretty steep, but it was all you can eat (and all you can drink), and the food was top notch. I had at least 5 plates. I was hurting. It was all worthwhile.

There was great turkey, with gravy. There was cranberry relish. There was pumpkin pie. There almost wasn’t mashed potatoes, but Heather, having read my account of Thanksgiving at Holiday Inn last year, fixed that problem. She called ahead and requested mashed potatoes at the buffet. As a result, there were mashed potatoes, and they were good. There were tons of other non-Thanksgivingesque selections as well, such as sushi, steak, “roast beef salad,” and pasta. But we were all happy to see the Thanksgiving traditional dishes represented.

So I guess now it’s back to Chinese food every meal, every day.

Regarding the melancholy, there are a whole lot of factors contributing, and it’s a strange mix of emotions. I have already committed to a move in early January, and I’m not looking forward to leaving Hangzhou and all my good friends here behind (look at Greg’s sweet Thanksgiving post). Yet it’s time for a change. So there’s a lot of excitement and uncertainty too. I think I’ve found a great job, but it’s not quite finalized yet, so I don’t want to announce it publicly.

Also, next month I take the HSK. That’s the big Chinese “TOEFL.” I have been skipping too many classes lately and not studying nearly enough. It’s time to really buckle down. If I don’t get an 8, I’m going to be sorely disappointed and pissed at myself for not working harder. I know I can get an 8.

Also, I haven’t been blogging much lately. It’s partly because I don’t have much time for it, but also because lately I’m feeling a little unhappy about the whole deal. I’m not sure why, exactly, and it’s hard to pin down the exact emotions, but I have some vague ideas.

One of the biggest changes to the “China Blog Community” of late has been the addition of Living in China. It’s a community blog in every sense of the word, and the founders did an amazing job. The site looks awesome, and there are new posts frequently, on a wide range of topics. The site is just so professional. It deserves every hit it gets.

Still, there’s something about it that feels strange. I agree with Richard’s assessment. I suppose I really like the process of browsing blogs, and I’ve never been a fan of RSS feeds. Now it kind of feels like if you don’t have an RSS feed then you’re out in the cold. I guess the need for RSS is an inevitable development given the tremendous surge in the number of China blogs. But I still feel a little bit like the Wal-Mart of China blogs has arrived, if that makes any sense.

I’m not trying to criticize Living in China, though. What they’re doing is great, and my reaction is strictly a personal one.

Along those lines, though, it’s been disturbing to me seeing the personal, nasty side of the China blogs. Attacks on Glutter, Hailey…. Why is “who’s right” always the most important issue? Why do blogs tend to encourage raging, ruthless egos?

I guess I just miss the good old days when everything seemed so intimate and friendly. But things change, and that’s fine. For the time being, though, I’m very content with being pretty quiet. But I’ll stick around.


25

Nov 2003

Fixing what's screwed up

You gotta admire people who see a problem and then actually do something about it. I’m not talking about just words, I’m talking actions. I try to adhere to this philosophy in my own life (hey, the Sinosplice Network!), and I applaud it when I see it.

One of the things foreigners quickly recognize as very wrong in China is the horrible dance music played in clubs. It’s really bad. You really need a good dose of alcohol to withstand it for any decent length of time.

When Wilson was here, he tried to bring some better music to Chinese clubbers by DJing at two different clubs in Hangzhou. Now some friends of mine are taking a slightly different approach. They’re renting out a club, hiring their own DJs, playing good music, and charging a small admission. They’re even keeping beer prices low somehow. This could be the start of something big. Definitely check it out if you’re in Hangzhou Saturday, November 29th. It’s all going down at “Sacred Chrees Pub” on Ding An Road by West Lake Boulevard.


(Note: DJ “Nasdaq Composite” has his own site!)


25

Nov 2003

Clear Skies

I think Hangzhou is a great city as Chinese cities go, but one of the things I really don’t like very much about it is the weather. Particularly the winter weather, not because it’s cold but because it’s basically just rain, rain, rain. Hence my last post, which was basically an elaborate “I hate puddles” whine.

That’s why I am really happy about our weather of late. It’s winter already, but the weather’s great, and doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. Loving it. (Too bad it’s causing a drought.)

Click for Hangzhou Weather (weather.com)


22

Nov 2003

Uncooperative Water

Water flows downhill. This is a simple fact that has been pretty well mastered by the average 8-year-old. Yet somehow it seems to elude Chinese civil engineers. I speak, of course, of the deplorable condition of drainage engineering in Hangzhou. That “the things we take for granted back home just don’t apply here” is a tired, worn-out cliche, but we’re talking about the most basic principles of physics here. Water flows downhill. Place drains in low points, and the water will “magically” drain into them. Is that hard? I don’t know, maybe it actually is. But looking at the drains around my campus, they seem to be almost randomly placed. You know something is wrong when huge puddles and big thirsty drains live side by side in perfect harmony.

Here are some good examples of uselessly placed drains:

Pictures of water on the ZUCC campus not flowing anywhere:

Granted, none of the puddles are really deep. The pavement is reasonably flat. But it doesn’t really drain. If there is an absolute deluge, then the water will find the drains. That seems to be the guiding principle, though, instead of good old “water flows downhill.”

The greatest part is how the stubborn puddles are taken care of. Grounds maintenance staff sweep them into the drains. Yes, they sweep the water. With a broom. (Sorry, I didn’t manage to get a picture of that.)

Come on, China, you’ve got a space program now, for crying out loud. Let’s see a little better display of your mastery of gravity.


20

Nov 2003

Muzimei Correction

I made an erroneous assumption regarding “Muzimei” in my recent post about having a cold. Rainbow called me on it. I checked up on it (sort of). Today in my class of 27 college kids (aged 19-20), only 3 had ever even heard of Muzimei. Three! So my “all Chinese people know about her” comment was way off. If the majority of these web-surfing college kids don’t know who she is, then my exaggeration was out of line. Oops, my bad.

Maybe that 27 person sample was somehow ridiculously unrepresentative of Chinese youth, but I really don’t care that much to look into it. Up until today, every Chinese person I mentioned Muzimei to knew who she was (including my Chinese class teacher).

Regardless, China bloggers are going to town over Muzimei. Danwei is grabbing all the stories in Chinese media, the Gweilo is rejecting her, and Brainysmurf is covering it all.


18

Nov 2003

Wang's Observations

I have a Chinese teacher whose last name is Wang. All her students call her “Wang Laoshi” (laoshi means “teacher”), according to Chinese custom. She teaches my HSK prep class. Since the class only meets once a week for two hours, I see less of her than most of my other teachers, but I feel like I know her much better than the others. For one thing, I’ve known her longer. She tutored me for about half a year during my first year in China. For another, she seems much more straightforward about her feelings than a lot of Chinese people I meet.

Last week she shared with the HSK class a problem she’s been having with another class. She says her current intermediate level Chinese class is simply not willing to talk. At all. When she asks the class if someone can make a sentence using the new word, the whole class just stares down at their books, not daring to make eye contact. She waits patiently and encourages them, to no avail. If she asks a single person, she gets the same response. Trying to get just one sentence out of them is like pulling teeth. Even when she simply asks the class if they understand, she can’t get an answer. The only time the students show definite signs of life is when she writes on the chalkboard. They all magically spring into action, jotting everything down neatly in their notebooks. They seem to prefer it when she simply talks and writes, but that’s really boring for her, and not the most effective teaching method, either.
Wang Laoshi said that in the past she lost her temper and berated the students for their overly passive attitudes, which seemed to help the situation for a while. This semester, however, almost all her students are girls, and she doesn’t want to upset them.

So what’s with this class? Well, for one thing, they’re almost all Korean. Wang Laoshi asked the Korean students in the HSK prep class why they thought her intermediate level students were so incorrigibly passive. The Korean students reponded that it was because of their culture — the traditional Confucian style of education.

Wang Laoshi didn’t buy that. She said that Chinese students weren’t like that. That really made me smile, because I don’t think Wang Laoshi knows how passive Chinese students can be in an English class taught by a foreigner. Still, though, the way she described her students made them more inactive than any Chinese students I’ve ever taught.

Wang Laoshi’s observations on international students of Chinese were thus:

  1. Students from Western countries are much more active in the classroom. Wang Laoshi prefers there to be at least a few students from Europe or the Americas to liven up the atmosphere.
  2. Students from Western countries want to spend classtime mastering a few grammar patterns so that they can feel confident about their usage.
  3. Asian students want to cover as many grammar patterns as possible in class, and review them on their own.

Another thing I think Wang Laoshi doesn’t realize is that a lot of Chinese teachers don’t encourage class participation so much. I think some of the other Chinese teachers wouldn’t be so bothered by the lifelessness of her students. It just disappoints me that an excellent teacher like Wang Laoshi is wasted on such undeserving grammar sponges.


18

Nov 2003

感觉不到

今天在汉语读写课上我们看了一篇关于孔子的文章。虽然生词很多,而且带了一点古文的味道,我没觉得特别难懂。对我来说最难的方面就是语气。尽管看得懂作家的意思,我仍摸不着他的态度。我觉得基本上我的语感还可以,但到了高一点的文学水平就不行。

其实这个问题跟我自己写的汉语也有关系。我用中文写文章时,就算我的语法没什么错误,用词也恰当,总是不清楚中国人对它会有什么反应。好象都是莫名其妙的反复试验。当然,到了这个汉语水平,不可能什么都感觉不到,但我总觉得我还缺少一种官能。

没办法,只能这样学习下去,在黑暗中进行…


18

Nov 2003

Stupid Cold

I was thinking of writing about Muzimei, since I’ve been reading her for a few weeks and all Chinese people know about her, but I guess it’s too late. Jeremy at Danwei covered it a while ago, and so did Andrea more recently over at Living in China.

“Muzimei” is a Chinese girl who got really famous on the internet by writing all about her sex life, including the identities of her partners. It’s kind of funny to me that someone can get so famous in China just by writing about sex. That trick is kind of played out in the West already.

But I’m not writing about Muzimei. I’m whining about my cold. It’s Day Two. Today I slumbered blissfully through my morning Chinese classes to get more rest, sucked in over 6 liters of water, and pounded vitamins too. Take that. Stupid cold.


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 2003

New China Blog List

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 2003

Just "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 2003

Who'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 2003

This 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 2003

Adapting

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.

Bedroom (1)

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.

Bedroom (2)

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.

apt-1

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.



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