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 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.
11
Oct 2003Alaric is at it again
Alaric Radosh has made a big splash in the tiny world of blogging in Chinese as a foreign language. His Chinese language blog has earned him a lot of respect from Chinese people and foreigners alike. I haven’t really mentioned it here before because it’s in Chinese, and most of my readers don’t read much Chinese.
Alaric has recently started a Chinese Language Blog and Study Journal in English, which he calls a “a companion to my Chinese language blog, journal of thoughts and goals, portal of community with other online students of Chinese-as-a-second language.” The guy’s writing really good stuff. Gold. I found his latest entry on Becoming an Avid Reader in Chinese particularly relevant to my current situation in my Chinese studies. If you’re studying Chinese, read what Alaric has to say. You will benefit.
09
Oct 2003Too much DNA
I didn’t have my usual Intensive Reading Chinese class today. Yesterday in class someone from the administration came and passed out special letters of invitation to the “First China Zhejiang Academic Festival” (首届中国浙江学术节). We were told if we went our taxi fares would be reimbursed, and we’d get a free lunch. We all decided to go.
Last week I was walking near West Lake with Russell and we passed a huge lavish meeting hall-type building. We weren’t sure exactly what it was. It turned out to be the Provincial People’s Congress Hall (浙江省人民大会堂), and that’s where the “Academic Festival” was. Today I showed up 10 minutes late and was greeted on the steps of the building and given a ticket and a special pass to wear around my neck (it said “特邀代表证”). Then I was ushered to my seat along with a classmate who happened to show up at the same time.
A word about the Congress Hall. It is massive. Lavish. Lush. Evidently no ordinary four walls and a roof will do when it comes to determining the will of the people. It’s like that place was built just to make painfully apparent the point that the government is squandering the people’s money on displays of opulence. (That said, it was cool to be there for an official function once and to have a “specially invited representative” pass.)
I was seated on the ground floor of the “show room,” but there were balconies on the second and third level which could be accessed by escalator. There were massive video screens on either side of the stage, showing a zoomed-in view of the “important” people seated on stage. This was their day to shine, to blab on and on about boring crap. You know they’re bullshitting when you hear them mention the “Three Represents” over and over.
The “award ceremony” was kinda amusing. This troop of girls in red qipao was parading around with plaques, handing them to the appropriate recipients. At one point sashes were handed out to outstanding scientists, but there weren’t enough to go around, and one guy didn’t get one, on stage, in front of everyone. Some Chinese guy behind me was calling out loudly and repeatledy, “HA! They’re short one!” Tactful.
Next the main speaker launched into an intensely boring and long-winded talk on DNA. I really don’t get it. Why was he talking about DNA? The talk was too basic for anyone in the field of biology, but a little too in-depth for anyone not. The guy was going on and on about Watson, Crick, Franklin, and Pauling, and all the details of the discovery of DNA’s double helical structure. It would have been interesting to hear a 5-minute talk on the subject, as I was familiar with it (my major freshman year of college was microbiology — I once wanted to go into geneetic engineering) and it was kinda interesting to hear it in Chinese, but this guy went on for an hour and a half with his neverending PowerPoint presentation! People were nodding off left and right. I did my best to keep my own drowsiness from getting too obvious, but I think I failed.
The talk did provide lots of vocabulary. I got to hear words like “double helix” and “cytoplasm” and “chromosome” in Chinese. Word of the day: 蛋白质 – protein. As you might expect, the word came up again and again, and I just think it’s a funny word. “Protein” in Chinese, translated literally into English, is “egg white essence.” That’s kinda funny in itself, but I can’t help also associating it with 蛋黄南瓜, a Chinese dish made with pumpkin and egg yolk (“egg yolk” translated literally from Chinese is “egg yellow”).
What redeemed the entire ordeal was the meal afterward. It was in a nice restaurant, and it was really good. Crab, shrimp, mussels, chicken, duck, tofu, asparagus, lotus, dates, nuts, and other stuff I can’t remember — all really good. Also, the waitresses had this habit of refilling my wine glass pretty fast, so I was well on my way to very happy by noon! I had to teach class at 1:30. I was very cheerful in class.
08
Oct 2003Dumb Pronunciation
That pronunciation guide I made turned out to be a big pain for me. It has gone through multiple revisions, but I think it’s pretty done now. The latest revisions included adding “pinyin clarifiers” in red which may very well only make it all more confusing. Oh well. I also changed the tone of my “condemnation” of pinyin to satisfy the pinyin fanatics out there who can’t bear to see the word “inconsistent” associated with pinyin (OK, that’s a joke — calm down).
I hope it’s more accurate, more balanced now. The “Background” section was never even supposed to be the important part, so those of you who haven’t done so already long ago can forget about it now. The people who were paying the most attention to it probably don’t need it anyway. The following is an e-mail I got from a learner who found my pages via Google.
> John,
> I have recently begun learning Mandarin. I knew there was a difference in pronunciation between j & zh, x & sh, q & ch, but I was very frustrated in my attempts to find a clear explanation of the difference. You’re website is like cool water in a desert! Marvelous!
> Thank you very much for putting so much effort into setting the record straight! Now, at last, I can get my pronunciation close enough that my tutor can help me fine tune it.
> Great job John! God bless you!
> Charles
That’s exactly what I made the pronunciation pages for. They’re working. I am content. Thank you everyone. I exit now to sleep, and to later arise and report another day on my Chinese studies which have been consuming so much of my time of late…
05
Oct 2003Independence is so overrated
In an age when young Americans are trying so hard to be independent it’s just so refreshing to see a sector of Chinese society charging full tilt in the opposite direction.
“My son has never been away from our family. He doesn’t talk much, is poor in managing his daily life and doesn’t even know how to wash his socks. I’m afraid that he will put aside his studies and indulge in playing computer games all day long.” Ms. Song, a lady from Nanjing, quit her job immediately upon hearing of her son’s acceptance to a college in Shanghai and rented an apartment near this school. According to Ms. Song, she has been with her son and supervising his studies since his elementary school years. “I didn’t watch him closely for a while during his second year of junior high school because of my busy schedule and during this time my son would often sneak out to play computer games, therefore causing his grades to drop.” Since then, she would rather sacrifice a steady job than to leave her son alone in his studies.
Read the whole article. It’s pretty hilarious.