Greetings from the Road

My first post after the family arrival. We spent their first few days in Shanghai, with me laughing every time something I now take for granted startled them, and filling the role of trip planner, navigator, translator, food orderer, negotiator and ATM. We went to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition, which had a rather uninteresting diorama of the city as it will look in the year 2020 and half-attempts to explain the city’s efforts in municipal development, transportation, greenification and tourism. The museum did, however, have a lovely exhibit of paintings done by Dali in the 1970s inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy and other works. In all, as I may have said before, Chinese museums tend to leave a lot wanting (The Shanghai Museum, at which I saw the collection of Chinese ceramics and slightly condescending “Hall of Minority Ethnicities”, is the only major exception to the rule I have seen thus far), so no one was particularly surprised, but the exhibit was at least different if not informative. We toured around the city, did some shopping and had Christmas dinner at an Irish Pub with an open bar and tables full of loud expats.

From Shanghai we were on to the more Chinese and (somehow) more daunting Chengdu, where we met up with one of my classmates and her family for a Sichuan Hotpot dinner (lots of fun guessing with the non-English menu resulted in some choices not often appealing to your typical American eater: “bamboo ____” proved not to be bamboo shoots but an edible fungus that grows in bamboo forests and resembled a sea cucumber, and what seemed like a safe choice of chicken turned out to be chicken kidneys). Still, I maintain that accidental orders are half the fun of hotpot (the first time I went this semester we ended up with duck’s feet, which turned out wonderfully if left to really boil). Chengdu is big and ugly and utilitarian, with small pockets of charming Chinese temples and gardens. Unfortunately its main appeal is as a base camp for trips deeper into Sichuan, for which time did not allow. Still, we enjoyed spicy foods and a Tibetan neighborhood that sold prayer flags, Buddhist accoutrements and, of all things, chrome blenders, saw a Sichuan opera/variety show performance, drank tea in a Zen monastery courtyard, and had a wonderful DVD shopping excursion that took us weaving through stalls in an electronics market, and suddenly swept to a back stairwell and a small room crammed with bootleg movies and tv shows, where we were allowed to browse to our hearts’ content.

Now we are in Lijiang, in the Yunnan province, and for the first time in two months I find myself not in a city. Lijiang is known for its Old Town, a Song Dynasty village turned backpacker haven that has been entirely rebuilt since it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1996, thus proving that the Chinese can forge and replicate anything, from purses to DVDs to iPhones to German beer to money to historical towns. The town is now full of quaint courtyarded guesthouses and cafes with western/Tibetan/Japanese/Chinese/Local menus and beers and coffee and internet and tour booking, and stores selling all manner of tourist crap, all tied together by cute narrow alleyways with white walls, ceramic tile roofs, red lanterns and small waterways. We had fun guessing which of the locals (and there are many, all old, all in traditional dress) were paid to wander around as part of the local color and quaint scenery. One old guy was carrying a hawk on his arm, identical gaggles of old women came and went through the town squares, and occasionally lavishly decorated ponies were led down the narrow streets. It all seemed very choreographed, but there is something nice about it anyway.

As I post this we are getting ready to leave for an overnight trek in Tiger Leaping Gorge, so I’ll try and post when we get back.

addendum

8. Pajamas. I have on many occasions, especially since it’s started to get colder, seen people of all ages walking around on the street in their pajamas. Sometimes they’re plain, matching cloth or flannel sets, sometimes fuzzy fleece with teddy bears. I don’t get it. They wear bedroom slippers, too. Once I saw someone walking down the street fully dressed, but with big furry orange slippers on.

It's a Mystery

Living in China for several months, there are many customs and trends to which I have adjusted. Early posts centered on the novelties that came with life in China, the things I couldn’t figure out or found troublesome and foreign. Recently these posts have become fewer, partly because I now take many of these differences for granted. I have in many ways become accustomed to life in China. There are, however, still some things that make me realize that I will never fully understand China, its culture or its people. In no particular order, I give them to you now.

1. I was in our campus convenience store trying to spend the cash remaining on my ID card, and found a pile of black and red tote bags embroidered with the words “Trader Joe’s”. I can understand seeing these in a random market with lots of fake purses and such, but a college campus?

2. Chinese fashion and hair. I went shopping last weekend and we saw quite some interesting outfits, including a 40-year-old woman in black leather ankle-length pants, a bright pink cardigan and sneakers. Also one hairstyle that seems to be popular is a perm with lots of choppy layers and a big fan of ironed flat bangs.

3. Cabs. They are convenient and generally cheap, but in Hangzhou they all disappear around 5:00 when they have to check in or switch drivers. It is impossible to get a cab anywhere in the city from about 4:00 to 5:30, peak traffic time and the time when the buses are so crammed full of people that you can rarely get on.

4. China is developing, very quickly. Anyone who reads the newspapers will of course say “well, yeah of course”. But my point is that on the ground development is taking place at a speed that is unheard of in other countries. Consider: I went to a favorite fried noodle place near school one day, and the cooking was taking place, as usual, on the sidewalk in front, next to a table of ingredients. I went back for lunch the next day and suddenly there was an almost completely done kitchen enclosure. A restaurant near school closed down, was entirely gutted, had no front wall for a good period of time, and reopened about two weeks later completely renovated. I heard a story of a street-crossing underpass in Urumqi built in anticipation of greater Olympics-related tourism (Urumqi is really far away from Beijing) start to finish, including outfitting it with retail shops, in a week.

5. The Olympics are everywhere: sponsors have been displaying the Beijing 2008 logo on ads and products for years, every city has official Olympics merchandise stores (and knockoff goods in all the markets), the gym at the University I was studying at was decorated on the outside with the Olympic rings. I know it’s a matter of national pride, but it’s really pervasive.

6. Firecrackers. Rumor has it that during the Chinese New Year, many foreigners fear for their lives due to the number of fireworks and firecrackers people set off of their rooftops, and I believe it. Especially at weddings and grand openings, firecrackers are used in abundance, and you can often hear them echoing from farther-off places, having no idea what they are celebrating. It’s endless. When that restaurant near school re-opened, there was an entire are of sidewalk covered with firecrackers, filling the whole area with smoke and deafening sound.

7. English education. The kid who begged near a bar we frequented spoke practically accent-free (though limited) English, but most of our roommates, echoing spoken Chinese, put a vowel after every consonant sound. I doubt any of their teachers have ever been to English-speaking countries, and the material they study is more absurdly useless than what we used to study. In the course of helping my roommate with her homework, I had to explain to her what Hepatitis was, and explain words like “hoist” taken from a passage explaining US flag protocol. One friend found her roommate memorizing words by letter (for instance, one day just reading a list of words that start with ‘A’). I once looked at my roommate’s corrected homework. The sentence she’d written in response to a question (I don’t know if it was the right answer or not) was grammatically shaky but not wrong, and then the teacher had, in her corrections, added an adjective in an entirely incorrect spot, turning the sentence into nonsense.

Phase Two Begins

I am so sorry for the lapse in entries. The last few weeks of my semester consisted largely of speaking English, wasting time and going out to eat non-Chinese food. I had an interesting time browsing a Chinese bookstore and made pancakes in the dorm with two of my friends. Nothing seemed particularly noteworthy.

Yesterday we had our graduation ceremony, officially ended the language pledge, tested out our roommates’ English abilities and said our goodbyes. I spent the large part of the afternoon lying around with two of my friends singing cheesy songs and wasting time, then set off to take a train to Shanghai, where about half of the people in our program were staying in two hotel rooms to have one last night out. Well, it’s a good thing I gave myself plenty of time to get to the train station, because I first found myself not at the East Train Station but the East Bus Station. I calmly marched myself to the front of the line for cabs, and in my most desperate sounding Chinese pleaded with the attendant to let me get a cab, because I needed to catch my train. At the train station I unloaded my bags onto the X-ray machine, presented my ticket and was told, to my dismay, that I wanted not the East station but the South one. You can’t make this shit up. I was embarrassed that I was still having this kind of trouble after three months. Fighting back tears of frustration, I loaded up my bags again and set about trying to get another cab. I decided if I couldn’t make the train, I’d go back to the school, spend a last night with a few friends still around, sleep in a friend’s room as I no longer had my key, get to Shanghai in the morning. As it is I made the train with time to spare, though in the end I found myself falling asleep in a club at two in the morning (I only slept about four hours on Friday), and dragged myself back to the hotel to sleep. I am now killing time in Shanghai with a few friends, trying to figure out a plan for the week (relaxing around here, possibly with a side trip to Suzhou or Nanjing), and waiting for Sunday when my mom and sister arrive.

Checking In

Just a quick note to let everyone know I'm still here, though my activities for the past week have been limited to cruising around town, class, writing a 2000 character (roughly equivalent to 8 pages typed English) term paper for my one-on-one class, dinners and evenings out, a mild stomach bug and sleep.

We're heading into exam week, and then I'll be off travelling around the country until January 21. I hope you'll all keep up with my adventures, I'll try to keep posting wherever I go.

'Tis the Season

Some time ago, I started looking around online for information about places to celebrate Christmas in Shanghai. It seems most hotels of a certain size offer some sort of holiday celebration, but their idea of what a Westerner wants from a Christmas dinner seem a bit off. All of the options were filled with lavishly tacky events and activities, and pathetic strings of adjectives. At least ten used the word ‘sumptuous’. Here are some of the particularly creative descriptions:

***A children's choir and violin music will entertain you while you dine in a casual atmosphere at our Coffee Shop. Every guest will be presented with a special gift. Buffet dinner is priced at RMB 198 net per person, half price for children under 12 years old. At our Banquet Hall, a Christmas Eve gala will take place. Traditional Christmas favourites, mystery entertainments and generous lucky draw prizes await you.
***With the breathtaking Shanghai skyline as a backdrop for an unforgettable holiday celebration rejoice in the holiday spirit with choir carols and Santa & Santarina delivering gifts to kids and greetings to all.
***Christmas is a season of peace, hope, harmony, joy, sharing and love ... Med_00, our Mediterranean restaurant will prepare a set of dinner for you and your beloved one on Christmas Eve. Of course, we didn't forget to prepare Christmas carols, lucky draws, gifts from Santa's magic bag and lots of fun, including live entertainment. A boogie Christmas Eve party with the hottest music is ready at Flanagan's (Lobby Level). All party tickets available in the hotel lobby from 9:00am-8:00pm, from December 9 onwards.
***Christmas is round the corner again! We have a sumptuous Christmas dinner and dazzling entertainment including games, a jazz show and lots of prizes. Our Thai-style massage, foot massage and facial treatment will help you find relief from fatigue and freshen up your body totally.
***Celebrate a crystal Christmas Eve at the Westin Shanghai. Enjoy a sumptuous buffet dinner, free flow of bubbly and selected beverages. Door gifts, party favourites, a lucky draw and live entertainment are waiting for you.

And my personal favorite:

***This year at the Purple Mountain Hotel Shanghai a brand new Christmas is waiting for you. Carols among dim candle light, in which the Virgin Mary stands up and moves towards you, holding the holy infant ... Santa Claus rushes in on his sleigh with jingling bells, delivering his first gift to you. The carnival begins. Opera, magic, acrobatics, Latin dance and a fashion show flood over in a feast for your eyes, while your stomach is being crammed with delicacies from across the world ...

Cultural Exchange

Near the start of the semester, Xueqin and I discovered a café across town from school, on the West side of the city where many foreigners seem to live and where interesting restaurants abound. This café is not only a peaceful study spot, it’s also home to a wonderful menu of western style foods, from breakfasts to sandwiches and salads and pasta and entrees. We took a few friends there a couple of weeks ago to get our fixes of BLT, mac and cheese, salad and apple pie, and yesterday decided to take our roommates out and give them a taste of American cuisine.

Five of us and two roommates (mine and Yazhen’s) ended up at the restaurant, and proceeded to try and explain the options to Xiaojun and Lifang, neither of whom had eaten anything that could be considered “Western” and didn’t come from a fast food place. In direct contrast to the general trend, the English menu had many more options than the Chinese one, onto which only a few western choices had been translated. In the end they asked us to order for them. We ended up getting them several dishes to share: a BLT, potato soup, fish and chips and apple pie. The result was an amazingly comical reverse of the hesitation and aversion to which we initially approached some Chinese dishes.

First to arrive at the table was the salad, which came free with the fish. Chinese people as a rule avoid raw vegetables, but both girls tried it, commenting at several vegetables they didn’t know could be served raw. Xiaojun bit into a carrot and immediately spit it out, making a face of half surprise and half disgust, which sent several of us into laughing fits. Lifang took a nobler stab at eating the salad, while Xiaojun ate some lettuce and concentrated on the soup.

Following our lead, Xiaojun picked up a knife and cut the sandwich in half for them to split. I think she liked the sandwich well enough, but we all noticed too late that Lifang was going at it awkwardly with a knife and fork, and had managed to mangle half and pull out the inside of the rest. When the fish and chips arrived (we were leaning toward pasta but figured that they were more likely to be comfortable with fish), Xiaojun ate several French fries and Lifang (who had initially said she really liked fish) picked at it a bit, but for a while it sat mostly untouched. Finally we figured out that they were having trouble figuring out how to eat it, as it was all in one piece, and hard to pull apart with a fork. Their fork skills were nowhere near as practiced as even the worst chopstick user when we first arrived, and they couldn’t get the hang of it, plus cutting with knife and fork was a bit too daunting. I took over and cut several pieces, instructing them to scoop rather than stab, and talking Xiaojun through cutting off a piece herself. Lifang was still having trouble, so I handed her the soup spoon and let her go at it that way. The apple pie was much the same, and Xiaojun ended up scooping bits of it onto the knife and eating off that. Overall an amazingly comical process to watch, though we felt bad we weren’t better instructors.

Perhaps the best was their reactions to some of the other food on the table. We knew better than to order them anything with cheese in it, but Yazhen had ordered a macaroni and cheese casserole and pressed them into trying it. Xiaojun politely chewed it and said that one bite was good, but it very much tasted of dairy and she wouldn’t want to eat a whole plate of it. Lifang ate some but made a face and declared the flavor to be “a little strong”. In the end, Lifang observed that she’d never thought to eat vegetables like lettuce and tomato raw, and never thought to cook apples, and yet we’d just given them a salad and apple pie!

Newspeak

Ever since week one of my Chinese study freshman year, when I learned that the word for telephone was “electric speech”, I knew I’d like this language. Chinese, as a somewhat limited language, without prefixes and suffixes and compound words, is full of wonderful words that have adapted with Western influences and changing technology. Here are a few examples of my favorites, see if you can’t guess what they are;

1. public together car
2. electric brain
3. ground iron
4. dry(v) dry(adj) vessel
5. Western red persimmon
6. foreign eggplant
7. soil bean
8. film appearance machine
9. exploded corn flowers
10. fire chicken

Answers:
1.bus 2.computer 3.subway 4.dryer 5.tomato 6.tomato 7.potato 8.camera 9.popcorn 10.turkey

When in Rome

The Chinese have an idiom 入乡随俗 (literally enter the countryside, follow custom) which has a meaning effectively equivalent to “When in Rome, do as the Romans”. These past days I have both abided by that guideline and ignored it.

Thursday, several classmates refused to give up their annual turkey feast, and since cooking anything resembling Thanksgiving was impossible in our kitchen of two woks with electric stoves, a microwave and something that claims to be a toaster oven, we ended up going to an Irish pub, which had put out a pretty decent spread, and having a quite enjoyable meal, finished off with drinking beers from the convenience store outside the pub, because inside the prices were outrageous.

Friday a bunch of us went on a trip organized by our residential director Jeremy, to Anji, a nearby town surrounded by bamboo forest, where the bamboo fight scene of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was filmed. We stayed in a fairly modest hotel, where we were given dinner and allowed to make a bonfire. At dinner, each dish was announced to us as it was placed on the table, and as the second one hit, every one of us did an audio double take. Sure enough, the woman toting the plates around had announced that it was dog meat. I tried a bite, and it was ok, but a bit dry, and not as good as the rabbit they brought us. I mostly ate vegetables because I needed something a bit lighter.

Saturday we hiked around in the woods, and I was thrilled to have been able to find real whole wheat bread and to have bought real monterey jack cheese, and thus was able to have a rather authentic trail meal, supplemented by sharing some other people’s gorp and peanut butter. By the time we’d dragged ourselves home last night, I could do little other than shower and crawl into bed.

Hey, Cow

I’ve probably mentioned it before, but I’ve encountered a strange phenomenon walking or biking around in Chinese cities; as a foreigner passes people by, or as people pass on foot, on bike, or in cars, many will yell out “hello?”. I don’t know why this phenomenon is so universal, but it gets old quickly. If in America I called out “nihao” to an Asian, it would be unacceptably rude and considered quite racist. I’m often tempted loudly mutter “so obnoxious” or chase one of these people down and ask them why exactly they felt the need to call after me, not in a greeting form so much as a question, like one trying to get my attention or answer a phone.

And then today it dawned on me, that this is probably exactly their goal: just to provoke any sort of reaction or response, to get my attention. It puts me in mind of a game called “Hey, Cow” that is apparently played by high school kids in rural areas, who must get bored easily, because they’ll drive alongside a cow pasture and yell at the cows until they turn their heads. I learned of this game in a more amusing form: my freshman year I played on the ultimate Frisbee team, and one of our captains was nicknamed “Party Cow”. Several younger players had the idea of adapting the game to calling “hey, cow!” at him, and seeing how often they could get him to react. So, here I am a novelty, and I suppose people want to engage me in some way, whether their intentions are obnoxious or not.

I had a fun shopping excursion to French grocery store/superstore chain Carrefour today, perusing the books, tea sets, furniture, etc and picking up some groceries for a trip I’m taking this weekend. Grocery stores are always fun for Chinglish encounters, and I was not disappointed today: in a blatant appeal to consumerist nature, a sign over a display of snack foods asked, “Have you tried the new life?”. I also found a package labeled “Elaborate Bacon”, which struck me as odd; I can think of few grocery items less elaborate than bacon: there’s really only one way to cook it (remove from package and place close to heat source), and it generally consists of little other than cured pig meat. Elaborate yogurt would perhaps work, since it now comes with so many mix-ins and layers and on-the-bottoms. Elaborate Cake Mix is also a product I might understand, though I think it might defeat the purpose of buying mix, but bacon is generally a rather simple matter, so I have no idea what they meant. Perhaps the most entertaining translations were on the boxes of condoms at the check-out, one of which proclaimed that it was the “Extra Soldier” variety (this was not a brand name but a category, like “ribbed”). On a side note, Thursday morning seems to be “old-people-shopping-hour”, and I must say that the elderly in China have some of the worst comb-overs, toupees and grown-out dye jobs I have ever seen. There were several people I wanted to shake by the shoulders and ask, “Who do you think you’re fooling?”.

Money and McDo

For a day or so this weekend I was plagued by the 50 kuai bill that wouldn’t go away. Before I explain, I’ll take a second to clarify terms associated with Chinese money, as I’ve been using various terms interchangeably without explaining. In banks and foreign markets, the Chinese currency is the Renmin Bi (RMB), or the People’s Money. The printed money is the yuan, and prices are generally listed with the character for yuan 元. One yuan is equivalent to ten jiao, which generally come in coin form, though occasionally are very small bills. The cent, called fen, is not used anymore, and though grocery store prices tend to include a hundredths place, they just round down at the checkout. Kuai is a spoken form of yuan, basically equivalent to saying “buck” instead of dollar, and mao is the spoken form of jiao. The difference is people rarely ever say yuan, and I never heard the term jiao until I looked closely at one of the coins. So when I write it’s really hard to talk about something costing 10 yuan, because I’m automatically thinking kuai.

Almost everything in China is done with cash, short of fancy hotels and restaurants. I even bought my airplane tickets in cash. The unfortunate situation is that most of my day to day purchases are about 5 kuai and under, but ATMs dispense 100 kuai bills, so we’re all in a constant struggle to not have to make the person selling you baozi for 2 kuai break your 100. Often we end up buying snacks and bus fare for each other, because it is rare that everyone has the right change. Chinese vendors, from bartenders to cab drivers to sellers of fried rice, are not only irritated to have to make so much change, but also very untrusting of the bills. Almost anyone will inspect the bill for its watermark, and some places with larger cash flow have money counters that also verify the authenticity of the bills.

On Friday I ended up getting passed a 50 kuai bill while we were making change for dinner. The bill looked as if it had been through the wash, and was a bit worse for the wear. Thing was, almost anyone I handed the bill to almost immediately rejected it as a fake, handing it back to me with a disapproving shake of the head and no explanation. The watermark was there, and to me it looked like any other 50 I’ve handled, yet two bartenders, a cab driver and the counter guy at McDonalds all refused it after very little inspection in some cases, and two rounds through the currency counter and an inspection in front of a light in another. I should have asked my roommate what she thought, but instead I took it as a challenge to find an opportunity to buy something in exact change and get away quickly. I know that raises all sorts of economic/existentialist questions about what is money; I mean, if I think it’s real, then to me it is worth 50 yuan, the trouble is finding someone else to whom it is worth 50 yuan, right? In any case it was more irritating than anything else, and I luckily managed to swap it out for a different bill at dinner the next night. The waitress made a big show of counting the money, and offered no objections to the bill, so I figured maybe I wasn’t such an idiot American after all, and perhaps people were just objecting to such worn-out money.

On the topic of McDonalds, I’d have to say I much prefer the Grille at Midd for late night satisfactions of cravings for greasy food (especially since good old 麦当劳, MaiDangLao, doesn’t have mozzarella sticks). Saturday morning at around 3:30 I found myself ordering food at a McDonalds for the first time in about four years. McDonalds prides itself in the fact that you can get an identical Big Mac at a restaurant in Shanghai and Seattle, in England and New England (tangent: I read an interesting article in Time or something over the summer about industrial food makers like Nestle and Campbells exactly fine-tuning their flavorings to the specific tastes of the region in which they’re being sold), so I cannot blame China when I say that the burger was quite unsatisfying. I remember a greasy burger dripping with special sauce and satisfyingly crunch iceberg lettuce. The burger I had was surprisingly tasteless, and I found myself thinking that I could be quite happy never eating one again. Not that I considered abstaining from McD’s a sacrifice: I not only object on principle, I rarely want to eat fast food. Still, it was an odd revelation to have in the middle of the night in a restaurant in China, that I have either lost the taste for it, or become immune to the manufactured flavor of uber-processed food, or they’re just not as good anymore.

Korean Food and Chinese Papers

Just a short entry to check in. Tonight I went out with a large group of classmates to a Korean restaurant, and we made our Korean classmates order for us, and so had our fill of spicy grilled and stewed meats, vegetable wraps and spicy pickled cabbage. We were also rather insistently presented with multiple rounds of Korean rice wine, so it became quite a renao evening (loud and boisterous).

Other than that, my day has consisted largely of writing an essay for my one on one class, describing the special characteristics of the second generation of nongmingong as opposed to the first, and watching segments of the BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice, which I have not seen before. Nongmingong are workers who leave the countryside to work in urban factories, service jobs and construction, and face many of the same social problems as immigrants in America: their census status lists them as rural peasants, and thus prohibits them from enjoying social benefits of city life like education and medical attention, and also lowers their wages and work conditions. I’ve spent much of my one-on-one time learning about the conditions of the nongmingong (literally rural peasant worker) and the history of development which led to their existence. It’s quite an interesting situation. One of the other students here, a girl taking time off between her undergraduate and graduate studies, is pursuing Fulbright supported research on the status of female workers in this group.

In any case, I had a great night out last night, but have come back early tonight to get some decent sleep and finish watching Pride and Prejudice. Tomorrow I’ve got some reading to do, and I think I’ll bike over to a coffee shop near West Lake to get it done.

Tea for Two

Posting this entry gives away some of the secretive process of buying souvenirs for some of my readers, but I think it’s just too good not to post. Last Sunday Xueqin and I went on our shopping excursion and ended up at a tea seller I’d heard was a good place for tea purchases. Hangzhou, is a city historically known for its silk, its tea, and according to my Lonely Planet guide, its wooden fans and scissors. The brand of tea associated with the area is Xihu Longjing, or West Lake Dragon Well tea, a type of green tea with a very clear flavor and slightly bitter taste. I plan to buy some Longjing to take home, as it’s very region-specific and practically synonymous with Hangzhou, and good to drink.

We entered the shop, which was filled with large glass jars of loose tea leaves. I am somewhat inexperienced at judging and evaluating teas, so I was needless to say at a bit of a loss, and explained to a helpful salesperson that I was looking for a good but not top quality Longjing to buy some gifts. His English, at least in terms of selling tea, was about on a par with our Chinese, so we had an interesting mix of languages flowing around as he pulled out a jar marked “68 yuan” (about 10 dollars), and explained that this was from the spring harvest and would soon be sold out, then brought us to a table with a small tea set and proceeded to serve us several rounds of tea.

First, he poured hot (but not too hot) water into a glass with the tea, then immediately strained the water, poured it into four small tea cups, and then dumped everything out, in order to wash the tea leaves and cups. He then repeated the process, allowing the leaves to brew only slightly longer, and presenting us with the tea to drink and comment on. I’m no expert, but it was good tea, and the bitterness was much more subtle than that of the teas I’d had before, which had steeped for long periods of time. He explained that the third or fourth cup usually has the best flavor, and that you don’t want to steep the leaves more than about five times. We smiled and nodded and pretended that this was the sort of thing that we knew about, and I asked about how the tea was sold.

Tea is measured by the jin, which I thought was a kilogram but in fact is 500g. I determined that it was possible to buy a half a jin, and asked for two half-jin boxes (no, not the frilly gift boxes set into the lined larger box, just the tea, thanks). I was already a bit bewildered by the measurements, which were not only metric but also Chinese, and which I’d never studied, so I kept asking about how much tea there was altogether, in each box, etc. I was convinced I’d accidentally ordered a very large amount of tea, but they reassured me that each box had 250g, and as I saw, each was about the size of a liter nalgene. Mistake there was, however, as I handed the cashier 100 yuan and received a blank stare. No, no, it’s 680 yuan. Excuse me? I looked again at the jar with the loose leaves. There, in very large print, the number 68 yuan. Beside it, in smaller print, was written “/50g”. I stopped dead, looked at Xueqin, and we both said something along the lines of “holy shit”. I mean I know good tea is expensive, but it never occurred to me that a mid-range tea at this place (the lowest price I saw was 20, and many were up to 180 and above) would cost 200 dollars per kilogram! Especially since I know a friend bought a half jin somewhere else for 30 yuan.

I offered some flustered apologies and explained that there was no way I could afford to spend 100 dollars on tea. The salesman, eager to be helpful, asked if I had a Visa card. I explained again that I was very sorry (the Chinese phrase is actually “I am embarrassed that I have made a mistake” and though it is used for any situation from stepping on someone’s foot to being late to meet someone, it was particularly fitting here) and the two of us left, still floored by the nonchalant way with which this very friendly guy about our age figured we could just drop that much money on tea. So sorry guys, no one is getting 50 dollars worth of tea, you’ll have to settle for either one cup’s worth of the good stuff or something slightly lower grade.

Armistice Day

Okay that’s not the topic of my post, I’m just recognizing that today marks the 89th (I think) anniversary of the end of the First World War, though in America it is only known as Veteran’s Day. Celebrate accordingly.

I thought I’d take a break from waxing intellectual/being an amateur social critic and let you folks know a bit more about my day to day life stuff. A few weeks ago I made a list of things I would like to do before leaving Hangzhou. It included, among other things, the bike around West Lake, a trip to a nice teahouse, the night market, an antiques market, a trip to a specific park, and a weekend trip to Suzhou. I’ve been gradually making my way through the list, and have taken care of a few things this weekend.

On Friday I went out to dinner by myself to a café/lounge in the West part of town, had a really nice salad and sat for a couple hours reading and having a drink. Later I met up with Jingbo whom I promised about six weeks ago I’d out to a bar with (I haven’t had any big nights out since). We went to a place called Paradise Bar that was less dark and crowded than some of the bars I’ve been to and had a nice live band. Turned out some of our classmates were there, and at one point in the evening we had about half the program in the bar. Through the night at two different bars, I managed to get free drinks from the bartenders, not sure if they were flirting or if we had translation problems, because as my friend Diana says, Asians don’t tend to make math mistakes: first I ordered a drink that should have cost me 22 kuai, handed the bartender 30 kuai and got back 28. Later Jingbo ordered (and paid for) a shot and a beer, and I ordered (and paid for) a beer, but two shots appeared on the bar. I shrugged, took the shot, and left quickly in case it wasn’t for me. I should mention that this kind of a bar-hopping night is really not part of my day to day life, but lots of fun on occasion.

Saturday I managed to get a large group together to go to Hangzhou’s famous Qingteng Teahouse, which was the perfect place to while away a Saturday afternoon without sitting around the dorm watching movies. The Qingteng Teahouse is gorgeous, with walk-through rock gardens, paper screens and traditional Chinese music performances. Chinese teahouses are places to congregate with friends to drink infinitely refillable tea, snack on food from a buffet included with the tea, and play cards or games or just relax and socialize for several hours. Each tea, it seems, has its own protocol and tea set: some came in covered cups to which the water was added directly, some came with small teapots and matching cups. I first ordered a Ginseng Wulong (Oolong) tea, which has a ridiculously complicated ritual: I received a wooden box, on which were placed a teapot slightly larger than a ping pong ball, a similarly sized empty pitcher, and two ceramic teacups, one of which was shaped like a tall shotglass and the other like a small bowl. The procedure is to pour the tea into the jug, then as you want to drink, pour some into the tall glass, put the small glass upside down on top, and then flip the whole thing over, carefully remove the taller glass and drink. When you run out of water you refill the teapot and start over.

It was all very cute and all, but I didn’t quite understand the point of the whole thing (except the part about pouring from the pot to the jug: you really don’t want that tea to steep too long: the ginseng was STRONG). In fact it was a little too strong for me, so I switched to a nice green tea, which came in a covered teacup. The only procedure for this one makes immediate sense to me: as you drink you do not remove the lid, but instead set is slightly askew in the cup, to allow the water through while trapping the tea leaves inside, thus eliminating the frustrating ritual of waiting for most of the leaves to settle, constantly spitting out the floaters, and doing the whole thing again when you refill the water.

Because three of my four classes meet on Monday, every weekend I have to prepare for several classes, and often write papers for my one on one or short essays for literature (the big essays are due on Fridays). This weekend I read for my literature class (“My Father’s Sickness”, by Chinese Modern Lit pioneer Lu Xun; imagine English literature was continuously written in Chaucer’s English, despite changes in the spoken form, and then somewhere around the start of the 20th century someone wrote something closer to the modern form, but with lots of Middle English influences. Now imagine you don’t really read English well. That’s what I’m up against.), read an article for my newspaper class (Darfur; this should be fun, as my professor, though great, always seems to have a very narrow view of world politics and the state of China in the world), and looked over a reading for my one-on-one. I have to familiarize myself with the contents, learn a few key terms, and memorize verbatim two sentences. Don’t ask me why, it’s just something we have to do every class. Unfortunately, the mark of good Chinese writing is writing extravagantly long sentences, and my teacher is a good writer. It’s too bad Faulkner didn’t speak Mandarin, is all I can say. I also have to study some vocab for dictation quizzes in both classes tomorrow.

This afternoon I’m going to get away from campus a bit and head to an antiques market with Xueqin. I’m sure they haven’t got too much authentically antique, which I probably couldn’t take home anyway, but it’ll be fun to have a look around, and maybe I’ll find some good Cultural Revolution memorabilia.

Measuring Up

I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I haven’t really been up to much of note this week, and the most exciting thing I did was go out to eat really good Italian food for a friend’s birthday. Since that has very little to do with China, I felt a full account was unnecessary.

I thought I’d take some time to write a bit about Chinese language, as it’s what I’m studying here and therefore what I spend a lot of time thinking about. So here’s my primer on Chinese measure words, or “amount words” as they are called in Chinese. Measure words are not entirely foreign to English speakers: we wear a pair of pants, buy a head of lettuce, watch a set of television and discuss an item or article of business. We also have the ones that actually indicate quantity, such as pound, bouquet, bale, bunch, cup, bag, dozen, etc. In Chinese, however, any time you quantify a noun, you need to use a measure word. Though the general word “ge” will work for most things that don’t have a particular word assigned, there are more specific words assigned to various types of items. Many are concrete, like a cup of coffee or an envelope of letter or a gram of rice. But there are also more abstract ones, for example, “ben” is for things books and things that are bound, “zhang” is for things that are flat like paper, pictures and tables, and “liang” is for vehicles.

There is generally a rule governing when to use what measure word, whether or not is immediately obvious. For instance, the word “tiao” applies to fish, pants, roads, string and rivers (things that are longer than they are wide). Much like English, “jian” applies to clothing like shirts and jackets, as well as business or tasks, and means “item” or “article”. “Ke” is used for teeth, pearls, stars and, by extension, satellites. The rule for that one is things that are small and round.

Sometimes looking at a list of items a word quantifies raises more questions than it answers, and it often helps to look at the meaning of the word itself. Perhaps my favorite is “ba”; the list of words to use with “ba” includes sugar, knives, brooms and hair; ba means “to grasp”, and so measures things that come in handfuls or things with handles. “tai” means stage, platform or station, and measures performances, engines and computers. Still others seem obscure but are actually quite literal. The word “chuan” means to conspire or gang up, or to run about from place to place, among several other unrelated meanings. It is also a measure word for kebabs and keyrings. Turns out the original meaning of the word is “to string together”, and the character 串is a pictograph.

Some measure words are ridiculously practical and translate poorly, for instance there is one for regularly scheduled public transportation, one for instances, and one for a class or field of study (that’s a semester-long class, not to be confused with one sitting of class, which is measured by a different word).

So the next time you put on an article of jacket and get in a vehicle of car to drive down a length of road to go to a house of restaurant and buy several plates of food, just be glad you’re not doing it in Chinese.

West Lake

I’d like to take some time to tell you all a bit about the city I am in. Hangzhou is about a three hour drive inland from Shanghai, the capital of Zhejiang province and home to about 6.5 million people (I’m not sure how the census works here; like any Chinese city there are lots of unregistered workers who are officially country peasants and travel home every new year). The city has been in continuous existence for over 2200 years, and was once the home to the emperors of the Southern Song dynasty. Hangzhou has long been an exporter of tea and silk. Marco Polo famously declared it to be the most beautiful city in the world, and though he embellished his descriptions somewhat, it is still known today as a city of great beauty.

Of course, due to rapid modernization and the utilitarian lack of architectural aesthetic, most of this beauty remains concentrated around West Lake, the landmark which truly sets Hangzhou apart. Located in the Central, Southern part of the city and backing up against the mountains that take up Hangzhou’s Southwestern edge, the lake was once home to the emperors, courtiers and merchants who held Hangzhou’s wealth. Today the Eastern bank holds a paved tourist walkway with benches, pavilions, teahouses, tour boat docks, etc. Across the street are Starbucks, Dairy Queen, and several other Western Chains and high-priced international restaurants. This part is also home to the Xihu Tiandi, roughly “West Lake Heavenly Place”, a park-like set of sidewalks that sits on the lake and houses upscale restaurants and bars, and yet another Starbucks. On weekends I like to wander through the pedestrian parks, watching old men argue or listening to street performers with traditional instruments.

I hadn’t spent much time along the other parts of the lake, and this weekend the weather was spectacular, so I decided to change that, partly because my literature class is reading a story set in 1920s Hangzhou and centered mainly around West Lake. On Saturday I rode my bike (yes, I used the pedals, not the battery) around the lake. I started off going over a bridge and tree-lined road to an island in the Northern part of the lake, which is home to several historic villas and a Chinese restaurant called Louwailou that has been around for over a century and is mentioned in the story. I then went on to the street that runs along the North shore, which was beautiful and lined by parks along the lake, and fancy hotels along the other side. There are two artificially constructed causeways that go down the West side of the lake, but one is pedestrian only, so I biked the beautiful Yanggongdi, home to more historic villas and parks and museums. Around the South end I passed the pagoda I visited several weeks ago, and then on to Nanshan Lu and the wide sidewalks I’d walked so many times. Along the way I saw lots of couples posing for wedding photos (a big part of Chinese weddings is the photos, taken in different scenic locations and in traditional as well as modern outfits). One pavilion had at least four couples, just standing around in their wedding garb. The ride was a great way to get outside for the morning, and I discovered some very pretty looking parks I’d like to go back and visit.

In all, I was left with a great sense of mixing the old with the new; with the exception of the smorgasbord of brand-name store fronts, which are presented tastefully, West Lake preserves a sense of peaceful beauty, and even the boats are more picturesque than tacky, though I don’t anticipate getting on one any time soon. The lakefront is undeveloped except for the landscaping, and almost entirely public (there are a few villas and places like the pagoda that have entrance fees). I think my favorite thing to do is sit at a park bench or outdoor teahouse, casually perusing my Lonely Planet, reading or playing cards.

Waiter, What's this Ghost Doing in my Soup?

A nice humor entry that does not revolve entirely around my own cultural and linguistic blunders; yesterday, Yazhen informed us that her roommate had discovered a mushroom in their bathroom. Mushroom is “mogu”, but Xueqin and I heard “mogui” which means monster or evil spirit (I also have a theory that this is the source of the name of the creatures in Gremlins). Knowing Chinese girls to scare easily and be superstitious about things like ghosts, we thought nothing of Yazhen’s matter-of-fact tone. There’s a ghost in your bathroom? Interesting… In fact when I came back from fall break unannounced and took a shower, I think Xiaojun got a bit of a fright, herself. Of course we figured out the mistake pretty quickly and alternatively laughed and cringed at the thought of either toilet intruder, sympathizing about the icky bathroom growth and wondering where to find a fungicide.

After a great day of no class and a few leisurely hours in a teahouse with a buffet, compliments of the school, five of us went out for Sichuan hotpot at a nearby restaurant. We ordered vegetables, meat, dumplings, tofu, potatoes and two kinds of mushrooms. We had a good laugh over the mogu/mogui story, and by then of course the wrong association was already cemented. Near the end of the meal, Huijuan took a ladle and started sifting through the pot, and after a minute declared that there were no more demons in the hotpot. I wish I knew the word for “exorcism”.

Boo? Bu

Most of the time in China if you want to say an especially foreign word or proper noun, like a brand name, celebrity, or place, you can approximate it in Chinese sounds and it is often right (there are official transliterations for almost everything) Example: ka-bu-ji-nuo=cappuccino, ta-mu-han-ke-si=Tom Hanks, fu-luo-li-da=Florida. Sometimes we can guess, but luckily I remembered this dangerous exception before using it yesterday; you can get a really close approximation to “Halloween”; ha-luo-yin, but this word does not mean a holiday where kids wear scary outfits and beg for candy; it means “heroin”. Yes, that was a word I learned over the summer (For anyone who’s curious, an-fei-ta-min is amphetamine). The word for Halloween is not transliterated, and is something like “Spirits Holiday”.

I read somewhere that a bar in town was having pumpkin carving and spiced wine, which sounded like a fun and relaxed thing to do, and several friends had planned to go. I invited my roommate, who on hearing the word “pumpkin” knew exactly what I was talking about and was eager to go. I set about figuring out whether or not I could put together a costume, settling finally on a candy corn, wearing various layers of white yellow and orange over a red skirt. The outfit was big and not really recognizable as candy corn, and about five minutes before walking out the door I changed into some rolled up jeans, threw a belt over my white shirt, took off one earring, tied my hair in a scarf and became a pirate instead.

Unfortunately when we got to the bar it was just a bar with lots of foreigners in strange clothes, and especially since my roommate isn’t big on the bar scene and I was in the mood for something calmer, I bought her a coke and me a beer, and we hung around but left about an hour later when things started getting rowdy. It was actually a really fun night, explaining to Xiaojun about Halloween and chatting with her and my friends. When we got back, since she’d let me pay for the cab and drinks, Xiaojun took me across the street for some midnight snacks: Sichuan barbecue (spicy grilled veggie kebabs), and some bready things. The snack was excellent, partly because for dinner I’d finished off the peanut butter and crackers I’d treated myself to and had a few handfuls of Xinjiang raisins, and we had some excellent roommate bonding time.

Culture Shock

I’ve mentioned before that Chinese people will often be very happy to help, whether or not they know the answer to what you’re asking; a ticket guy at the airport directed me to three different check in windows before grunting and telling me to go to the information counter. A related issue to this is the fact that Chinese people enjoy talking about their country to foreigners, though many Chinese people, especially college students, haven’t done much travel at all. When I was at the conference in Chengdu, one of the student volunteers, on hearing I was studying in Hangzhou, said “Hangzhou is very beautiful, especially West Lake”. This is about word for word what you’ll hear from anyone who knows Hangzhou. I agreed, “Yes, have you been there?” “No.” The thing is he didn’t say “I hear it’s beautiful there, how do you like it?”, his tone was as if he wanted to explain to me how great the city was, when of course I know it much better than he does.

This is an offshoot of a much bigger phenomenon in China, which I believe comes from a combination of a propagandizing culture and a strong history of rote education and straight memorization of quotations by famous scholars and historical dates. A newspaper article detailing the outcome of the 17th National Congress will repeat in summary everything that Hu Jintao spoke about, but offer no discussion on the substance of the material, past policies, etc; it seems what matters is knowing what was said. People rely on set associations and generalizations to form their opinions, and at times this can be uncomfortable for study abroad students.

When my roommate thinks of an American, she thinks of a white person. This is true for most people I’ve met; Americans are white and rich, and because white is beautiful and rich means you must be smart, Americans are better than other people. Because it is the most developed country, America is better than China. These are sentences I have heard, word for word, from roommates, shopkeepers, taxi drivers, random people on the street. In Kashgar I was approached by a man asking where I was from. He asked if America or China was better. I said I couldn’t make a comparison between the two, hoping he’d let the conversation drop, but he insisted that America was better, because it was the most developed country in the world. Others have encountered “all Americans are smart”, “Americans are taller and whiter than Chinese people, so they’re better”, etc. Last night I was getting a snack with my roommate and the vendor commented about all Americans having money. I called him on it, saying “not necessarily”, and proceeded to mention that though Americans make more money, things also cost a lot more, and there are plenty of poor people. This ridiculous idolization of things American is frustrating, especially since it’s so single-minded and widespread, especially among some college students who love American culture. I think next time someone asks I’ll say I’m Canadian or English, see what different reactions I get.

The race thing is big, and a lot have people have commented on how strongly a lack of diversity has influenced people’s thinking. Some people here have just said point-blank that they hate black people, and hate Japanese people. Having studied a bit the emotional wounds a culture can suffer and the extent to which past violence can feel very real to people in present day, I’m willing to be a bit understanding on the Japanese thing, but it’s really hard for the Asian-Americans in our program. Bamu is Japanese-American, and when people don’t assume she’s Chinese and our guide, they often give her a hard time for being Japanese. If people ask where we’re from and we say “America”, they then point to her and ask where she’s from; of course these white girls look American, but you don’t. My roommate asked me if I saw someone like Bamu or Shushan on the street in America, would I assume they were foreign? Partially because of the culture, it’s hard for some people to understand that a Chinese or Korean or Japanese person growing up in America would consider themselves first American and then something else; you are ethnically Chinese, and therefore you are Chinese. I asked one of my teachers over summer school, who teaches at UCLA, where she was from, and she said that it’s really hard to answer, because she grew up in Taiwan but her parents or grandparents were originally from somewhere in mainland China, which culturally would be considered her “老家” or her home town, though she’d never been.

Kashgar: Camels and Donkeys and Goats, Oh My!

The remainder of the week was spent in the city of Kashgar in Western Xinjiang, a stop over for people traveling from Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan or Tajikstan into China, or the reverse. I arrived after my hitchhiking adventure and, since my phone was dead, borrowed a cell phone to get in touch with my friends.

I found them at the hotel and managed to get a bed in their room (after a bit more arguing at the reception desk). I showered and we compared Karkoram Highway experiences and pictures, before strolling through part of Old Town on our way to dinner. Kashgar is a small place, and they’d already spent a day in the city, so they’d pretty much seen all that was worth seeing of the old, Muslim city center, but humored me by pointing out the elaborately decorated musical instruments, various foods they’d tried and the buildings of aptly named Old Town, a rundown set of alleys and brick houses with vendors selling naan and bagels, grapes and other fruit, and junk that, within any given store, would range from embroidered purses to beaded jewelry to “antique” rice bowls and tea pots to communist memorabilia.

Dinner featured, among other things, lamb chops roasted on grills on the front sidewalk, spicy stewed chicken and rice, and cold, spicy chick peas (we passed on the 500 yuan whole roast sheep). The lamb was wonderful and very different from anything I’ve had while in China. The evening took us to the night market to search in vain for some yummy sounding desserts we’d read about in Lonely Planet, and on the way back we paused at the square in front of the old mosque where a giant screen was showing movies to crowds of spectators.

Thursday was a trip to the desert which meant long but entertaining hours in the car, with a stop briefly in nearby Yengisar, a town known for its many expert knife makers, and another town where we had lamb kebabs and pumpkin dumplings, sitting on a large day bed with a short table in the middle.

The desert appeared suddenly, a huge expanse of sandy hills emerging from a wooded are with grape vines and trees. We were put on camels and led a ways in to look around. It was fun, but on the downhills I had to brace myself and close my eyes, as there were no stirrups and a rather crude saddle. Camels are not the nicest animals, but ours were at least complacent, except for Bamu’s which refused to sit, forcing her to have to climb up. Overall lots of fun, though my leg muscles were less than comfortable in the evening.

Dinner we had at the night market, sitting on benches in front of food carts and moving from stall to stall, trying one or two of each thing (we passed on the boiled goat heads), and actually found the sweet, fried raisin pastries we’d been looking for the day before. We finished the meal off with freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, which was served in small glasses set out in front of the juicer, meant to be finished in a few quick gulps. It was so good I had two more glasses on Friday.

Friday morning Bamu and Huijuan left for Urumqi and I had the day to kill before a late evening flight. I went to the Sunday market, operational (even on weekdays) for about 2000 years, saw the old mosque, and spent a good bit of the day wandering around Old Town, though I wasn’t in the market for much of what was for sale (carpets, big gaudy knives, fur hats, etc.) I bought some golden raisins and pistachios, both foods I can’t find in Hangzhou, and admired some brass tea kettles, though as a coffee drinker without a kitchen it’s probably better I ended up not buying one. I spent some time at a pretty cool upstairs tea house on a balcony overlooking the streets of old town. The place was crowded and by default I ended up getting seated with the only other tourists in the place (everyone else was Uighur, male, old, and wearing a dark coat and green embroidered cap), an American couple who had just crossed in from the West having spent several months in the former Soviet Union as part of an epic tour. I gave them what wisdom I could about Chinese practicalities, and was glad for a bit of conversation. The rest of the day consisted mostly of wasting time: I sat in the main square for a while perusing Lonely Planet and watching the men slowly pack into the mosque for afternoon prayers. When they all came pouring out, however, an old woman sinning near me started trying to read words aloud from my book, and I suddenly became the focus for LOTS of passersby, looking an my book and sounding out words (the Uighur script uses the Arabic alphabet, but it used to use the Roman). I obliged for a while, flipping to the part on Kashgar and pointing to the name of the mosque, but when it became clear that no one was losing interest and new people wanted to know what the excitement was, I pulled out my cell phone, looked at the time, feigned surprise and set off.

In all, Kashgar is a very cool place, but only for a short stay unless you have something to do there. Anyone who reads this and decides to go, I’ll gladly go with you, and give you the name of a nice guy with a yurt on Karakul Lake.

Xinjiang: Time Management

For some reason, all of China is officially on Beijing time, so no matter how far West you go, you remain in the same time zone. I’m not sure of the political or economic reasoning behind this system, but if I had to hazard a guess I’d say it’s some sort of communist symbolic move to remind people that Beijing decides everything, even the time, and is the functional if not geographical center of the country. Indeed, as I traveled through Xinjiang I found propaganda billboards and signs urging cooperation and extolling the contributions to the city brought by the People’s Republic of China.

Of course, when you’re closer to the border with Kyrgyzstan than the nearest Chinese province, and the majority population is not Confucian, Han Chinese but Muslim and Uighur, most people don’t pay much attention to Beijing, and make the time two hours earlier. The effect is that officially scheduled things are done on Beijing time, but day to day life occurs on local time.

I should make it a personal policy, in fact I think it should be a general rule never to arrive in a new city after dark. It is inevitably too late and I am inevitably too tired to do anything, and things are generally much more disappointing than they seem the next morning. I arrived at my hotel in Kashgar around 11:00, or 3 hours after sunset. I navigated the confusing reception desk system which involved multiple buildings and, after a short argument, secured a bed in a dorm room. The room, as I found out later, was occupied by two Tajik men, one of whom spoke English and was very friendly. I went to sleep almost immediately.

I woke up at 7 to catch a bus at 10, figuring I’d walk to the bus station through old town and maybe buy some snacks along the way. What I forgot was that it was really 5, so few people were around except a few sidewalk sweepers, taxis, and the occasional old man driving a two-wheeled donkey cart. By the time I got to the Mosque I’d found a few places open and bought some steamed buns before heading on to the bus station.

At this point I should note, nothing in my suburban New Jersey upbringing prepared me for the informality of many things involved in travel in China. Sure, I’ve gotten used to buying things in markets and haggling when occasion calls for it, but after arriving in Kashgar I experienced a whole new level of informal. To start, the taxi driver who took me to my hotel from the airport didn’t put on the meter. The price he gave me seemed fair and I was too tired and taken aback to argue. He then proceeded to give me his card and tell me he could take me out of the city on day trips to all the places tourists like to go. At this point I’ve only haggled for souvenirs, not services, and the idea of hiring a guide or going where public transportation does not was a strange one to me. I boarded a bus Tuesday morning to Karakul Lake, almost 200 km out of town on the Karkoram Highway, which has existed since before there were highways as a mountain pass connecting China and the Silk Road to Tajikstan. Karakul Lake is a glacial lake amongst the icy Pamir mountains, and it seemed like a good destination for an overnight trip. The bus left at 8:30/10:30 and stopped about five minutes later at the gravel parking lot that is the international bus station, where it stayed for about an hour and a half. We finally got going again, and 10 minutes later stopped for a bathroom break. Though initially I was irritated by this system (none of the officiousness of the transportation I’m used to), I quickly decided to let it go; I was in no rush, after all. At the third stop I got off to buy some snacks: bagels, of all things, seem to be a staple around here, along with a naan hearth bread the size of a dinner plate.

I should also mention that making the decision to not worry about the pace of the bus, or what time it was or using informally arranged services was helped immensely by a phone call from two classmates, Huijuan and Bamu, whose itinerary I was roughly following at a 24 hour lag and would meet up with Wednesday in Kashgar. They called to give me the number of the man who’s yurt they’d stayed at at Karakul lake, and tell me they’d probably hitchhike on to a further destination, and pick me up on their way back the next day. Also, they’d arranged for a driver to take us on a day trip to the desert on Thursday.

Well, Karakul Lake was nothing short of incredible. I met up with Muhui, the 20 year old who, with his father and two sisters, takes in tourists while his mother stays with his eleven year old brother at school in Kashgar. The lake was shaded by huge icy peaks, and its shores were dotted with yurts, camels, yaks and sheep. This was a new kind of tourism for me, and yet if felt comfortable and familiar. Mahui could speak a little English and a little Mandarin, but his sisters just whispered in Uighur, busying themselves making yak milk tea on the stove in the center of the yurt and setting out mats to sit on.

The tea had a very earthy green flavor, and was accompanied by hearth bread which I nibbled at while watching the sisters bake new loaves in a dutch oven on the stove. On my second bowl of tea, I realized I was out of breath, and had to start eating and drinking more slowly while intermittently taking deep breaths.

After the tea, Muhui took me on his motorbike around the lake, to take some pictures and see a bit of the area., which is truly scenery like I have not seen before. There was nothing, there was nobody, except the occasional shepherd or tan building. As crowded as China’s eastern cities are, I had found a place that was empty.

I returned and had some more tea, though I declined the freshly baked bread as I’d been eating bread all day and expending very little energy. I planned to walk around the little yurt encampment, but I instead lay down for a bit and actually fell asleep. When I got up, one of the girls was making dinner, and I sat around the stove with the family to warm up a bit and watch. I’m not the greatest conversationalist, especially when I’m not sure of myself, but I did my best in varying languages, trying to learn the names of the family and a few basic words, before finally asking the question I’d been avoiding: Where is the bathroom? I was directed to an area a couple dozen yards off with a stone screen and a pit. It was cold, so I hurried back to the yurt, and found myself panting when I got there; the cleanest air in China, and my first slight asthma problem? Only then did I finally realize that I’d gained a significant amount of altitude, and the cold, thin air was the likely cause for my shortness of breath and lack of energy.

Trying to mentally work up an appetite, I watched the older sister make pasta, to my surprise with a pasta machine, which she clamped to her cutting board and used to roll out the dough. The pasta was served with a simple stew, of which I ate as much as I could before declaring I was really, really full. As it was too dark and too cold to do much else, we went to sleep soon later on the mats and warm duvets the girls had just laid out.

In the morning it turned out my classmates had in fact decided to return to Kashgar the night before, so after breakfast of more tea and bread, I asked Muhui how I could get back to Kashgar. He said a bus should be through in half an hour, and we should go up to the road now to wait. Perhaps because of Muhui’s lack of hesitation at flagging down the first passing car, and perhaps because my sense of adventure had been piqued, I instead negotiated a ride back in a pickup truck with several Uighur men and four or five sheep on the back. An excellent way to round off my adventure into uncertainty.

Chengdu: Double Talk

Last Saturday I flew to Chengdu to attend a conference on Public Administration, at which I was presenting a paper for my grandfather. Overall the experience was interesting and, I suppose, worthwhile. I presented the paper, heard several other lectures, and got to meet professionals and academics in the field of Public Administration from America and China. Things were a bit on the surreal side, however, and I felt very much out of place.

This discomfort was heightened by the existence of Lizzie, the Chinese volunteer who met me at the airport (useful) and had apparently been told not to let me out of her sight (annoying). She’d show up at the end of the morning session to walk me back to lunch, which was a block away at the hotel where I’d spent the night and where I’d eaten breakfast. Also, she seemed unwilling to believe that I spoke Chinese. Consider: At the airport I mentioned to her that I was studying in Hangzhou for the semester. I then asked her Chinese name and repeated it back to her. She commented that I’d pronounced it well, and by way of explanation I said, in Chinese, “I am here studying Chinese.” A while later on the bus, she is talking to a Chinese professor on the bus. She explains the contents of the conversation to me, and I reply in Chinese “Yes, I understood it”. Which startles her and impresses the professor, to whom I speak with briefly in Chinese. Later in the hotel, as she continued to serve a translator function for me through check-in, she was searching for a word, and I supplied her with the Chinese one, which was more succinct. She gave me a strange look as if she wasn’t sure what language I’d addressed her in. On Sunday morning I explained to her that I was planning to leave before dinner and meet two classmates who were in Chengdu, and she seems to think I want to leave for the whole day. I explained it again, and when she left I sent her a text message in Chinese to avoid confusion. As we leave the meeting, I hear her commenting to a friend in disbelief about the long message, but of course the attitude with which she speaks is still one which assumes I don’t know she’s talking about me.

Sunday evening I took a cab into town to do some exploring. I found a Tibetan neighborhood and a really cool souvenir shopping area with a Sichuan snack street, where I tried a few gloriously spicy snacks before wandering farther uptown, eventually meeting up with Xueqin and Shushan for an authentic hotpot dinner. Not exactly taking in all the sights, but it got me thinking about what to do when I go back in December.

Breaking the Fall

I’m leaving tomorrow morning for my fall break. If it’s possible I’ll update you from the road, but otherwise know that I’ll be off doing other things. I’m flying to Chengdu for the weekend where I’ll meet up with a couple of friends Sunday afternoon, then flying further West on Monday to Kashgar, Xinjiang, which is closer to Pakistan than anything in China and full of Muslim heritage, silk road history and the like. I’m traveling by myself, but I’ll meet up with some classmates for a day or so who are in Xinjiang all week. For now, I’ll leave you all with a few anecdotes from the week.

We had midterms this week, which meant a lighter schedule, so I had a lot of leisurely trips around town and to various shopping spots. I went to nearby Qiantang market with Xueqin and Shushan, where I haggled a really good price on a pair of shoes (she originally quoted 150, but I let her know I knew what the price SHOULD be by saying I really didn’t want to spend more than 30, and she quickly changed her tune and gave me 45). As we left, some high school or college age kids walked past and one of the guys, clearly trying to show off, said something along the lines of “These foreigners are so ugly”. Acting almost entirely on reflex, I shouted after him “These foreigners understand what you’re saying”, spun around and looked at him with my best “What now, bitch?” look as he stared dumbly and his friends muttered embarrassed apologies. It was a proud moment.

Dinner that day was quite excellent; we went to a really traditional Hangzhou-style restaurant and ordered all of the dishes that people here keep telling us we should try. One, called “Dongpo Pork” was basically stewed pork fat in a sweet, rich sauce. Another, called “Sweet and Sour Fish” came in a very sticky, sweet gingery sauce. I now finally understand what Chinese people are talking about when they say that Hangzhou food is very sweet, with lighter flavoring. Until recently, the 8 regional cuisines all seemed to run together; though there is a Sichuan restaurant nearby and their food is clearly spicier and has a few dishes the others don’t, you can buy Kung Pow Chicken (a Sichuan dish) almost anywhere. What I put together was that while the Sichuan dish has more hot peppers than peanuts and chicken, the dish you order in the school restaurant has no peppers and is sort of sweet and soy saucy. Not sure I could eat such rich and sweet foods all the time, but they were goood. I also don’t really know how the other regional cuisines are distinguished.

Oh and Tim, I’ve been won over by milk tea, but I prefer the coffee ones to the tea ones, and I still don’t like the bubbles. Fair compromise?

Confucius Say

Being able to read and understand Chinese slogans is a special thing. You get used to the set up; the slogans, whether advertising shampoo, promoting a soccer tournament or issuing a helpful warning, are generally written as two parallel phrases of four to six characters. They sometimes rhyme, and often have symmetrical grammatical structures or breakup of words (two two-character words, for example). It’s a fun linguistic exercise to try and understand why it’s a clever slogan, and how it might translate. The fact is that these don’t translate very well into English, and I’m convinced this is a part of the Engrish problem that is common on signs and advertisements. The slogan for the FIFA tournaments was “美丽足女 美丽世杯” which means “beautiful women’s soccer, beautiful world cup” The English slogan, however, said “Beautiful Game, Beautiful Goals”.

In many parts of China, litter is pretty commonplace. There are trash cans everywhere, but it’s not uncommon to see small plastic bags, cigarette butts and food scraps scattered through the smaller alleys, especially near where these things are bought. Sometimes at back gate (pictures are coming, I promise) there is just a pile of trash and waste waiting to be put in a dumpster, sitting against a wall. Things never get too bad, because of China’s remarkably efficient trash system. There are lots of people hired throughout the city to clean up the trash, and they do their jobs well. Also, though there are trash bins and recycle bins placed on street corners, people just toss things willy-nilly. This is because there are lots of peasants who come to the city to go through the trash cans, pull out anything and everything that’s recyclable, and take them to recycling centers to exchange for cash. There are literally hundreds of people who do this for a living. To the westerner who’s used to sorting the trash and putting it on the curb for someone to take away it seems like an odd system, but it works.

In any case, there’s no one hired in the school to pick up litter, and there are metallic bins set up maybe every 30 feet. Each bin has a sign on top bearing a slogan urging passers by to deposit their trash. The great thing is, these signs are all different. Each one maybe repeats once or twice, but there’s got to be at least 20 different trash slogans around the campus. Yesterday I took the liberty of jotting a few down and translating them:

Increase hygiene consciousness
Cherish the beautiful campus

Don’t spit on the ground
Don’t carelessly toss fruit rinds and paper scraps

Let the Gongda Campus
Always preserve life’s green color

Care for nature
Care for life

Cultivate the flowers and trees like a gardener
Together, greenify the new landscape

Pay attention to hygiene
Trash goes in the bin

Diligent study can initiate
A rise in culture and civilization

The school is my home
Sanitation relies on everybody
(This one’s especially cool in Chinese: 学校是我家 卫生靠大家)

Character Lessons and Conversion Experiences

To start off, I’d like to say that I thought of the title “Character Lessons” before I realized it was a great pun since I’m talking about calligraphy. What does this mean? My English has now been suppressed to the unconscious and is punning of its own free will.

I do at times feel like there is a part of me that is suppressed by the language change. I’ve started to hear my name being called while walking through crowds. This is strange because Chinese really has few sounds that come close to “Sarah”, and everyone here uses my Chinese name, Xinru. Xinru has been my predominant form of address since the beginning of the summer; I’ve formed entire friendships as Xinru. Xinru’s personality is about the same as Sarah’s, short perhaps the occasional bad joke or obscure movie reference, but though I feel I’ve changed little, perhaps Xinru has just taken been carrying on business as usual while Sarah is suppressed and evolving, ready to reclaim control when I start using English again.

Sorry for that surreal interlude, but it was an actual thought that occurred to me, especially as I had an interesting break to use English when a group of visitors (Midd parents and Alumns) led by Middlebury’s Bai Laoshi came through today to have lunch with us and marvel at our study habits. We had a pleasant hour or so, ordering lunch for them and chatting about life in China. The alumn sitting next to me grew up in Maplewood, and his wife in Ridgewood, thus confirming in my mind the theory one in every ten people is from New Jersey, usually Essex, Union, Morris and Bergen Counties. In any case it was strange to be casually chatting in English with complete strangers and my classmates, and made me think a bit about whether or not I actually have a Chinese persona. Also my turns of phrase are suffering; I have recently used the phrases “far and few between” and “point in case”.

I’ve been studying Calligraphy for a few weeks now, and I’ve gotten down all of the basic brush strokes (to give you an idea, there are four components to writing a horizontal line, and two for writing a dot). Calligraphy relies on precision, uniformity and focus, attributes I categorically lack (I remember trying to build a rectangular box out of clay about five years ago: there was not a single even edge or right angle in the entire thing). At the start, the teacher would write outlines for us to trace, showing us the progression and having us repeat a single brush stroke or character several times. This guy is pretty young, but he’s been studying for about two decades, and he’s so incredible he can take a pen and quickly outline, in perfect proportion, the strokes for an entire character for us to trace. He also showed us a poem he copied onto a scroll; the scroll is about four feet tall and a foot across, the characters each maybe an inch square: he wrote it for seven hours straight without food, water, or breaks to regain feeling in his hand (you have to hold your elbow really high). This week we’ve graduated from tracing his characters and then attempting our own to writing characters from a book that has guidelines to show the proportions of each character.

I am often tempted to revert to my painting days and quickly trace out the characters, but the problem is that the character requires balance; it must fit evenly inside a box, with symmetrical proportions and regular stroke length and width. Anyone who’s seen my handwriting knows that consistency and balance are not my strong points. I’m confident that forcing myself to really study calligraphy may help not only my handwriting and character writing ability, but also help me find more patience for detail and precision in other areas of my life. I also think this is a ridiculously Chinese notion of self-discipline and training, but at least my teacher liked it.

This afternoon, having finished one of my exams, I took off in my bike (which I love and have named Tingting, which means Dragonfly and is also the sound its bell makes) and went to the silk market, which is much quieter than the other markets I’ve been to, a beautiful pedestrian street full of silk shops selling bolted fabric, scarves, embroidered crafts, shirts, ties and mandarin dresses. I bought a few souvenirs, restricting my purchases of big silk scarves for myself to one, and perused the various wares, musing about buying a length of silk fabric which I’d inevitably not turn into anything. I did a bit of haggling, but the prices were already pretty reasonable so I didn’t fight too hard. When I bought my scarf, the woman said it was 20 yuan. This sounded good but I wanted to play along, so I asked her if she could do 15 yuan. She replied the lowest she could go was 18. Suddenly, it somehow seemed like she was saying 180, and I stood around frantically trying to remember what she had quoted, simultaneously remembering that an equal or somewhat lower quality product in Beijing three years before had cost me 100 yuan. I decided it must be the higher figure, and handed her 200 yuan. Luckily, I picked up almost instantly that she was confused about the sum, so I hastily said a few confused sentences, took the money back, examined it, muttered something about not having change, and handed her back one bill. Whoops, that was embarrassing. More culturally embarrassing than anything else, because I’d clearly demonstrated that an American would pay 10 times the going price for a silk scarf.

Fall is Here

I went out to lunch at a restaurant behind the school with my roommate and two of her classmates I hadn’t met before. I watched people walking past the window, slightly more bundled up because of a cool wind, and was instantly put in mind of a fall afternoon in New York. It was a nice feeling of familiarity, and though the weather’s been getting cooler all week, it was the first time I really felt like fall had arrived.

On a separate note, I’d like to write a bit about Chinese snacks. If there is one thing American cities lack, it’s street food, and China seems to be the capital of street eating. There’s a small alley behind the back gate of our school with various small restaurants and noodle shops, but the real spectacle is at night when the alley is chock full of vendors and carts selling anything from Chinese crepes, roasted pork sandwiches, dumplings, fried rice, stuffed pastries, all the way to these kebab things with various vegetables and meats that you can pick and have fried right in front of you. These various snacks are put in small plastic bags, which you can carry back to your room or eat from while walking down the street. On the weekends, vendors set up all over (mostly outside bars) with long metal boxes of lit coals and lamb skewers, fanning the flames and roasting the kebabs. I once saw one of these metal boxes, still glowing, on the back of someone’s bike riding down the street.

Though I have a few favorites, I’m always excited to try new snack foods, many of which are various bready pastries or fried dumpling type things. If I need change for the bus, I can just grab a sesame ball and nibble at it while I wait at the stop. I once had an octopus skewer, which was seasoned a bit oddly, and there’s a great crepe sandwich with some vegetables and a slightly sweet sauce. My favorite is a plain, puff-pastry type bread, sometimes with a bit of hot sauce thrown on.

A Pile of Neuroses and then Some

Well I went from a low point of boredom yesterday, shut in by the largest rainfall in Hangzhou in recent history due to a typhoon, to a day full of many ups and downs and fears and excitements, and several choice blonde moments.

This morning I got to talk to a couple of close friends I haven’t talked to since getting here (High point).

Then I set about figuring out how to buy plane tickets for my upcoming fall break. It seems I couldn’t use the phone service because they don’t take credit cards and a trip to the bank was just as much trouble, so I went to a ticket office in town. They organized my flights, asked for my information, and I discovered I’d of course neglected to bring my passport (Blonde moment). Luckily I was able to conjure the passport number out of nowhere on only the second try (the first try I switched two numbers). When it came time to pay, they insisted they only took Chinese credit cards. Flummoxed, I asked if there was a Bank of China (the bank I knew I could get money from) nearby. They smiled and pointed me down the road. The problem with asking Chinese people for help is that they will always gladly and helpfully answer you, whether or not they actually know the answer. I walked down a street containing I think every bank EXCEPT Bank of China, finally trying one of the bigger ones on a whim. It worked, and as the guy had said I needed 3450, I took out 3500 and went back. Of course he’d really said 3750. This was a slur of speech I’d never encountered before: four and seven should NOT sound alike, but he definitely said “qi” which should have an “ee”, with the “i” sound from “si” (“eh”) and lisped, so it came out like “tseh”. I had in total in my purse 3700. Irritated beyond belief and with no one actually at fault besides my carelessness, I trudged back to the bank to get more money, thinking all the while, of course, of the inferior exchange rate, and fighting back tears of frustration and proclaiming my hatred of China, all the while chastising myself because, after all, I was buying the tickets I wanted (Low point). Later Jeremy insisted that he’s used credit cards before there, and there really should be no problem (Lower point).

This afternoon I had my calligraphy class, and while I am still woefully behind the rest of the class, I am definitely enjoying the class. Today, our instructor demonstrated some writing for us. He wrote in five different styles, for each one choosing an appropriate thing to write. The oldest form was written on fan-shaped paper, and had a four-character phrase encouraging studying one thing to perfection. The somewhat looser style was a long poem that he said was slightly ironic in meaning. The more modern, expressionistic style was a single, bold “dragon”. Afterward he let each of us take one for our own. I liked them all, and ended up with the dragon, which while it doesn’t have as significant a meaning, is very asymmetrical and artistic, and I think I’ll like having it on my wall (High point).

Afterward I set off with a few friends on an errand I’d been considering at a distance for some time: buying an electric bike. By the way, I’ve edited a previous entry mentioning said bikes so that no one can try to use it to call me a hypocrite. The bike I bought looks more like a bike and less like a motorcycle, so it is lighter and theoretically can be mailed home. This forms the basis for my decision to buy it, plus the fact that it will definitely help me get out into the city more in a less structured manner, post “I’m bored and it looks like I’ll stay that way” rut. Of course most people who know me know I suddenly become a neurotic mess when I buy myself things that aren’t frequent and repeating purchases (and even sometimes then), so though I knew I’d regret not buying the bike, and that I would love having it to use, the second I started writing the paperwork I started having what felt like a miniature panic attack of “what did I get myself into?” (Low point). Xueqin had done more research than I had, and especially since I knew I was going to buy the bike but hadn’t told myself yet I felt unprepared for the buying process. She walked me through it, and I took deep breaths. By the time I got ten feet down the road, all that was gone (High point). The bike runs smoothly, and though it’s pickup isn’t great it can get up to about 18 mph, plus it has pedals. I love it and I’m not even sad I didn’t buy one sooner: I’m really glad that I now really know the bus system, and now have to learn the city from another angle. We rode back (with our friend riding on the back in true Chinese form), locked up our bikes, and then I threw out some packing material and the keys to my two locks (Blonde moment).

We had an evening meeting, which was neither high nor low but definitely thought provoking, as among other things we discussed a certain lax attitude toward the language pledge among a large portion of our group. It’s true that a lot of people use English as their default language away from classes, and though I don’t particularly care what other people speak, it’s a little weird to go out with a big group and suddenly realize that everyone is speaking English. Especially when these are not people you’re particularly close with, it’s a bit strange and I end up tending to just not talk at all. So the meeting ended with a new conviction in the language pledge, and I went back to my room and discovered my keys were missing (Low point), went to the downstairs trash can, found one set right off, then removed everything from both bins before finding the other (High point).

Consumer Trends

As I was walking through the alley at back gate last week, I looked through a doorway I’d never noticed before and saw a big indoor food market. I have slightly more faith in my powers of observation than to think I could miss such a large and useful thing, and sure enough it turns out the market is newly-opened after being under renovation since I got here. A stroll through revealed vegetables of all kind (including a cucumber-type squash that was as big around as a salad plate) and a whole row of fish tanks, plus almost anything you could want to make a Chinese meal. Maybe I’ll have to give this cooking thing another shot, and just make Chinese food.

Last night for dinner six of us went to a Korean restaurant. I’d never had Korean food before, and I really liked it. Afterward we bought some ice cream from a convenience store and strolled down to a nearby street that is a main drag of bars near the other big university in town. We parked at “Black and White Bar” and I ordered a screwdriver, which was a mistake. I somehow forgot that there isn’t real orange juice in China. The stuff they sell everywhere labeled as OJ is watery, sweet and somewhat citrus tasting, and in small cups you can see straight through it. So my screwdriver was sweet, citrus tasting water with some vodka at the bottom. Still decent, but I should have just gotten a beer.

Today I dragged myself way across town to wander a bit, and I ended up going into a big shopping mall, only the second like it I’ve found in Hangzhou. The problem with shopping in China, however, is that I can’t actually do it. Chinese fashion is always interesting, and while there’s plenty of tacky silver-painted T-shirts and halter vests that I would never wear, there’s also a lot of pretty designs of dresses, blazers and shirts that I really like looking at. Of course, one gets self conscious walking into a store knowing nothing on the racks will actually fit, leafing through a few sweaters, noticing a shopclerk standing grinning over your shoulder, and then muttering something about nothing being the right size and leaving quickly before she tries to show you something large and hideous with an elastic waist that’s sitting in a box on the floor. The problem is not weight. I could lose 50 pounds and still not be able to buy clothing here. The problem is that my shoulders, ribcage, hips and thighs are just built significantly wider than those of most people here. Surprisingly, I do not feel fat here. I think I’m on such an entirely different level of body-type that my unconscious has just stopped making comparisons altogether. The thing is that there are fat people in China, and there are people with slightly wider frames, and they must buy clothing somewhere. I have no idea where it is, and I can’t exactly stop someone on the street and say “Excuse me, you’re a bit on the large side, where did you get those jeans?”. Anyway, the inability to actually try anything on takes some of the fun out of shopping, so I made a quick tour through the mall and headed back out.

Before getting on the bus I found yet another, larger indoor food market. This one had a whole row of butcher stands, spices, rice, vegetables and an aisle of poultry. They had chicken and duck, sitting in their cages, looking unalarmed and rather unlike the six-piece family tray at Shoprite. This reminded me of one time I saw a woman carrying her morning groceries in a shopping bag. Sticking out of the bag was a head of bok choy or some vegetable, and, after I did a double-take, a duck’s head bobbing along down the street.

Me and My Tapeworm

Faced with no real plans for the afternoon, and determined to get out of the Eeyore mode I’ve found myself in the last day or two, I decided to finally take care of an errand I’ve been avoiding for about a week and went to buy a mouse (I spilled water on my track bad a while a go, and while it’s still technically functional, the right click function occurs on a left click on my desktop, and not at all most other places, a small nuisance which prevents me somehow from dragging text and files, opening attachments or using gmail). The electronics market is near Wensan Rd, an area I’d been meaning to explore more, so I filled my bag with books, maps and busywork and took the bus across town. The electronics market was certainly no Best Buy; two flors of booths crammed with mp3 players, cameras, computers, cell phones and all of the accoutrements that come with them. One of my teachers had helpfully told me the word for mouse (NOT the word for the animal) and told me the approximate price of a bottom-line one. I dispatched the errand without too much trouble, though I of course just bought the first decent one I found. It was a bit overwhelming and I am happy with my purchase, so no matter.

I then set off for a café on a nearby street to kill some time and relax away from campus. This was my first chance to have a relaxing Friday afternoon in a while, and damn it, I was going to make use of it. Unfortunately, I failed to notice that though I was on Wensan Rd (3rd Wen Rd), the place I wanted was not on Wen’er (2nd Wen) Rd, but WEST Wen’er Rd, so I ended up trekking a fair bit across town. It was definitely walkable, and a rather pleasant walk at that, but by the time I arrived I was more than ready to collapse into an armchair on the second floor, order a drink and a sandwich, and not move for a long time.

I spent the next couple of hours working out travel itineraries, reviewing my 1 on 1 a bit and reading, while listening to a continuous loop of lounge piano recordings of, among others, “Somewhere Beyond the Sea”, “White Christmas” and another that I couldn’t place but is definitely in at least two Meg Ryan movies. In fact the whole CD may have been “Sounds of Meg Ryan Movies” as I’m pretty sure White Christmas is in Sleepless in Seattle, and Somewhere Beyond the Sea in When Harry Met Sally.

Coffee house music here never fails to amuse. One place had a recording of several Beatles covers, a few sappy 1990s love songs of the Patrick Swayze variety (one really was that song from Ghost with the pottery wheel; can’t place it now, but you know the one), “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” again, but with the lyrics, and a rock version of Auld Lang Syne. Still another had “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” sung in French, as well as several similarly moody selections, but the CD was replaced after only two repetitions by an excellent 80’s mix, every other track featuring Michael Jackson. This is rare; they usually don’t change the CD all day. You can actually measure the time you’ve spent in a café here by how many times the CD repeats.

At least it’s better than the street cleaning trucks that roll through several times a day. From all points on campus you can year the truck ambling past blaring an ice-cream truck medley of Christmas tunes, mostly “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, and one tune that I swear sounds like Scarborough Fair. If you go farther West, it’s Happy Birthday, London Bridge and Brahm’s Lullaby.

Being Touristy, Part 2

This week hasn’t been immensely taxing, or even that eventful for that matter. Because class was canceled Monday, I effectively only had a half course-load this week, which I dealt with in one fell swoop at Starbucks Tuesday night. It was a rather sniffly swoop, as everone here seems to be sleeping poorly and coming down sick this week. I started getting the sniffles Monday evening, and by Tuesday I was in full-on head cold mode. I couldn’t sleep Tuesday night, a fact which was made worse by the fact that there were mosquitoes in my room. Chinese mosquitoes are quicker, and therefore harder to kill than the American ones. When I was in Beijing I bought a flyswatter, and it became a ritual every night to close the door and climb on every piece of furniture to kill my mosquitoes, each with a fast and supremely satisfying thwack. It was kind of fun, part vindictive pleasure, part prey-stalking.

Though there are mosquitoes here, they’re not as many and haven’t been a huge problem. But when you can’t sleep and you hear an occasional, ominous buzzing somewhere near your head, it can pretty quickly drive you crazy. I’d wave my arms wildly around my head, but a few minutes later they’d be back. I’d pull the covers over my head to keep them away, but quickly get too hot and decide that was a bad idea. It was awful. I’d get up to blow my nose, indignantly flick on the lights and swat at one perched on the wall over my bed. Of course, it would get away, and I’d scan the room for a minute before turning off the light and climbing back into bed. This went on for at least an hour, before finally I took out two of them with one of my textbooks, and (I hoped) shut a third in the bathroom. Left in peace, I settled into my ailing sleep for the night.

Wednesday I felt a bit better, but I also had well over five hours of class, and by the time I finished my one-on-one at 4:15, my brain was droning a monotonous mantra of “sleep…sleep…” and sleep I did, until 9:30 this morning, except for an hour and a half break around 8:00 when I sent off some emails and ate a granola bar. This morning I felt better, but a walk to the post office left me exhausted, and though I wasn’t exactly loving the idea of another afternoon in bed, I didn’t have any homework and wasn’t up for much activity.

Luckily my hand was forced by prior arrangements and a growing urge to get the hell away from campus, which I hadn’t ventured from since Monday night (Starbucks, though a 5-10 minute bus ride away, does not count as it is a place to sit and do work and come back, and has no sight-seeing aspects like other coffee houses). So this afternoon I set off with Xueqin, Shushan and Yazhen to the pedestrian area of Hefang Street, a street promising to give us the chance to haggle to our hearts content over jade cell phone fobs and Peking Opera masks. It still being the National Golden Holiday, the stores were crammed full of people, but it was lots of fun to see everyone’s wares, especially since the street seems to have been outfitted with a somewhat traditional façade, so the shops were all adorned with carved wooden signs and lanterns and such. There were also craft demonstrations of every type, which we were more than happy to gaze at in awe.

After walking the length of the street (and posing in only one picture with gaping tourists, who kept thinking poor Shushan, who’s Korean and lives in New Jersey, was our Chinese interpreter), we headed back to a teahouse we’d seen reviewed in a magazine, and were ushered to a private upstairs room. The waiters were all wearing somewhat traditional garb, and the service featured a tea ceremony that apparently takes two years of study to master. The tea, which was served cold, was refilled from a brass pot with a very long, narrow spout (we’re talking about four feet). The server could twirl the pot in all manner of configurations around his body, at last resting it on his head or behind his back, extending the other hand to the end of the spout and pouring the water, often from some distance, into the cup. Once he lunged at the cup from across the room, holding the pot high over his head, and once he even balanced the cup on his knee. We sat for quite some time, happily munching on the fruit, candies and sunflower seeds they provided us with. The place was terrific; it looked like a set from a kung fu movie, and we were definitely content to stay for as long as they kept bringing us more sunflower seeds, and refilling our beautifully painted teacups.

I’m a big fan of being touristy in Hangzhou. Much as I am getting used to living in this city for daily life, the touristy stuff has so much more stimulus, and there are better places to park and people watch downtown than on the outskirts. At the end of the day I don’t have to schlep my backpack to a hotel room, and I don’t have to think about whether or not I’m making use of my time, because I’ve got lots of time. I live here, though it’s definitely not home. Still, when I have the afternoon free, wandering around the touristy parts is an interesting and different, and somehow more cool than running an errand to buy a mouse (which I still need to do) or doing homework at Starbucks (which I will inevitably do again).