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.