Now we are in Shangrila, far northwestern part of Yunnan province not far from the Tibetan border. And here there resides quite a bit of Tibetans, and thus their cultural influence. The landscape here is stunning and something very unlike what I have been accustomed to seeing in China. That all the different places I have been to constitute one nation is truly amazing; it is difficult to conceive of how variegated and diverse a place China is. Yunnan is beautiful, but this time of year rainy and intolerably cold (Oregon has softened me, Chicago winters are much worse). I came unprepared for this weather so just now purchased long underwear that has left me duelly satisfied. I had to leave behind the special privelage of my own bedroom with a king-sized bed and heating blanket in Lijiang (Pingping hooked me up with that) for an even colder place and a shared room in Shangrila.
There is a lot on my mind these days, thinking about the future. I am specifically concerned about graduating on time, figuring out housing, searching for jobs both for when I am at school and after I graduate. Meanwhile I am focusing on now, on learning as much Mandarin as I can of course, and then missing Shawna a lot. Distance is far from easy, but no part of me has any doubt that it isn't worth the wait and the longing. Mainly these last couple of days all I can really concentrate on is how cold and wet I am. On a side note I am celebrating Halloween a night early (tomorrow) by going to a Tibetan family's house to eat, drink, dance, and be merry. Our teacher said the family would slaughter two sheep for us. Today I bought a homemade alcohol from a roadside restaurant near Tiger Leaping Gorge that was brewed in all sorts of plants, fruits, spices, snakes, and deshelled tutrtles, among myriad other unknown entities. It tastes good and will be suitable for our "Tibetan party."
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
成都
余怡和我在成都天府广场
masa and christine with 钵钵鸡
大熊猫繁殖研究中心... shawna in animal form :)
me, Pingping, christine, and brittanyAboard the flight from Chengdu (成都） to Lijiang (丽江) I listened to Christmas music and felt warm and chuckled to myself thinking about how quickly the remaining month and a half will slide by and soon I will be once again home for the holidays. And two weeks after that at long last I will be reunited with my love. I still have at least 6 flights before I get to that point unfortunately, but it is keeping me running.
This time in China I've really experienced the feeling of "cultural isolation," as it's sometimes referred. I should say it has been valuable for me to go through this though in the long run. What's aggravated it is how bad the food in Nanjing is. As well I practically have no friends in my program. I mean have a few I'm becoming better friends with, but I don't feel much connection with the lot of them. I get along fine though and can carry on a semi-respectable conversation. I would like to say however, that as a group these kids can get pretty strange. Amidst this 9-day sojourn quite a bit of drama has been stirred that was fermenting for weeks, enough to fill a mini-soap opera to keep me entertained. I am in the perfect position: on the outside looking in, without even the least bit of involvement. Group travel is quite a pain, and so our stay in Chengdu was mostly such. But I did have a few golden times that made it worth it... such as at a small restaurant the other night with a group of friends; we ordered several dishes including something specifically Sichuanese called Boboji (钵钵鸡）. When we finished eating there was a very awesome moment of relief when we found out that the boboji we ate was left over from the customers before us who had ordered it, and that which we did not eat was destined for the next customers to order it. Afterwards, going along with one person's desire to go meet up with others in a clubbing district, instead of going to dance, I along with myriad other bystanders watched a man beat himself up, crawling across the ground moaning and crying and wallowing in his own blood. Shortly thereafter I went back to the hotel.
Chengdu otherwise is a pretty chill city; they say the people here lead quite laid back and enjoyed lives and I believe it based on my initial impressions. There isn't much exciting going on there though, but the food is amazing. I ate hotpot with so much huajiao (花椒) my ears literally went numb. Today before leaving the city for Lijiang I met with my dad's friend 余怡 early in the morning. She took me to a nice Buddhist temple, followed by two meals at different restaurants back-to-back, coffee and the public square 天府广场 at the city center. It was a great time though because I spent the entire day speaking Chinese, and not just the basic practical stuff, but actual discussions about a wide range of topics such as graduate school, relative housing expenses, places in China, random experiences and opinions, eastern medicine, food, 等等. With such comprehensive discussion I was able to practice my listening and speaking skills over a very broad range of vocabulary.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
midterm distraction by "Casino"; One-year anniversary overseas
Things are picking up rapidly around this time surrounding midterm exams and the group trip to southwestern China. At the moment I am taking a break from studying for a massive written (汉语） exam that will include, among other sections, two impromptu essays and a dictation covering 160 words, some of which are essentially completely trivial for me to know how to write (such as 招聘，燕子，汗珠）, but I am chugging through it nonetheless. I do like my teacher for that class quite a bit... among the Chinese students he has a reputation for being pretty intense. In class he is really animated and acts so ridiculous at times I just laugh and eventually he laughs with me, regardless of whether or not he knows why I am. He's one of those people whose mannerisms I can just think of and start laughing on the spot. I remember one time, a vocab word of ours was 吸毒 (to take drugs) to which he discussed by using the example of frequent drug use in the U.S. Then he went around the room and put a few of the students on the spot and asked each of them one after the other with a pointing finger: "你吸大麻啊？" ("Do you smoke weed?")
My other class is speaking for the most part, and that teacher I enjoy a lot as well. It's a much easier class to follow and moves considerably slower than my other, but I do appreciate the ability to have chances to talk more, and much of the grammar we learn in it is more applicable to common speech. Whereas in the other class Cao Laoshi will be going way into depth on a given grammar pattern only to reveal later that it's strictly used in written Chinese and not spoken. As for the speaking class, we generally have at least 2 speeches to give in front of the class each week, and that is good compared to the 1 or 2 oral speeches I was required to give each TERM back at the U of O.
Yesterday/today was the one year anniversary for Shawna and me which we conducted quite well with an ocean between us. She sent the absolute most sweetest thing that she had put together. I finished downloading it around 2 or 3 last night. At the time my roommate Funstar was asleep and I was pretty absorbed in watching the movie "Casino." I remember feeling really good as I turned off my computer and crawled into my bed, excited to see the gift in the morning and putting off the stresses of studying for another day.
My other class is speaking for the most part, and that teacher I enjoy a lot as well. It's a much easier class to follow and moves considerably slower than my other, but I do appreciate the ability to have chances to talk more, and much of the grammar we learn in it is more applicable to common speech. Whereas in the other class Cao Laoshi will be going way into depth on a given grammar pattern only to reveal later that it's strictly used in written Chinese and not spoken. As for the speaking class, we generally have at least 2 speeches to give in front of the class each week, and that is good compared to the 1 or 2 oral speeches I was required to give each TERM back at the U of O.
Yesterday/today was the one year anniversary for Shawna and me which we conducted quite well with an ocean between us. She sent the absolute most sweetest thing that she had put together. I finished downloading it around 2 or 3 last night. At the time my roommate Funstar was asleep and I was pretty absorbed in watching the movie "Casino." I remember feeling really good as I turned off my computer and crawled into my bed, excited to see the gift in the morning and putting off the stresses of studying for another day.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
You don't know about my additional pythons
Things suddenly looked up for me today when I was taken in as a tutor to a sweet 7 year-old boy who grew up between NZ and China and whose parents want him to retain the bilingual capability. The people upstairs wanted in on it too so I agreed to tutor their children on Wednesday evenings as well. Although I am teaching English, I can speak Chinese to both of the mothers who have limited English capability and two of the three kids who also have a lower level of English knowledge. So with those two at least I can use Chinese to teach English in some instances. I make far beyond any job I've had in the U.S. which is nice and will also be provided with a home-cooked meal since I take a public bus to their apartment complex directly after I get out of class at 5:30. This was just the kind of arrangement I was looking for to keep my hands out of the bank account for a time, and so I can save up for a plane ticket to Changsha 长沙 and back. The home-cooked meal is the real cherry on top since the lack of decent food in my immediate surroundings has actually depressed me quite a bit. I can't help but think of food in Beijing which I think is a lot better.
Getting out today and conversing with those mothers about arrangements made me feel quite a bit more confident about my spoken Chinese. More often than not I get stuck into the rhythm of spending all my time studying, which in particular entails a lot of reading and writing exercises, and at moments like those I think about how little I must have progressed in the 2 months I've been here already. When I have the chance to go out and about however, sometimes that frustration is rapidly alleviated (and sometimes not) by actual interactions with Chinese people. Putting up with so much frustration and effort to hear people say such compliments of my ability is indeed a rewarding feeling. For instance the way the two mothers jokingly conversed between themselves about me "His pronunciation is such that he should teach our kids Chinese" or at the restaurant owned by a guy from Anhui and his wife with whom I've become acquainted, when one of their staff asked me where I was from, before I answered the wife said: "He's Chinese."
Of course all of this is nice, but I never get too caught up in it because I know very very well that to be proficient in Chinese takes worlds more than what I have now. There is always so much to learn, and I feel the digger I delve into Chinese the more fascinating, confusing, and overwhelming of a language it seems. It's interesting too from the perspective of learning Spanish in high school, a language so closely related to English, and then to study Chinese a language whose structure and grammar at times can literally be untranslatable to a significant degree. And I try to imagine what it is like to think in Chinese, what every sound and expression of body language indicates, and how it is connected with the written language which for all foreigners is like a separate language in and of itself.
I feel language really represents the way people think, and so it is fun to compare my eastern and western heritage in relation to each other, specifically now, the language difference and how that determines the way one observes the world around them. And if only all those kids I knew growing up who loved making fun of the way Chinese people speak English could see how they would look trying to live independently in China and wholly incorporate the language into their lives, they'd realize it's far far away from their comfort zone as well.
Getting out today and conversing with those mothers about arrangements made me feel quite a bit more confident about my spoken Chinese. More often than not I get stuck into the rhythm of spending all my time studying, which in particular entails a lot of reading and writing exercises, and at moments like those I think about how little I must have progressed in the 2 months I've been here already. When I have the chance to go out and about however, sometimes that frustration is rapidly alleviated (and sometimes not) by actual interactions with Chinese people. Putting up with so much frustration and effort to hear people say such compliments of my ability is indeed a rewarding feeling. For instance the way the two mothers jokingly conversed between themselves about me "His pronunciation is such that he should teach our kids Chinese" or at the restaurant owned by a guy from Anhui and his wife with whom I've become acquainted, when one of their staff asked me where I was from, before I answered the wife said: "He's Chinese."
Of course all of this is nice, but I never get too caught up in it because I know very very well that to be proficient in Chinese takes worlds more than what I have now. There is always so much to learn, and I feel the digger I delve into Chinese the more fascinating, confusing, and overwhelming of a language it seems. It's interesting too from the perspective of learning Spanish in high school, a language so closely related to English, and then to study Chinese a language whose structure and grammar at times can literally be untranslatable to a significant degree. And I try to imagine what it is like to think in Chinese, what every sound and expression of body language indicates, and how it is connected with the written language which for all foreigners is like a separate language in and of itself.
I feel language really represents the way people think, and so it is fun to compare my eastern and western heritage in relation to each other, specifically now, the language difference and how that determines the way one observes the world around them. And if only all those kids I knew growing up who loved making fun of the way Chinese people speak English could see how they would look trying to live independently in China and wholly incorporate the language into their lives, they'd realize it's far far away from their comfort zone as well.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
More notes on autumn
Today the weather was clear for once with a nice broad and blue sky and a very crisp, but not too cool airflow going through the city. The sunlight cast everything aglow in a very autumny manner that made me miss the autumnal turn of places like Illinois and Oregon where I know them best. I remembered days at the races, the way the earth shook with hundreds of runners in a stampede competing for the finish line three miles away beneath the spotty shade of sparse forests whose leaves had been all but flushed with my favorite hormone, ethylene.
I miss even the rain that lights up those autumn leaves, giving them a psychedelic glow on a still and gloomy street in Oregon.
I miss walking home from school in Illinois as leaves fall like a slowed-down contemplative scene in a movie, or the way the pumpkins used to ripen in the back field, seemingly floating on that open sea of grass and dirt at a glorious sundown like buoys spread out all across the waters. I miss the golden hue the setting sun would cast upon the prairie and the pick up of winds that shook the house at night while I was bundled up reading a book, babying my sore legs after an intense cross-country practice. I miss walking up the steps of the Mill St. Shithole to my attic space, turning on the computer as soon as I slopped off my rain-drenched clothes... reaching over my bed to plug in the Christmas lights and then keep putting off my studies to have flirtatious, intriguing AOL Instant Messenger chats with this girl named Shawna.
I miss perusing the video store with Seth looking for a suitable couple of horror films to watch in the preceding excitement of Halloween, which to this day remains a favorite pastime of mine whenever I return home, regardless of the date's proximity to October 31st. I long to take a permanent marker and trace out a foolish design on a big orange pumpkin and then systematically disembowel it and carve it, just as I would a cadaver in the anatomy lab (it always comes back to that, you see). And then with the assistance of my mother to butter and salt all of the seeds and bake them in the oven, waiting for my brothers to come home from school marking one less day until Halloween.
Today, walking along a city street flashes of these sorts of memories struck me in succession and I thought about them a little bit. In conclusion, I love the autumn, and I really do miss the experience of it in the places with which I'm most accustomed. Autumn should be okay here, an experience at least, a growing one so to say. One thing though, I will be spending Halloween in Shangrila... more on that to come of course.
I miss even the rain that lights up those autumn leaves, giving them a psychedelic glow on a still and gloomy street in Oregon.
I miss walking home from school in Illinois as leaves fall like a slowed-down contemplative scene in a movie, or the way the pumpkins used to ripen in the back field, seemingly floating on that open sea of grass and dirt at a glorious sundown like buoys spread out all across the waters. I miss the golden hue the setting sun would cast upon the prairie and the pick up of winds that shook the house at night while I was bundled up reading a book, babying my sore legs after an intense cross-country practice. I miss walking up the steps of the Mill St. Shithole to my attic space, turning on the computer as soon as I slopped off my rain-drenched clothes... reaching over my bed to plug in the Christmas lights and then keep putting off my studies to have flirtatious, intriguing AOL Instant Messenger chats with this girl named Shawna.
I miss perusing the video store with Seth looking for a suitable couple of horror films to watch in the preceding excitement of Halloween, which to this day remains a favorite pastime of mine whenever I return home, regardless of the date's proximity to October 31st. I long to take a permanent marker and trace out a foolish design on a big orange pumpkin and then systematically disembowel it and carve it, just as I would a cadaver in the anatomy lab (it always comes back to that, you see). And then with the assistance of my mother to butter and salt all of the seeds and bake them in the oven, waiting for my brothers to come home from school marking one less day until Halloween.
Today, walking along a city street flashes of these sorts of memories struck me in succession and I thought about them a little bit. In conclusion, I love the autumn, and I really do miss the experience of it in the places with which I'm most accustomed. Autumn should be okay here, an experience at least, a growing one so to say. One thing though, I will be spending Halloween in Shangrila... more on that to come of course.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Overdue Pics
Shawna, XiaoHu, and me
Baby elephant in Bangkok
BK Buddhist temple
Temple of Dawn seen from the Chao Phraya river
Forensic science museum in BK, it got creepier from here, this was only the beginning...
手术
I'm beginning to get my second wind after a few days feeling down-and-out in old NJ. I still have quite a while before returning to the U.S. and really need to get out of my comfort zone even more to improve my Chinese as best I can. I was exhausted by 8:30 this evening after spending the entire afternoon translating into English a triple bypass surgery record from 南京鼓楼医院. The surgeon was none other than my one-on-one teacher's father. Translating surgery records into English every week and then discussing them with my guy is pretty challenging, but he is patient and after these grueling sessions he and I usually discuss the difference between the U.S. and China's medical care systems (using Mandarin of course :) ).
Anyway making local friends is key; I have my roommate 樊星 "Fun-Star" who is a character, as well as campus bad-ass Xiao Hu and my recent addition: "Henry" who is a party member. He seems excited that both of our fathers come from Hunan. And then there is "Sugar Ray" Tang Le, another strange one from Beijing who just seems incredibly chilled out every time I see/talk to him. I definitely should seek out some more contacts with whom I can practice speaking. Or at least going out and about can afford some practice as well. Then again sometimes not. Though the coming weeks are packed, I still have a few independent travel plans up my sleeves..
Anyway making local friends is key; I have my roommate 樊星 "Fun-Star" who is a character, as well as campus bad-ass Xiao Hu and my recent addition: "Henry" who is a party member. He seems excited that both of our fathers come from Hunan. And then there is "Sugar Ray" Tang Le, another strange one from Beijing who just seems incredibly chilled out every time I see/talk to him. I definitely should seek out some more contacts with whom I can practice speaking. Or at least going out and about can afford some practice as well. Then again sometimes not. Though the coming weeks are packed, I still have a few independent travel plans up my sleeves..
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
秋天终于开始了
Autumn has finally arrived and quite suddenly too. When I got back from Bangkok I found the weather to be much chillier than before. And finally it is setting in that autumn has begun. I've felt as though I was living in a perpetual summer, when in reality this academic year is quickly going to pass and I am graduating at the end of it.
I need to say now that food in Nanjing is terrible. Since food is a large part of my livelihood, it depresses me that I have yet to find a single restaurant that I can say is actually entirely palatable. Every nutrient in every dish is sapped by the method of cooking and flavor is only a factor of how much MSG was added. Even the Sichuanese food served here is nothing special. It's like the quality of water very far from its high altitude source: shitty. So the act of eating has become a part of my day that I dread.
Today I learned two insults in Chinese that I thought were hilarious:
你生儿子没屁眼
Ni sheng erzi mei pi yan
You will bear a child without an asshole.
操你祖宗十八代
Cao ni zuzong shiba dai
F--- 18 generations of your ancestors.
I need to say now that food in Nanjing is terrible. Since food is a large part of my livelihood, it depresses me that I have yet to find a single restaurant that I can say is actually entirely palatable. Every nutrient in every dish is sapped by the method of cooking and flavor is only a factor of how much MSG was added. Even the Sichuanese food served here is nothing special. It's like the quality of water very far from its high altitude source: shitty. So the act of eating has become a part of my day that I dread.
Today I learned two insults in Chinese that I thought were hilarious:
你生儿子没屁眼
Ni sheng erzi mei pi yan
You will bear a child without an asshole.
操你祖宗十八代
Cao ni zuzong shiba dai
F--- 18 generations of your ancestors.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Seth
From time to time I get to missing Seth. I'll be thinking about the old Illinois boys and I never forget that he is the one who tries to keep in touch with me most. And I'm proud of him too, for he's come a long way and been through a lot growing up, having conquered all sorts of demons I am sure. In spite of it all too, Seth still has his frank sense of humor and positive outlook on things that always brings me to smile.
Once in a while I think about how two years passed in the middle of high school where we didn't talk at all, and though it seems regretful at first, perhaps it was a necessary break where we had some time to grow as individuals before reuniting as close friends again.
Seth does what he does without the fear of others' judgmental scrutiny, yet he has about him a set of morals that always makes him a very good person, even if he doesn't always see it himself. It's comforting knowing that he would never pass judgment onto me. Seth is the only kind of true friend I need in life. I can say that with assurance about any of the Illinois 6 which other than Seth would of course include Dave, Ryan, Brian, Erik and Eric. I would not ask for better friends.
Once in a while I think about how two years passed in the middle of high school where we didn't talk at all, and though it seems regretful at first, perhaps it was a necessary break where we had some time to grow as individuals before reuniting as close friends again.
Seth does what he does without the fear of others' judgmental scrutiny, yet he has about him a set of morals that always makes him a very good person, even if he doesn't always see it himself. It's comforting knowing that he would never pass judgment onto me. Seth is the only kind of true friend I need in life. I can say that with assurance about any of the Illinois 6 which other than Seth would of course include Dave, Ryan, Brian, Erik and Eric. I would not ask for better friends.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Another Day in BK
Second to last day in Bangkok I decided to go to a forensic science museum as well as an anatomical museum obscurely hidden away in a big hospital campus. I took the river taxi on the Chao Phraya again, enjoying the big brown wake and the loud, studdering engine as the boat slams into the side of the dock and passengers hurry on and off. Found the hospital and within it these two museums which were insanely gruesome.
First off, I went to the forensics museum where I saw the mummified corpses of 4 Thai serial killers standing upright in telephone booth kind of structures, as well as uncountable babies in jars. Aside from the babies were severed limbs from traffic accidents and plenty of liver, brain, heart, lung, skull specimens as they are affected in any of the three following ways: gunwound, stabwound, traffic accident.
As though I hadn't my fill of babies in jars, I went to the anatomical museum afterward, walked up the old wooden stairs passing the dissection floor on the way and smelled that sweet distinctive scent of formaldehyde and formalin. Instantly took me back to the anatomy lab in my memory, but I walked on and reached the tiny exhibits on the 3rd floor of this old school building. There I saw skeletons with curly deformations (arm and leg bones like curly fries) and every possible type of conjoined twin babies in jars, including the most intense: the condition of cephalothoracopagus (Google that). I also saw some other creepily preserved bodies and whatnot; it was a lot like how you'd envision Gunther von Hagen's adolescent imagination would be. So I had my fill of the morbid, which was nice. I always come back to anatomy in the end, it's nice how that works.
I did almost die laughing trying to explain that I saw upwards of one hundred deformed babies in jars to my mom and aunt over a Skype video chat. My mom only made me laugh harder, it's kind of funny if you think about it, there was something absurd about describing it over a video chat while I am so far away.
First off, I went to the forensics museum where I saw the mummified corpses of 4 Thai serial killers standing upright in telephone booth kind of structures, as well as uncountable babies in jars. Aside from the babies were severed limbs from traffic accidents and plenty of liver, brain, heart, lung, skull specimens as they are affected in any of the three following ways: gunwound, stabwound, traffic accident.
As though I hadn't my fill of babies in jars, I went to the anatomical museum afterward, walked up the old wooden stairs passing the dissection floor on the way and smelled that sweet distinctive scent of formaldehyde and formalin. Instantly took me back to the anatomy lab in my memory, but I walked on and reached the tiny exhibits on the 3rd floor of this old school building. There I saw skeletons with curly deformations (arm and leg bones like curly fries) and every possible type of conjoined twin babies in jars, including the most intense: the condition of cephalothoracopagus (Google that). I also saw some other creepily preserved bodies and whatnot; it was a lot like how you'd envision Gunther von Hagen's adolescent imagination would be. So I had my fill of the morbid, which was nice. I always come back to anatomy in the end, it's nice how that works.
I did almost die laughing trying to explain that I saw upwards of one hundred deformed babies in jars to my mom and aunt over a Skype video chat. My mom only made me laugh harder, it's kind of funny if you think about it, there was something absurd about describing it over a video chat while I am so far away.
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