Although it really didn’t feel like Christmas over here, what with palm trees outside my window and my entire family on the other side of the planet, I did my best to recreate a Christmas dinner with a few of my friends on Christmas Day. What had started as a couple of traditional treats with our good friend and regular dinner guest Benson somehow snowballed into a mini Christmas party with six people and a full seven-course Christmas dinner crammed into our tiny dorm room. Despite a brief case of “what the ^&$*!&@ was I thinking,” it all fell quite neatly into place, and for a few fleeting hours I felt the familiar warmth of a Western Christmas (and my Chinese friends got a taste of a foreign Christmas).
Bridget had already received a care package this month from her obliging (and obviously very well-organized) parents, equipped with Christmas decorations, napkins, a pair of crackers, a placemat, a tea towel, and gifts for both of us, and our friend Paul had given us a tiny silver tinsel Christmas tree strung with blue lights, so we were actually fairly well prepared. When we cleared all the books and junk off the homework desk at the front of the room and set the tree on it with all the gifts underneath, it actually looked pretty festive in here.
We spent the day cleaning our apartment and rushing around Beibei buying as many traditional Christmas foods as we could. In the end we had a formidable buffet spread around our little tree, and the only think I had to cook was a pot of mulled wine (accomplished, of course, with my trusty rice cooker). We had apples (苹果, píng guǒ), oranges (橘子, júzi), sesame candies, chestnuts (栗子, lìzi) and roasted yams (红薯, hóng shǔ) procured from various street vendors; smoked walnuts (核桃, hé tao), roasted almonds (杏仁, xìng rén), imported Scottish shortbread, imported Swiss Miss hot chocolate and cheapo Changyu red wine from the supermarket; Korean chocolate covered almonds from the import store; and some raspberry Jell-o, European chocolate-topped digestive cookies and Scottish clotted cream fudge sent all the way from Calgary by Bridget’s awesome parents. In China, if you don’t serve meat to your guests, you run the risk of looking like you’re too cheap to feed them properly, and I knew some of our guests were meat enthusiasts, so without a turkey in sight we opted for takeout kung pao chicken (宫保鸡丁, gōng bǎo jī dīng) and sweet and sour pork (糖醋肉, táng cù ròu) with rice (米饭, mǐ fàn) from the canteen a block from our dorm.
Of course, about half an hour before our guests were expected to show up, I realized I’d misplaced my corkscrew. I ran to a couple of the campus convenience stores, which sell everything from socks and housewares to farm-fresh eggs and booze, and neither of them had a corkscrew they’d sell, although both offered to open the bottle for me if I brought it over. Defeated, I ran back to my dorm and returned with my wine to the nearest store, an incredibly grubby and dishevelled little collection of sparingly stocked shelves in a shop whose function appears to be completely dominated by the mah-jong table in the back. After announcing my presence several times, someone eventually heard me over the chatter and gossip, and four or five older men and women abandoned their game to crowd around and watch the grinning shopkeeper haul out the store corkscrew and open the foreigner’s wine.
Somehow, we got the food, drinks and apartment ready in time. We’d found Santa hats for sale at the supermarket and bought enough for everyone, so as soon as our friends arrived we slapped a hat on them. I had some extra cloves on hand from the mulled wine (which only requires two or three cloves, maximum), so I set them out on the coffee table with some tiny baby mandarins and taught everyone to make pomanders. It ended up being a really nice icebreaker, as well as a fun little cultural detail for my Chinese friends. We stabbed cloves into oranges and chatted a bit, discussing school, Christmas traditions, and plans for spring festival, and then we all migrated to the buffet. It was a good thing we thought to buy meat – it was the only thing on the table that got finished. Benson and Xu Bixi had arrived with a massive cake, and when we were all too full to look at the buffet anymore they forced a big slice on everyone. There’s still nearly half a cake sitting in our fridge right now. I’m scared to look at it.
We spent the rest of the night sitting around, picking at the buffet, making pomanders and chatting. I’d found Toblerones for a reasonable price at the import store and gave one to everyone. I also had a special gift for Bixi. In China, nearly everyone under the age of 30 has studied English, and most of them have an English name, as well, which they either pick themselves or are given by an English teacher. Bixi could never decide on one and was never given one by a teacher, so she was excited when I promised her a name for Christmas. After a few hours scanning lists on baby name sites, I eventually went with my original idea – Bijou – which, although it’s actually French and not English, seemed to suit her the most and sounded closest to her Chinese name. She loved it, and so did everyone else. Although I’ll probably just keep calling her Bixi out of habit.
Chinese word of the day:
晚会
wǎn huì
(Evening) party
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Do they know it’s Christmas?
Wow. It’s already Christmas (圣诞节, shèng dàn jié). Despite the presence of a few Christmas decorations that have been popping up around the city for the past few weeks and the cheesy Mandopop Christmas songs that have been following me from every window and door I pass, I never really felt it coming. I hadn’t really expected much to be going on here in the way of Christmassy events, so I’d planned to just hang out with some friends and share whatever treats and traditions I could scrape together. But one of my teachers told us last week that Christmas Eve (known in China as 平安夜 (píng ān yè, “peaceful, safe and sound night”), is actually a pretty lively event downtown, so we went to check it out.
As it turns out, they do know it’s Christmas in China. Or at least they know it’s December 24th, and that it’s a holiday called Christmas. And they certainly do celebrate. But what I witnessed here bore more resemblance to Halloween or New Year’s Eve than any Christmas I’ve ever seen. Apparently, in China, Christmas is a holiday of chaos and mischief. So much for peaceful, safe and sound.
We walked to downtown Beibei just after dark. The streets were already clogged with people. A stream of honking cars and motorcycles threaded through the crowds, while vendors spread their wares across the sidewalks. Most of them were selling glowsticks, light-up devil horn headbands, cans of coloured spray foam, and large, inflatable plastic weapons. By the time we’d shuffled about a block into the crowd, I’d gathered that the main point of Christmas here is to run amok, spraying foam at everyone in arm's reach and beating them with inflatable hammers. Groups of little kids and teenagers wearing glowing devil horns over their Santa hats chased each other shrieking through the streets, emptying cans of foam into each other's faces and beating each other with the inflatable weapons until they deflated and were tossed to the muddy, foamy, garbage-strewn pavement. Several kids were igniting the spray foam with lighters. I got beaten by a couple of random people with hammers and my roommate got sprayed a bit while we tried to slither between the densely-packed bodies to someplace a little less crowded. We found ourselves at an outdoor market I’d never seen before and browsed the candies, preserved fruits and pickled vegetables for a few minutes before turning back to brave the crowds. We were only downtown about an hour, but by the time we’d fought our way back to the street we’d come in on the crowds had doubled. We decided at that point we’d had enough and headed home before we could get trampled.
On the way back we passed numerous vendors selling piles of large, pale pink apples, some of which were wrapped in a flourish of coloured cellophane. Rather than oranges, as in the West, Christmas is associated with apples here due to the seasonal sentiments reflected in the sound of the name; the 苹 (píng) in the word for apple (苹果, píng guǒ) sounds the same as the 平(píng, meaning peace) in 平安夜. They're a ubiquitous Christmas gift here and all week I've been seeing people lugging huge bags of them around to share with their friends and families.
Chinese word of the day:
节日
jié rì
Holiday
As it turns out, they do know it’s Christmas in China. Or at least they know it’s December 24th, and that it’s a holiday called Christmas. And they certainly do celebrate. But what I witnessed here bore more resemblance to Halloween or New Year’s Eve than any Christmas I’ve ever seen. Apparently, in China, Christmas is a holiday of chaos and mischief. So much for peaceful, safe and sound.
We walked to downtown Beibei just after dark. The streets were already clogged with people. A stream of honking cars and motorcycles threaded through the crowds, while vendors spread their wares across the sidewalks. Most of them were selling glowsticks, light-up devil horn headbands, cans of coloured spray foam, and large, inflatable plastic weapons. By the time we’d shuffled about a block into the crowd, I’d gathered that the main point of Christmas here is to run amok, spraying foam at everyone in arm's reach and beating them with inflatable hammers. Groups of little kids and teenagers wearing glowing devil horns over their Santa hats chased each other shrieking through the streets, emptying cans of foam into each other's faces and beating each other with the inflatable weapons until they deflated and were tossed to the muddy, foamy, garbage-strewn pavement. Several kids were igniting the spray foam with lighters. I got beaten by a couple of random people with hammers and my roommate got sprayed a bit while we tried to slither between the densely-packed bodies to someplace a little less crowded. We found ourselves at an outdoor market I’d never seen before and browsed the candies, preserved fruits and pickled vegetables for a few minutes before turning back to brave the crowds. We were only downtown about an hour, but by the time we’d fought our way back to the street we’d come in on the crowds had doubled. We decided at that point we’d had enough and headed home before we could get trampled.
On the way back we passed numerous vendors selling piles of large, pale pink apples, some of which were wrapped in a flourish of coloured cellophane. Rather than oranges, as in the West, Christmas is associated with apples here due to the seasonal sentiments reflected in the sound of the name; the 苹 (píng) in the word for apple (苹果, píng guǒ) sounds the same as the 平(píng, meaning peace) in 平安夜. They're a ubiquitous Christmas gift here and all week I've been seeing people lugging huge bags of them around to share with their friends and families.
Chinese word of the day:
节日
jié rì
Holiday
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Just Cheng-du It: Part Two
Saturday morning I got up early, packed my bag with snacks and a map, and beelined it to the hostel cafe for breakfast and a long-anticipated cup of real coffee. There were lots of things Bridget and I wanted to do in the city and we were kind of at a loss, so we decided to take a bus to Tianfu Square in the middle of the city and just start exploring from there.
We only got lost once on the way to the bus stop and made it to the square without much trouble. The square itself was anticlimactic, just a big open space with some sculptures and benches, and nothing of any apparent interest nearby. Well, except for the huge Museum of Science and Technology that overlooked the square, but we weren't really in the mood to walk around looking at exhibits of cars and airplanes. We bought a proper map from a street vendor and tried to figure out where to go next. We decided to try again for the Wenshu Temple and started off in the direction of the bus stop. Of course, we immediately got lost. Wandering among the skyscrapers and ornate karaoke bars, we stumbled across a lively outdoor market tucked away in an alley behind some buildings and decided to check it out. We got sucked in by a couple of stalls selling beautiful hats and successfully bargained a couple of them down to 40 RMB from 60. Emboldened by our success, I went on to bargain for a warm fluffy scarf from a nice guy a few stalls down who seemed thrilled to meet foreigners who spoke Chinese. We strolled to the end of the alley, and upon discovering that it was part of a larger indoor market, we decided to abandon the earlier plans and spend the afternoon exploring.
The market was full of stalls selling a fairly standard array of clothes, hats, scarves, cosmetics, fake designer bags and household things. When we'd had a good look around, we followed a trail of street vendors to another market nearby. After grabbing lunch from one of the vendors - I had an amazing Chinese crepe filled with squid, cucumber, bean sprouts, cilantro, and a rich spicy sauce - we braved the next market. This one was four storeys of absolute shopping chaos, the narrow aisles between the stalls crammed so full of people it was difficult to move. We spent a few hours there checking out wild shoes, hair accessories and jewelry. When we got tired of fighting through the crowds we grabbed a seat at a manicure stall and got our nails done before heading off in search of dinner.
We left the market and saw a large mall across the street. I figured they'd have some interesting stuff in the food court, so we went to check it out. Unlike the west, malls in China are where people go to get a little upscale. The food court turned out to be a collection of slick, modern, mostly foreign restaurants offering fairly expensive sit-down meals. It was dark by this time and we didn't feel like getting lost again, so we just picked a place and tucked in to a ridiculously overpriced and entirely ordinary dinner. The drinks were good, though - the place specialized in fancy teas and smoothies, which were even more expensive than the food.
We left the mall and wandered around till we found Tianfu Square and got our bearings again. The square, which had seemed so dull and bare in the daylight, had completely transformed into a fantastic urban light show. The enormous statue of a waving Chairman Mao which presided over the square glowed above a powerful set of spotlights. The square itself was lit by dozens of art deco lamps, highlighted by the softly lit spiralling statues that poked out of the fountains in the middle. Colour changing lights played up and down the sides of the huge malls, skyscrapers and luxury hotels that surrounded the square, while two were adorned with enormous screens which played psychedelic shifting colourscapes. We soaked it in for a while before heading down to the metro station under the square. The Chengdu metro was mercifully simple, and we finally managed to make it to our hostel without getting lost.
Back at the hostel, we relaxed a bit and decided we were up for some nightlife. I'd found out Chengdu's longest running gay bar, 1 + 1 Area, was not too far away, so we decided to walk there and check it out. It was hidden away in an industrial part of town on the third floor of a large KTV building without any signs alerting passersby to its presence, but it was there. Peering inside from the deserted, smoke-stained hallway, we both felt a sudden wave of fear about being such obvious outsiders entering this secret place, but we'd already walked all this way, so I steeled myself and marched in, dragging Bridget with me. We were warmly welcomed by the door staff and seated at the closest available seat to the stage, where the nightly show was already in progress. One of the servers came to take our order and informed us that we weren't the only foreigners in the bar, pointing to a table in the far corner. Like many bars in China, there was no cover charge, but it was compulsory to order food or drinks, so we shelled out 40 RMB for two Cokes and sat back to enjoy the show.
The MCs - a man wearing white pants and a white suit jacket over his bare, tattooed chest and a drag queen in a poofy polka-dot sundress which revealed an enormous back tattoo* - bantered back and forth between drag performances and karaoke numbers. We were treated to another awesome drag performance, including some bellydance and modern ballet, along with the standard sex-it-up pop numbers. The MCs greeted the out-of-towners in the audience and asked each of them where they were from, and then they made a special greeting to the 外国朋友 (wàiguó péngyou, foreign friends) in the audience. They waved at Bridget and me, but must have assumed we didn't speak any Chinese, because they didn't ask us any questions. The Americans in the corner got more attention - they somehow got one brave girl up on stage, and when they discovered that she spoke Chinese they grilled her about her sexual orientation and made her dance to Lady Gaga. She gamely kept up with the MCs, and the audience loved her - better her than us, I suppose.
We ended up leaving a little early, about midnight, because we weren't sure whether we'd be disturbing a new roommate in our dorm when we got back to the hostel. In the end, we had the place to ourselves that night. And so ended another day in Chengdu.
Stay tuned for part three...
Chinese word of the day:
性感
xìng gǎn
sex appeal; sexy
* Along with watching Chinese drag, tattoo spotting is one of my new favourite pastimes here, due to the common belief in the west that the Chinese don't get tattoos. They may not be as popular as they are in the west, but they certainly do exist - more on this subject later.
We only got lost once on the way to the bus stop and made it to the square without much trouble. The square itself was anticlimactic, just a big open space with some sculptures and benches, and nothing of any apparent interest nearby. Well, except for the huge Museum of Science and Technology that overlooked the square, but we weren't really in the mood to walk around looking at exhibits of cars and airplanes. We bought a proper map from a street vendor and tried to figure out where to go next. We decided to try again for the Wenshu Temple and started off in the direction of the bus stop. Of course, we immediately got lost. Wandering among the skyscrapers and ornate karaoke bars, we stumbled across a lively outdoor market tucked away in an alley behind some buildings and decided to check it out. We got sucked in by a couple of stalls selling beautiful hats and successfully bargained a couple of them down to 40 RMB from 60. Emboldened by our success, I went on to bargain for a warm fluffy scarf from a nice guy a few stalls down who seemed thrilled to meet foreigners who spoke Chinese. We strolled to the end of the alley, and upon discovering that it was part of a larger indoor market, we decided to abandon the earlier plans and spend the afternoon exploring.
The market was full of stalls selling a fairly standard array of clothes, hats, scarves, cosmetics, fake designer bags and household things. When we'd had a good look around, we followed a trail of street vendors to another market nearby. After grabbing lunch from one of the vendors - I had an amazing Chinese crepe filled with squid, cucumber, bean sprouts, cilantro, and a rich spicy sauce - we braved the next market. This one was four storeys of absolute shopping chaos, the narrow aisles between the stalls crammed so full of people it was difficult to move. We spent a few hours there checking out wild shoes, hair accessories and jewelry. When we got tired of fighting through the crowds we grabbed a seat at a manicure stall and got our nails done before heading off in search of dinner.
We left the market and saw a large mall across the street. I figured they'd have some interesting stuff in the food court, so we went to check it out. Unlike the west, malls in China are where people go to get a little upscale. The food court turned out to be a collection of slick, modern, mostly foreign restaurants offering fairly expensive sit-down meals. It was dark by this time and we didn't feel like getting lost again, so we just picked a place and tucked in to a ridiculously overpriced and entirely ordinary dinner. The drinks were good, though - the place specialized in fancy teas and smoothies, which were even more expensive than the food.
We left the mall and wandered around till we found Tianfu Square and got our bearings again. The square, which had seemed so dull and bare in the daylight, had completely transformed into a fantastic urban light show. The enormous statue of a waving Chairman Mao which presided over the square glowed above a powerful set of spotlights. The square itself was lit by dozens of art deco lamps, highlighted by the softly lit spiralling statues that poked out of the fountains in the middle. Colour changing lights played up and down the sides of the huge malls, skyscrapers and luxury hotels that surrounded the square, while two were adorned with enormous screens which played psychedelic shifting colourscapes. We soaked it in for a while before heading down to the metro station under the square. The Chengdu metro was mercifully simple, and we finally managed to make it to our hostel without getting lost.
Back at the hostel, we relaxed a bit and decided we were up for some nightlife. I'd found out Chengdu's longest running gay bar, 1 + 1 Area, was not too far away, so we decided to walk there and check it out. It was hidden away in an industrial part of town on the third floor of a large KTV building without any signs alerting passersby to its presence, but it was there. Peering inside from the deserted, smoke-stained hallway, we both felt a sudden wave of fear about being such obvious outsiders entering this secret place, but we'd already walked all this way, so I steeled myself and marched in, dragging Bridget with me. We were warmly welcomed by the door staff and seated at the closest available seat to the stage, where the nightly show was already in progress. One of the servers came to take our order and informed us that we weren't the only foreigners in the bar, pointing to a table in the far corner. Like many bars in China, there was no cover charge, but it was compulsory to order food or drinks, so we shelled out 40 RMB for two Cokes and sat back to enjoy the show.
The MCs - a man wearing white pants and a white suit jacket over his bare, tattooed chest and a drag queen in a poofy polka-dot sundress which revealed an enormous back tattoo* - bantered back and forth between drag performances and karaoke numbers. We were treated to another awesome drag performance, including some bellydance and modern ballet, along with the standard sex-it-up pop numbers. The MCs greeted the out-of-towners in the audience and asked each of them where they were from, and then they made a special greeting to the 外国朋友 (wàiguó péngyou, foreign friends) in the audience. They waved at Bridget and me, but must have assumed we didn't speak any Chinese, because they didn't ask us any questions. The Americans in the corner got more attention - they somehow got one brave girl up on stage, and when they discovered that she spoke Chinese they grilled her about her sexual orientation and made her dance to Lady Gaga. She gamely kept up with the MCs, and the audience loved her - better her than us, I suppose.
We ended up leaving a little early, about midnight, because we weren't sure whether we'd be disturbing a new roommate in our dorm when we got back to the hostel. In the end, we had the place to ourselves that night. And so ended another day in Chengdu.
Stay tuned for part three...
Chinese word of the day:
性感
xìng gǎn
sex appeal; sexy
* Along with watching Chinese drag, tattoo spotting is one of my new favourite pastimes here, due to the common belief in the west that the Chinese don't get tattoos. They may not be as popular as they are in the west, but they certainly do exist - more on this subject later.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Just Cheng-du It: Part One
Recently, while planning my five-week vacation over Spring Festival (春节, chūn jié, known in the west as Chinese New Year), I realized there are way too many things I want to do here to fit into five weeks. Homework be damned - I need to start making better use of my weekends. So on Friday after class the roommate and I decided to run off to Chengdu (成都), The capital of Sichuan province, which is just a two-hour train ride from Chongqing.
Although I've been living in China for three months now, it didn't really occur to me till I got to Chengdu that I've never actually been a traveller here. When I arrived in China I went straight to school, a comfortable life already cut out for me complete with accommodation, income, and a community of Chinese friends to show me around and help me with the tricky things. Although being a full time resident here has certainly not been without challenges, travelling has a whole different set. Or maybe they're really all the same challenges, only you have only a limited amount of time to figure them out. In any case, as soon as I got to the train station on Friday afternoon and elbowed my way through a sea of chattering, shoving, staring people and onto a train bound for a city I'd never seen, I realized I was about to have a totally new experience here.
We'd done some research ahead of time and found a few hostels that looked promising, but chickened out when it came to actually calling them to book a room - without the ability to use body language or hand gestures, talking on the phone in your second language (or with someone else who's using their second language) is extremely difficult. It's becoming my new hallmark of language proficiency, really - when I can comfortably make a phone call in Chinese, I may actually consider myself bilingual.
So anyway, midafternoon on Friday we arrived at the Chengdu north train station and were about to hop a bus and start searching for the nearest hostel when we heard someone calling to us in English (it happens all the time - despite the fact that plenty of people come to China from non-English speaking countries like Russia, France and Germany, people here tend to assume that anyone with white skin is an English-speaking American). We turned around and saw a couple of people holding a large sign saying "Sim's Cosy Garden Hostel," which just happened to be one of the hostels we'd chickened out of calling. Not only had the place looked great, but they'd advertised a free pick-up service, which apparently doubled as a way to rustle up business. We didn't even need the sales pitch. Feeling lucky and opportunistic - and anxious to ditch our bags and start exploring the city - we decided to just take the chance and go with them. They brought us to a city bus, paid our fare, and escorted us back to an absolutely charming bohemian oasis hidden behind the dull concrete facade of Chengdu's urban jungle. The place was so gorgeous I didn't even bother taking pictures; I knew they wouldn't do it justice. Just check their website to see what I mean.
We had a look at the tiny double room and decided we'd actually have more privacy in the spacious four-bed dorm, which had two bunk beds, shelving, lockers and its own bathroom, including a shower and a western toilet. At 45 RMB (about $7.50 CAD) per person per night, it was an awesome deal. The place even had a mellow little bar/restaurant/cafe which served real coffee. The eclectic, bohemian atmosphere of the place reminded me so much of the Ocean Island Backpackers Inn back home that I forgot I was in China at times; I felt a wave of culture shock every time I stepped through the heavy gates onto the street.
We settled in, freshened up, and went off to find dinner and acquaint ourselves with the neighbourhood, which was in the northeast end of the city. We immediately became lost; Chengdu, like the rest of China, is under relentless development which no map or guidebook can keep up with. The streets generally had a different name on every block, and our map infuriatingly neglected to record this. It also appears they rename the street every time they demolish and replace a building; even when we got a newer, better map, the names often didn't match up.
We'd originally set out to look for the famous Wenshu Temple, which was just a few minutes' walk from the hostel and boasted a vegetarian restaurant, but somehow ended up overshooting the turnoff and ending up closer to the middle of the city. We found ourselves in a plaza of boutiques, restaurants and snack stalls and decided to cut our losses and just pick a random dish from random restaurant. We ended up at a noodle shop where I managed to communicate to the proprietor that I wanted something - anything - vegetarian. Her responses were all completely unintelligible to me, but I ended up with a tasty bowl of noodles in a miso-like fermented bean broth with some kind of vegetable which I think might have been sweet potato leaves. Satiated, we resumed our search. Using our totally inadequate free tourist maps, we eventually found ourselves in a touristy recreation of an ancient Chinese village. We knew we were close to the temple, but it had already gotten dark and we knew we'd probably end up getting lost again, and what's more it would already be closed. So we tried to make a mental note of where we were and turned around to head back to the hostel.
Several wrong turns and nearly two hours later, we finally found the right street and arrived at the hostel. We grabbed some books from their little international library and relaxed at the cafe for a few minutes, plotting our next move. Then we dragged ourselves off to our bunk to prepare for another day of being clueless tourists.
To be continued...
Chinese word of the day:
迷路
mí lù
to lose the way; lost
Although I've been living in China for three months now, it didn't really occur to me till I got to Chengdu that I've never actually been a traveller here. When I arrived in China I went straight to school, a comfortable life already cut out for me complete with accommodation, income, and a community of Chinese friends to show me around and help me with the tricky things. Although being a full time resident here has certainly not been without challenges, travelling has a whole different set. Or maybe they're really all the same challenges, only you have only a limited amount of time to figure them out. In any case, as soon as I got to the train station on Friday afternoon and elbowed my way through a sea of chattering, shoving, staring people and onto a train bound for a city I'd never seen, I realized I was about to have a totally new experience here.
We'd done some research ahead of time and found a few hostels that looked promising, but chickened out when it came to actually calling them to book a room - without the ability to use body language or hand gestures, talking on the phone in your second language (or with someone else who's using their second language) is extremely difficult. It's becoming my new hallmark of language proficiency, really - when I can comfortably make a phone call in Chinese, I may actually consider myself bilingual.
So anyway, midafternoon on Friday we arrived at the Chengdu north train station and were about to hop a bus and start searching for the nearest hostel when we heard someone calling to us in English (it happens all the time - despite the fact that plenty of people come to China from non-English speaking countries like Russia, France and Germany, people here tend to assume that anyone with white skin is an English-speaking American). We turned around and saw a couple of people holding a large sign saying "Sim's Cosy Garden Hostel," which just happened to be one of the hostels we'd chickened out of calling. Not only had the place looked great, but they'd advertised a free pick-up service, which apparently doubled as a way to rustle up business. We didn't even need the sales pitch. Feeling lucky and opportunistic - and anxious to ditch our bags and start exploring the city - we decided to just take the chance and go with them. They brought us to a city bus, paid our fare, and escorted us back to an absolutely charming bohemian oasis hidden behind the dull concrete facade of Chengdu's urban jungle. The place was so gorgeous I didn't even bother taking pictures; I knew they wouldn't do it justice. Just check their website to see what I mean.
We had a look at the tiny double room and decided we'd actually have more privacy in the spacious four-bed dorm, which had two bunk beds, shelving, lockers and its own bathroom, including a shower and a western toilet. At 45 RMB (about $7.50 CAD) per person per night, it was an awesome deal. The place even had a mellow little bar/restaurant/cafe which served real coffee. The eclectic, bohemian atmosphere of the place reminded me so much of the Ocean Island Backpackers Inn back home that I forgot I was in China at times; I felt a wave of culture shock every time I stepped through the heavy gates onto the street.
We settled in, freshened up, and went off to find dinner and acquaint ourselves with the neighbourhood, which was in the northeast end of the city. We immediately became lost; Chengdu, like the rest of China, is under relentless development which no map or guidebook can keep up with. The streets generally had a different name on every block, and our map infuriatingly neglected to record this. It also appears they rename the street every time they demolish and replace a building; even when we got a newer, better map, the names often didn't match up.
We'd originally set out to look for the famous Wenshu Temple, which was just a few minutes' walk from the hostel and boasted a vegetarian restaurant, but somehow ended up overshooting the turnoff and ending up closer to the middle of the city. We found ourselves in a plaza of boutiques, restaurants and snack stalls and decided to cut our losses and just pick a random dish from random restaurant. We ended up at a noodle shop where I managed to communicate to the proprietor that I wanted something - anything - vegetarian. Her responses were all completely unintelligible to me, but I ended up with a tasty bowl of noodles in a miso-like fermented bean broth with some kind of vegetable which I think might have been sweet potato leaves. Satiated, we resumed our search. Using our totally inadequate free tourist maps, we eventually found ourselves in a touristy recreation of an ancient Chinese village. We knew we were close to the temple, but it had already gotten dark and we knew we'd probably end up getting lost again, and what's more it would already be closed. So we tried to make a mental note of where we were and turned around to head back to the hostel.
Several wrong turns and nearly two hours later, we finally found the right street and arrived at the hostel. We grabbed some books from their little international library and relaxed at the cafe for a few minutes, plotting our next move. Then we dragged ourselves off to our bunk to prepare for another day of being clueless tourists.
To be continued...
Chinese word of the day:
迷路
mí lù
to lose the way; lost
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Language, wine, and the Sichuan accent
Our Chinese friends here tend to have really strange schedules – classes in the mornings, afternoons and evenings – and often a really odd mix of required courses and electives. Physical education is mandatory for university students in China, as is Marxist theory, no matter what your major is. The electives available are pretty interesting, though, and yesterday I had the opportunity to sit in on one of Benson’s classes all about the art, science, and culture of wine (葡萄酒, pú tao jiǔ).
The lecture room was only about a quarter full, and we managed to sneak in and fold ourselves into one of the rows of tiny seats near the back without getting too many stares. The teacher was chattering animatedly into a headset about the various features and technicalities of wine corks, his voice piped out of the speakers installed around the room. I noticed right away that he had a bit of the local accent, which means, among other things, he pronounced a standard Mandarin “sh” sound as an “s,” a “zh” sound as “dz,” the “r” kind of sounded like a “z,” and his tones were a bit different.
For the first few minutes of class I was pretty lost and could only pick out the odd word or phrase, but I just sat back and relaxed into it and found that the less I strained myself to grasp every word, the more I understood. It’s a bit of a “forest for the trees” phenomenon. The teacher elaborated on barrels, bottles, grape varieties, stemware, and, for reasons not fully apparent, Marilyn Monroe, and by the end of the two-hour lecture I was able to make sense of most of what he said, even when it included some unfamiliar words. I was even able to decipher the meaning of some of those familiar words from the context alone, without even checking a dictionary, and that’s harder than it sounds. Listening comprehension has been one of my biggest obstacles here; while my spoken Chinese is good enough that I generally have no trouble communicating, I often don’t understand what I hear, particularly when it’s addressed directly to me. I tend to get flustered and distracted and won’t understand even familiar words and phrases. It certainly doesn’t help that people often sound like they’re yelling when they talk to you here – I always think they’re angry at me and start listening for a totally different set of words.
Anyway, the class was educational on two levels and I’m stoked to keep going. Now I'm scanning around for more classes to infiltrate. Benson's also learning French (taught by the same Chinese guy who taught the wine class), and I bet that would be a pretty interesting class to check out. Although I studied French from elementary school through high school, it's all completely atrophied from underuse now. Relearning my second language via my third language would allow me to set up a whole new two-way mnemonics system for both languages and would be one hell of an intense brain workout. I've also been invited by one of the teachers here to sit in on her Russian class, which would be entirely in Russian as she speaks no Chinese and only basic English. Not particularly helpful to my Chinese studies, but I've always loved the sound of Russian, so why not?
Chinese word of the day:
语言
yǔ yán
Language
The lecture room was only about a quarter full, and we managed to sneak in and fold ourselves into one of the rows of tiny seats near the back without getting too many stares. The teacher was chattering animatedly into a headset about the various features and technicalities of wine corks, his voice piped out of the speakers installed around the room. I noticed right away that he had a bit of the local accent, which means, among other things, he pronounced a standard Mandarin “sh” sound as an “s,” a “zh” sound as “dz,” the “r” kind of sounded like a “z,” and his tones were a bit different.
For the first few minutes of class I was pretty lost and could only pick out the odd word or phrase, but I just sat back and relaxed into it and found that the less I strained myself to grasp every word, the more I understood. It’s a bit of a “forest for the trees” phenomenon. The teacher elaborated on barrels, bottles, grape varieties, stemware, and, for reasons not fully apparent, Marilyn Monroe, and by the end of the two-hour lecture I was able to make sense of most of what he said, even when it included some unfamiliar words. I was even able to decipher the meaning of some of those familiar words from the context alone, without even checking a dictionary, and that’s harder than it sounds. Listening comprehension has been one of my biggest obstacles here; while my spoken Chinese is good enough that I generally have no trouble communicating, I often don’t understand what I hear, particularly when it’s addressed directly to me. I tend to get flustered and distracted and won’t understand even familiar words and phrases. It certainly doesn’t help that people often sound like they’re yelling when they talk to you here – I always think they’re angry at me and start listening for a totally different set of words.
Anyway, the class was educational on two levels and I’m stoked to keep going. Now I'm scanning around for more classes to infiltrate. Benson's also learning French (taught by the same Chinese guy who taught the wine class), and I bet that would be a pretty interesting class to check out. Although I studied French from elementary school through high school, it's all completely atrophied from underuse now. Relearning my second language via my third language would allow me to set up a whole new two-way mnemonics system for both languages and would be one hell of an intense brain workout. I've also been invited by one of the teachers here to sit in on her Russian class, which would be entirely in Russian as she speaks no Chinese and only basic English. Not particularly helpful to my Chinese studies, but I've always loved the sound of Russian, so why not?
Chinese word of the day:
语言
yǔ yán
Language
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Carrie-OK
Well, it's happened. After successfully avoiding it for three whole months, I have finally experienced the Asian cultural phenomenon that is karaoke (卡拉OK, kǎ lā OK). Saturday night Benson texted me asking me and the roommate if we wanted to hang out. We met him and one of his friends outside the dorm and he said, “well, what do you want to do? I know, let’s go sing some songs!” Knowing that resistance was futile – and that I had nothing better to do anyway – I made a mild show of protest and gave in.
We walked to the nearest karaoke bar just a few minutes from the campus and stepped through the double glass doors into some kind of space fantasy – the room was bathed in the dim glow of colour-changing lights installed all up and down the walls and under the glass floor, offset by alternating mirrored wall tiles. A chandelier with beads hanging all the way to the floor lit one end of the room and slick black leather couches lurked in the corners. And that was just the lobby. We never actually got to see the rest of it, because the place was full. Unlike the west, where (according to my limited experience) karaoke is usually performed in a crowded, noisy bar in front of a bunch of drunk strangers, karaoke bars in Asia usually consist of little private rooms which you rent by the hour for a cozy evening of drinking, snacking and singing with your friends. They do have people singing karaoke publicly, too, but the private room karaoke seems to be the standard here.
Anyway, after we got turned away from the first bar, we went on to the next one, which was even more grandiose with a colourful, two-storey art deco design covering half the block over the entranceway. We entered the somewhat less impressive lobby, paid for four hours in one of the smaller rooms, and were escorted down a dim corridor to a room that looked like someone’s outdated basement entertainment room – loud, swirly wallpaper covered the walls and ceiling, closing in around the worn vinyl couches and pitted granite coffee table. A large TV and karaoke machine sat against the wall opposite the couches.
As we were settling in, the staff informed us that we needed to order some food or drinks, so we ordered popcorn and dried shredded squid and started picking songs. Benson and his friend kicked things off with a few of their favourites (Benson really loves Faye Wong, or 王菲) and I was relieved to discover that their voices weren’t much better than mine. My roommate, being a fan of Mando-Pop, was slightly better off than I was – there were only a handful of English songs on the machine, and of these the only ones I was really familiar with were “Hey Jude” and “You Are My Sunshine.” She bravely sang a few songs in English and Chinese and I did the two I knew, along with a few Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys songs I didn’t know well enough to follow along even with the lyrics. Our friends looked pretty bored, to be honest, but it turned out to be a much less painful experience than I thought.
Chinese word of the day:
随便
suí biàn
As one wishes; "whatever"
We walked to the nearest karaoke bar just a few minutes from the campus and stepped through the double glass doors into some kind of space fantasy – the room was bathed in the dim glow of colour-changing lights installed all up and down the walls and under the glass floor, offset by alternating mirrored wall tiles. A chandelier with beads hanging all the way to the floor lit one end of the room and slick black leather couches lurked in the corners. And that was just the lobby. We never actually got to see the rest of it, because the place was full. Unlike the west, where (according to my limited experience) karaoke is usually performed in a crowded, noisy bar in front of a bunch of drunk strangers, karaoke bars in Asia usually consist of little private rooms which you rent by the hour for a cozy evening of drinking, snacking and singing with your friends. They do have people singing karaoke publicly, too, but the private room karaoke seems to be the standard here.
Anyway, after we got turned away from the first bar, we went on to the next one, which was even more grandiose with a colourful, two-storey art deco design covering half the block over the entranceway. We entered the somewhat less impressive lobby, paid for four hours in one of the smaller rooms, and were escorted down a dim corridor to a room that looked like someone’s outdated basement entertainment room – loud, swirly wallpaper covered the walls and ceiling, closing in around the worn vinyl couches and pitted granite coffee table. A large TV and karaoke machine sat against the wall opposite the couches.
As we were settling in, the staff informed us that we needed to order some food or drinks, so we ordered popcorn and dried shredded squid and started picking songs. Benson and his friend kicked things off with a few of their favourites (Benson really loves Faye Wong, or 王菲) and I was relieved to discover that their voices weren’t much better than mine. My roommate, being a fan of Mando-Pop, was slightly better off than I was – there were only a handful of English songs on the machine, and of these the only ones I was really familiar with were “Hey Jude” and “You Are My Sunshine.” She bravely sang a few songs in English and Chinese and I did the two I knew, along with a few Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys songs I didn’t know well enough to follow along even with the lyrics. Our friends looked pretty bored, to be honest, but it turned out to be a much less painful experience than I thought.
Chinese word of the day:
随便
suí biàn
As one wishes; "whatever"
Friday, November 26, 2010
Don't Fear The Bean Curd
Being a vegetarian in China, I'm relying pretty heavily on soy for my protein these days. But it’s cool, because they do everything you can imagine with soy here. In the fresh food section of the supermarket you can buy tofu (豆腐, dòu fu) in several styles: there’s the basic white medium-firm tofu like you see in the west; extra-firm sliced tofu that’s been marinated and smoked; tofu that's been rolled into a fat little sausage while it's still fresh and then marinated and smoked; plain or marinated semi-dried tofu that's made in big flat sheets, which you can cut into strips to make some damn tasty low-carb noodles; tofu cubes that have been deep fried until they go puffy and have a chewy texture; spongey tofu sold in round, flat, pancake-like slices; and tofu that's been aged for a richer flavour and a chewier texture. I’ve even seen soft tofu sold in tubes - I have no clue how you’d eat it, but I think you squeeze it into hotpot to make noodles or something. I’ve also seen what appears to be tofu cut into shapes that resemble prepared squid, likely also for hotpot.
And tofu is but one humble speck in the glorious bean curd galaxy. There are tons of equally delicious soy products that can’t really be classified as tofu. In the dry goods you can get bean curd that's been made in flat sheets and then dried in densely rolled tubes, meant to imitate a nice chewy chunk of beef tendon when reconstituted and stir fried or added to hotpot. Delicious, chewy bean curd skin (豆皮, dòu pí), which is made with the skin that forms on top of soymilk while it's being boiled, can be bought dried in sheets, sticks, and cute little bowties. A wide variety of seasoned dried tofu (think tofu jerky) can be bought in regular or snack-sized vacuum sealed packs. In the ready-to-eat section of the supermarket, which is totally awesome despite being completely un-foodsafe and a really good way to get sick, you can buy all the above varieties of tofu prepared a million different ways with various combinations of veggies, meats, noodles and seasonings: spicy tripe and bean curd skin salad, bean curd faux tendon with green beans, tofu noodles with long strips of seaweed, sliced tofu sausage and lotus root, etc...so much fun just to walk around and look at.
And that's not all. The snack shops sell a super-soft fresh tofu, very tricky to eat with chopsticks, which you eat dipped in a mixture of chillies, oil and salt. Another one of my favourites is tofu pudding (豆腐脑, dòufu nǎo, lit. “tofu brains”), a super-soft tofu with a gorgeous light, silky texture, which I’d previously only eaten Hong-Kong style chilled and topped with ginger-flavoured syrup. The local style is completely different, though – served warm, and, like everything else they eat here, topped with chillies, Sichuan peppers, preserved vegetables, salt and green onions. Semi-dried, marinated and seasoned tofu (香豆腐, xiāng dòufu) can be bought on skewers from the snack shops and street vendors.
Another popular street snack is the infamous stinky tofu (臭豆腐, chòu dòufu), tofu that's been fermented in some kind of yeasty brine until it has an ungodly reek that you can follow for blocks. Last week, after passing by several times before and chickening out, I finally bought a bowl of stinky tofu from a street vendor by my school. And it was delicious - fried golden and chewy on the outside, soft and fresh on the inside, and smothered in chillies, Sichuan peppers, cilantro and green onions, with a generous sprinkling of salt. The smell and flavour are somewhat reminiscent of a strong cheese and the flavour is actually quite mild, nowhere near as strong as the smell. It's surprisingly palatable; as long as you didn't tell them what they were eating, the chilies would probably put more people off than the tofu. Even my super picky roommate liked it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will definitely be making it a part of my snacking repertoire.
These are only the things I’ve discovered in a short time here, with my untrained eye and limited Chinese. I’m having so much fun discovering the infinite possibilities of bean curd, I've decided to launch a bean curd mission: I’m going to sample as many types of bean curd as I can get my hands on. Guess this means I'll have to try those scary preserved tofu cubes you buy in sticky dust-covered jars in the emptiest aisles of the Chinese supermarkets...
Chinese lesson of the day:
素食者
sù shí zhě
vegetarian
And tofu is but one humble speck in the glorious bean curd galaxy. There are tons of equally delicious soy products that can’t really be classified as tofu. In the dry goods you can get bean curd that's been made in flat sheets and then dried in densely rolled tubes, meant to imitate a nice chewy chunk of beef tendon when reconstituted and stir fried or added to hotpot. Delicious, chewy bean curd skin (豆皮, dòu pí), which is made with the skin that forms on top of soymilk while it's being boiled, can be bought dried in sheets, sticks, and cute little bowties. A wide variety of seasoned dried tofu (think tofu jerky) can be bought in regular or snack-sized vacuum sealed packs. In the ready-to-eat section of the supermarket, which is totally awesome despite being completely un-foodsafe and a really good way to get sick, you can buy all the above varieties of tofu prepared a million different ways with various combinations of veggies, meats, noodles and seasonings: spicy tripe and bean curd skin salad, bean curd faux tendon with green beans, tofu noodles with long strips of seaweed, sliced tofu sausage and lotus root, etc...so much fun just to walk around and look at.
And that's not all. The snack shops sell a super-soft fresh tofu, very tricky to eat with chopsticks, which you eat dipped in a mixture of chillies, oil and salt. Another one of my favourites is tofu pudding (豆腐脑, dòufu nǎo, lit. “tofu brains”), a super-soft tofu with a gorgeous light, silky texture, which I’d previously only eaten Hong-Kong style chilled and topped with ginger-flavoured syrup. The local style is completely different, though – served warm, and, like everything else they eat here, topped with chillies, Sichuan peppers, preserved vegetables, salt and green onions. Semi-dried, marinated and seasoned tofu (香豆腐, xiāng dòufu) can be bought on skewers from the snack shops and street vendors.
Another popular street snack is the infamous stinky tofu (臭豆腐, chòu dòufu), tofu that's been fermented in some kind of yeasty brine until it has an ungodly reek that you can follow for blocks. Last week, after passing by several times before and chickening out, I finally bought a bowl of stinky tofu from a street vendor by my school. And it was delicious - fried golden and chewy on the outside, soft and fresh on the inside, and smothered in chillies, Sichuan peppers, cilantro and green onions, with a generous sprinkling of salt. The smell and flavour are somewhat reminiscent of a strong cheese and the flavour is actually quite mild, nowhere near as strong as the smell. It's surprisingly palatable; as long as you didn't tell them what they were eating, the chilies would probably put more people off than the tofu. Even my super picky roommate liked it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will definitely be making it a part of my snacking repertoire.
These are only the things I’ve discovered in a short time here, with my untrained eye and limited Chinese. I’m having so much fun discovering the infinite possibilities of bean curd, I've decided to launch a bean curd mission: I’m going to sample as many types of bean curd as I can get my hands on. Guess this means I'll have to try those scary preserved tofu cubes you buy in sticky dust-covered jars in the emptiest aisles of the Chinese supermarkets...
Chinese lesson of the day:
素食者
sù shí zhě
vegetarian
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Walking in a Western Wonderland
Yeah, so, still having trouble finding the time for this blog. But that’s good, I guess, because when I’m not blogging it’s probably because I’m studying our out having an adventure. It really is a shame about the pictures refusing to upload; if I could post pictures I wouldn’t feel compelled to write such long posts!
Just like they said in Pulp Fiction, some of the coolest things you encounter while travelling are the little differences. Obviously, in China, a lot of the differences aren’t so little, but the little ones are no less fascinating. Yesterday the roommate and I took our Chinese friends Benson and Paul to Chongqing’s hip, urban Shapingba district to introduce them to some of the Western novelties that can be found there and to see how they translated into Chinese. The main mission for the day was to find an authentic slice of pizza, but we ended up spending the whole afternoon cruising the shops and restaurants for a taste of home. The first place we found after we got off the bus was a Dairy Queen and we rushed in to get our friends their first Blizzard. I opted instead for something that I’m pretty sure has never graced the menu of a North American Dairy Queen – a strawberry and red bean Iced Cap. We weren’t disappointed - the Blizzard was served upside down, just like at home, and our friends told us it was the best ice cream they’d ever had. At over 30 Yuan (five dollars) per ice cream, which is shockingly expensive over here, the prices were authentic as well.
Wandering through Shapingba, we were beckoned by a KFC, a McDonald’s and a Starbucks, but as we’d already set our hearts on pizza, we didn’t stop till we saw Shapingba’s fabled Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut in China is not the tacky family pit stop it is back home. Servers in headsets and smart uniforms opened the glass double doors for us as we approached and ushered us up the curving, purple-carpeted staircase to a window seat in the upper dining room overlooking the boulevard below. The enormous menu was in both Chinese and English and included appetizers, salads, pizzas, pastas, and rice dishes, as well as a selection of bubble tea, milk tea, wine, cake, and ice cream. The one thing it didn’t have was a vegetarian pizza, so I ordered a miniature seafood pizza for myself and the rest of the table shared a Hawaiian. My seafood pizza was generously piled with squid, shrimp, crab sticks and real mozzarella – I actually forgot I was in China for a second as I ate it. My roommate declared the Hawaiian pizza authentic and it seemed to be a hit with our friends, as well. Again, the prices were insane by Chinese standards, although at about 100 Yuan for a large and a small pizza, it was probably a little cheaper than a Pizza Hut back home.
After the pizza I debated taking everyone to the Starbucks around the corner, but decided as I’d already experienced the Chinese Starbucks I should really try something new. We ended up going to Holiland (好利来, Hao3 li4 lai2), a Chinese coffee and bakery chain that I’d heard had decent coffee for a fraction of the prices in Western places. Sadly, my Americano was burned to crap. Oh well.
Next we spotted Watson’s, a British drugstore, and went to check it out. Apparently they were having some kind of huge sale, because the place was packed to the rafters and it was nearly impossible to move. We elbowed our way through the shampoo and cosmetic aisles and were about to leave in fear for our lives when we spotted the snacks at the other end of the store – Walker’s shortbread cookies! Lindt chocolates! And…oh my god…Kinder Surprises. We snatched a couple of choice items, braved the line to the cash register, and got the hell out. Benson, for some reason, was particularly excited about the little Lindt chocolate balls. I was really excited about the Kinder Surprises, which were wrapped in an extremely curious kind of bubble packaging I’d never seen before. When we got them home and opened them up I was shocked to discover that there was no cleverly layered hollow chocolate egg, no little plastic yellow capsule stuffed with dismantled toy parts. The plastic bubble-egg separated into two plastic-covered halves, one containing the toy and the other containing what appeared to be a couple blobs of chocolate and cookie crumbs suspended in a pool of white chocolate, which was apparently meant to be spooned out with the little plastic spatula-thing that came sandwiched in between the halves. In my childish anticipation of cracking open that familiar chocolate egg, I was kind of disappointed for a moment, and then I remembered that I was in China, dammit, and that this really weird Kinder Surprise was actually a cultural experience. So we put the toys together, played with them for a bit, and then ate the weird chocolate puddle thing. The blobs turned out to be delicate chocolate-covered wafers filled with chocolate hazelnut cream, a lot like Ferrero Rocher, and the puddle turned out to be some kind of fudgy white chocolate hazelnut concoction. It was amazing. You’re all getting some for Christmas.
Chinese word of the day:
好吃
Hao3 chi1
Delicious (literally, good eat)
Just like they said in Pulp Fiction, some of the coolest things you encounter while travelling are the little differences. Obviously, in China, a lot of the differences aren’t so little, but the little ones are no less fascinating. Yesterday the roommate and I took our Chinese friends Benson and Paul to Chongqing’s hip, urban Shapingba district to introduce them to some of the Western novelties that can be found there and to see how they translated into Chinese. The main mission for the day was to find an authentic slice of pizza, but we ended up spending the whole afternoon cruising the shops and restaurants for a taste of home. The first place we found after we got off the bus was a Dairy Queen and we rushed in to get our friends their first Blizzard. I opted instead for something that I’m pretty sure has never graced the menu of a North American Dairy Queen – a strawberry and red bean Iced Cap. We weren’t disappointed - the Blizzard was served upside down, just like at home, and our friends told us it was the best ice cream they’d ever had. At over 30 Yuan (five dollars) per ice cream, which is shockingly expensive over here, the prices were authentic as well.
Wandering through Shapingba, we were beckoned by a KFC, a McDonald’s and a Starbucks, but as we’d already set our hearts on pizza, we didn’t stop till we saw Shapingba’s fabled Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut in China is not the tacky family pit stop it is back home. Servers in headsets and smart uniforms opened the glass double doors for us as we approached and ushered us up the curving, purple-carpeted staircase to a window seat in the upper dining room overlooking the boulevard below. The enormous menu was in both Chinese and English and included appetizers, salads, pizzas, pastas, and rice dishes, as well as a selection of bubble tea, milk tea, wine, cake, and ice cream. The one thing it didn’t have was a vegetarian pizza, so I ordered a miniature seafood pizza for myself and the rest of the table shared a Hawaiian. My seafood pizza was generously piled with squid, shrimp, crab sticks and real mozzarella – I actually forgot I was in China for a second as I ate it. My roommate declared the Hawaiian pizza authentic and it seemed to be a hit with our friends, as well. Again, the prices were insane by Chinese standards, although at about 100 Yuan for a large and a small pizza, it was probably a little cheaper than a Pizza Hut back home.
After the pizza I debated taking everyone to the Starbucks around the corner, but decided as I’d already experienced the Chinese Starbucks I should really try something new. We ended up going to Holiland (好利来, Hao3 li4 lai2), a Chinese coffee and bakery chain that I’d heard had decent coffee for a fraction of the prices in Western places. Sadly, my Americano was burned to crap. Oh well.
Next we spotted Watson’s, a British drugstore, and went to check it out. Apparently they were having some kind of huge sale, because the place was packed to the rafters and it was nearly impossible to move. We elbowed our way through the shampoo and cosmetic aisles and were about to leave in fear for our lives when we spotted the snacks at the other end of the store – Walker’s shortbread cookies! Lindt chocolates! And…oh my god…Kinder Surprises. We snatched a couple of choice items, braved the line to the cash register, and got the hell out. Benson, for some reason, was particularly excited about the little Lindt chocolate balls. I was really excited about the Kinder Surprises, which were wrapped in an extremely curious kind of bubble packaging I’d never seen before. When we got them home and opened them up I was shocked to discover that there was no cleverly layered hollow chocolate egg, no little plastic yellow capsule stuffed with dismantled toy parts. The plastic bubble-egg separated into two plastic-covered halves, one containing the toy and the other containing what appeared to be a couple blobs of chocolate and cookie crumbs suspended in a pool of white chocolate, which was apparently meant to be spooned out with the little plastic spatula-thing that came sandwiched in between the halves. In my childish anticipation of cracking open that familiar chocolate egg, I was kind of disappointed for a moment, and then I remembered that I was in China, dammit, and that this really weird Kinder Surprise was actually a cultural experience. So we put the toys together, played with them for a bit, and then ate the weird chocolate puddle thing. The blobs turned out to be delicate chocolate-covered wafers filled with chocolate hazelnut cream, a lot like Ferrero Rocher, and the puddle turned out to be some kind of fudgy white chocolate hazelnut concoction. It was amazing. You’re all getting some for Christmas.
Chinese word of the day:
好吃
Hao3 chi1
Delicious (literally, good eat)
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Operation Gay Bar
Chongqing isn’t as cosmopolitan as Beijing or Shanghai or as westernized as Hong Kong, all of which have a relatively visible gay community. Having spent most of my life in one of North America’s gayest cities, I’d come to China expecting to encounter some major culture shock in this area. What I hadn’t expected was to find myself living in the gay capital of China. As it turns out, Chongqing has a huge gay subculture, albeit a rather underground one.
It took some searching, but a couple weeks back I managed to track down the names of a couple gay bars and find a friend who was interested in checking them out with me. Pretty much all the nightlife here is in Jiefangbei, which is about an hour away by bus, and bus service back to Beibei ends at around 10 o’clock at night, so a night out is really a night out – unless you want to pay for an hour-long cab ride, you’re stuck there till the next day. So we prepared ourselves for a weekend trip and set out on Saturday afternoon with plans to find the bar, check into the nearest hotel, grab some dinner and then go party the night away.
By the time we got to Jiefangbei it was dark out, and we only had a vague idea where the bar was, so we asked everyone we passed for directions as we walked. After half an hour of searching, we found out it had closed. Not to be discouraged, we decided to go to another gay bar which was somewhere nearby. My friend didn’t know the way, so she called a friend, who called a friend, and eventually we got a call saying that one had closed, too. At that point, I started to worry, but then the friend told us that there was another gay bar only a few blocks away. We set off in search of the other bar, asking at least a dozen people for directions, until we finally found ourselves in a rubble-strewn alley next to a partially demolished building. We were about to give up and look for the next bar on our list when I saw a sign at the other end of the alley with some familiar-looking characters on it – it was 天堂酒吧 (Tian1 Tang2 Jiu3 Ba1), Paradise Bar, the one we’d originally planned to go to. After taking a look inside to confirm that it was indeed the right place, we found a little hotel around the corner, got a room for 88 yuan (about $14, and hit up the roadside snack stalls for dinner and some snacks to sustain us through the evening.
At around ten we went back to the bar, which was now completely packed. The nightly drag show was about to start and there were no tables left, so we ended up sharing a table with the group of girls just in front of us. The shabby exterior, we discovered, hid a pretty decent interior. The place was huge but not too exposed, with lots of tables tucked off in intimate little corners, all within eyesight of the stage in the middle of the room. The ceiling was filled with funky chandeliers and tiny hanging lights which reflected off the mirrors on the walls. They even had a gogo cage, although there was nobody dancing in it.
We sat down, made introductions, and ordered Chivas and lemon tea for the whole table. A drag queen in a curly blonde wig tottered over with a tray of snacks and served us little plates of chicken feet, spicy marinated seaweed, and dried tofu on the house. One of the girls taught us a drinking game and we all chatted, rolled dice and tossed back shots as we watched a troupe of impossibly pretty drag queens do a few dance numbers and shriek their way through a Beijing Opera. The show lasted until midnight, and was clearly the main attraction of the bar – there was no dance floor, and by 12:30 the place was deserted. We thought about checking out another place but weren't really in the mood for another search, so we called it a night and headed back to the hotel. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to dance at all, but we'll just make that our mission for the next outing.
Chinese word of the day:
同性恋
tong2 xing4 lian4
homosexuality
It took some searching, but a couple weeks back I managed to track down the names of a couple gay bars and find a friend who was interested in checking them out with me. Pretty much all the nightlife here is in Jiefangbei, which is about an hour away by bus, and bus service back to Beibei ends at around 10 o’clock at night, so a night out is really a night out – unless you want to pay for an hour-long cab ride, you’re stuck there till the next day. So we prepared ourselves for a weekend trip and set out on Saturday afternoon with plans to find the bar, check into the nearest hotel, grab some dinner and then go party the night away.
By the time we got to Jiefangbei it was dark out, and we only had a vague idea where the bar was, so we asked everyone we passed for directions as we walked. After half an hour of searching, we found out it had closed. Not to be discouraged, we decided to go to another gay bar which was somewhere nearby. My friend didn’t know the way, so she called a friend, who called a friend, and eventually we got a call saying that one had closed, too. At that point, I started to worry, but then the friend told us that there was another gay bar only a few blocks away. We set off in search of the other bar, asking at least a dozen people for directions, until we finally found ourselves in a rubble-strewn alley next to a partially demolished building. We were about to give up and look for the next bar on our list when I saw a sign at the other end of the alley with some familiar-looking characters on it – it was 天堂酒吧 (Tian1 Tang2 Jiu3 Ba1), Paradise Bar, the one we’d originally planned to go to. After taking a look inside to confirm that it was indeed the right place, we found a little hotel around the corner, got a room for 88 yuan (about $14, and hit up the roadside snack stalls for dinner and some snacks to sustain us through the evening.
At around ten we went back to the bar, which was now completely packed. The nightly drag show was about to start and there were no tables left, so we ended up sharing a table with the group of girls just in front of us. The shabby exterior, we discovered, hid a pretty decent interior. The place was huge but not too exposed, with lots of tables tucked off in intimate little corners, all within eyesight of the stage in the middle of the room. The ceiling was filled with funky chandeliers and tiny hanging lights which reflected off the mirrors on the walls. They even had a gogo cage, although there was nobody dancing in it.
We sat down, made introductions, and ordered Chivas and lemon tea for the whole table. A drag queen in a curly blonde wig tottered over with a tray of snacks and served us little plates of chicken feet, spicy marinated seaweed, and dried tofu on the house. One of the girls taught us a drinking game and we all chatted, rolled dice and tossed back shots as we watched a troupe of impossibly pretty drag queens do a few dance numbers and shriek their way through a Beijing Opera. The show lasted until midnight, and was clearly the main attraction of the bar – there was no dance floor, and by 12:30 the place was deserted. We thought about checking out another place but weren't really in the mood for another search, so we called it a night and headed back to the hotel. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to dance at all, but we'll just make that our mission for the next outing.
Chinese word of the day:
同性恋
tong2 xing4 lian4
homosexuality
Monday, November 1, 2010
Hikes, art, and sketchy restaurants
I know, I know, I’ve been slacking on my blog lately. It’s been a busy couple of weeks. On weekdays I spend my mornings in class and much of my afternoons doing homework, which is insanely time-consuming when I have to read a long passage full of unfamiliar characters. Since the Chinese writing system is pictographic and not phonetic, when you run into a character you don’t know, you not only don’t know what it means, you don’t even know how it’s pronounced, so you need to look it up twice – first to find out how it’s pronounced, and then to find the definition. It turns a simple homework assignment into a long and arduous task. When I feel like writing, I don’t have time, and when I do have time, I’m really not in the mood to spend it writing! I’ve had a good couple of weekends, though.
The weekend before last I climbed Jinyun Mountain again. I went with a few friends and we walked all the way from the school to the mountain and took a longer route up, stopping every half hour or so to rest and have some snacks. We stopped at a farmhouse that had an orange orchard and I had my first-ever fresh orange, straight off the tree. I even got to pick them myself! A little further on, we stopped again at a nice picnic spot for a snack, and while we were eating a vendor carrying large two large cans on either end of a bamboo pole over his shoulders appeared and started hawking his wares. In the cans he had noodles, hot tofu pudding, disposable bowls, chopsticks and cutlery, and various sauces and toppings, so I was treated to fresh Chongqing-style tofu pudding topped with chilli oil, salt, green onions, preserved vegetables and crunchy yellow beans. At the peak we met a group of girls who turned out to be from Southwest University, and we spent the rest of the afternoon walking and talking with them. On the way down we stopped at a different Daoist monastery, even more beautiful than the one I visited last time. By the time we got back to the school it was getting dark, so we stopped at a dingy little family-run restaurant for dinner, where I quickly caught the attention of the students at the table next to us and spent the evening talking and downing beers with them. By the time we finally left the restaurant around eleven o’clock, we were all carrying on like best friends. Though I never did hear from any of them again.
Early the next morning, slightly the worse for wear, I dragged myself out of bed for a trip to the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute to see their huge 70th anniversary art show with my friend Xu Bixi (许碧溪), an art major I met through my friend Benson. After an hour-long bus ride through Chongqing’s crumbling, rubble-strewn, pothole-riddled suburbs, we finally pulled up outside the school. It took us almost half an hour to find the exhibit, but we were looking at art the whole time; the entire campus was covered in it. A 20-foot high statue hung by its knees over the railing of the school canteen, arms trailing to the ground. Being a Sunday, the art seemed to outnumber the students; large silver human heads, mosaic archways, antique wedding beds, salvaged stone archways, and abstract sculptures were scattered all over the place. The place is worth a visit even without the art show; it’s like a giant playground of art. The art show itself was in a series of long, narrow buildings all squeezed together with just a narrow corridor of space between each, with each room opening off the corridor filled with art. We spent the morning walking from door to door down the corridors, stuffing our eyes with art, and then we went to the student village just outside the gates of the campus for lunch. The village was awesome; not only was it full of great little shops and snack stalls, it even had a few midway rides!
After lunch we went back to the art show, but we were tired and I wasn’t feeling great, so we just checked out a few pieces and then caught the bus back. By the time we’d rattled and swerved our way back to campus it was clear that I had more than a hangover. By some miracle, I made it back to my room without incident, and it was a couple days before I left again. And I’m never eating at that little restaurant by the campus again.
Anyway, this post is too long already, so I’ll have to post the next weekend’s adventures as a separate instalment. Oh, and I seem to be having trouble writing accents on my computer right now, so instead of standard Pinyin I’ll just write the tones in as numbers (1=high flat tone, 2=rising tone, 3=dipping tone, 4=falling tone, 5=neutral tone).
Chinese word of the day:
食物中毒
Shi2 wu4 zhong4 du2
Food poisoning
The weekend before last I climbed Jinyun Mountain again. I went with a few friends and we walked all the way from the school to the mountain and took a longer route up, stopping every half hour or so to rest and have some snacks. We stopped at a farmhouse that had an orange orchard and I had my first-ever fresh orange, straight off the tree. I even got to pick them myself! A little further on, we stopped again at a nice picnic spot for a snack, and while we were eating a vendor carrying large two large cans on either end of a bamboo pole over his shoulders appeared and started hawking his wares. In the cans he had noodles, hot tofu pudding, disposable bowls, chopsticks and cutlery, and various sauces and toppings, so I was treated to fresh Chongqing-style tofu pudding topped with chilli oil, salt, green onions, preserved vegetables and crunchy yellow beans. At the peak we met a group of girls who turned out to be from Southwest University, and we spent the rest of the afternoon walking and talking with them. On the way down we stopped at a different Daoist monastery, even more beautiful than the one I visited last time. By the time we got back to the school it was getting dark, so we stopped at a dingy little family-run restaurant for dinner, where I quickly caught the attention of the students at the table next to us and spent the evening talking and downing beers with them. By the time we finally left the restaurant around eleven o’clock, we were all carrying on like best friends. Though I never did hear from any of them again.
Early the next morning, slightly the worse for wear, I dragged myself out of bed for a trip to the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute to see their huge 70th anniversary art show with my friend Xu Bixi (许碧溪), an art major I met through my friend Benson. After an hour-long bus ride through Chongqing’s crumbling, rubble-strewn, pothole-riddled suburbs, we finally pulled up outside the school. It took us almost half an hour to find the exhibit, but we were looking at art the whole time; the entire campus was covered in it. A 20-foot high statue hung by its knees over the railing of the school canteen, arms trailing to the ground. Being a Sunday, the art seemed to outnumber the students; large silver human heads, mosaic archways, antique wedding beds, salvaged stone archways, and abstract sculptures were scattered all over the place. The place is worth a visit even without the art show; it’s like a giant playground of art. The art show itself was in a series of long, narrow buildings all squeezed together with just a narrow corridor of space between each, with each room opening off the corridor filled with art. We spent the morning walking from door to door down the corridors, stuffing our eyes with art, and then we went to the student village just outside the gates of the campus for lunch. The village was awesome; not only was it full of great little shops and snack stalls, it even had a few midway rides!
After lunch we went back to the art show, but we were tired and I wasn’t feeling great, so we just checked out a few pieces and then caught the bus back. By the time we’d rattled and swerved our way back to campus it was clear that I had more than a hangover. By some miracle, I made it back to my room without incident, and it was a couple days before I left again. And I’m never eating at that little restaurant by the campus again.
Anyway, this post is too long already, so I’ll have to post the next weekend’s adventures as a separate instalment. Oh, and I seem to be having trouble writing accents on my computer right now, so instead of standard Pinyin I’ll just write the tones in as numbers (1=high flat tone, 2=rising tone, 3=dipping tone, 4=falling tone, 5=neutral tone).
Chinese word of the day:
食物中毒
Shi2 wu4 zhong4 du2
Food poisoning
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Clueless in China
One problem I keep running into here is that the restaurants, markets, cafes and snack shops don't work they way they do back home. It's rare to be able to just walk up to a counter, point at whatever looks good and hand over the cash. I never know how, where and when to order things （点菜，diǎncài） or pay for them （付钱，fùqián）. It's never as straightforward as it looks. I’ve been here over a month already and I still haven’t gotten used to it. In restaurants I never know whether there's table service or counter service and whether I have to pay before or after the meal. When buying food at a canteen or particular items at a store you might have to go to a cashier, tell them what you want to buy, pay for it and then bring the receipt back with you to get your stuff. Sometimes stores have separate tills for different products scattered through the store and you have to go hunting for the right one. Even buying bulk food at the market can be a challenge because you need to get it weighed and priced before you go to the cashier and you need to find the right station to get each item weighed. Sometimes when buying bulk you need to buy a certain amount - I'll start filling a bag with something and the staff will start jabbering at me in Chinese about weight and prices and I just get totally rattled and don’t know what to do. It's hard because my Chinese is really not strong enough for some of the complicated explanations I run into and I end up looking like an idiot a lot of the time.
But I'm gradually starting to figure out how to order in restaurants and cafes, or at least how to ask the staff where and how to pay. Today, for the first time since I arrived, I managed to go to the canteen (食堂, shítáng), order a meal and pay for it all by myself, with no help from a Chinese-speaking friend and no confusion or trouble at all. Well, they gave me hot soymilk when I specifically asked for cold, but it was still delicious, so whatever. For lunch I got the 4.9 Yuan combo with rice, crunchy stirfried lotus root (one of my new favourite veggies) and tomato fried eggs (番茄炒蛋, fānqié chǎodàn). Chinese tomato fried eggs are a super tasty dish that I can usually rely on as a vegetarian option when I eat out here. The ones I got at the canteen today were cold, clumsily made, and actually pretty terrible, but they tasted of sweet, sweet victory.
Chinese word of the day:
开心
Kāixīn
Happiness; to feel happy (lit. start/open heart)
But I'm gradually starting to figure out how to order in restaurants and cafes, or at least how to ask the staff where and how to pay. Today, for the first time since I arrived, I managed to go to the canteen (食堂, shítáng), order a meal and pay for it all by myself, with no help from a Chinese-speaking friend and no confusion or trouble at all. Well, they gave me hot soymilk when I specifically asked for cold, but it was still delicious, so whatever. For lunch I got the 4.9 Yuan combo with rice, crunchy stirfried lotus root (one of my new favourite veggies) and tomato fried eggs (番茄炒蛋, fānqié chǎodàn). Chinese tomato fried eggs are a super tasty dish that I can usually rely on as a vegetarian option when I eat out here. The ones I got at the canteen today were cold, clumsily made, and actually pretty terrible, but they tasted of sweet, sweet victory.
Chinese word of the day:
开心
Kāixīn
Happiness; to feel happy (lit. start/open heart)
Sunday, October 10, 2010
The art of learning Chinese
After a week of hanging around on the campus, I was kind of relieved to resume classes again on Friday. I was also stoked to start my Chinese calligraphy class! It’s one of my two electives this semester. The other is Kung Fu, which I’m super excited about. So far I’ve attended each class once and we just covered the basics – we learned about the history and various styles and implements of calligraphy, and in Kung Fu we did some stretching and strength exercises and learned the basic stances.
Calligraphy is a lot harder than it looks, and I never thought it looked easy. You need to simultaneously pay attention to the style, position, proportion, thickness, energy, and order of each stroke as you try to compose them all into a balanced and well-constructed character, and one wrong stroke can ruin the whole thing. I love how calligraphy manages to be both a strict discipline and highly expressive art form, combining the symbolic meanings of the words and the aesthetic appearance of the characters with the artistic expression of painting. A character is never painted the same way twice. I’ve also found it to be very meditative; focusing so many energies on a single brushstroke, it’s really easy to push every other thought out of your mind and just lose yourself in it. Actually, I’ve found it’s pretty much impossible to do it with something else on your mind. The first few times I tried it I found it kind of exhausting. After about an hour of copying characters I just couldn’t concentrate. Every time I try, though, I get a little more into it and feel a little more relaxed after. Last time Benson took me to the art room to practice, we were there until closing.
Hanging out in the art room is an experience in itself. Chongqing isn’t a tourist destination and the few tourists it does draw are Chinese; very few foreigners come here. Almost nobody I’ve talked to has travelled outside of the country, and I’m getting the impression that most people haven’t ever met a westerner in person and some have never even seen one. But western music, movies, TV shows and celebrities are popular here, and English studies are compulsory from middle school through high school, so they’re all very curious to meet us. Whenever I practice calligraphy in the art room with Benson, the other students do a double take and start whispering among themselves when they see me walk in. When I sit down and start painting they all crowd around to watch, and assuming I don’t understand any Chinese, they all start asking Benson questions about me – where am I from, am I his girlfriend, etc. It’s pretty intense and can be kind of uncomfortable, but it’s great practice and everyone’s friendly. Once they find out I speak some Chinese they start complimenting me and asking questions – how do I like China, can I eat Chinese food, have I been to any other cities in China – and then they’ll say “let’s be friends!” and give me their phone number. A girl I met there the other night is taking me to an art show on Sunday; I have no idea if it’s classical or contemporary, but I’m really looking forward to it and I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures.
By the way, I’ve started uploading all my pictures to Facebook instead of Windows Live because it’s just way more practical and I can write more in the captions, so for anyone who wants to check out the visual counterpart to this blog just go to my Facebook photo album. Maybe someday I’ll be able to load photos on Blogger, but for now this is just easier.
Chinese word of the day:
书法
Shūfǎ
Calligraphy
Calligraphy is a lot harder than it looks, and I never thought it looked easy. You need to simultaneously pay attention to the style, position, proportion, thickness, energy, and order of each stroke as you try to compose them all into a balanced and well-constructed character, and one wrong stroke can ruin the whole thing. I love how calligraphy manages to be both a strict discipline and highly expressive art form, combining the symbolic meanings of the words and the aesthetic appearance of the characters with the artistic expression of painting. A character is never painted the same way twice. I’ve also found it to be very meditative; focusing so many energies on a single brushstroke, it’s really easy to push every other thought out of your mind and just lose yourself in it. Actually, I’ve found it’s pretty much impossible to do it with something else on your mind. The first few times I tried it I found it kind of exhausting. After about an hour of copying characters I just couldn’t concentrate. Every time I try, though, I get a little more into it and feel a little more relaxed after. Last time Benson took me to the art room to practice, we were there until closing.
Hanging out in the art room is an experience in itself. Chongqing isn’t a tourist destination and the few tourists it does draw are Chinese; very few foreigners come here. Almost nobody I’ve talked to has travelled outside of the country, and I’m getting the impression that most people haven’t ever met a westerner in person and some have never even seen one. But western music, movies, TV shows and celebrities are popular here, and English studies are compulsory from middle school through high school, so they’re all very curious to meet us. Whenever I practice calligraphy in the art room with Benson, the other students do a double take and start whispering among themselves when they see me walk in. When I sit down and start painting they all crowd around to watch, and assuming I don’t understand any Chinese, they all start asking Benson questions about me – where am I from, am I his girlfriend, etc. It’s pretty intense and can be kind of uncomfortable, but it’s great practice and everyone’s friendly. Once they find out I speak some Chinese they start complimenting me and asking questions – how do I like China, can I eat Chinese food, have I been to any other cities in China – and then they’ll say “let’s be friends!” and give me their phone number. A girl I met there the other night is taking me to an art show on Sunday; I have no idea if it’s classical or contemporary, but I’m really looking forward to it and I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures.
By the way, I’ve started uploading all my pictures to Facebook instead of Windows Live because it’s just way more practical and I can write more in the captions, so for anyone who wants to check out the visual counterpart to this blog just go to my Facebook photo album. Maybe someday I’ll be able to load photos on Blogger, but for now this is just easier.
Chinese word of the day:
书法
Shūfǎ
Calligraphy
Friday, October 8, 2010
Happy birthday to me!
As if I need more excuses to shop and party here, Sunday was my birthday, and with all my friends and family on the other side of the planet it was entirely up to me to make my own fun. I had originally planned to go see the Dazu rock carvings, a UNESCO world heritage site and one of Chongqing's top tourist destinations, but after my sightseeing experience the other day I thought better of it. Instead I had a lovely shopping spree financed by various family members (many thanks to you) and bought myself some cute new clothes and hair accessories. I also succeeded in locating a western-style café and tasted my first cup of real coffee in almost a month - hard to find, confusing to order, and it cost me 30 Yuan, but it was a perfect cup of coffee. Totally worth it.
Later I went with the roommate and some friends for a somewhat surreal hotpot experience at a large franchise Hotpot restaurant. Halfway through dinner, some loud Chinese ballad started pouring from the speakers and the staff all assembled in the dining room to show their gratitude and respect for the customers with an excruciating dance routine. Afterward we had cake, cookies and bad Great Wall Cabernet from paper cups in the lobby of the foreign students’ dormitory, and then we checked out the Blue Bar, a crowded, beer-soaked little smoke pit just off campus that all the foreign students go to. I disobeyed any shouts of "ganbei" and went to bed with my dignity intact.
I got some pretty sweet loot, too. Along with the coffee and clothes I bought on my shopping spree, my roommate bought me a hat, and Paul gave me a couple of badass reproduction Cultural Revolution propaganda posters which I’ve been coveting forever. My awesome new friend Benson, who’s been helping me lots with my Chinese and teaching me calligraphy, made me a seal with my Chinese name inscribed on it. Overall, a very successful birthday was had!
Chinese lesson of the day:
祝你生日快乐！
Zhù nǐ shēngrì kuàilè!
Happy birthday! (lit. "wish you birthday happy")
Later I went with the roommate and some friends for a somewhat surreal hotpot experience at a large franchise Hotpot restaurant. Halfway through dinner, some loud Chinese ballad started pouring from the speakers and the staff all assembled in the dining room to show their gratitude and respect for the customers with an excruciating dance routine. Afterward we had cake, cookies and bad Great Wall Cabernet from paper cups in the lobby of the foreign students’ dormitory, and then we checked out the Blue Bar, a crowded, beer-soaked little smoke pit just off campus that all the foreign students go to. I disobeyed any shouts of "ganbei" and went to bed with my dignity intact.
I got some pretty sweet loot, too. Along with the coffee and clothes I bought on my shopping spree, my roommate bought me a hat, and Paul gave me a couple of badass reproduction Cultural Revolution propaganda posters which I’ve been coveting forever. My awesome new friend Benson, who’s been helping me lots with my Chinese and teaching me calligraphy, made me a seal with my Chinese name inscribed on it. Overall, a very successful birthday was had!
Chinese lesson of the day:
祝你生日快乐！
Zhù nǐ shēngrì kuàilè!
Happy birthday! (lit. "wish you birthday happy")
Monday, October 4, 2010
Touring China 101
Oh boy. This is gonna be a long post.
So. One of my priorities on this holiday was to see a little more of the city, and on Saturday my roommate Bridget and I went with our Chinese friend, Paul, to visit Jiefangbei, Chongqing’s central district, for a little shopping and sightseeing. Being a holiday weekend, we were expecting crowds, so we caught an early bus. When we arrived in the downtown core, most of the stores still hadn’t opened, so we wandered the streets a bit and ended up in a large open square full of people and vendors hawking all kinds of goods. Several people handed us flyers advertising bus tours to several tourist attractions in Chongqing, and although I’m generally not a tourist attraction kind of person, it seemed like a fun and spontaneous way to spend the afternoon and get the touristy stuff out of the way, so we decided to go with one that hit three or four different spots in six hours for 50 Yuan (about $8.50) per person.
We told the guy we were interested and he led us out of the square and down a busy street to a parking lot full of bored-looking people to wait for the bus. In typical Chinese fashion, they didn’t give us any information about when the tour started or how to pay, and nobody else seemed to know, either. We asked around and eventually someone informed us that we had to pay at the tour company office, which we’d passed just up the street, so we doubled back, gave them our money, and returned to the parking lot to wait some more. Twenty minutes later there was still no bus, so Paul went asking around again. He started talking to a woman who turned out to be the tour guide, a very bad-tempered looking lady who talked very fast and very loud until people started crowding around them. He eventually came back to tell us that, due to the legal risks, the tour wouldn’t take foreigners. We went back to the office to get our money back and there was another loud, fast conversation which I couldn’t follow save for frequent utterances of “laowai”; foreigner. Across the street was another tour company, so we went there instead. Originally we were turned away there, too, but something must have changed their mind, because we were informed that if we came back at 12:30 we’d be able to go on a tour.
Somehow, in the confusion, we’d gotten hooked up with a Chinese family who seemed to want to hang out with us, and we still had two hours to kill before the tour started, so they took charge and marched us through the various nearby tourist spots. We took pictures in the square, sped through a museum of famous Chinese historical figures, and took a half-hour boat cruise a few hundred metres down the Yangzi river and back. We returned to the tour company office at 12:30 and, after more shouting and confusion, they must have told us that the bus would pick us up somewhere else, because the family whisked us out of the office and took us down the street. We walked for a good 20 minutes or more before flagging down a seemingly random bus as it passed by. And that, apparently, is how bus tours work in China.
The bus was hot and crowded, and, after getting up so early and having such a strange morning, I was exhausted and quickly fell asleep in my seat. I was immediately woken up by screeching voices and Chinese music punctuated by a laugh track; they’d put a comedy tape on the TV at the front of the bus and were apparently playing it at full volume for the comfort and amusement of their guests.
I drifted in and out of sleep all the way to the first destination, a quaint old-fashioned Chinese village called Ciqikou (tseh-chee-ko). The tour guide told us to be back in 45 minutes and we headed to the main gate of the village, where we were funnelled into the dense stream of people that swelled into the narrow lanes and alleys of the village. With bodies pressed against us on all sides, we were swept along in the river of tourists, helpless to stop and look at anything. Once in a while the crowd would shout and flatten against the walls as an overflowing garbage cart bristling with discarded meat skewers would rumble through, taking up nearly the entire alley. A couple of times we managed to break out of the crush and duck into a less-crowded shop to take a breather and quickly peruse the goods before resuming our slow shuffle toward the exit. By the time we made it back to the bus we were 20 minutes late and about half of the people still hadn’t come back, so we hung around the main gate eating whatever snacks we’d managed to buy in the village.
Eventually, when everyone was safely back on the bus, we set off about an hour behind schedule for our second destination. Once again, I quickly fell asleep to the sound of the screeching Chinese variety show. When I woke up, we were in gridlock traffic, slowly cooking under the hot Chongqing sun. When it became clear that we weren’t going to get any further, they opened the doors and we all got out of the bus to walk the last kilometre or so to our destination, which I think was some kind of scenic natural spot – I never actually found out. When we finally got there, we took one look at the front gate and decided not to bother; it was clogged with even more bodies than Ciqikou. We bought some snacks from the street vendors in the parking lot, checked out a couple of tacky tourist shops, got photographed with some amused locals, and waited for the braver people to return before turning around and walking back to the bus.
By the time we were ready to leave the second destination it was clear that the tour was over. We crawled back to Jiefangbei to the sound of the comedy tape and the apologies of the tour guide and got downtown just in time to catch one of the last buses back to campus. So, in the end, I may not have seen much in the way of quaint villages and local scenery, but the cultural experience was a hell of a lot more authentic than any tourist attraction.
Chinese word of the day:
拥挤
yōngjǐ
Crowded
So. One of my priorities on this holiday was to see a little more of the city, and on Saturday my roommate Bridget and I went with our Chinese friend, Paul, to visit Jiefangbei, Chongqing’s central district, for a little shopping and sightseeing. Being a holiday weekend, we were expecting crowds, so we caught an early bus. When we arrived in the downtown core, most of the stores still hadn’t opened, so we wandered the streets a bit and ended up in a large open square full of people and vendors hawking all kinds of goods. Several people handed us flyers advertising bus tours to several tourist attractions in Chongqing, and although I’m generally not a tourist attraction kind of person, it seemed like a fun and spontaneous way to spend the afternoon and get the touristy stuff out of the way, so we decided to go with one that hit three or four different spots in six hours for 50 Yuan (about $8.50) per person.
We told the guy we were interested and he led us out of the square and down a busy street to a parking lot full of bored-looking people to wait for the bus. In typical Chinese fashion, they didn’t give us any information about when the tour started or how to pay, and nobody else seemed to know, either. We asked around and eventually someone informed us that we had to pay at the tour company office, which we’d passed just up the street, so we doubled back, gave them our money, and returned to the parking lot to wait some more. Twenty minutes later there was still no bus, so Paul went asking around again. He started talking to a woman who turned out to be the tour guide, a very bad-tempered looking lady who talked very fast and very loud until people started crowding around them. He eventually came back to tell us that, due to the legal risks, the tour wouldn’t take foreigners. We went back to the office to get our money back and there was another loud, fast conversation which I couldn’t follow save for frequent utterances of “laowai”; foreigner. Across the street was another tour company, so we went there instead. Originally we were turned away there, too, but something must have changed their mind, because we were informed that if we came back at 12:30 we’d be able to go on a tour.
Somehow, in the confusion, we’d gotten hooked up with a Chinese family who seemed to want to hang out with us, and we still had two hours to kill before the tour started, so they took charge and marched us through the various nearby tourist spots. We took pictures in the square, sped through a museum of famous Chinese historical figures, and took a half-hour boat cruise a few hundred metres down the Yangzi river and back. We returned to the tour company office at 12:30 and, after more shouting and confusion, they must have told us that the bus would pick us up somewhere else, because the family whisked us out of the office and took us down the street. We walked for a good 20 minutes or more before flagging down a seemingly random bus as it passed by. And that, apparently, is how bus tours work in China.
The bus was hot and crowded, and, after getting up so early and having such a strange morning, I was exhausted and quickly fell asleep in my seat. I was immediately woken up by screeching voices and Chinese music punctuated by a laugh track; they’d put a comedy tape on the TV at the front of the bus and were apparently playing it at full volume for the comfort and amusement of their guests.
I drifted in and out of sleep all the way to the first destination, a quaint old-fashioned Chinese village called Ciqikou (tseh-chee-ko). The tour guide told us to be back in 45 minutes and we headed to the main gate of the village, where we were funnelled into the dense stream of people that swelled into the narrow lanes and alleys of the village. With bodies pressed against us on all sides, we were swept along in the river of tourists, helpless to stop and look at anything. Once in a while the crowd would shout and flatten against the walls as an overflowing garbage cart bristling with discarded meat skewers would rumble through, taking up nearly the entire alley. A couple of times we managed to break out of the crush and duck into a less-crowded shop to take a breather and quickly peruse the goods before resuming our slow shuffle toward the exit. By the time we made it back to the bus we were 20 minutes late and about half of the people still hadn’t come back, so we hung around the main gate eating whatever snacks we’d managed to buy in the village.
Eventually, when everyone was safely back on the bus, we set off about an hour behind schedule for our second destination. Once again, I quickly fell asleep to the sound of the screeching Chinese variety show. When I woke up, we were in gridlock traffic, slowly cooking under the hot Chongqing sun. When it became clear that we weren’t going to get any further, they opened the doors and we all got out of the bus to walk the last kilometre or so to our destination, which I think was some kind of scenic natural spot – I never actually found out. When we finally got there, we took one look at the front gate and decided not to bother; it was clogged with even more bodies than Ciqikou. We bought some snacks from the street vendors in the parking lot, checked out a couple of tacky tourist shops, got photographed with some amused locals, and waited for the braver people to return before turning around and walking back to the bus.
By the time we were ready to leave the second destination it was clear that the tour was over. We crawled back to Jiefangbei to the sound of the comedy tape and the apologies of the tour guide and got downtown just in time to catch one of the last buses back to campus. So, in the end, I may not have seen much in the way of quaint villages and local scenery, but the cultural experience was a hell of a lot more authentic than any tourist attraction.
Chinese word of the day:
拥挤
yōngjǐ
Crowded
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Another week...
...another holiday! Tomorrow marks the beginning of Chinese National Week (国庆节, Guóqìngjié) and once again I find myself turned loose in Chongqing with new friends, plenty of cash, and no obligations. Not only that – my birthday is this weekend! Plans are materializing and the week looks promising. One of the best things about my situation here is that even when I’m out socializing, shopping, or just vegging out in front of the TV, I’m still learning Chinese. I’ve found a way to turn partying into studying. Actually, the other foreign students here all tell me you do about 80% of your learning outside of the classroom. Pretty smart, huh?
I’ve discovered that, aside from actually going out and conversing in Chinese, watching kids’ shows and soap operas on TV is one of the best ways to improve your listening comprehension. That’s the beauty of foreign-language TV and movies – even the trashiest talk show can be educational. My roommate follows several of the corny Asian soaps (known here as “dramas”), but I’m really into the kids’ shows. The Chinese kids’ shows are delightfully strange – I watched one last night that appeared to be a traditional folk story acted out by creepy stop-animated puppets – but I also get a huge kick out of watching the Chinese-dubbed versions of Spiderman and Digimon. Nearly all the TV shows also have Chinese subtitles, too, so I can practice my reading at the same time. I still haven’t gone to check it out, but there’s a theatre (电影院, diànying yuàn) on campus where you can watch Chinese and Chinese-dubbed Western movies for just three or four yuan, or about 50 to 70 cents. Sounds like a good way to pass the rainy winter evenings. My snazzy new cellphone also has FM radio, so I listen to Chinese talk radio while I do my homework (作业, zuòyè) and it gets easier and easier to follow along.
For a different challenge, I like reading kids’ books. Well, more like translating, because I never seem to know enough of the content to just sit down and read them. I always have to look up words in a dictionary, untangle a few grammar structures, and make some notes. Occasionally you can find a book written in both Pinyin (the Romanized phonetic transcription of Chinese) and characters (汉字, Hànzì), but the ones without Pinyin are much harder because if you run into a new character you have to look it up twice – once to find out what the pronunciation is and then to find the meaning. I also often run into words I know used in a combination or grammatical context I’m not familiar with, so even if a passage looks simple at first glance I’ll probably still have to struggle to understand it. It’s like decoding a secret message. Chinese is easier to learn than people think it is, but it’s still damn difficult sometimes.
Socializing in Chinese is by far the best way to practice. All the Chinese students here speak some English, which makes it really easy to lapse into English every time I run into a word or concept I can’t express in Chinese, but I’m doing it less and less. One thing I’m thrilled about is that I’m starting to get to that point where, to at least some extent, I’m thinking in Chinese. People here will often address me in English, but more and more I find myself automatically responding in Chinese and completely bypassing English. Lots of the Chinese people I talk to want to practice their English, too, so I’ve gotten into the habit of doing a language exchange; I speak Chinese to them while they speak to me in English. My limited vocabulary (词汇, cíhuì) can be extremely frustrating, and when I first got here I despaired at the amount of Chinese I didn’t know, but in the deluge of new words I hear every day I manage to retain a few. I was told by one of my Chinese friends last night that my Chinese has improved, so if I can make a noticeable improvement in three weeks I must be doing something right.
Chinese lesson of the day:
我学习汉语
Wǒ xuéxí Hànyǔ
I study Chinese
I’ve discovered that, aside from actually going out and conversing in Chinese, watching kids’ shows and soap operas on TV is one of the best ways to improve your listening comprehension. That’s the beauty of foreign-language TV and movies – even the trashiest talk show can be educational. My roommate follows several of the corny Asian soaps (known here as “dramas”), but I’m really into the kids’ shows. The Chinese kids’ shows are delightfully strange – I watched one last night that appeared to be a traditional folk story acted out by creepy stop-animated puppets – but I also get a huge kick out of watching the Chinese-dubbed versions of Spiderman and Digimon. Nearly all the TV shows also have Chinese subtitles, too, so I can practice my reading at the same time. I still haven’t gone to check it out, but there’s a theatre (电影院, diànying yuàn) on campus where you can watch Chinese and Chinese-dubbed Western movies for just three or four yuan, or about 50 to 70 cents. Sounds like a good way to pass the rainy winter evenings. My snazzy new cellphone also has FM radio, so I listen to Chinese talk radio while I do my homework (作业, zuòyè) and it gets easier and easier to follow along.
For a different challenge, I like reading kids’ books. Well, more like translating, because I never seem to know enough of the content to just sit down and read them. I always have to look up words in a dictionary, untangle a few grammar structures, and make some notes. Occasionally you can find a book written in both Pinyin (the Romanized phonetic transcription of Chinese) and characters (汉字, Hànzì), but the ones without Pinyin are much harder because if you run into a new character you have to look it up twice – once to find out what the pronunciation is and then to find the meaning. I also often run into words I know used in a combination or grammatical context I’m not familiar with, so even if a passage looks simple at first glance I’ll probably still have to struggle to understand it. It’s like decoding a secret message. Chinese is easier to learn than people think it is, but it’s still damn difficult sometimes.
Socializing in Chinese is by far the best way to practice. All the Chinese students here speak some English, which makes it really easy to lapse into English every time I run into a word or concept I can’t express in Chinese, but I’m doing it less and less. One thing I’m thrilled about is that I’m starting to get to that point where, to at least some extent, I’m thinking in Chinese. People here will often address me in English, but more and more I find myself automatically responding in Chinese and completely bypassing English. Lots of the Chinese people I talk to want to practice their English, too, so I’ve gotten into the habit of doing a language exchange; I speak Chinese to them while they speak to me in English. My limited vocabulary (词汇, cíhuì) can be extremely frustrating, and when I first got here I despaired at the amount of Chinese I didn’t know, but in the deluge of new words I hear every day I manage to retain a few. I was told by one of my Chinese friends last night that my Chinese has improved, so if I can make a noticeable improvement in three weeks I must be doing something right.
Chinese lesson of the day:
我学习汉语
Wǒ xuéxí Hànyǔ
I study Chinese
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Ganbei!
I’m currently recovering from my latest adventure in China: drinking with the Chinese. One of my Chinese friends asked me to help her classmate correct a paper which he wrote in English, and to thank me they took the roommate and me out for beer and hotpot (火锅, huǒguō), Chongqing’s signature dish. Chongqing-style hotpot is a spicy and fattening affair, best enjoyed in large groups: a bubbling pot of oil and broth, loaded with at least a cupful of chillies and mouth-numbing Sichuan pepper, sits in the middle of the table, and you order plates of raw ingredients off the menu, cook them in the pot, and then dip them in sesame oil and garlic. The plates of food keep coming until nobody can eat any more, and then you all sit around in a grease-spattered stupor until it’s time to go. It’s great.
We got a private room in the restaurant (which is quite common in China), and as soon as we sat down, my friend’s classmate ordered a case of beer. Uh oh. I gather that women in China rarely drink, because every time I mention to someone that I like beer they get all excited about it. The case arrived, the beer started flowing, and the next thing I know I’m conversing comfortably in Chinese. The Chinese drink beer in the same little cups they drink tea out of, and every time someone says “ganbei,” you’re expected to drain your cup. It’s not too bad, except that the beer was 9.5 percent and “ganbei” was flying around at a frequency of about once per minute. I’m pretty sure that “ganbei” means “hey, let’s get this foreigner disgrasefully drunk!”
Strong beer and weird food cooked in spicy grease are a pretty deadly mix, and I’ll leave the rest of the night up to your imagination. Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.
Chinese lesson of the day:
我不要 Wǒ bú yào.
I don’t want any.
We got a private room in the restaurant (which is quite common in China), and as soon as we sat down, my friend’s classmate ordered a case of beer. Uh oh. I gather that women in China rarely drink, because every time I mention to someone that I like beer they get all excited about it. The case arrived, the beer started flowing, and the next thing I know I’m conversing comfortably in Chinese. The Chinese drink beer in the same little cups they drink tea out of, and every time someone says “ganbei,” you’re expected to drain your cup. It’s not too bad, except that the beer was 9.5 percent and “ganbei” was flying around at a frequency of about once per minute. I’m pretty sure that “ganbei” means “hey, let’s get this foreigner disgrasefully drunk!”
Strong beer and weird food cooked in spicy grease are a pretty deadly mix, and I’ll leave the rest of the night up to your imagination. Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.
Chinese lesson of the day:
我不要 Wǒ bú yào.
I don’t want any.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Wandering
Today was the roommate’s birthday, so we celebrated with a manicure and a shopping spree, spending most of the day wandering around the busy shopping district near the campus. The streets are extremely crowded, the stores all look the same, and the sidewalks are all lined with un-pruned trees which greatly inhibit your ability to look for landmarks, so it’s easy to get lost. Somehow, we managed to get where we needed to go and find our way back to the dorm after.
During our wanderings we happened upon a strange underground mall which must have had about 200 cramped little shops squeezed into it, consisting almost entirely of clothing shops and beauty salons. It turns out getting your nails done is a great way to practice your Chinese. I didn’t even know the Chinese word for fingernails when I walked in there, and we had to use hand gestures and a pocket dictionary to tell them what we wanted (because we were just there for a polish, not the two-inch-long jewel-studded talons that are so popular here), but they figured it out. We had a quick, simple, somewhat unsanitary manicure while the woman behind us had her eyebrows tattooed on. One of the girls there, whom I gather was the younger sister of one of the beauticians, was extremely friendly and chatted with us in Chinese the entire time we were there. She only knew a few words of English. She used words we didn’t know and had a bit of a Chongqing accent, so there were lots of times when we didn’t understand her, but whenever we really got stuck she’d grab my dictionary and look up the translation for me. She was great.
All Chinese students study English from middle school through high school, so nearly everyone under 25 here knows at least a little English. Most of them have an English name, too. I did a bit of a double take when the girl told us her English name was Jezebel, but she seemed pleased when I said her name was very unique. She was particularly interested in my tattoos – I get tons of comments on them here. She was horrified when I told her how much they cost. She said she thought tattoos were really cool and she wanted one, but her mom wouldn’t allow it.
Although the constant stares my roommate and I get when we go out in public are unnerving, the people here seem really interested in talking to us when the opportunity arises. My Chinese friends tell me they stare because they’re curious and they want to talk to us. They’re all eager to practice their English with us, but they’re even more excited to meet an English-speaker who can speak Chinese. People will often just walk up to me and start speaking English. I have great conversations with strangers nearly every day, and they frequently end with an exchange of phone numbers and a new friend to practice and explore the city with.
The highlight of the day: seeing a woman who was at least 50 wearing a bright red t-shirt with the words “SEK ZOMBIE FROM MARS” written on it in rhinestone-studded block letters.
My new favourite Chinese word:
辣妹子 Làmèizi
Hot chick(literally, spicy sister)
During our wanderings we happened upon a strange underground mall which must have had about 200 cramped little shops squeezed into it, consisting almost entirely of clothing shops and beauty salons. It turns out getting your nails done is a great way to practice your Chinese. I didn’t even know the Chinese word for fingernails when I walked in there, and we had to use hand gestures and a pocket dictionary to tell them what we wanted (because we were just there for a polish, not the two-inch-long jewel-studded talons that are so popular here), but they figured it out. We had a quick, simple, somewhat unsanitary manicure while the woman behind us had her eyebrows tattooed on. One of the girls there, whom I gather was the younger sister of one of the beauticians, was extremely friendly and chatted with us in Chinese the entire time we were there. She only knew a few words of English. She used words we didn’t know and had a bit of a Chongqing accent, so there were lots of times when we didn’t understand her, but whenever we really got stuck she’d grab my dictionary and look up the translation for me. She was great.
All Chinese students study English from middle school through high school, so nearly everyone under 25 here knows at least a little English. Most of them have an English name, too. I did a bit of a double take when the girl told us her English name was Jezebel, but she seemed pleased when I said her name was very unique. She was particularly interested in my tattoos – I get tons of comments on them here. She was horrified when I told her how much they cost. She said she thought tattoos were really cool and she wanted one, but her mom wouldn’t allow it.
Although the constant stares my roommate and I get when we go out in public are unnerving, the people here seem really interested in talking to us when the opportunity arises. My Chinese friends tell me they stare because they’re curious and they want to talk to us. They’re all eager to practice their English with us, but they’re even more excited to meet an English-speaker who can speak Chinese. People will often just walk up to me and start speaking English. I have great conversations with strangers nearly every day, and they frequently end with an exchange of phone numbers and a new friend to practice and explore the city with.
The highlight of the day: seeing a woman who was at least 50 wearing a bright red t-shirt with the words “SEK ZOMBIE FROM MARS” written on it in rhinestone-studded block letters.
My new favourite Chinese word:
辣妹子 Làmèizi
Hot chick(literally, spicy sister)
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Mid-Autumn Festival
One week into classes and I’m already on holiday! China goes by a lunar calendar and right now it’s the fall equinox, known in China as the Mid-Autumn Festival. During Mid-Autumn Festival, people get together with friends and family, watch the full moon, and eat moon cakes – rich, dense, extremely fattening little pastries stuffed with a variety of different fillings, such as red bean, peanut, pork, preserved egg, fruit, and lotus seed paste. The cakes are elaborately decorated and packaged, and ever since I got here I’ve been seeing people carrying around expensive-looking moon cake gift boxes to give to their friends, family and coworkers.
It seems that it’s also an unofficial tradition to climb mountains on Mid-Autumn Festival, because we had invitations from three different people to climb some of the nearby mountains over the holiday. We ended up climbing Mount Jinying, about a 20 minute bus trip from the campus. The trail starts at a busy street and winds through lush bamboo forests all the way up to the top of the mountain. It’s not wilderness, though – the trail is paved the entire way with stone steps, there are roads, restaurants, farms, hotels and shops all up the mountain.
Along the way we stopped at a rambling Taoist monastery and then at some kind of super-rustic restaurant which seemed to operate out of someone’s house, complete with laundry hanging from the eaves in the courtyard and the family cat attacking our feet while we ate. The restaurant had a Mah Jong table and while we waited for our food our Chinese friends taught us a simple version of Mah Jong, which, it turns out, is almost exactly like Rummy. Lunch was a typically excessive affair: our friends ordered noodles with egg, thinly julienned potatoes and green peppers stir fried with a heavy dose of mouth-numbing Sichuan pepper, spicy deep-fried fish with tofu, stir fried eggplant with garlic and chillies, strips of cucumber sautéed with ginger, some kind of spicy pork dish, stir fried peanuts, cabbage in broth, and rice. After we left the restaurant we bought dessert from a street vendor selling cleverly shaped caramelized sugar lollipops.
We spent most of the day meandering our way to the peak. When we got there, we hung out for a bit, took some pictures, ate some moon cakes, and then walked back to a bus station near the top of the mountain to catch a bus back to the campus. Exhausted, I got back to my dorm room and finished my excellent day with an excellent dinner – a bag of “intense and stimulating numb and spicy hotpot flavour” potato chips. These things are bloody amazing. I’m bringing a case back with me.
Chinese word of the day:
中秋节 Zhōngqiū jié
Mid-Autumn Festival
It seems that it’s also an unofficial tradition to climb mountains on Mid-Autumn Festival, because we had invitations from three different people to climb some of the nearby mountains over the holiday. We ended up climbing Mount Jinying, about a 20 minute bus trip from the campus. The trail starts at a busy street and winds through lush bamboo forests all the way up to the top of the mountain. It’s not wilderness, though – the trail is paved the entire way with stone steps, there are roads, restaurants, farms, hotels and shops all up the mountain.
Along the way we stopped at a rambling Taoist monastery and then at some kind of super-rustic restaurant which seemed to operate out of someone’s house, complete with laundry hanging from the eaves in the courtyard and the family cat attacking our feet while we ate. The restaurant had a Mah Jong table and while we waited for our food our Chinese friends taught us a simple version of Mah Jong, which, it turns out, is almost exactly like Rummy. Lunch was a typically excessive affair: our friends ordered noodles with egg, thinly julienned potatoes and green peppers stir fried with a heavy dose of mouth-numbing Sichuan pepper, spicy deep-fried fish with tofu, stir fried eggplant with garlic and chillies, strips of cucumber sautéed with ginger, some kind of spicy pork dish, stir fried peanuts, cabbage in broth, and rice. After we left the restaurant we bought dessert from a street vendor selling cleverly shaped caramelized sugar lollipops.
We spent most of the day meandering our way to the peak. When we got there, we hung out for a bit, took some pictures, ate some moon cakes, and then walked back to a bus station near the top of the mountain to catch a bus back to the campus. Exhausted, I got back to my dorm room and finished my excellent day with an excellent dinner – a bag of “intense and stimulating numb and spicy hotpot flavour” potato chips. These things are bloody amazing. I’m bringing a case back with me.
Chinese word of the day:
中秋节 Zhōngqiū jié
Mid-Autumn Festival
Saturday, September 18, 2010
The first impression
I seem to be having trouble posting pictures on Blogger, so I'm posting them all on my windows live account.
Chongqing is famous for being one of the hottest cities in China. It was 37 degrees yesterday. Thankfully, it hasn't rained in over a week, so the humidity was bearable. Sometimes the climate here is practically tropical. My skin reacted pretty badly to the humidity and pollution at first, but it seems to be calming down now. And, thankfully, nearly all the buildings and dorm rooms here are equipped with a functioning air conditioner. We also have a private bathroom with a flush toilet, which I'm quickly realizing is a real luxury here.
I really like the campus. It's quite large and has all the amenities - there are a few cheap restaurants and snack bars, several markets and shops scattered around where we can buy pretty much everything we need, a post office, two libraries, three banks and a hair salon. It's also really beautiful here - there are plenty of trees and they let them grow out a nice big canopy to provide shade during the hot summer months, so the effect is quite lush and exotic. There are gardens and courtyards around the campus with cute little stone tables and stools to sit at. The campus has a fleet of small, open-sided electric buses that ferry people around at a cost of one Yuan per person, or about 17 cents, and zipping around the narrow, winding streets through the dense overgrowth feels like some kind of safari. The surrounding scenery is beautiful, too. Chongqing is surrounded by lumpy, green, mist-shrouded mountains, exactly like in the classical Chinese paintings.
In the next month we'll be having one three-day holiday and one week-long holiday, and I'm thinking of hopping a train to do some sightseeing. People tell me that Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) is typically a four- to six-week vacation, so I'm making some travel plans. I've got a friend in Tokyo I really want to see, so that's the priority. There are also loads of students here from Vietnam and Thailand and I'm getting to know some of them, so hopefully by spring I'll have an invitation or two to come visit with them!
Anyway, here are the highlights of my trip so far: on the first day, I woke up to find a spider bigger than my hand on the ceiling above my head. Last weekend I tried Chongqing's famous signature spicy hot pot for the first time - tasty, but it's just so much oil! The supermarkets here are amazing and shopping for food to cook at the dorm is actually more fun than eating in restaurants. The dollar goes pretty far here, and I can fill a shopping bag with tasty eats for under five bucks. In the "leisure foods" aisle you can find a variety of potato chips with flavours like blueberry, lemon tea, cucumber, sour fish soup, and "vigorous and refreshing numb and tingly hotpot." Yesterday I ate fresh durian (I'd had durian before, but it's shipped frozen and tastes different), which, for those who haven't tried it, is a truly phenomenal fruit that has a rich, creamy texture and a complex flavour that tastes like a combination of avocado, pineapple, cheese, and onions. Everyone here is super friendly and curious about foreigners, and it's really easy to make friends.
I am a little homesick, and I'm experiencing a bit of culture shock, but I'm having lots of fun here and I'm adjusting fine. The three things I miss most (besides my friends and family, of course): my bike, privacy, and electric dryers. We're lucky enough to have a washing machine in our dorm, but hanging things to dry really sucks in this wet climate.
Chinese word of the day:
旅行 Lǔxíng
To travel
Friday, September 17, 2010
We are experiencing technical difficulties
Ok, so I originally started this blog to circumvent China's Facebook ban, but I naively didn't realize that China also blocks blog sites. Hence the lack of new posts. I've found some ways around it and for the time being I can get onto the blocked sites, but that can change at any time. I've written a couple more blog posts which I will have to post later, because the internet is really patchy here and it seems to be acting up right now. If it comes to it, I'll just put the blog in the care of someone else and post via email.
That's all for now - new posts coming soon! Don't tune out yet!
Saturday, September 4, 2010
T minus 3 hours.
I expect most people who will read this blog are people I know, but on the off chance you don't know me, here's the story: I'm a third year English major at the University of Victoria. I started studying Mandarin on a whim and fell in love with it, and after my second year of Mandarin studies I decided to take it on as a minor. This spring my teacher got wind of a few scholarships to Chinese universities and encouraged me to apply, and I thought, "why not?" So I applied for three or four to different universities, not expecting to hear anything of it ever again. By summer I'd forgotten all about it. And then in mid-July I get a big envelope in the mail with Chinese writing all over it. Inside is a letter telling me I've won a full scholarship to study Mandarin at for a year at Southwest University in Chongqing - tuition, lodging, living allowance and medical coverage all included. And I have to be there by September tenth. And so the mad scramble began. Gathering documents, getting shots, applying for a visa, packing, saying goodbyes...Somehow it all came together, and tonight I get on a plane and fly for 16 hours to a totally foreign country, where I will be living for a year.
So after an epic night of goodbye-partying, a 3-hour sleep, and a horrendous day of last-minute packing, retreiving forgotten items, and rushing to catch the ferry so I could pick up my Visa from the agent before they closed, my journey begins: I'm currently at YVR airport, with only three hours left on my home continent. In less than one day, I'll be plunged into a completely new life. So surreal.
Anyway, the main purpose of this blog is to keep in touch with everyone at home while I have no access to Facebook, which is blocked in China. So say hi and tell me what's up with you!
So after an epic night of goodbye-partying, a 3-hour sleep, and a horrendous day of last-minute packing, retreiving forgotten items, and rushing to catch the ferry so I could pick up my Visa from the agent before they closed, my journey begins: I'm currently at YVR airport, with only three hours left on my home continent. In less than one day, I'll be plunged into a completely new life. So surreal.
Anyway, the main purpose of this blog is to keep in touch with everyone at home while I have no access to Facebook, which is blocked in China. So say hi and tell me what's up with you!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)