The Final Countdown

I wrote my last exam yesterday, officially finishing my year of studies in China. I leave Chongqing on Monday to spend a couple days in Hong Kong and Beijing before flying home on the 13th. I have less than two weeks left in China. My little dorm room has been stripped bare, and my roommate and I officially “divorced” today after sharing these intimate quarters for nearly a year. My things are already packed in a brand new suitcase the size of a Volkswagen, and I’ve stocked up on enough bootleg DVDs, cheap sundresses and wild coloured tights to last me until my next trip to China, at least. Although this blog has clearly been a total fail, I figured I’d write one last post for…closure, or something.

I’d expected to be more reluctant to leave China every day as the deadline loomed, but I’ve actually found the opposite. Once I got down to the last few weeks, I started to feel that all I really had left to look forward to here was exams, packing, saying goodbye (permanently, for the most part) to all my new friends, and preparing for the daunting task of moving back to Canada and resuming an entirely different life. In the meantime, I’m stuck in this limbo, far from home in a foreign country and too stressed out to enjoy much. I just want to get this last push behind me. I’m exhausted. Having moved eight times in the past five years, with each time being more stressful than the last, the prospect of another move – compounded by the sheer logistics of moving to another country – has got me so paralyzed with anxiety that attempts to go out and enjoy my last few weeks here haven’t really been worth the effort. Not to mention it’s hotter than the pits of hell here now! I’ve pretty much been camped out under the air con in my room for the past few weeks. Once I’ve officially vacated my place – always the worst part of moving – I’ll be fine. When I’m all packed up and back on the open road I’ll feel a little lighter and get a bit of that travel bug back.

Last night I had a housecooling party to say goodbye to my friends and, hopefully, unload some of the stuff I’ve accumulated that couldn’t take back home with me. We had a great time, and I did manage to get some extra stuff off of my hands.

It's the dream team - me on the left, my roommate Bridget on the right, and our adorable friend Benson, who we met our first week here, in the middle.

So that’s me right now. What am I most looking forward to when I get back to Canada? Having my own bedroom. Cheese. Electric dryers. Not nearly getting run over by motorcyclists driving down the sidewalk every time I step outside. Democracy. Not having to deal with the incredibly obnoxious and pervasive Chinese habit of loudly spitting all over the street (or even indoors, on the floor). Not being stared at when I dare to go out in public. What am I going to miss the most about China? Every little thing being a novelty. Every experience being a challenge and an adventure. Being able to take off and stay in a hostel in a Ming palace or a 700-year-old traditional courtyard house on the canal for under five dollars a night. The local spots I’ve come to know and love, like the café just off campus where I took the barista class or the little shop where I get fresh-ground red bean milk every day. The openness and lack of reserve of the Chinese people which makes socializing so much easier than it is back home. Having fresh-brewed soymilk for breakfast every morning. Marking the passage of time by the constantly changing selection of seasonal local fruits and vegetables being sold by the roadside. Buying snacks like roasted chestnuts and yams or deep-fried stinky tofu cooked in a converted oil drum on the back of a street vendor’s bike.

Chinese word of the day:
离开
lí kāi
(verb) to depart, to leave

Look! A new blog post!...With pictures!

Wow, time's flying by these days. My last post was seriously over a month ago? Yikes...

So, what are my excuses this time? Well, aside from the usual schoolwork, I've been busy taking a barista class at my favourite cafe (yes, in Chinese - it's a normal barista class for normal Chinese people, not just for foreigners) and tutoring a few kids on the weekends. I've also decided not to get fat while I'm here, which means instead of just eating quick, greasy veggies and fried noodles at the canteens and restaurants every day, I now spend a fair chunk of time grocery shopping, cooking and working out at the little gym in the basement of my dorm. The food here is delicious, but my god, is it ever fattening. Take Chongqing's favourite dish, hotpot, for instance:



That pot's probably got at least a half litre of chili oil floating on top of the broth. Raw ingredients are added to the pot, fished out, and dunked in a bowl full of soya oil before eating. The sheer quantities of oil consumed in a hotpot dinner are insane. And it's not necessarily just for "special occasions," either. There are lots of people here who eat it on a weekly basis. Hotpot's an extreme case, but pretty mush everything here tends to be swimming in grease. People here are always commenting on how westerners are all fat because of our unhealthy diets, but I don't buy it; I think even Ronald McDonald would be overwhelmed by the amount of grease and MSG in the local food.

Although it's kind of a shame to have to limit my consumption of the local cuisine, I'm getting all the fresh, local, seasonal produce I can eat! Since I started cooking for myself more, I've probably been eating healthier than I ever have in my life. Street vendors are everywhere with their locally grown sweet potatoes, greens, cherry tomatoes, and fruits. And the fruits! I'm eating fresh pineapples and Asian pears and watermelons like it's my job. I will really miss all this when I go home.

Anyway, as you can see, I've finally got a reliable enough connection to support the photo uploader, so I'll get on that and brighten up this blog a bit.

Coming up soon: my Chinese barista class, durian season, travel plans, and more pictures of Chongqing!

School Daze

Ok, so I'm a terrible blogger. That's not news. I guess I've learned that there's no point in promising makeup posts, 'cause I just can't seem to bring myself to write them!

Anyway, I did end up switching to the upper intermediate classes, and I'm so glad I did! My new classes are great. The content is challenging - especially the volume of new and increasingly obscure characters I have to learn every week - but we spend enough time on it that I'm able to absorb at least some of it. The classes themselves are actually really fun, as we're all at a high enough level that the teachers can chat freely and naturally instead of spoon feeding us.

On top of the brisk classroom pace, they've also added a composition class to our curriculum. I now have to write an essay of 500 characters or more every week. It's exhausting, but it's also kind of fun trying to put your thoughts together using unfamiliar vocabulary and grammar structures, like a puzzle. I also find it liberating to focus on just getting words on the page, hopefully in the correct order, without getting bogged down by flow and balance and other details that plague perfectionists like me. I actually remember reading somewhere that Samuel Beckett used to write his poems in French and then translate them into English to keep them pared-down and pure. I thought it was a cool idea at the time, but now I really get it.

The fact that a class that was way too hard for me just five months ago is way too easy for me now is a real milestone. Immersing yourself in a foreign language is an utterly bewildering and overwhelming experience. Boxed in on all sides by a towering language barrier, the new skills you learn every day seem completely insignificant in comparison; no matter how quickly you learn, the progress feels maddeningly slow. I remember feeling pretty confident when I came to China - I was at the top of my class, after all - and arriving here and finding out how little I really knew was a pretty rude awakening. I despaired that my dream of becoming bilingual was just a delusion. The simplest things became difficult or impossible. For months, I felt like I was making only minimal progress. It wasn't until I started finding myself coping easily with situations that had previously stumped me that I realized how far I've come.

Chinese word of the day:
成功
chéng gōng
Success (n); to succeed (v)

Hitting the books

Classes have started, and my classmates and I are now at lower-intermediate level. During my month of travels, when I went days at a time without speaking a word of English, my spoken Chinese improved a lot, so I’m currently trying to decide whether to stay at lower intermediate or switch to upper intermediate for more of a challenge. Without a challenge, I tend to get lazy and do things like surf the net on my phone during class, which I can actually afford to do here. The upper-intermediate class also has no native English speakers, so even with my classmates I’d be exclusively speaking Chinese. I sat in on a class this week and I felt ok with it, but the teacher doesn’t seem to think I can handle it. I’ll try again next week and see if he’s right.

In the meantime, I’m still studying from the lower-intermediate textbook. I’ve not had a particularly productive week and I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone tonight and study while blogging; the following is a translation of the first lesson in my new textbook. I find it very interesting. Forgive a little awkwardness in the structure – I tried to keep it as parallel as I could, and some things don’t make for smooth translation.

“After graduating university, I wanted to go to China to teach English, but my parents didn’t approve. Because I live in a small town, there’s not much information about China, and my parents thought of China as undeveloped; moreover, the place I went to wasn’t very well-known and they were worried that it wouldn’t be safe for a girl to go there alone, so they advised me to find work in my own country. But my curious heart compelled me in spite of my parents’ opposition, and I resolutely chose to come to China to work.

When I came to China, my luggage was over 50 kilos. My parents were dying to give me everything they could to bring with me; they’d even packed a bunch of instant noodles.

When I got to China, I was very surprised. Beijing, so grand and and imposing; Yantai, so beautiful. Especially last October, when several of us foreign teachers and students went to tour a small fishing village. I say it’s a fishing village, but what we saw was a bunch of red-tiled, white walled little houses. Walking into this tiny little fishing village, I saw nothing but the green trees, flowers and lawns in front of each house, and the streets were clean and orderly. It was very pretty. In the afternoon, my colleagues and I went to a fisherman named Chen’s house to have lunch. The Chen couple and their daughter warmly welcomed us. The family had a small house with five or six rooms – bedroom, kitchen, drawing room, and washroom. They had a colour TV, fridge, air conditioner and stereo. Everything they needed was on hand; it was just like a luxurious hotel. Their peasant cooking smelled really good. There was roasted sweet potato, boiled corn, cornmeal cakes, and of course seafood – fish, shrimp, crab, absolutely everything. As we were leaving, our hosts couldn’t let us go without a big bag of sweet potatoes and cornmeal cakes. Later, I wrote my parents a letter telling them everything I’d seen. But they thought I was deliberately lying to them because I was afraid they were worried about me. Half-believing, half-doubting me, they decided to come see for themselves.

My parents arrived in China in May of this year. They felt the same way I did when I’d just arrived – as soon as they got off the plane they said “Oh! This is China?” They simply wouldn’t dare believe their own eyes. I took them sightseeing in Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an and Guilin. Besides touring famous scenic and historic sights, we also went to all kinds of markets. My mom thought everything was really cheap, so she bought tons of stuff - so much so that, when she went home, her luggage was way overweight.

When we got back to Yantai, I took them on a special trip to that fishing village for a peasant-style meal. Only then did they believe that what I said in my letter wasn’t untrue at all. When they were about to go back home, my mom said: “travelling in China was the most interesting experience of my life – I really am enlightened. This trip was both a treat for the eyes and a treat for the stomach. China is indeed developing fast, your choice is correct; your father and I both support you.”

Through a year’s work, I’ve developed even deeper feelings toward this place. I feel that China has a lot of potential for development, and later will associate more and more with countries around the world. If you can proficiently grasp China’s language, you will definitely have a favourable position to use your skills in the future. Thus, after my year’s teaching job finished, I decided to stay in China – but this time as a student, from the start, studying Mandarin.

I think my choice this time around is just as correct. If you don’t believe me, let’s find out.”

Chinese word of the day:
宣传
xuān chuán
To disseminate, to give publicity to (v); propaganda (n)

Back in Chongqing

Well, vacation's over, and I'm back in Chongqing now - broke, exhausted, and thrilled with my travels. I've got a lot of catching up to do, so I'm going to continue chaotically adding new posts out of order. My apologies for the mess; hope it's not too hard to keep up.

After a month on the road, returning to my foreign home of nearly six months was utterly surreal. I couldn’t figure out if it felt more familiar or more foreign than ever. Arriving at the airport, I had the same problem I always seem to have figuring out which bus to take and where to catch it. Eventually I made it to the right bus, and we set off for downtown Chongqing just before dusk. The route we took seemed strangely indirect, winding through industrial areas and backstreets for nearly an hour before reaching the first stop, where I was to transfer to a bus into Beibei. It was great - I saw parts of Chongqing I’d never seen before, and I felt like I was on another trip instead of on the way back home. As night fell I became aware of the elaborately arranged strings of lights and red festival lanterns that lined the streets and hung from every tree and building. I’d come back just in time to catch the Lantern Festival (元宵节, Yuán xiāo jié) – the first full moon of the year, falling on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, that marks the end of Chinese New Year celebrations.

Finally arriving back at the dorm, I gratefully ditched my bags and ran off to get a very late dinner with only my wallet in hand, neglecting to bring either my camera or my phone. After a quick tofu hotpot at the Korean place just off campus, I followed the sound of fireworks into downtown Beibei to find it festively crowded and filled with lights. Couples twirled to tinny old ballads in the central square, lit by hundreds of red lanterns and white string lights. I cursed my camera-less state and considered running back to the dorm to grab it, then decided to just try to enjoy the moment without it for once. A corridor of lights led down the street toward the river, so I followed it, stopping at a crowded bakery for a hot cup of fresh soymilk and some sticky rice cakes (元宵, yuán xiāo), which I later found out are the traditional snack of the Lantern Festival. The streets were lined with snack vendors taking advantage of the crowds – I almost regretted eating at a restaurant as I walked past the tables of veggies, tofu, noodles, seafood and meat being stirfried and grilled over charcoal fires.

I reached the promenade alongside the river and wandered the tent city of snack stalls and mah-jong tables for a while. The sky was dotted with the warm glow of drifting sky lanterns (lanterns that work like miniature hot air balloons, floating into the air with the heat from a candle or wick fixed into the wire frame at the bottom) while fireworks blossomed from sidewalks and balconies all around. I went down to the pitch-black riverbank and ate yuán xiāo, watching the groups of people that gathered around the lanterns as they filled with light and air and floated eerily off into the sky like celestial jellyfish. Eventually I remembered that I was on a hot water schedule again and tore myself away from the hypnotic scene, picking my way through the sky lantern carcasses littering the now-deserted streets and back to my dorm for my bedtime shower.

Chinese word of the day:
漂亮
piào liang
(Adj) pretty, beautiful

Letter From a Cafe in China

It’s pouring rain and I’ve got a cold, and my feet are killing me from three weeks straight of walking on stone and concrete, so my ambitious plans for a day trip to Hong Kong have been abandoned in favour of a cosy afternoon at *coughStarbuckscough*. I know, I know. Supporting globalization, western colonialism, the evil coffee industry, etc, etc. And I’m in China! I should be sipping green tea and listening to some screeching Chinese opera in a grimy 800-year-old teahouse somewhere, or at least getting my caffeine fix at a Chinese-owned cafe with more local flavour - not basking in the safe orange glow of those arty blown glass lights surrounded by familiar cookie cutter faux-hemian décor with Ella Fitzgerald crooning softly in the background, right? But here I am.

So why am I at Starbucks instead of soaking up some culture somewhere more “Chinese”?

To be honest, Starbucks has become something of a safe haven for me here in China. Kind of like a west-coast Canadian embassy. In a country where the most mundane things like ordering and paying for food and drinks can be utterly confusing and awkward, prices fluctuate wildly, and wi-fi and real coffee are often difficult to come by, Starbucks is an uncomplicated, reliable oasis. I know exactly what to expect when I come here. Starbucks’ western prices appear brazenly expensive in cheaper cities like Chongqing, but in more metropolitan cities like Beijing and Shanghai the prices are about on par with the other cafes and teahouses, and are often cheaper. The menu and prices are the same no matter where you are, likewise the payment method, and there’s no risk of accidentally ordering (or “accidentally” being served) some outrageously expensive specialty item which you’ll have to pay for later – a common occurrence in China. There’s always free wireless (when it’s compatible with my computer, which is not the case today), the coffee’s good, and foreigners are a common sight so nobody stares. Oh, and the bathrooms are clean, with western-style toilets.

Teahouses are noisy and intimidating, especially if you don’t know a thing about tea, and are frequented mainly by older people. Chinese-owned coffee shops tend to be super fancy, catering to chain-smoking middle-aged business men wishing to show off their status by blowing up to 200 RMB on a pot of coffee. Starbucks does have a large clientele of homesick foreigners, but it’s also very popular with Chinese people, particularly young people.

As I’ve discovered in so many ways, an experience doesn’t need to be traditional to be authentic. What is "authentic," anyway? Maybe Chinese people do come here for a change of atmosphere, to have something foreign, like when we go for Chinese food in the west, but they still come and hang out here in droves. This is a part of life in China, with a uniquely Chinese aspect to it. The fact that it’s a western place doesn't necessarily "dilute" my experience of China. It’s not like Canadians have high tea with the queen every day or survive on a diet of poutine and maple syrup - foreign things are a part of our lifestyle, and what's a part of your lifestyle is essentially a part of your culture.

So, while the anti-corporate coffee snob in me still balks at the idea of saying I’m proud to hang out at Starbucks…I guess I’ll just say I look at it with a gentler eye now.

Chinese word of the day:
文化
wén huà
Culture (noun)

PS: here are some of last week's photos of Suzhou, as well as the black and whites from Tongli!

Shenzhen

So I've just arrived in Shenzhen, the final leg of my trip. I have to go explore now, but I thought I'd do a quick post to rave about the hotel/hostel I found here: The Hanting Hi Inn. It was the fist time I'd booked a hotel online and I was a little worried I might show up to find a roachfest or no hotel at all, and from the outside the place certainly looks dubious, but the rooms are very comfortable and clean. What the place lacks in character it makes up for in comfort and privacy. My tiny room has a spotless little ensuite bathroom, an excellent shower and western toilet (as opposed to the Chinese squat toilets which are common here, just a hole in the floor), air conditioning, a little flatscreen television on the wall in front of the bed, a desk with an adaptable electrical socket, and free wireless. The place seems quite secure, with every door and elevator locked with electronic keys. There's a cute little cafe/common area on the second floor with foosball, TVs and computers, and a canteen on the third floor that delivers freshly cooked chinese food to your room for a decent price. And apparently it's walking distance from a great pedestrian shopping/snacking street and a subway station. All for the low, low price of 118-180 RMB (20-30 CAD) per night, depending on holidays/weekends.

So I'm absolutely delighted and relieved right now, and very grateful that this little place exists. Especially after pulling an all-nighter at the Shanghai airport last night.

Chinese word of the day:
小吃
xiǎo chī
snack (noun; literally, "small eats")

Photos

I almost forgot: some photos of Beijing, Tongli and Xuzhou. More photos of Tongli and Suzhou coming soon!

At the mercy of the Bus Gods in Tongli

About 20 kilometres outside of Suzhou is a little canal town called Tongli, known for having some of the area’s best-preserved ancient buildings. Feeling adventurous, I armed myself with some basic directions, said a prayer to the Bus Gods, and set off alone on a day trip. I somehow managed to strike out on the first try, catching my bus on the wrong side of the street and ending up at the north train station instead of the south bus station, but this was easily corrected and only set me back an hour. I arrived at the crowded bus stop outside the station and was briefly lost in the confusion – was this just a regular bus stop, or is this what bus stations are like in China? I examined the bus schedule for clues. Seeing my pale skin and bewildered expression, about a dozen touts and hawkers descended on me, trying to sell me maps and offer me “independent” cab rides to Tongli for 100 RMB, insisting that there was no other way to get there. I shook them off, had a look around, and found that the proper bus station was just a half a block away. So that part was simple. I went in, paid 8 RMB for a ticket to Tongli, and bought some overpriced snacks from the convenience store, basking in the confidence of having secured an adventure for the day.

Arriving in Tongli – or at the bus stop called “Tongli,” that is – I again found myself wandering around looking for a destination that seemed to have gone missing. There were no canals or ancient stone buildings – just the same apartment highrises and hotpot restaurants as every other place. Eventually I realized that I still hadn’t reached my destination – I’d just reached the shuttle. And I had to figure out where to buy tickets, because they didn’t take cash.

Still pretty simple. I found the ticket office tucked off to the side of the tourist information centre and ten minutes later I was stepping off the little electric bus into an 11th-century Chinese village. I cheerfully abandoned my sense of direction and waded into the crowds of tourists, snack vendors and rickshaws. I spent the day wandering the canals and narrow alleys, snapping dramatic black-and-white photos of haphazard clay-tiled eaves and decayed concrete walls reflected onto still water. I snacked on stinky tofu skewers, green tea flavoured glutinous rice balls and red bean pastries from the street vendors as I wandered around, stopping for a while at a dingy little sidewalk restaurant to watch the tourist-laden gondolas drift by over a cup of dragon well tea. I made the rounds to most of the museums and sightseeing destinations on the ticket, including an estate with a small classic garden and the Sex Culture History Museum. My feet were sore from walking on uneven stone streets all day and it was getting late, but as I made my way back to the main gate I kept getting sidetracked by beautiful views and photo opportunities. the crowds became thinner, the little alleys off the main tourist drag became more and more irresistible in the long afternoon light. I didn't make it out until dusk, when the light became too dim for photos.

Braindead and exhausted from a full day of touring museums and losing myself in the heartbreakingly beautiful maze of canals and old architecture, I finally stumbled back to the main gate and into a shuttle back to the bus station. But when I went to buy a ticket back to Suzhou, the receptionist told me there were no buses to the Suzhou bus station. In my weakened state, it never even occurred to me that I could just get a ticket to the train station instead. She told me I could take the city bus #203 just outside, so I ran out and got on, only to be told by the bus driver that he didn't go to the Suzhou bus station, either. In fact, none of the buses did. But, as so often happens, he took pity on the poor helpless lost foreigner and offered to help me get to a place where I could transfer buses. After a long drive through some totally unfamiliar, barren farmland, he dropped me off at the Wujiang bus station and instructed another passenger, a girl about my age with Tina Turner hair, to help me get a ticket to Suzhou. Half an hour later, I arrived at the crowded station, where I was again mobbed by the cab scammers. From there I easily figured out which bus would get me back to my hostel - as chaotic as things can be here, I have to give China props on its idiot/foreigner proof bus system. All the bus stops have clearly marked names, and a billboard lists the different buses that stop there, as well as each stop on their route, with your current stop clearly marked. Some schedules even have a clock next to each route to tell you how many minutes till the next bus comes.

My bus came and I confidently elbowed my way to the front of the heaving crowd as it shoved its way through the doors, triumphant in overcoming my foreign handicap. I'd made my way to a different city and back completely blind. The Bus Gods had finally smiled on me. For the moment, at least, I felt like I'd earned the right to shove like a local.

Chinese word of the day:
迷路
mí lù
Lost

Bohemian rhapsody in Suzhou

After five days of touring Xuzhou and celebrating the new year with Benson, Bridget and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to hop a train to nearby Suzhou, an ancient city famous for its classic gardens. Several of them have even been declared UNESCO world heritage sites.

Finding that Suzhou has an ample supply of funky, cheap, centrally-located youth hostels to choose from, we easily convinced ourselves that the stressful second-language phone call to book ahead wasn't necessary. Well, it was. After dragging our suitcases down ten blocks of thousand-year-old hand-cut paving stones to our hostel of choice, the Mingtown, we were told that all their beds were booked up. The receptionist took pity on us and obligingly called around until she found us another hostel to stay at - the Suzhou Watertown Youth Hostel. We hailed the first cab we found and were there before we'd even ticked up one yuan on the flag fare. Although not as impressive as the Mingtown, which is in a richly furnished traditional courtyard house overlooking a canal on the most charming thousand-year-old street in the city, the Watertown is also a traditional house (in an ancient alley rather than an ancient canal street) and is walking distance from nearly everything worth seeing.

Still, we really had our hearts set on experiencing the different flavour of the Mingtown, so we went back and booked the next two free beds they had for tomorrow night, our last night in Suzhou. It's a bit of a hassle to pack up and move again, but it's also kind of cool to be getting a taste of a few different places and localizing ourselves to a couple of different bases while we're here.

There are many things in life where you get more for less, and hostel life is one of those things. For a fraction of the price of a hotel, a hostel can provide you with accommodation in an authentic, traditional house, complete with charming decor and gardens, antique furniture, a multilingual book and DVD library, wireless and broadband, a kitchen, a cafe, travel information, and a great base for meeting people. Hostels rock.

Chinese word of the day:
箱子
xiāng zi
Suitcase

A note

Lately I've been writing my posts as they come to me, instead of in order of occurrence, but I'm dating them so that they're posted in order. So it may not look like I'm posting much, but check back a bit - new posts may be popping up under earlier dates. I just wrote two new posts for January.

Also, it looks like the Great Firewall has figured out some new way to keep me off Facebook, so I may not be posting new photos or blog updates for a while. At least I can still access Blogger!

New Year's Eve

I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning to the sound of China exploding. It was still dark out, and people across the country were already up and launching a full-scale firecracker assault on the last few hours of the old year, chasing out the year of the tiger and welcoming in the year of the rabbit. Firecrackers blasted on all sides of our apartment, ricocheting and echoing off the concrete, at times alarmingly close. It never stopped. All day, Xuzhou hummed steadily with the constant rumble of faraway firecrackers, punctuated by sudden ear-splitting blasts from just next door or around the corner. It sounded like a war zone. Enough firecrackers and fireworks have been detonated here today to collapse several large buildings.

I dozed as long as I could through the noise, dreaming fitfully of earthquakes and guerrilla warfare, until Benson’s parents came in and told us we had to get up and get ready to go out. We threw on some clothes and slurped down a bowl of Benson’s mom’s freshly made, super tasty dumplings (filled with chives, egg, sweet potato noodles and ginger) and then the six of us squeezed into Benson’s cousin’s car to go meet up with the rest of the family at his uncle’s house in the countryside.

We arrived at a maze of simple concrete one- and two-storey homes and picked our way through the alleys, stopping a few times to greet old friends and neighbours who were out for walks or sitting out in their doorways. Arriving at a pair large metal double doors decorated with the ubiquitous red and gold paper character (?) on it, we stepped through and into a traditional Chinese courtyard home. We were greeted in the courtyard by Benson’s grandmother and several uncles and aunts, along with a hardy little Pekingese and a very agitated husky. A doorway on the right led to the kitchen, where a couple of the aunts were already preparing an elaborate lunch, and on the left a sun-drenched porch lay before the front door to the main house. We went inside, made introductions with the rest of the family and sat around for a bit chatting and eating sunflower seeds. Not long after, everyone got up and started getting ready to leave. We gathered, from their heavily Xuzhou-accented explanation, that we were going on a walk somewhere. Benson’s mother carried a few dumplings from breakfast in a plastic bag, and his father was carrying another bag that bulged with little slips of yellow paper.

We followed a narrow path out of the concrete village and into the dusty, brush-covered hills of the countryside. The sound of firecrackers never faded, echoing off the hills in the distance. After a few minutes, I noticed a cemetery ahead, and realized the family was going to pay respects to their ancestors. We bypassed a long stretch of neatly arranged headstones and wandered through a series of unmarked mounds of earth, the ground littered with white paper flowers, alcohol bottles, unsmoked cigarettes, dumplings and the scorched bits of red paper left by firecrackers, stopping eventually at one of the mounds. We all gathered around as Benson’s mother made a large pile of yellow paper, which represents money, and lit it on fire, sending it to the ancestors who’ve moved on to the afterlife. Everyone took turns kowtowing three times to the mound, and then they carefully stamped out the fire, moved on to another mound just behind us and repeated the ceremony. Leaving a couple of dumplings at each mound, we turned around and walked back.

Back at the house, we filled every piece of furniture in the living room and crowded around a little coffee table crowded with plates of fish, meat and veggies. We again found ourselves lacking a corkscrew for the wine, and I again was obliged to demonstrate my expertise at improvisational wine-bottle-opening. This time I used a chopstick. But it was all in vain, as the wine turned out to be completely undrinkable. Chinese wine, at prices as low as two or three dollars a bottle, seems to be such a great bargain until you actually drink it. Once in a while you find something that might be suitable for sangria or mulling, but most of them I wouldn’t drink if I were paid.

Anyway, after lunch we all sat around a while longer and then headed back to Benson’s house, where we rested up and prepared to conquer a huge New Year’s dinner of more fish, meat and veggies, washed down with bowls of Tsingtao. Benson’s mom was the only one brave enough to get into the baijiu (白酒, bái jiǔ, the excessively strong and unappetizing national booze). Then we all sat down on Benson’s parents’ bed to watch the annual New Year’s program on TV while firecrackers and fireworks continued to roar like gunfire around us until late into the night.

Chinese lesson of the day:
新年快乐
xīn nián kuài lè
Happy New Year!

Xuzhou

My friend Benson invited me to spend Chinese New Year with him and his family, so after 11 days touring the highlights (and braving the public transit system) of Beijing I bade farewell to my friends there and hopped a plane to Xuzhou to meet him. I was somehow lucky enough to get here without encountering the crowds that notoriously fill airports and train stations every Spring Festival – kind of a shame, really, as it would have made for great blogging.

Xuzhou is quite different from the overwhelming metropolitan (and at times shamelessly touristy) experience of Beijing. Blue-collar and totally off the tourist map (save for one attraction, a recently unearthed 2000-year-old emperor’s tomb, which doesn’t seem to draw any foreigners), Xuzhou is refreshingly laid-back and real, and a good place to experience my first Chinese New Year in China. Oh, and it’s also got the craziest driving I’ve ever seen. I thought Chongqing was lawless. Pedestrians in Xuzhou wander casually through six-lane highways, where drivers frequently pull sudden u-turns without signalling, and motorcyclists, scooters and mopeds are apparently allowed to drive against traffic. Overpasses, underpasses and crosswalks simply do not exist. Sidewalks, narrow alleys and bustling outdoor markets are also fair game for drivers here; I almost got hit by a car driving down the sidewalk yesterday. Let’s hope I survive the next three days here.

Chinese lesson of the day:
冒险
mào xiǎn
Adventure (noun); to take risks (verb)

Beijing

I’m lucky enough to have a good friend from Beijing whose family still lives there, so I arrived with someone to pick me up from the train station and a comfortable place to stay all lined up for me. I spent 11 days living with my friend’s parents on the 26th floor of an apartment compound for military retirees. I’d planned to visit a few of Beijing’s famous historical sites, but I knew it would be the everyday, mundane experiences – not the traditional dishes eaten or must-see tourist attractions visited – that would really make the trip.

I couldn’t have found a better place to stay. My friend’s parents spoiled me like I was their own granddaughter. I woke up every morning to a hot mug of tea and a full breakfast, which they would heap onto my plate until I couldn’t eat any more. Then, while I prepared for the day’s adventures, they’d help me figure out an itinerary and tell me which buses to take. They’d even walk me to the bus stop if they weren’t sure I could find it. They kept the house well-stocked with snacks, which they’d shove into my bag before I set out. And when I stumbled back at the end of the day, exhausted, footsore and frostbitten, they’d have a huge vegetarian dinner cooking. We’d chat over dinner, discuss the places I went to see, and then I’d stubbornly try to help with the dishes. After dinner, they’d try to get me to eat more snacks. I’m starting to get the impression that in China, “young” is synonymous with “underfed.” Older people are constantly urging you to eat more, more, more, even when you’re full to bursting.

As they didn’t speak any English at all, staying with the couple really put my Chinese to the test. It was my first time being completely immersed in the language, in a situation where there were no bilingual friends to act as translator and my English was truly useless. It went really well, actually – I was delighted by how well my mere one-and-a-half years of Chinese studies served me. For the first two days I even surprised myself with my fluency. I was able to talk around the gaps in my vocabulary without getting flustered and forgetting how to construct a sentence. But then it got difficult again, and the hesitation and mental blocks came back. I think that, being immersed like that, I learned so much so quickly that my brain was forced to go into assimilation mode for a while to make sense of all the new information, making on-the-spot recall difficult. I wonder if everyone goes through cycles like that in the second-language acquisition process.

One of the best things about going to Beijing (aside from the sheer fabulousness of the city itself) is that the standardized form of Mandarin we learn in school is based on the Beijing dialect, so communication with the locals was easy. It was such a relief to be able to converse smoothly with strangers and understand directions without having to decipher a heavy local accent. Even though everyone in the country understands standard Mandarin, they can’t all speak it, so I often encounter a one-way communication barrier where people can understand my Chinese but I can’t understand theirs. It can be very stressful. Coming from Chongqing, where this is a constant problem for me, this new clarity was a huge thrill. I’ve never enjoyed talking to strangers so much in my life as I did in Beijing. The sudden ease of communicating in a mutually intelligible dialect, and the compliments I got from Beijingers who were impressed to hear a foreigner speaking their dialect, gave me a huge confidence boost that had me chatting with everyone who gave me an opportunity. It really came in handy with all the aggressive hawkers, who’d lose interest in trying to hustle me as soon as they realized they could have a real conversation with me. My favourites were the young guys slinging dumplings and stinky tofu and bugs on skewers at Wangfujing snack street. Perusing all the crazy snacks, I was greeted with the usual catcalls of “HELLOOOO! Look-a-look! Delicious Beijing special treat!” But as soon as I walked up for a closer look and started asking questions in Chinese, they’d immediately drop the act and show a genuine interest in me, asking me where I was from, telling me my Chinese was awesome (很棒, hěn bàng!), flirting a bit and finding common ground with me.

Chinese word of the day:
双语
shuāng yǔ
Bilingual (adj) (lit., double language)

Going off the rails on a Chinese train, cont'd

A few hours into the trip, one of the attendants came around to collect our tickets. The 12- or 13-year-old girl in the bunk below mine had apparently lost hers sometime after boarding the train, and, from what I understood, the staff suspected a scam and wanted to kick her off. The woman in the bunk opposite hers, a feisty Chongqing local, butted heads ferociously with the staff and the situation escalated into an ongoing saga that had the woman fielding phone calls every few minutes while various attendants and managers visited our bunk repeatedly to engage in yet another heated discussion with her. I gathered she wasn’t related to the girl, and possibly didn’t know her at all, but they were going to the same place and she decided to take charge of the situation. Between the Chinese-speaking foreigner, the silent, ticketless mystery girl, the fierce Chongqing lady and the loud drunk, ours was definitely the most interesting bunk in the car. As we neared Beijing and the situation with the ticketless girl was still not resolved, the staff became more agitated and began taking other passengers aside to press them for information that might help them decide whether or not the girl was scamming them for a free ride across the country. Eventually, they came for me.

After nearly a whole day listening to my bunkmates discuss every angle of the matter (and overhearing everyone else on the car gossiping about it), I’d pretty much tuned out the drama unfolding around me and was just keeping to myself, listening to the Cocteau Twins, and watching the poor farming villages go by. Then one of the attendants, a young girl with a mean, catty look behind her polite smile, came and told me they’d like to ask me some questions. Not knowing what else to do, I agreed, and she grabbed me by the arm and marched me through seven or eight cars to the dinner car, where several more attendants were waiting at a table. The ticketless girl was sitting alone at a table behind ours, looking blankly out the window. They obviously weren’t letting her leave.

They asked me to sit down and introduced me to the boss, a woman who appeared to be in her 30’s. They started asking me questions about the ticketless girl and the woman who’d taken on the role of her advocate, but I couldn’t make out the meaning of anything they said through my nervousness and their heavy Sichuan accents. They seemed intent on getting certain information. When it became clear to them that I had no idea what that information was and I could tell them nothing helpful, they thanked me with exasperated smiles and the mean-looking one grabbed me by the arm again and escorted me back to my car.

In the end, they never resolved the issue with the ticketless girl. She and the woman stayed on the train till we got to Beijing, where everyone wordlessly went on their way and the temporary relationships formed on the train dissolved as quickly as they’d formed. I arrived feeling like I’d just reached my second destination on the trip instead of my first. The train ride was a trip in itself.

Chinese lesson of the day:
奇怪
qí guài
Strange (adj)

Going off the rails on a Chinese train

Once again, I’ve been slacking on my blog. Sorry about that. I wrote my exams about 2 weeks ago after a week of intense cramming, and I think I managed to pass, but I won’t know until next semester, if they ever tell me at all. During this time, I was also trying to salvage my travel plans for the Spring Festival, which were rapidly unravelling. Taking advantage of my six-week vacation to travel in China seemed like a good idea; I mean, I’m in China with nothing to do, so naturally I should travel, right? Well, Spring Festival is also the largest annual human migration in the world – the time when the millions of migrant workers who’ve left their hometowns for a better income in the cities go home to spend Chinese New Year with their families. It’s nearly impossible to get a train anywhere; plane tickets double or triple in price.

I’d originally planned to spend a few days in Beijing, then fly to Japan and spend a week or two there, and then fly back to my friend’s hometown in Xuzhou to spend Chinese New Year with his family. Afterward I’d hoped to hop a train to nearby Suzhou or Hangzhou to spend a day or two soaking in the famous scenery (Suzhou is famous for its gardens and Hangzhou is known as the “Venice of China”), and then continue south to Shenzhen or Hong Kong before flying back to Chongqing. Japan ended up being impossibly expensive, eating up almost my entire travel budget and paralyzing my plans until I could cancel everything – a very expensive, time-consuming and depressing task. By the time I got that worked out, I’d decided to just spend some time in Beijing and then take a train to Xuzhou at the end of January, and I thought I’d break up the long, long train ride to Beijing with a stopover in Xi’an. Poor train scheduling to Xi’an ended up making things more complicated when it was supposed to make them simpler, so I dropped that idea and decided to fly to Beijing; I’d found a cheap ticket that would get me there in two hours for just 100 RMB (15 CAD) more than the cost of a train ticket. The website was confusing and the prices were climbing by the second (I could watch the numbers go up as I sat and looked at the page), so by the time I had a friend come over to help me the ticket was more than double the price of a train. So, after another split second change of plans, I ran out and bought a train ticket straight to Beijing; 31 hours. I was actually really lucky to get it only five days in advance – tickets generally sell out the day sales open, which is ten days in advance. I found myself a cheap plane ticket to Chongqing from Shenzhen and my holiday began to take shape again. Meanwhile, Beibei had become unnaturally subdued as all the shops and street stalls I’ve come to know and love pulled down their heavy steel shutters or just packed up and disappeared completely for the holidays. The campus turned into a creepy, deserted ghost town. I was anxious to leave.

The train station was overflowing, but I managed to get onto the train without any trouble or confusion. I must be getting better at this whole “not being a clueless foreigner” thing. I’d booked a “hard sleeper,” which, so I’m told, is exactly the same as a “soft sleeper” except there are three beds to a bunk instead of two, so it’s a little more crowded. But, clocking in at 440 RMB (about 66 CAD), half the price of the soft sleeper, I decided it was money well saved. Of course, my bunk was in the middle of the car, and to get to it I had to walk past about 30 pairs of stunned eyes. Everyone watched, riveted, as I fumbled conspicuously with my overstuffed suitcase. Then a girl about my age approached me in the corridor and struck up a conversation. Of course, everyone listened in, and word spread quickly through the car that there was a “waiguoren” who could speak Chinese on the train. I could hear everyone talking about me, but they all seemed to be saying good things, so I relaxed a bit. People kept dropping by to participate in the conversation and exchange a few words with the foreigner. They were all quite friendly, although I couldn’t understand what they were saying half the time as they were all Sichuan/Chongqing locals and spoke with a heavy accent.

Eventually I went back to the little table next to my bunk to have some dinner and was followed by the crazy drunk guy who’d been blundering around making a scene ever since he arrived. He made lively conversation with me while I tried to review some vocabulary and eat my dinner, spraying me with flecks of chewed-up betel nut as he spoke. He told me repeatedly that I was beautiful and then he called his wife and told her he was talking to a “foreign beauty,” gleefully reporting afterward how jealous she was. My other bunkmates joined in and we all talked for a while – I’m always amazed at the social ease of the people over here. I guess in a country this crowded, where maintaining personal space is impossible, you don’t really have the option of being hesitant to talk to people. Chatting with strangers is both a way of life and an art form over here. It’s funny – when I see fellow foreigners now, my first instinct is to run over and strike up a conversation, ask where they’re from, what their story is, and then I realize that that’s a very Chinese response. It’d be the last thing I’d be likely to do back home. Being in China has fundamentally changed the way I view social interaction. Not only do I have no choice but to talk to strangers here, it’s basically my entire purpose for being here. And the social interactions I have here, in my horribly inadequate Chinese or in someone else’s faltering English, are completely different from the culturally nuanced, socially molded conversations I have in my native language. Every conversation I have here is useful to me in some way – it’s never worth it to avoid them (unless you’re talking to a crazy drunk who’ll just end up following you around all night). And it’s changed the way I view awkwardness in social interaction, too. No social interaction in the world can be as awkward or intimidating as being interrogated in a heavily-accented version of your second language.

…to be continued.

Chinese word of the day:
尴尬
gān gà
Awkward (adj.)

Happy Spring Festival!

Please excuse the lack of new posts as of late - life's been hectic! I finished my first semester at SWU a couple weeks ago and wrote my exams a week after that. Now I'm taking advantage of the month-long vacation to do some travelling through China and only have sporadic internet access. I'll try to keep writing when I have time and just dump my posts on here when I find a place with good wifi. I'm currently in Beijing at a Starbucks on Qianmen street, just south of Tiananmen Square. Stay tuned for updates on my adventures on the road!

Chinese word of the day:

放假
fàng jià
To have a holiday or vacation