Today's Lunch--duck tongue served cold

Listening

Take a second and think about how much you actually listen and respond to someone in a given day.  I mean actually take in what they say, process it, and deliver a valid response.

Now think about how much of your day is filled up with people aimlessly talking at you and you talking to disinterested people.

Lastly, think about how many times you can respond with a yes, no, or just repeat the back end of some one’s question in answer form.

I realized that maybe about 5% of my day requires me to intently listen and respond with an intelligent answer in Chinese.  The rest I have been able to get by with minimal understanding and some simple head nods and smiles.

What I am discovering is that, outside of class, my degree of understanding conversations with native Chinese speakers ranges from 10 to 50%.  That means that out of any given subway meeting, street vendor discussion, or friendly passerby I can understand at most half of what he is saying.

I have, however, been able to appear more fluent than I seem.  The trick is to know the words that you have learned really well and listen for key words in another person’s speech.  Casual meetings usually contain the same topics like the weather, school, the city, etc.  This makes it easy to expect what is coming, but I encounter trouble when the conversations range outside of my expectations.  This is when my weakness as a Chinese speaker comes into play and I have to resort to my crutch sayings like, “I’m sorry I do not understand, could you please say again more slowly?” or “I cannot understand you can you use different words?”   It is not a bad thing though, I do not claim to be fluent, and I would go crazy if I tried to understand everything.  Also, allowing people to think you are better at Chinese than you really are makes it less likely for them to rip you off, e.g. at the markets, street corner tables, and stores.

On a side note, my lice situation is cleared up thanks to the shampoo given to me by the dorm keepers.  I now know where they keep it so I stole a bunch of bottles and gave them to Li Jiang’s family.  I gave them directions on how to use it, but they really do not have a lot of water to use so I am not sure what they are going to do.  I could not believe how damn itchy my head was from those little bugs, but it made me feel bad for Li Jiang, I am sure she was miserable.  I hope the shampoo helps her out.

This is Li Jiang

Weak Stomachs BEWARE

DISCLAIMER: If you have a weak stomach or get grossed out easily then maybe you should not read this post.

I have been in China two weeks now and I have been saving all of the strange/gross things to tell you.  I will, however, have to get used to these things if I want to live her for six months.  For right now, I have a coping mechanism, and it is to swear quietly to myself.  The fact that I have not been able to speak English means that I cannot use my favorite words in the language (curse words).  Therefore I am resorting to Chinese forms of cursing, such as Zhen de a? meaning Are you f***ing serious? And Cao for F***.  Occasionally I will slip these into speech when I cannot find a way to express myself.  Believe me, I know it is bad but it has been a great way for me to relieve stress.  Anyway, here is my list thus far:

1. Everyone here spits all the time.  They will spit in the street, on the sidewalk, and even in restaurants!  By far the grossest thing I saw was a guy “snot rocketing” i.e. blowing this nose with his hand at the table next to me in a dumpling restaurant…zhen de a?  Also, I hate the frozen “loogies” on the side walk. 

2. People do not wash their hands, but yet love to share food.  I get it, Chinese culture is all about sharing and Chinese people really want to make guests feel welcome, but I can barely stomach it when my roommate will use his hands to place food on my plate.  Also, everything is served family style sans serving utensils, so we all use of chopsticks…chopsticks that have just been in your mouth and now you are using them to serve other people…zhen de a?

3.  I know my Mum will read this and freak out, but seriously I’m fine…I have shampoo for it and it is taken care of…but my little friend Li Jiang who you all know apparently had lice.  I know this because she always wants to try on my hat.  Long story short, my head was really itchy the other day so I had one of the care takers of the dorm look at it and yep, it was lice!  My little buddy gave ME a gift this time…cao!

4.  The plumbing in China is so bad that you cannot flush toilet paper, so instead of flushing it you either A. do not use it or B. throw it in the trash can…and I thought having septic at home was bad!  Not only is seeing used toilet paper in the trash can gross, but it makes the bath room smell awful!

5.  Last for now is the fact that a lot of food is thrown out daily from restaurants.  This is not the gross part…the gross part is the maggots under the trash bags that you can see squirming on the street after the trash is removed…cao.

This is not meant to be a bash on China, I am sure we do a lot of things that disgust them.  I mean I sleep with rats in my ceiling at school…who am I to judge living conditions…

It is all about customs and what you are used to.  I am starting to be less zhen de a? and cao! about all of this, but if you plan on traveling abroad just remember the first few weeks will shock you.  It is important to not have a bad attitude and embrace everything about the culture…and a coping mechanism never hurts.  It keeps me smiling.

Minority Report

I realized today that no matter how different cultures, government, and religion can be kids are the same no matter where you are in the world.  I believe this is due in part to their pure and unadulterated minds.  The darker side to this universal truth is, however, that their innocence never remains. 

I say this because of an encounter I had today.  While playing with my little friend, Li Jiang, an older man passed by in a group of people during the normal lunch rush hour and shouted something towards both of us, but it was meant to be instructions for Li Jiang.  He spoke too fast for me but I caught a few choice words like “Watch out for…foreigner…stay away...go inside/home.”  A few people in the crowd looked back at me and laughed.  I looked down and Li Jiang as she was holding my hand, and she looked up at me and said, “Let’s keep playing.”  Because Li Jiang is the only person in China that I fully understand all the time we have become good friends…I guess my best friend over here is a six year old girl…

I cannot understand why my intentions would be so misread.  I give Li Jiang some type of toy or treat every day and play with her for at least an hour, because I know she is always hungry and does not have any other children to play with.  She lives in the store with her family and just runs errands for her mother all day; like picking up dumplings or giving 5 yuan to the post man for a delivery.  The old man’s words just show how backwards some people can be when it comes to differences.  I admit I have done the same thing, but I never realized how senseless it is to remain hostile to someone who is different.  It took me a trip to China where I am suddenly the minority to discover truly how ridiculous prejudice can be.

Hearts and Minds

Across the street from the school is my favorite store.  I am calling it a store because I cannot really explain it in one word other than “store,” but to give the whole picture it is basically a convince store the size of a toll booth attached to a street front grill where the best lo mien in all of Beijing is made.  The store is owned by one family consisting of the father, mother, grandmother, grandfather, two aunts, an uncle, and three boys.  The entire family lives in the store and sleeps behind the cash register and in between the isles.  This is the side of Beijing that most foreigners do not get to see.  The disparity of wealth is like nothing I could have imagined.  I will take a taxi ride 10 minutes from campus and pass ten high rises worth millions and then I can return to where I live and seen three generations of a family living in their store. 

This store really is not the cleanest place to buy my things, but I like giving them my business.  My daily routine is to grab a bottle of iced Oolong tea in aisle 2, which is also their kitchen apparently because they are always making food right next to the tea shelf, grab an egg custard y the uncle’s bedroom, which is a rolled blanket and makeshift pillow out of grocery bags, and then go to the cash register aka master bed room.  The family also has a little girl about five or six years old.  Every time I see her I try to give her a small treat or gift.  The other day I gave her a chocolate and today I gave her this small Beanie Baby key chain.  She seemed to really like it and thanked me.  I was sure she did not have a lot of toys, so I knew it was appreciated. 

In the afternoon I went to order lo mien for lunch and the little girl came up to be and said, “Hey I remember you, I like you!”  Then to my surprise she came out with a giant bag of stuffed animals and asked me to play.  I sat on a little folding stool on the side walk and ate my noodles as I played with her Mickey Mouse dolls.  We played for about an hour; games that five year olds enjoy like running to a random spot, touching it, and running back.  I taught her how to do a “high 5” and then we played hide and seek.  All of this was done under the watchful eyes of the grandmother, who looked like she was suspicious of westerners.  After countless giggles and laughter the grandmother warmed up to me as well and chuckled at the games the little girl and I were playing.  After about an hour of play I told the little girl that I had to return home, so she said “OK, I will see you later tonight then and we can play again?” I had to tell her that I was busy tonight but tomorrow afternoon we would play again.  She said OK and good bye. 

After playing with a little Chinese girl for an hour and understanding most of what she said I realized that my Chinese speaking ability is equivalent that of a six year old.  Even she had to dumb stuff down for me because she could see I did not understand.  Sadly eight years of studying Chinese puts me at a pre-school level in China.  It is, how the Chinese say “Mei guan xi” (no problem), because I have been in China over a week now and I realize that I am quite functional with my abilities and this program is really accelerating my progress.  Days like today remind me that it is more important to appreciate the whole experience rather than lock myself in my room and study the text. 

Informal Learning

I always felt bad not being able to distinguish Koreans from the Japanese from Chinese people in America.  I did not notice the subtle differences in their features and did not understand why a person would become so enraged by being called Korean when they are in fact from Japan.  I finally realized what they must have felt due to my ignorance when my teacher, who is a native Beijing-er and has never been out of China, told me that she thought I was from the Middle East and was surprised when I told her I was born and raised in America.  As you can imagine I was not thrilled with her assertion, but the more I thought about it I had to laugh.  Here I am with my comparatively dark skin, full beard, and unusually dark features and I am expecting a 25 year old Chinese girl to be able to recognize the fact that I am American.  We all associate ourselves proudly with our country and expect others to recognize it, however, being a foreigner my identity is an enigma.  In China, a stranger on the street could mistake me for a number of ethnicities.  In fact, I have started using this to my advantage.  Sometimes the Chinese like to use me to practice their English; however, I do not want to submit to my native language as a crutch.  To combat this problem I have begun to pretend I do not speak English, only Portuguese, and I tell them (in Chinese) that I am from Portugal.  When they ask how I know Chinese I tell them that I live in Macao (a Portuguese port in southern China).

This week has been a great mix of what I like to call my formal learning (class room exercise, homework, etc.) with my informal learning (going out in Beijing, eating at restaurants, etc.).  Recently my informal learning has trumped my formal learning as I am getting my Chinese roommate to teach me swear words.  In exchange I am teaching him English curse words.  As you can see America is getting the most out of its dollar sending me to China.  I believe that the informal knowledge I gain in the streets is something I cannot simulate in a class room and I like being able to use the new words and grammar I learn in class in Beijing at night.  Being abroad is essentially a 24/7 learning experience.  Tomorrow is the conclusion of the first week and I already feel like I accomplished 6 weeks of Chinese class back at home.   I guess I truly “don’t need no education.”  I know…it took a trip half way around the world for me to finally understand the Pink Floyd song “Another Brick in the Wall,” which is also funny because I believe China is the only place non-drug induced that is weird enough to actually get Pink Floyd’s lyrics.

A Beijing Breakast

There is an episode of The Office in which Michael Scott (Steve Carrel) takes a $300 bonus for being the most successful regional manager in the quarter for himself instead of using the $300 towards much needed office supplies.  After the employees find out he justifies himself by professing his love for the Burlington Coat Factory and says, as he is wearing a ridiculous fur coat, “If you walk into the Burlington Coat Factory with 300 dollars you are literally a god.”  This is exactly what it is like buying food and clothes in China.

                For breakfast I walk across the street and buy a spicy egg pancake, a bottle of water, and a yam for 5 RMB.  Not only is everything prepared fresh in front of you but it is less than a dollar, definitely beating the hell out of McDonald’s dollar breakfast menu.   However, I did realize that some restaurants look to rip off foreigners.  My friend and I recently paid a 600 RMB tab at a local establishment, which is around 100 dollars for the two of us.  Apparently when we ordered Sake they gave us an entire bottle instead of two glasses like we wanted.  They definitely played the system well…defeated, we paid and drank the rest of the Sake, not a total loss.

                After the first week and a few mishaps like this one I now have a better understanding of the consumer market system in China.  I went to a flea market the other day and was verbally beaten into buying a fake Dolce & Gabana trench coat.  I went strictly to practice my Chinese and bargaining abilities and somehow this little Chinese lady talked me into buying a coat for 130 RMB that I really did not want.  When it is all said and done it was about $20 and from previous gifts I have bought my girlfriend, this coat ranks amongst the cheapest.   No one needs to know it is not D&G, so I am pretty sure she will like it.  Some of the items are so great because they are so terribly fake!  Many of the items have names purposefully misspelled; for example, would anyone like me to pick them up a “Norf Face” jacket or a “Burberries” scarf…how about an “Adadias” gym bag?

                I would say the biggest adjustment so far is not being able to speak English.  For this January intensive semester we all took a pledge to speak Chinese 24/7.  Even when I am with my friends in town we have to use Chinese, and due to our limited vocabularies we often times get frustrated and use elaborate hand gestures.  For me, the hand gestures are not anything out of the ordinary.  Being raised in an Italian home, moving your hands like a maniac is conversational status quo.

                Getting past the mild inconvenience, I can see how beneficial this semester will be for my language ability.  In addition to the language itself, my cultural awareness and just overall street-smarts have already seen vast improvements.  I do not claim to be a master of transit in Beijing but I have discovered the subway system on my own and can just about get anywhere I need.  In addition to the subway I am able to direct taxi drivers and now I am starting to use the busses. 

                Everyday is an adventure; actually, yesterday I just decided to hop on the subway and go to the National Library and walk Zi Zhu Park.  I saw native Beijing-ers in the park riding rigged bicycles with ice skates on the lake and others were using poles and chairs with blades on them to traverse the ice.   I also ran into a large group of British students from Leeds University who study at Capital Normal University, the school I will be attending from February until June.  I guess I stuck out being a lone American, but they were very friendly and it looks like I have some people I will know at my new school when I leave the January intensive language program at the Beijing Institute of Education.

                Despite all the fun and adventures I have been enjoying I’m remaining cautious and protective.  In the subway I have a hand on my wallet at all times and I am constantly watching my back.  It is a great city, but there is not a 100% safe place on earth and I need to be extra careful being a foreigner.  I hope to have some more stories after the first week of class ends and I have another weekend to explore the city.