Kidneys Behind Their Eyeballs

It's St. Patrick's Day.  I'm planning lessons to talk to my classes about Ireland.  The Chinese for Ireland, 爱尔兰 (aierlan), happens to start with the character for love.  St. Patrick's Day is a time when I remember my grandmother Sally.  Not only was she Irish, but she passed away right around St. Patty's Day about eight years ago.  Like most Americans, I'm a mix of several different countries, none of which I have any real solid claim to.  But a little sliver Ireland has been passed through, though I cannot be sure how much of it is my grandmother and her quirky personality.

It times when I have been in distress, my father or my aunts and uncles would say to me sayings that Grandma Sally used to say to them.  Many of these are things that don't make much sense the first time, or have a wry, slightly crude humor to them which I have been told is very Irish.  But they stick with me, and over time have given me strength and wisdom.  “Do the best you can, it's all a horse can do.” Don't worry about getting everything perfect, you have limits.  Just do your best.  And the one that I have been thinking about the last few days, “The Irish have their kidneys behind their eyeballs.”

This last one was explained to me as meaning that Irish people are sentimental and emotional and dwell over what they've lost in a mournful wistful way.  I once read someone describe a requiem this way.  You're sad, but you feel good feeling sad.

I am embarrassed to say that my knowledge of Irish history is sorely lacking.  I have had the chance, in preparing for class, to read a bit more of history and I feel like I'm getting in touch with my roots.  In describing St. Patrick's Day, and in describing why the Irish left Ireland, and how Irish Americans feel, I feel a great deal of pride and emotion.  Were I in the United States, around various Irish American organizations, or even just home with my family, I would say I am not the most Irish person.  My Dad, whom I take after, is more Norwegian than Irish.  Which, a family joke, needs explaining.  Even among caucasians in America, there is a deal of surviving cultural distinctions that still exist in communities.  Depending on the community, that ethnic origin has come to be associated with regional traits.  The Dakotas, Minnesota, and Montana were settled by many Norwegians, and those Norwegian cultural traits in America have come to be associated with the area even more so than the ethnicity.  Other communities, like in New York City, can be distinguished by neighborhood and has a bit of a stronger sense of country of origin because that neighborhood is trying to remind itself and its neighbors that they are different from the Italians or the Polish neighborhood just next door.  Growing up, when I would visit my aunt and uncle in Fish Town I would see Irish flags flying next to American flags outside people's houses.  It was much the same way I would see Italian flags outside the houses in South Philly, where I went to middle-school.  So who can be the most Irish or the most Norwegian out of a set of brothers and sisters?  Though I don't think any of us have a serious definition for it, I would say it's a combination of personality, stereotypes, and what we tell ourselves it means to be Irish or to be Norwegian.  So though in Fish Town I don't think I would be very Irish, I feel very Irish right now.

I have been listening to Irish songs I have either heard second hand that my grandmother used to sing, or have read about once when I was younger.  There is a feeling of longing and sorrow.  There's “Down By the Glen-side,” about remembering the brave young men of an Irish rebellion.  The singer does not say that he/she saw them himself, but heard of it from an old woman humming to herself.  “Green Fields of America,” a series of letters are sent out to a man who has gone to America.  He and his family grow up.  Time passes.  And though the family is glad for him, thankful for the money he sends them, have great affection for the family he has started, they miss him very much.  They keep asking him to please come home to visit.  It would be good to see him again.  And I cry when I hear them.  And I listen again.

It feels good to cry.  It feels good to feel sad about the things that have been lost, the things that will be lost.  And though I feel like I'm making the right decision, I still feel sad.

I never like saying goodbye.  I hate saying goodbye to friends.  Thanks to the internet it is easy to stay in contact with people.  We don't really have to say goodbye to people so long as we have a computer.  But there still can be emotional distances between people.  And though we hope it is not goodbye forever, we know it will not be the same.  I will miss my students here very much.  But at the same time I feel that I have to go.  The more I learn about Shenzhen, the more I think about the future there, the more certain I feel about the decision I have made.  But I still wish I could have my cake and eat it too.  I wish I could keep everything I like and carefully cut around the unpleasant things.  But I can't.

I can accept that.  But I feel a good cry is in order.  And a good cry is in order, in honor of Ireland, and my grandmother whom I wish I had known better.

The Road Not Taken*

There are a number of different people reading this blog.  Most of you have met me in person.  We are friends from high school, or college.  We are family, or friends of family.  You may even possibly be a former professor.

Those of you who spoke to me last year, around this time, might have heard me talk about making a decision about where to go.  I was torn between coming to Kaifeng, and going to Shenzhen, another city in China.  While Kaifeng is nearly two thousand years old, it is considered 'off the beaten path.'  There are few foreigners or tourists.  It is one of the poorer cities.  Shenzhen on the other hand was a small village until 1979, and has since sprouted into the fourth richest city in China.  Between trade, and its close proximity to Hong Kong, there are no lack of foreigners.  When seeking advice as to which city to live in, I kept hearing both cities are incredibly different, but I would gain a valuable experience in both places.

After vacation, I felt I needed to plan what I will do for the next few years.  I will spend one more year in China.  Then I will go to graduate school in International Relations.  Last semester I told many people, including some people back home, that I intended to spend next year in Kaifeng.  But I have applied to the same program in Shenzhen, the one I chose not to do last year, and they have accepted me.  I have not made a final decision yet.  But I find myself getting more and more excited with the idea of going to Shenzhen.

There is one thing that holds me back.

I will miss my students.  Today I taught reading for four hours, and in a few minutes I will teach it for two more hours.  I teach Minsheng, which I have described before.  And it is truly a pleasure to teach them.  I will miss this kind of relationship with students, where we are more like peers.  I really enjoy teaching these classes.  I may find a joy in teaching younger students, but that is still somewhere in the future.  It is unknown.  And this is familiar, and precious.  Some students I have become close to, and consider friends.  I know I will keep in contact with them, even if I do leave.  But I will not be able to stand in front of the class and explain Brave New World and Playdough in the same lesson, with several jokes and questions in between.

I have a little more time before I have to decide.  There are many things I believe Shenzhen can offer.  One of them being that it is so different from Kaifeng, I may be able to use that experience to further my grad school education.  I will have seen different parts of China, and will be able to compare them.  And frankly, as you may have noticed whenever I bring up Japan, I love comparing things.

Unlike Robert Frost, I would be backtracking down the road less traveled by in order to see the road, just as fair, but slightly more traveled by.  I wouldn't be able to set down further roots where I am, which would be a shame.  But I would be able to come back and visit friends and colleagues I wish to keep in touch with.  And so I will take the other road, and see where it takes me.

*This post I had meant to put up for some time.  I have since decided to go to Shenzhen next year.  I still would like to share this piece.

Nothing But Time: Exploring in C

Originally written in early February

Half Recovered Photo of Buddhist Monks

This is a bit of a tangent essay.

Just a few short hours after deleting my vacation photos, I wrote on here, as well as on facebook, bemoaning my stupidity.  Well, on facebook several friends were kind enough to point me to PhotoRec, a freeware program that recovers your lost photos.  I will not get into the specifics of how it works.  But after I got back, I downloaded the tar file for it.  Unfortunately Archive Utility would not unarchive it.  I would keep getting told “Error 2- no such file or directory.”  The best thing about freeware is that you can fiddle with it yourself.  The worst thing is that if you don't usually fiddle around with your computer, you can be more than lost with no customer service.

I would say my computer literacy is maybe a little bit better than my Chinese, though not as good as my Japanese.  That is to say, I've done some cool things in conjunction with classes where teachers would do the hardest parts and I could always double check to make sure I was doing the right thing.  It's been over six months since I've done any kind of programing, and I've forgotten the syntax for C.  I don't remember how list the files in a directory, but I know how to get to understand the contents of the help manual.  So right now I am spelunking through C, trying to see if I can unpack my tar file.  I know I have done all of this before once, but only once.

I will say, one of the great things about liberal arts is that you have the chance to try some crazy things unrelated to your major.  My last semester I took a class on data compilation for Physicists which involved learning the basics of C (a language not too different from Java, which I studied in high school, one of the basic languages many people start out learning).  C is a little bit less pretty and user friendly, and unlike Java, I don't think it can quite flow in a way that English speaking brains can intuit.  But it works.

I've found that I don't have the motivation to learn programing as an end to itself – I have to have some sort of goal, something I want to make.  Similarly, I don't think I would have the patience to learn a dead language – something that can't communicate with live people.  I admire people who can, I just don't think I could do that myself.

When I stop worrying about how much I've forgotten, and what a newbie I feel like, I learn quite a bit.

Though at times it can feel like you are just bashing your head against the wall.  Would that be .bash?

A Force for Evil

This is just looking at a pair of characters and how character simplification works.  In spite of the ominous title, I don't have any philosophical story, or even anecdote around this theme.  I just think this is fun.

There are three sets of 'Chinese characters' 汉语、漢字used in the world today, Traditional 繁体字, Simplified 简体字, and Japanese Kanji （日本語の）漢字.  All three are based on the same set of characters.  Traditional characters have remained unchanged.  Though what words are used most often have changed, the way of writing words is no different.  Think of it like the difference between Dickens and Rowling.  Words have taken on new meanings, but the spelling is more or less the same.  Kanji underwent slow changes over a thousand years, and a few new characters were invented.  Then after World War II, the Japanese education system was reformed, standardized, and a number of characters were simplified.  Mainland China also simplified its character system.  In order to explain further how they were simplified, I would have to get into what makes a character and how do you read them, which I feel should be in another post.

One of the main things I've noticed, coming from Japanese to Chinese, is that most characters in Japanese fit into one set or the other – they are either the same as simplified or the same as traditional.  I found it interesting that one character, the character for evil, has turned out different in all three.

惡 Traditional  繁体字

悪 Japanese  漢字

恶 Simplified  简体字

On the other hand, the character for demon/magic (usually appearing as a pair with the word 'evil') is the same in all three.

(惡, 悪, 恶)  魔

Same combination, three ways of writing.  One changes, the other stays the same.

I guess the devil is in the details.

Travel Journal, Beijing, January 13th

I kept a notebook with me during my trip, and when I had free time I would write about whatever I was thinking in various places.  This will take me a little while to type these up, so these will be in episodes.  Accompanying photos will be added soon.

I am an 中山公园. In the spring I'm sure it's very beautiful- full of flowers and people.  Right now it has a much quieter beauty- full of evergreens, stones, and ice.  A few people walk through, but their conversations are drowned out by the crows calling to each other.

I am sitting outside the teahouse, listening to a recording of a biwa.  I can hear when the player plucks the string and moves his fingers. When he lifts his fingers while the string is still resonating from the previous note.  I think of my violin.  For all my complaining, and the many many days I didn't practice, I miss it now.  The bare, singular biwa notes remind me of the trees – without foliage, naked, exposing their branches.  They are natural and random.  Logical and asymetrical.  Cold, but honest and elegant.

It may sound a little silly but for the my first two days I haven't eaten much Chinese food.  For breakfast, there's a great little 包子 place I have been frequenting, but otherwise I've eaten Korea, American, and now Italian.  Yesterday, the Korean place was one that Ting's friend recommended, and Pizza Hut because Ting confessed she really wanted to go there.  Today I'm at a surprisingly inexpensive Italian place nearby my hostel because I've secretely been imagining spagetti and it's only 10 块 here.

Pink Carnations and a Caterpillar

In Japan, amidst Valentines Day sales and decorations, in Kyoto station I found a gift store selling key chains, folders, and other paraphernalia – the sort that Japan is so good at making, pretty and practical enough that you almost can't resist buying it as a gift for someone – all with the Very Hungry Caterpillar on it.  And I thought of my mother.

My mother is a unique person whom I have often tried to describe, but I don't think I have every really been able to capture her.  I have described her to friends, and occasionally one might say, 'I bet your mother would...' and say something that to me sounds so completely unlike her that I think I must have been unable to portray her.  She is very civilized, in a way which I have always thought of as being European.  Every morning even on the weekends she is very well put together, but she is not a clothes horse or fashion conscious.  And, though this is my own quirk not hers, I remember her favorite books and cartoons from my childhood better than my own.

My mother loved Eric Carle.  Now that I am older, I can see the artwork with a mature eye and see why, but at the time I thought it was a dull book.  I was in first or second grade, perhaps too old for it when she read it to me and my younger brother, who would have been at the perfect age for that book.  I have been told that I was a slow reader in first grade, and by the end of second grade I consumed them.  But I don't remember it.  I don't remember any of the books that I read then, or the books that I liked though I'm sure I had strong opinions about them at the time.  But I remember that green caterpillar.

When other people talk about their favorite cartoons as a child, my contributions are usually followed by, “that was one of my mom's favorite cartoons.” 'Batman Beyond,' 'Dexter's Laboratory,' 'Rocky and Bullwinkle,' I know there were other shows.  I do remember them.  But they are never the first ones I think of.  And rarely to I get as excited remembering them as I do those ones.

And usually when people ask my opinion on Valentines Day, the first thing I think of is not mine, but my mother's.  I remember one year my mother telling me that she had decided to no longer celebrate Valentines Day.  But we all brought her cards and flowers anyway.

I remember in middle school we could buy white, red, and pink carnations.  We could send them to other students, or keep them to take home.  I would buy one or two and take it home, make a card with a large heart and glitter, and give them to my mother.  Because even if she wasn't celebrating Valentines Day, I wanted to say 'I love you.'

I know it's been many years since I bought you carnations.  I know my memory is not clear, and things may have happened in a different, less poetic order than I think they did.  But standing in that decked out for Valentines Day store, staring at that hungry green caterpillar, I thought of those pink carnations.  I and just want to say, I love you.

The Ones Who Walk Away

My title today comes from the Usula K. LeGuin short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelos.”  In this story there exists a perfect society.  There are a few flaws, but they are the most benign blights a society could have.  There exists only one fundamentally unfair, unchangeable thing – a single child is kept in a small dark room and is left there with only just enough food to eat for its entire life.  Each citizen is brought before this child, without which society could not exist, in order that they understand.  Some stay, and appreciate the sacrifice.  Some walk away.  We are asked to contemplate just what they are thinking.

When we were asked to contemplate this story in class, I remember thinking rather bleakly that such was the cost of living in any sort of society.  There wasn't really a way of walking away from Omelos.  The ones who did were really just kidding themselves.^*

People who have known me for a short time see that I am very optimistic.  People who have known me for a longer time know that I am also very cynical.

Another idea I would like to play with today also comes from Ursula K. LeGuin.  In high school, I read 'A Wizard of Earthsea,' in which magic stems from the true name of each object, creature, and person.  LeGuin is not the only person to use this device, and I would guess it comes from older Celtic or Druidic traditions.  I remember at the age of sixteen thinking about how powerful language was, and playing a mental game in which I tried to disassociate words from their meaning.  The fact that signs made up of lines, curves, and circles could create images in my mind was a miracle I had taken for granted.  I would try to force myself not to imagine their meanings, to look at the words as only what they were – images.  In an elective creative writing class in high school, I remember our teacher talking to us about the power of words and how the very sound, even without its meaning could have the power to create an image.  Her example was the word 'pus,' which she thought produced a visceral image purely through sound.  My friend Emily pointed out to her that the word 'bus' sounds almost the same and produces no similarly gruesome image.  Four years latter in Japan something reminded me of this idea – of an object's essence lying within the name, and I remember thinking how small and limiting that idea was.  It seemed to understand theoretically that languages could be complete yet unrelated, yet not understand its actuality.  Language is a human construct.  Without humans the world has no names.  There are no words, no power, while the physical world remains undisturbed.  But this does not mean language is not powerful.  It is so powerful as to tie the world together in all of our minds.  It does not tie them in a way that mimics reality, but in a way that is whole and entirely original.

Recently I talked about homesickness.  Homesickness affects different people different ways.  Before we start, I think I have to make it clear that while I sympathize with people who have very strong homesickness I have trouble empathizing with them.  I remember feeling homesick only two times in my life – the second time I have described already on this blog.  Both times were around a holiday, and both times I recovered as soon as the holiday had passed.  I feel I should explain this about me before I continue, because what follows may not ring true for persons with different personalities from myself.

Humans rely on predictability.  When things are predictable, then we feel secure.  This makes evolutionary sense.  You don't need to run.  You don't need to starve.  You can plan ahead to avoid both situations.  A great deal of socializing is based on predictability.  We only recognize social patterns when they are absent.  We avoid people who behave in an unpredictable way, a way deviating from social norms.  Ostracizing these people also, I believe, unfortunately makes evolutionary sense.  Patience, understanding, behavior therapy are all luxuries of stable societies, several steps away from primitive man.  If the rules change – if suddenly we are the ones who do not understand the social signals or norms when previously we did, it can give one the feeling of going mad.  It can feel as if the physical world itself has altered itself somehow.  An alternative is to declare that everyone is mad except one's self.  Others have the 'correct' 'natural' way of interpreting the world hidden from them, but one is able to intuitively understand it so it must be true.  This I believe is analogous to language and the physical world.  Without language the physical world would still exist.  Similarly, I believe that without social norms human personalities would still exist.  Our mental framework is fundamentally rooted around perceiving one using the other.  It would be a mistake, albeit a very easy one that everyone makes, to think the two equated each other.

Most people, cultures, etc. interpret one's ability with language to equate one's ability to think.  As teachers it is difficult to predict at times what sorts of things others are exposed – and plenty of times information that is commonly available in the United States, such as sexual education, critical thinking, hostile debate, is not accessible in China for cultural or political reasons.  But we are very young, with limited life experiences ourselves.  We are separated by a few years, not decades.  We are older brothers and sisters, not uncles and aunts.

So who are the ones who walk away from Omelos?  They are the ones who are not comfortable with what they saw, and cannot live with themselves once they have that knowledge.  They have seen what they consider to be a fundamental part of humanity to trampled upon.  I sympathize with their discomfort.  I disagree with their observations.  I disagree with their premiss – of ideas being as directly connected to speech as objects are to words.  I disagree with their conclusion – that humans are not beings filled with contradictions, that some values might only be different but not less valuable to each human.  And I do not believe we can escape these things by walking away.  

Afterward:  There is a pink elephant in the room as I write this, and that is the question of values.  What are values?  Are they universal or culturally specific?  No one really believes them to be on the extremes, but it is easy to make emotionally satisfying arguments about why absolute universalism and absolute cultural relevancy are wrong.  I heard my Uncle Matt say once, “Academics fight so hard because there is so little at stake.”  I am cautious to talk about cultural relativism in this essay because I am afraid of having to then defend myself against arguments similar to those I have made in the past against cultural relativism.  Really, everyone should have the same degree of universalism and cultural relativism as me, and I am sure my views contain no self contradiction on this point.

*Please debate me on this story and interpretation in the comments.  I encourage you.  I really enjoy these kinds of debates, and some of you I know enjoy them too.

Never Forget

I'd like to build off the theme of 'the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves' I touched on when talking about television, and talk about the Nanjing Massacre Memorial.  Professor Paul Scott at Kansai Gaidai taught all of his classes how to 'read' museums – how to interpret what political message a museum tries to tell.  When we hear people describe historical and politically sensitive events we often take things with a grain of salt, allowing for personal bias.  For the most part we do not practice this with museums.  Part of what made me interested in visiting the memorial was a chance to 'read' this museum.  In Japan, I visited several World War II museums including the museum on the grounds of Yasakuni Shrine in Tokyo.  Yasakuni's museum denies that the Japanese army engaged in any kind of aggressive attacks anywhere in China.  My hobby is to try and collect these stories told about World War II in Asia as well as I can understand them being told to the people who live there.

There were two indoor museum areas.  The smaller of the two is built around the archeological site where a mass grave was discovered.  The team, comprised of Chinese scientists but in cooperation with Japanese groups, were able to identify bodies as being executed, and then attempts to destroy the evidence.  The exhibit was coldly descriptive, which made it all the more horrifying.  Bone fractures and pieces of metal were noted as causing death by driving nails into people.  Wounds were counted.  But the actual words were emotionless, written as though the writer was trying to avoid accusations of bias.  At the end, a pile of paper cranes lay on an eye-level shelf.  Each string of cranes came with a small banner declaring it from a school from Japan and a message in Chinese or Japanese promoting peace.

The much larger building, the more popular building, I believe was arranged and organized by different people.  The larger building used photographs and artifacts to create a time-sequence narrative.  The nature and tone were very different.  There were clear villains.  One villain who caught my attention was an officer who made a bet with a fellow soldier as to who could cut off the most heads.^*   It was specifically noted that he was sentenced to death during the International War Crimes Tribunals.  The Guomindang were grossly ineffective at protecting the city.  The details of the slaughter were described in detail, but not as much detail as the feelings of loss and fear coming from survivors who wrote about the experience.  One pair of pictures that stands out in my memory is toward the end of the museum, where there are two quotations on China and Nanjing and their roles in World War II as a whole.  One quote is from Mao Zedong, the other from Chiang Kai-shek.  The content is almost identical.  Each quote is accompanied by a picture of the man who said it.  The picture of Chiang shows him standing stiffly for a formal picture facing the camera straight-on.  He appears old and uncomfortable and inanimate.  The picture of Mao shows him at an angle with his arm outstretched while giving a speech.  He appears young, hansom, and comfortable.

I can't say that the larger museum lied.  They didn't lie.  To use just the example of the photographs, those were both real photographs of real people.  But it created a forceful narrative for how an event is to be remembered.

I have two other thoughts that are related to the location, and to the theme of memory.  The memorial entrance has a series of statues based off of photographs of people fleeing the city while it was under attack.  Beneath each statue is a piece of poetry about the massacre.  Above them on the wall in large metal letters is the name, 'The Memorial Hall for Compatriots killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Forces of Aggression', written in half a dozen languages.  Beneath the name, in large metal letters is inscribed 'AAAAA.'  Tourist attractions nearly all have a rating.  I'm not sure if these ratings are how culturally important somebody thinks the location is, or how highly recommended the location is.  The ratings are between one and five A's.  The Nanjing Memorial is a bit less discrete in displaying it than other places, but not by much.  It is a stark contrast to see.

The second thought is where the title for this essay comes from.  Though most of our time in Nanjing William and I explored on our own, we both decided to go to the Nanjing Memorial on the same day.  It had struck me as strangely ironic that the area were were in seemed to be nothing but malls, with a space carved out for an out-of-place memorial.  The creates an odd, but emotional reaction in me.  So many people felt so intensely at the same time so much pain.  And now, fifty years latter, nearly everywhere outside of that small island, all of that had disappeared.  While we waited in line to go into the larger building I wondered aloud about how that could happen.  William disagreed.  He felt the memorial and the attachment to its history were more artificial than the malls surrounding it.  The natural tendency is to move on and live normally, especially after so much time after an event.  So what is the nature of remembering, and what is its value?  I had thought given time I would be able to come up with a satisfactory short term answer that could conclude this vignette, but unfortunately I cannot.

*Do you remember in 'The Two Towers', Legolas and Gimli have a bet as to how many orcs they can kill at Helms Deep?  Remember how that was comic relief?  I wonder why I have a harder time getting into classic fantasy stories than I did when I was a kid.

CCTV Z: Television and The People's Republic of China

There are two kinds of TV stations on mainland China – Chinese Central Television (CCTV) channels of which there are easily a dozen, and all of the others.  For most of the day, there is not much difference between them; CCTV stations tend to specialize in something like movies, peking opera, or documentaries, while the other stations are more likely to have soap operas and game shows.  Except, for half an hour between seven and seven thirty pm, every channel shows CCTV 1 news – every channel except CCTV channels.

The news itself I cannot give a detailed account of.  Aside from a few names, like Hu Jintao, and a few common words like afternoon (xiawu) and work (gongzuo) and CCTV, I can't understand the commentary.  What I can understand is the imagery.  Lots of flags, political figures busily at work^*, and  a large sickle and hammer figure prominently on the screen.  Ballet dancers perform in the United States, while singers do a translated Mama Mia for a Chinese audience.  On the local news show, African children sing in Chinese.  Children compete on the local news station on 'red' contests, doing various communist related activities, like racing to pick up apples.  Aside from this very patriotic half an hour (an hour if you count the local news) this channel will show a romantic drama taking place during the Han Dynasty^**, and a dating game show^***.  Commercials will sell makeup and moisturizer.  A soccer team whose goalie appears to be a frail classical beauty, will pass around Snickers bars and the beauty will turn into a young man who is no longer hungry.  Babies will wear disposable diapers, and cell phones will play one's favorite music.  A hansom father takes his son to KFC for dinner while mom is out of town.  A young woman chews a piece of Winterfresh gum her father gave her, and magically is transported back home to visit.  I have picked mostly American brands to talk about in order that my American readers will quickly be able to imagine the advertising landscape, but Chinese brands also have very similar commercials.

A great deal can be learned about people and their perceptions by looking at media and advertisements.  My father taught me this in high school with subway billboards.  It was latter emphasized by Professor Paul Scott at Kansai Gaidai when he would show and discus films in political science classes, both fiction and documentary.  Rob LaFleur at Beloit put it the most articulately: “the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.”

China seems to be telling itself two very different stories.  There is a story about socialist ideals that are genuinely valued and respected.  It includes things like technological development and cultural and global respect.  But there is a much newer, sleeker story that, though it does not contradict, has a very different tone.  It is a story that does not quite match the outside world in Kaifeng, but is being beamed into ever person's television set.  And in the outside world stores, new city policies, the use of decorative English on every kind of product, move reality closer to that sleeker image every day.  It is one thing to read about this in the newspaper or for class.  Here it is really happening right in front of my eyes in front of my TV screen.

I can really only describe this by using an anecdote.  Two years ago I visited a friend who's parents live just outside Jinan in Shandong province.  One day we were watching a television program dramatizing Mao Zedong's battle with the Guomindang (KMT)^**** for control of China and the survival of the Chinese Communist Party.  Without warning or pause, as is quite common, the show cut to a commercial.

*date 10/17/11 TV showing politiburo.

**MeiRenShinJi was for a while my favorite show to watch.  I learned how to say 'shut up' (zhukou), your royal highness to the queen mother (taihouniania), and what to say when you are about to be killed or if another man is with your lover (buyao, literally 'do not want').  It also was a good thing to chat about with other girls my age.

***My father has informed me that according the the New York Times, these dating game shows are a governmental concern because they do not promote approved social values.  But they are everywhere on the dial, and I've had a large number of people ask me if I've watched them.

****There are two romanization systems for Chinese.  One of them, Pinyin, was developed by The People's Republic of China.  The other, Wade-Giles, is still used by Taiwan and other areas.  Using Wade-Giles, Guomindang is Kuomintang.  Using pinyin, Kuomintang is Guomindang.  One of them is showing up as a spelling error on my computer, but both are in my Apple Dictionary application.

Afterward:  In a conversation that is referenced in my post about the Nanjing Massacre memorial, William and I talked about the time it takes to process the ideas that form around what one sees when one travels.  This is one of the contrasts I've noticed when I did my post about our different blogs – different people wait different periods after an event, and post with different frequency.  This post was originally started in October during a week when I was sick.  I wish I could say the fact I hadn't worked on it since then was intentional, but I kept meaning to go back to it and edit it and finnish it, but I didn't until now.

Also, bonus points to anyone who can spot the B-52s reference in the title.

新年快乐！ Happy New Year!

I'm going to try to write as much of this as I can, while I'm still in the moment and before the excitement wears off.

Adam insisted we go and celebrate New Years Eve by going to a bar.  We went as a group of seven – Adam, Will, Alexis who is a good friend and is a senior English student, Allan who is a freshman German major with very good English, Mary and Sally who are Adam's students, and myself.  We arrived just after eight pm.  The place had a black and white floor, a series of booths with white cushioned seats, and tables with plastic bar stools.  Heart balloons decorated the booths and bouquets of pink balloons decorated the walls.  There were at least two different screens showing two different American music videos, neither one of which matched the song the DJ was playing.  We sat in a corner, and Adam treated us to beer and some fries.  We were given an extra set of fries and popcorn for free.  We were also invited to come again to parties the bar was planning to throw latter this year which we were told we would be allowed to go to for free.

The first portion of the evening was dedicated to people watching.  There were a number of young men with hair styles which, had we been in Japan, I would have said they were Yakuza (gangsters who tend to have very gelled and bleached hair).  The booths and tables slowly filled up.  Most of the people I spotted seemed to be young men and women and middle-aged men, though latter I saw middle-aged women as well.  There were a number of different people working for the bar, each job with a different style of outfit.  Waiters and waitresses had blue and white stripped shirts, and tended to be young, probably in their twenties.  Older women who were probably fourty or fifty at least wore khaki belhop jackets and occasionally swept the floor.  At least a dozen young women wandered between tables, each wearing white furry boots coming up to at least halfway up their thighs, a short white furry skirt, white furry arm warmers, and a sleveless shirt with a hood with cat ears.  They tended to go to tables that were filled exclusivly with men, but they did also attend mixed gendered tables.  I can't tell exactly what they were doing, but they talked and socialized with patrons.  My own guess is that they were a bit similar to Japanese hostesses.^*  Our neighbors played a drinking game with cups and dice.  And occasionally the waiters would carry to various tables a bucket filled with ice, a bottle of liquor, a lilly, and a sparkler.  The ceiling was covered with lit up plastic tubes, and a giant disco ball hung above the dance floor.  At one point several people sang live – I'm not sure if the volunteered or if they are hired by the bar.  Then, two dancers came out a guy and a girl.  The girl was wearing a black bra and the guy was shirtless, but both were wearing black hula skirts.  After they finished, the tiny dance floor was open and peppered with dancers.

At some point we moved out to the dance floor.  I really enjoy dancing, and had been dancing in my seat almost since we arrived.  However I was a bit apprehensive about going to the dance floor.  I have been warned before that foreign women usually get swarmed by Chinese men who've had a little bit to drink and don't want to give the girl much personal space.  I will say though, I experienced very little of this myself.  The first time we went out about half the people dancing were a circle of women in their thirties, which probably helped.  The only really weird thing that happened was one guy who was trying to get Will to poke my breasts.  But by that point we had danced quite a bit, and I had enjoyed myself.

Adam was in his element.  He walked around and got treated to beers, wished everyone a happy new year, and patted people on the back.  

We saw the tail end of the New Year's Gala the school threw, and Adam and I walked Alexis back to her dorm.  On the way back he shouted Happy New Year, or Xin Nian Kuai Le! To nearly everyone we passed.  It was by far the most memorable new year's eve I've had in my life.  It was quite a rush of adrenaline.

*Hostesses are women in evening gowns employed by hostess bars.  The women are basically like human icebreakers.  They compliment patrons, tell jokes, encourage them to drink more, and the men who come in can bond over their common attraction.  If a group of men come together, for example several businessmen who are planning a transaction together, they can identify themselves as part of the same group – men who tease each other about the women around them.  In a number of respects, hostesses are like a modern version of geishas.  There are also a number of variations of hostess bars, including maid cafes where each woman wears a costume fitting the cafe's theme, and host clubs in which young men compliment and flirt with female patrons.  Though some hostess bars are fronts for brothels, generally no actual sexual contact takes place between hostesses and their patrons.

I won't be home for Christmas – Two Christmases Two Years Apart

Due to similar sounding names in Chinese, many people give friends apples on Christmas Eve.

Christmas is a big holiday.

Christmas is the day that airports are clogged.

It is the day families see each other again.

Christmas is when people are most stressed.

All of the stores are decorated and play music for two months in preparation for it.

Christmas is Christian, yet it is so widespread, so popular, so much a cultural monolith, that it has almost, though not quite, been separated from its religions origins.

Christmas is when many people who are not home become homesick.

The timing of Christmas is almost perfect for homesickness abroad.  Throughout one's time abroad, or at least for the first year or two, one experiences an emotional roller coaster.  One meet challenges and on alternating occasions succeed or fail at overcoming them.  On some days the triumphs seem larger than the failings, and one feels brave, smart, and confident.  On others, the failures pile up and everything seems too large, too different, and the small gains feel pointless.  It's strange, but I have had some weeks where my entire outlook on life turns a full one hundred and eighty degrees over the course of just seven days.  One of the larges downturns most people experience happens about three to four months after first arriving in a new country.  Among other things, there is a feeling of being tired, and just wanting to go back to where everything was 'normal' and made sense.  One's first time, you could wonder if coming to this new country was the biggest mistake of your life.  That was my thinking last Christmas I was away from home.  This year I just feel like I need a vacation for a week, then I'll be back for more.

Christmas can make these feelings more poignant since it has such sentimental value.  If one has friends who are going home for the holidays, it might not help matters.  In Japan, many of my friends were only staying for one semester.  Some of them were especially homesick.  I had managed to feel almost no homesickness for nearly four months, but after hearing them talk about how excited they were to go home it started to hit me.  I had also had some person difficulties and was beginning to doubt not only my language ability, but whether I was likable as a person.  In addition, my mother had been planning to visit Japan during Christmas, but since the plane tickets to visit for New Years Day were significantly less expensive, her visit was delayed a week.  I left my host family on Christmas Eve and moved into a hostel in Osaka.  My memories of that Christmas Eve and Christmas day are of feeling isolated, lonely, and free at the same time.^*

I walked through downtown Osaka, where expensive stores for suits and books had classy Christmas decorations that would have been at home on 5th Avenue.  The trees down the boulevard were wrapped around the trunks with lights.  I passed columns of yellow, blue, and magenta as I passed clusters of people on their way to underground restaurants.

I strolled through the Osaka Illumination, where lights of every color wrapped every individual branch of the trees.  Food stall employees shouted their welcome as a much quieter audience slowly shuffled through the assigned pathway, stopping occasionally to take pictures.  Music played and the lights flashed in time to match it.

I stood on a train platform, waiting for the train to Doubutsuen station.  One of the trains that stops at my platform is completely packed.  Through the window I see a man dressed in a Santa Claus suit.  He appears as nonchalant as the other passengers.  In a moment, the train has vanished and the man in the Santa suit with it.

I sat at my computer checking my facebook page as a church down the street from my hostel played Christmas music out onto the street.  I could hear silent night being played, the tune familiar, the lyrics entirely alien.

The afternoon and evening of Christmas day I spent with my friends Maarika and Rose.  We decorated Christmas cakes, the only widespread Christmas tradition in Japan, with Maarika's friends from koto club.  Then the three of us went to karaoke.

This year's Christmas was in almost every way different.  Most of the people I interact with on a day to day basis are not going home to the United States for the holidays.  We teachers wouldn't be able to go back even if we wanted to – or at least we wouldn't be able to go back for more than a single day if that.  Though I feel myself retreating into English a great deal of the time and know that I could potentially improve my language skills a good deal more than I have been, I am confident in the fact that I have progressed a great deal since I first arrived.  I am getting along well with all the people I interact with on a daily basis.  I find myself actually becoming homesick for Japan more so than for the United States, and can recognize the negative feelings I do have, of being bored, as being very similar to two years ago.  Not only do I recognize it, I know the cure.  Travel and vacation.  Both of which are coming so soon I can almost taste it.

Today we, the five foreigners in the compound, had breakfast together.  Adam made french toast, which we all enjoyed.  I had lunch with my student Sydney.  Adam, Ben, and Ben's girlfriend visited a church, an experience which I will not do justice to in the retelling, so I would encourage people to look at their blogs. We exchanged Secrete Santa gifts.  And we had peking duck for dinner along with four Chinese friends.  Our conversation traveled quickly over some very dark or dirty topics, but the atmosphere was warm and light.  We got to watch our duck being carved.  We bemoaned the fact that there are no longer any sanlongche.^**  We retired to our rooms.  

And I found myself looking at the past, as if the years are layered on top of one another like stacks of paper or a folded blanket.  It was as if I could remove any number of sheets and see whichever Christmas of my past I should want – as each day is connected to itself in the past.  I have done this with other days, not only Christmas, but Christmas is special since so many of us look back then.  I remembered fragments of things I remember writing which have since become lost to cyber space.  I feel content, nostalgic, and a bit restless all at the same time.  And it is this feeling, this nostalgia mixed with restlessness, a restlessness I can explain, while feeling at the same time so lucky to know the people I know, it is this that I want to share with you, dear reader.  Merry Christmas, dear reader, even if you don't celebrate Christmas.  Merry Christmas from two countries that have embraced the trappings of Christmas without ever absorbing its religious meaning.

*There are several videos and photographs from this time which are on my facebook page, including a video of the illumination in Osaka.  I no longer have the hard copy to upload here, but I would encourage family and friends to watch it.  On an unrelated note, though these memories all happened within a few days of each other, I don't remember the order.  I know for certain they did not all happen the same day, though I realize the phrasing may make it seem otherwise.

** Sanlongche are three-wheeled motorcycle cabs which have recently been banned in Kaifeng and replaced with a more tourist friendly but available bicycle version.  For more details, including a song about them, please visit Eaaf or Ben's blogs, as both have written very good posts on the topic.

Looking Forward by Looking Back

I'm including another one of my Asian Studies Senior Seminar papers.  The winter break is coming up, and I've been trying to decide where to go.  I had thought that I'd explore China, but these last few weeks they only places I want to go to are Beijing and Harbin.  I also have started to feel a little tired, in a way that I remember feeling tired of everything around this time two years ago in Japan.  So, I think I'm going to visit Japan this break.  Though it is certainly not written in stone.  This piece talks about the end of the semester in Japan, and coming back.

Pine Trees at Uji, Kyoto

Walk from Train Station to Kansai Gaidai Dorms

Listening Practice:  An Outsider's Role in Japan

            After one semester in Japan, I felt a bit overwhelmed.  My language skills seemed to be deteriorating, instead of getting better.  Most of the study abroad students I knew were returning home for spring semester.  And I had the eerie but unconfirmed suspicion that my host family was glad that I was leaving them.  I was beginning to wonder if I had gained anything from the experience of being abroad.

            Ironically, it wasn't until I left Japan that I began to feel at home there.

            For two weeks during winter break I traveled outside Japan.  The experience was incredible, but I will not elaborate on it here.  I will leave it that I saw a side of Asia that is not as organized as Japan is.  I found out what it was like to be unable to speak any of the native language.  It is with this context that I was able to view my return to Japan.

            On the first night back I caught the slowest of the Shinkansen and rode from Fukuoka to Osaka.    By the time I arrived in Osaka it was 11:30 at night.  The local train I would have needed to catch to get to the dorms would shut down for the night before I could get there.  With my leftover money I went and caught a cab.

            Osaka is known for being more casual and more open than most of Japan.  People speak more informally and are more comfortable with foreigners.  The cab driver that night was definitely from Osaka.  After I told him the destination and we agreed on the price, he used the casual short verb form.  He didn't try to use English except once in a great while when I didn't understand something he said, and even when he did, he would shift almost immediately back into Japanese.  Over the course of the two hour cab ride we talked about food, American/Japanese stereotypes, and China as a world power.  Out of all the people I talked to in nine months in Japan, that cab driver that night remains by far my favorite conversation partner.

            As spring semester went on I found myself fitting into a new role.  While first semester I tried to be a part of a family, second semester I tried to be myself and explore.  I eavesdropped more, and smiled more.  I have come away with some interesting conversations, from a brief history of a fire bombed neighborhood in Tokyo to drinking habits of working men in Sapporo.  I found a role in listening to others rather than in speaking or doing.  Perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised.  I am much more of a listener in English as well.

Unorganized Days

I forget often to mention daily life.  When I first got here everything was so new, that there wasn't enough time to write about everything.  Now, with day to day stuff is not so new it doesn't seem important anymore.  But that doesn't change how different it is from back home, so I can elaborate now.

Most mornings I get up, have instant oatmeal or yogurt for breakfast.  Both are sold at almost all supermarkets and are easy to come by.  I also have instant coffee, which is also incredibly easy to get, lemon tea with honey, which is delicious, or hot cocoa, a recent acquisition from a new shopping center that opened this last week which has imported foods.  If I have class, I then load up my bag with the relevant text book, my homework folder, lesson plan or notes, and a thermos of lemon tea.  I place the bag in my bicycle basket then ride about three minutes to get to the building my first class is in.  During that three minute ride I might pass any of the following: people taking wedding photos in a rented suite and dress, people playing 'gate ball' something similar to croquet, someone with a trash collection cart with a large straw broom attached, cars, bikes, electric bikes, students walking.  For the last five, you may think these things happen adjacent to each other, but in fact, they all happen in the same place - on the road/side walk where I am riding.

I then teach class.  If I am in the North Foreign Language Building, during breaks if I stand on the balcony I can hear someone playing a flute.  I have yet to figure out where exactly the mysterious flute player is, only that he/she is there most mornings I am there.  Though the individual rooms are heated, the inside courtyard is not, so if I leave the classroom I must make sure I'm bundled up.  If I am in the Comprehensive Building, during breaks I often go to the stairwell where the sound of students reciting lessons, speeches, and practicing pronunciations in Chinese, English, German, and Japanese, creates a dull roar that almost cannot be heard from outside.  The bathrooms in both buildings are similar.  They are squatting toilets that are open, so that all five other occupants plus those waiting for their turn, could potentially see you at work.  There is a trough that is flushed every so often - at least once an hour.  The Foreign Language Building has a mirror by the sink, but otherwise the two buildings are the same in this respect.  There is a blue sheet with the character 女, for woman, or 男, for man, blocking the inside from view by the opposite sex.

Lunch and dinner tend to be very similar and are based entirely on my mood at the time.  Outside South Gate, there are a variety of restaurants that serve a variety of dishes on rice or noodles.  Outside East Gate are most restaurants, though perhaps owing to the fact I usually go there with students, the restaurants seem to be more specialized in specific kinds of noodle dishes.  Outside West Gate are a few restaurants, but the main appeal is the variety of stalls that sell a wide selection of foods - Korean sushi, egg and ham in steamed bread, egg vegetables and sausage in a piece of bread that looks like a tortilla, fried chicken, stinky tofu, fried balls of pumpkin dough, choose your own noodle soup.

Some days if I have time and am feeling adventurous, I go out from the campus area.  Sometimes I am with other people and we show each other stuff we have heard about.  Sometimes I am by myself, usually on my bicycle testing myself to go farther than I've been before.  Traffic is crazy, but I have come to feel no longer controlled by my fear of it.

And then at the end of the day I sleep, but depending on the time I can still hear people walking around outside, old people exercising, or fireworks at Millennium park.

Unorganized Thoughts and Updates!

This here is a little bit of an amalgam of thoughts and stories and bits and pieces of things that I originally wrote out while my reading class was taking a test.  For reasons I won't go into, the notebook I wrote it in is now in someone else's room and though I have every intention of retrieving it soon, I would like to update before doing so.


First, I would like to tell everyone that we had a real Thanksgiving in Kaifeng China.  Ben ordered a turkey off of taobao (a cross between amazon and e-bay), but otherwise most of the ingredients we collected here.  We had mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, steamed broccoli, carrot pennies, stuffing, gravy, bread, and baked apples.  We invited one of the Australian teachers, the German teacher, and the Japanese teacher and his wife as well as several Chinese students and one of the translators who works for the international affairs office.  It was quite delicious.

In other news, it is that wonderful time of the year when professors start working on finals and students start studying for them.  We have about three weeks or so till the end of the semester.  Conversation finals start early so that everyone will have enough time to have oral conversations.  Ben and I have worked together to design our final and it looks pretty, I think.

My confidence about my Chinese oscillates between being very proud to slightly embarrassed.  However, I am certain that my ability has definitely been improving steadily.  Occasionally I wonder if I studied the wrong language in college, or in high school, but it is too late.  And in all honesty, with the workout Japanese grammar gives your brain, I feel like there's not much grammatically that can intimidate me.  (The exception is Russian.  Scares the Dejesus out me.  Strangely, I still insist to myself that French would be impossible to learn.  Guess I'm going to draw the line somewhere.  Spanish however would be fun to go back and work on....)  That was a bit of a tangent.  But back to Chinese!  I am studying for about two hours a week with a student of mine, and that keeps me somewhat honest even during these intensive weeks when I spend a good deal of time reading and writing things or otherwise working.  The more time I spend working, the more time I spend using English.  And when I'm exhausted from said work, I relax by reading or watching things in English.  It is a vicious cycle.  But, my TV works fine and I have watched Chinese TV if not regularly then enough that I can talk to people about 那是我妈码 (That's my mom!), a reality show where young men go on and answer questions about their mothers' preferences and traits.  And Mona, or 豪杰(Haojie) keeps me honest by giving me and quizzing me on vocabulary and grammar.

I have been eating lunch with my students more regularly, and I am quite enjoying it.  I feel in need of a break from teaching, but the actual classes are going well.  My conversation class, which at the beginning of the semester I had no clue how to run much less make active and fun, have gone quite well the last few weeks.  I am proud of where I am now, though I somewhat wish I could go back and start the class from the beginning without the bumbling and missteps I made the first month or so of the semester.  But that was the price of growth. I know I am going to be teaching the same students next semester, though it is currently up in the air as to what I will be teaching them.

It is cold out, though not enough for snow. We had a flurry about a week ago, but no more.

This was surprisingly organized.  I did not expect it to be so.
Oh, one final note: I have been talking to my Reading classes about Native Speakers and bad grammar.  What it means about a person or character if they make certain grammar mistakes.  You can call this a conversation about dialects, or classes.  The thing I want them to remember is simply one's education level.  If someone has poor grammar and speaking skills it is assumed that they are not educated.  So, on their test I had a set of 10 sentences, which they had to mark as being said by someone well or poorly educated.  All the sentences were taken from Pirates of the Caribbean.  I'm quite pleased by how it turned out.

The Infantile Expert

This essay was written last semester for Asian Studies Senior Seminar.  I believe it holds true for China as well, so I decided to publish it here.

Playground Nearby Kansai Gaidai Dorms in Hirakatashi Japan

The Infantile Expert: Settling in Back Home After Study Abroad in Japan

In my previous abstract I talked about historical roots of culture and the effects of them imposed over a short period of time.  In this abstract I would like to speak more briefly about the similar effect that occurs to individuals who study and absorb culture over a short time in their lives.  In short, I will examine the paradox of the East Asian Studies student.

As the student travels from his or her home country to their country of focus, then back to their home country, after the initial culture shock he or she begins to settle into a role.  While abroad, the road is that of observer and inquisitor.  With child-like ignorance, the student blunders and attempts to absorb.  The process is ongoing.  Some say one must stay longer than one semester in order to move a degree beyond it.  Others say one must stay longer than a year in order to move beyond.  In truth, the student is trying to compensate for all the years they lived outside the culture in order to understand and navigate a world, even though realistically the student will always be a foreigner.

When the student returns the role is reversed.  Suddenly the student is an authority among his or her family and peers.  Having seen, breathed, and eaten things contemporaries don't know how to pronounce, the student becomes an expert.  Essays that might have been an a middle schooler's text book magically transform into advanced language study.  The student becomes a story teller, trying to spread the knowledge that they absorbed.

Certainly such experiences are important for well rounding students.  But what do they mean for the specialist?  What is it to specialize in a culture one did not grow up in?  This author can only speculate since this author is still on the first few baby steps of this journey.  It is the journey of trying to become a bridge.  How does one really 'settle' into being a bridge?  How can one settle into being half-way between worlds?  It is unsettling to realize that one may be a sage in one language and an infant in the other.  Possibly more unsettling is the knowledge that one may never really move beyond that role.  Yet there is something exotic and addictive to it as well.  There is something strange in the desire to not settle in back home, and instead return to childhood and adventure.

How the System Works

I believe previously I described the classes I am teaching as reading and conversation, but I don't think I've explained before the schools I am teaching at.  At Henan University, there are three different schools at which you can get a degree as an English major.  The first, where I teach conversation, is the Foreign Language College.  This school is particularly well known for teaching English and the students there received very high scores on their college entrance exam.  The second, where I teach reading, is Minsheng, which has the exact same curriculum and for the most part the same teachers as the Foreign Language School but the students received lower scores on their entrance exam and pay about two to three times as much as the Foreign Language School students.  The third school is the College of American and European Studies, where Eaaf teaches conversation, which is new and therefore has a less defined curriculum and has students with even lower scores and higher tuition fees.
I myself can only compare the Foreign Language School and the Minsheng students.  For the most part, I find the main difference to be personality.  The Foreign Language School students as a whole are quieter and the Minsheng students are more creative.
Their future on the other hand, at least when I talk to the Minsheng students I am friends with, is overshadowed by which level of school they were in.  I cannot imagine what it would be like to have one's future written by the score of a single test.  It frankly terrifies me.  I sincerely hope they do well in their careers in the future, because they are as a whole wonderful intelligent students.  But what I know is that on several occasions when with a friend from Minsheng, they will hesitate and point out how they did not go to the Foreign Language College, so maybe their dream of becoming a translator or English teacher will be more difficult...

Stories from Nanjing: Karma

I don't mind bugs.  I don't like to touch bugs.  I freak out if I think a bug will bite or sting me.  But if I am reasonably assured that the bug means me no harm, I am usually perfectly content watching it.
On Purple Gold Mountain, there are a number of big name tourist locations.  There is the Sun Yat Sen Memorial, and a UNESCO World Heritage Ming Dynasty tomb.  But after a long half day of walking, and of getting slightly lost going up and down, surrounded by seas and mountains of people (海人山人) I ended up in the area slightly to the East of the main attractions.  It was actually someplace that I had read was really worthwhile to visit but had given up on finding.  There were considerably fewer people.  And though I had wanted to see the Sun Yat Sen Memorial because of the historical significance of Sun Yat Sen, it was only when I got away from it that I started to enjoy myself.
I would have a conversation with a woman who picked up the trash around the food stands, which involved lots of writing and nodding.  People start conversations with you almost any time you are out in parks or other public areas and don't seem preoccupied with something.  It is something I like a lot more than in Japan, where people waited for some sort of formal connection to be made.
But before that, I visited a Buddhist temple there, in that Eastern part of Purple Gold Mountain.  Walking through gates to go further inside, I saw a bug on the ground flat on its back.  It was a beetle that had landed somehow and could not open its wings and fly.  I lowered my bag to it's legs and let it grab hold of it.  I walked farther inside the temple courtyard and assumed the beetle would just fly off.  It did not fly off, and when I checked fifteen minutes latter it remained firmly attached to my bag.  I adjusted my bag so that the beetle could walk onto the stone hand rail.  It crawled and climbed atop a stone lotus.  It stood there while I watched it, and until I walked away.

Like Riding A Bike

This Friday I got a bicycle!  I haven't ridden since I was in middle school, but I got one for 130 yuan with a lock thrown in.  I should say, I picked the bike, and then Ruth and Jane (you may remember an earlier post talking about some girls who gave me moon cakes and some hand made flowers.  That was Ruth and Jane) bargained it down.  It has a white rose on it, which I did not see before I bought it, so I want to call it 薔薇 which means rose in Japanese.

(A side note about the word  薔薇.  My Japanese is not as sharp as it once was, so I checked to make sure that I remembered it correctly.  I did.  But I also discovered that there are two ways of saying  薔薇 which I was unaware of, which also mean rose.  The first, the one I knew, was 'bara' ばら.  The second and third, 'soubi' and 'shoubi' そうび としょうび are written using the exact same characters.  About a week ago I was listening to someone explain to the foreigners who speak better Chinese why they think foreigners have a hard time reading since some characters have more than one way to be read.  Ha!  I say, ha!)

Yesterday I rode my new bike around campus, especially up and down the street behind our apartments next to the track field, which has little to no traffic.  Today I rode it to the convenience store on campus and to the soccer field.  I am still too scared to ride out in street traffic, but it is amazing how those fundamentals, once learned, stay in your brain.

I have managed to have an actual conversation with Mrs. Wang王太太.  In the International Affairs building right next to our apartments live Mr. Wang 老王 and his wife.  They are caretakers of the area and live in the International Affairs building.  Mr. Wang has a strong accent and even our Chinese friends have trouble understanding him.  Mrs. Wang on the other hand speaks very clearly.  Usually I can follow a conversation she has with someone else who speaks better Chinese, but can't actually say anything of consequence myself.  Well, today she was out gardening when I came out to ride my bike, and told her that I bought it yesterday, that it was not new, and that Molly had also gotten a not new bike yesterday.  Mrs. Wang knows a fair amount about bikes, and she said many things I did not catch.  She pointed out parts of the bike, possibly commenting on the quality.  But I was just so happy I could be understood saying small talk and could understand her as much as I did.  It's shaky, but it's just like riding a bike.