Born In The USA

Posted on November 24, 2006 by Meg

It was awesome having Pseudo-Thanksgiving with my Yantai friends. Ron and his wife brought their new baby so in some ways it really was like a family. A crazy dysfunctional family, with a lot of alcohol and trashtalk, but still.

We got takeaway from the Korean place near the school, something that’s almost like American barbequed chicken. Will put on a DVD of music videos, to make our T-day even more American. Nirvana, Fleetwood Mac, Springsteen and Bon Jovi. The MTV actually made it surreal, because I could remember hearing that Kurt Cobain was dead, and now I’m watching his videos on Thanksgiving in China a decade later.

There was a bit of the inevitable imagining what our families were doing now. Right now, my mom’s on page two, line twelve, of the Thanksgiving List. What’s your family doing? Later we had an American chocolate cake, only it was actually a chocolate-tomato cake.

I brought my camera to record my crazy Yantai Thanksgiving, but unfortunately, my batteries died. I was annoyed, but three bottles of wine later, when we were singing Bon Jovi and Springsteen, and I might have been showing my Jersey Girl roots just a little bit, I was glad there was no camera around.

This morning, I called my folks and heard the whole room shouting “Happy Thanksgiving To Meg Now!” See, my mom brought the phone into the dining room and told everyone to… oh never mind.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

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It’s All True

Posted on November 18, 2006 by Meg

I wrote this a few days ago but I made it sticky to faciliate the flame war make it easier for folks coming over from Sinosplice.

One thing that about learning Chinese that makes me crazy is that there seems to be no definitive correct answer. The pronunciation that one cabbie tells me is almost as good as Da Shan’s, leaves another staring and repeating ting bu dong. Some of it’s caused by regional dialects; a town only an hour away might speak the Mandarin equivalent of cockney rhyming slang. (Ok, I’m exaggerating. Surely that’s Shanghainese!) Even common words like thank you are used differently by different people, all of whom insist that they’re saying it at the right times and everyone else is needlessly formal or rurally rude. And of course, xiaojie either means waitress or hooker, depending on who you ask.

The language contradictions are just a warm-up for all the contradictions in China. China has 5,000 years of culture and etiquette. Chinese people spit bones out on the tablecloth.

China is so safe, a girl could walk alone at night without worrying she’d be attacked or robbed. China is so dangerous, she might fall into a gaping hole in the middle of the sidewalk, left but the constant construction.

Chinese people are the hardest-working people I’ve ever seen. People like Juice Aunt and her husband are outside with their cart, all day, every day, no matter what the weather is. But Chinese people are the laziest people I’ve ever seen. I’ve gone into restaurants and seen the staff asleep on the dining tables.

More and more people in China speak English. If you consider HULLOR! and You buy? English.

I wonder if Middle Kingdom actually means Average of Two Extremes Kingdom.

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Yantai Museum

Posted on November 17, 2006 by Meg

If you find the drop spindles underwhelming, there was also a dusty jawbone of a whale, and a preserved seaturtle. The weird exhibits are arranged around a courtyard with a garden and a temple. The garden was impressive, even in November, and the temple and the gates were worth the visit.

Close up on the painted figure from the doorway (mostly for my mom to see).

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How Can I Leave?

Posted on November 16, 2006 by Meg

Yesterday, I was handing out new schedules in my Drips class, thinking about how great it is to be at a school with actual schedules.
“This class is becoming too big,” I told my kids. “Starting Saturday, there will be two classes of four students, instead of one class of eight.” (Remember when I was lecturing to over 100 students per class?)
“Can I be in your class?” asked one of my students, looking at the new class lists.
“I’m in B, are you teaching B?”
“Will you still be my teacher?”
“Can you teach A ’cause I’m in A?”
“I want to be in Meg’s class!”

To be honest, this isn’t even my favorite class. I usually call them the Drips or the Bumps (short for Bumps On A Log, which is their participation level). But, man, yesterday’s class is really making it hard to leave.

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Lost In Translation

Posted on November 15, 2006 by Meg

The other day, I picked up the first season of Lost at my local DVD shop. I watched it in Mandarin with English subtitles. Sometimes I do that to improve my comprehension, it’s very passive learning but it does help me pick out words I know.

Lucky for me, the first two episodes are a lesson in using zh? dao (I know) and zai n?r (where is?), with all personal pronouns and variations. The entire dialogue is like a Pimsleur-style language drill:

Where are we?
I don’t know where we are.
Do you know where we are?
Where is Jack?
I don’t know where he is.
Kate knows where he is.
They don’t know we are here.
He doesn’t know where you are.
She knows where we are.
I know you know where she is.

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Pepero Day

Posted on November 11, 2006 by Meg

Today all my Korean kids came to class wearing traditional Korean dresses and eating this amazing candy called pepero.

Pepero is a Korean version of a chocolate-covered pretzel. Or chocolate-pretzels are the Amewrican version of pepero. Either way, pepero is an awesome cookie, chocolate, and nuts combination. And four sticks of pepero look just like today’s date, 11/11, so everyone should eat lots of pepero to celebrate.

You say Armistice Day, I say chocolate-eating day. Just another cultural difference on this side of the planet.

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Red Fire Fire

Posted on November 10, 2006 by Meg

Red Fire Fire is a local BBQ and beer shop. Even though it’s just down the street from my house, my co-workers Debra and Junie had to introduce me to it. It’s famous for 3 kwai beer, cheap barbecue and cheap seafood. I happen to hate seafood but I love reading Red Fire Fire on the sign.


The street barbecue

People back home seem to think I am exaggerating when I talk about cocoon food. I could write a thousand words on why I don’t need to exaggerate in Yantai, but instead, I’ll let this photo do the arguing for me. (They’re extra fresh! Try one!)

If you don’t like Yantai beer, there’s also a selection of paint thinners nail polish removers toxic chemicals bai jiu. Hello Kitty likes the harder stuff.

Beautiful foreign women drink Yantai beer!
(Dorothy and I might drink a little too much 3 RMB beer…)

Zorro: I think I’m drunk. I can feel my brain.

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Chinese Language Exercises

Posted on November 9, 2006 by Meg

I started going to a yoga class. It’s really hard because although I can understand simple things like up, down, left, right and basic body parts, I can’t understand many verbs. I don’t think I understood a single verb in that whole class! It was really tough to follow without really understanding the teacher, but it’s good to remind myself of what my students go through.

My survival-level Chinese now includes Taxi Survival (turn left, turn right, stop here, no, we agreed on 20 kwai), Speak-or-Starve, Teacher Essentials and now “breathe deeply”, “relax your body” and “open your chakras”.

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Without Thanksgiving

Posted on November 8, 2006 by Meg

I’m heartbroken that I’ll miss Thanksgiving at home this year. I love every part of the holiday, but especially the food and my family in all our dysfunctional glory.

I love getting home on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Last year was the first time my college-freshman little sister had to come home, too. My mom always tells me how behind we are on the Thanksgiving prep, as if there was one perfect year when we had everything cleaned and baked and decorated and cooked sometime in mid-October.

My mom has a Thanksgiving List and some of the chores already have my name on them. Actually, some of the sub-lists have my name on them. I think my Montclair coming-of-age ceremony involved the promotion from vacuuming to actual food preparation. My mom asks my dad for his opinion and he pretends like he can tell she’s moved all the wine glasses clockwise six degrees around the water glasses.

Wednesday night I go see Scep and now Katie, too. We used to hide out from last-minute chores, watch videos in his attic and talk about college. Now we hide out from last-minute chores and have margaritas with Stick and Katie. Last year, Scep and Katie told me they have real jobs, and they’re paying and that’s that.

No one really watches the parade but what’s Thanksgiving without inflatable Barney in the background? The arrival of Stick added watching football to the Stivison Thanksgiving, which makes up for the end of the traditional holiday pastime of Critique Meg’s Boyfriend.

I can’t actually talk about the food because if I think about it too much, I’ll be on a plane home.

After dinner, the extended Stivison family has dessert and wine. My cousins and I used to play Monopoly but then we started playing other games (like Illuminati) as we got older. We have enough pie that the arrival of half a dozen hungry teenage boys isn’t a problem. That’s not hyperbole, actually, we’ve tried a few times when I was in college, and then Bethie brought all the international students from Wesleyan home last year. Last Thanksgiving was my first experience with ESL pictionary, now a staple of my classroom.

I’m so sad that I won’t be home this year. But if my family can have latkes for Christmas, then I can have Beijing duck for Thanksgiving.

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Six Weeks Left In China

Posted on November 6, 2006 by Meg

I love Yantai with the part of my heart that’s not full of the love-hate expats have for China. It’s hard to fully love a places in which all travel involves dealing with an Mandarin-speaking Whitmore. Here, I’m a G-rated Paris Hilton. Why Paris? Because I don’t do anything fame-worthy, most people think I dress like a tramp, and they don’t like the priviledge and immorality that I represent, yet everyone takes a picture.

When I first arrived, I noticed a lack of female voices in the China blogoshere, and now I’m starting to understand why. Being a young, single foreign woman in China is like… actually that is the strongest metaphor I can think up. Like waving a red thong at 700 million extremely horny bulls.

I read my friends’ emails and blogs and I really miss things from home. Like literacy. Turkey and swiss on rye bread (the only part of that I can find in China is the mei you. Oh, man, I crack myself up!). Personal space. Brewed coffee. Hygiene. Internet without a proxy. Sit-down toilets. (Would you believe I forgot this one on my original draft, and had to add it in later? I really need to go home!)

But mostly I miss Stick. It’s hard to accept that if Stick weren’t in the picture, I’d take the great terms my school offered me to renew my contract next year. It’s really hard to accept that I’m moving back around the world for some guy.

But next month I am.

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