The ad behind me says (basically) “I love Western food.com”
Ex-Pat Working Conditions
Will (my boss): Great job! We should increase your responsibilities around here!
Meg: No.
Cheddar, edam, brie, gouda
When I’m traveling, I tend to blindly assume everything’s going to come out all right. There won’t be mice in this bathroom! Of course we’ll get off this island! Sure this is the right bus! But traveling with Zorro is an endless list of bad things that could happen. What if there are no taxis when we get out? What if they cancel our flight because of bad weather?
Our adventure was somewhere between my daydream and Zorro’s warnings. Our first flight was about 2 1/2 hours late. Apparently the American Embassy in Beijing closes from 12 to 2, and as we watched the clock get closer to noon and our taxi’s meter increase, it was getting more and more like a mad dash to the embassy, like in a movie.
The taxi driver dropped us off at the beginning of a maze of embassies, and we had to show our passports to several guards to get into the complex. If I actually was running to the embassy for santuary, I’d be a citizen of Finland now. By following the guard’s directions, Zorro and I found ourselves standing outside the wrong embassy. There was a big shiny gate, actually they polish that gate every day to protect the Finnish. (Bethie, I wish you were here!)
When we found our way through a maze of broad, tree-lined avenues, all alike, Zorro’s paperwork was quick and painless. We were out of American Citizen Services in under an hour and it was time to get on with my real business in Beijing.
Can I just mention how much I love traveling with Zorro? First of all, his Chinese is way better than mine. Second, waitresses, flight attendants, security guards, taxi drivers don’t know what to make of a Chinese American. No one knows whether to address him in Chinese or English. Except for service people ignoring me to speak to him, it’s great.
The real purpose of the trip, for me at least, was to eat decent food. I remember once trying to talk Stick and some of the Griffon Games boys out of eating at Subway, but in Beijing? I was so excited to see an (almost) English menu and real bread and boneless chicken and cheese! We also went to a TCBY and a Pizza Hut.
And we went to the grocery section of the Friendship Store. This is a mythical place, previously known like Atlantis or Shangri-la, in persistant but unproven rumors.
There was bread. Cereal. Cheese. Not the Kraft singles that you can get at the Jiajiayue, either. Cheddar, edam, brie, gouda. It was amazing. I asked Zorro not to stand near me when I checked out, but he did and he’s still laughing about how much I spent. Only the embarrassment of being broke at my parents’ arrival next week stopped me from buying more.
In the airport, going home, security had never seen or heard of Nutella, and Zorro and my combined Chinese vocab was useless here. I really should learn to say “delicious spreadable chocolate hazelnut food”. Finally, they determined it wasn’t explosive or inflammable, and we were allowed to board our flight home.
Salvatore, Shakespeare, Stephen King
My cousin Andrea sent my a huge books of books! Mostly fantasy novels, because those are her favorite. I really like a lot of fantasy novel, as long as they’re light on the Renn faire accent. She also sent me some Stephen King, Shakespeare, and Hairy Rotter and the Unauthorised Parody.
It was perfect.
After borrowing every book available at BET (Jarhead? Shogun? Mao biography? Sure!), I’d have been happy with anything in English.
And then Zorro needed to run an errand that promised to involve lots of waiting, and I said something like “Sure, I’ll come with you! I have a new Stephen King book and I can’t read it at home by myself!” (This may be a little hyperbole)
I started reading in the airport, and I wasn’t even bothered by the early-morning fog that was the first of many delays. I was reading a new book! Also, we met a Little Emperor who discovered the only thing more fun than touching the lao wai‘s hair is kicking her friend in the shins. (No hyperbole this time. Mom, you would have fainted.)
There was one slight problem with this amazing book. Whenever one of the characters stopped into the Excellent Cafe or grabbed a milkshake, I got envious. And that’s why fantasy novels are even better in China. I can’t get nostalgically hungry over moonfruit and roast phoenix.
Posted in Books, New York City
Tagged Books, China, Chinese life, Mao, New York City, reading, Renn, Stephen King, Zorro
Leave a comment
World of Warcraft: The Board Game
I was on www.warcraftunderground.com
and I saw there’s a WoW-based boardgame. World of Warcraft: The Board Game allows players to choose their characters (not all races and character combinations are available) and decide whether to fight for the Horde or the Alliance. No word on whether I can be a tailor in the boardgame version, though. BoardGameGeek (It’s a website, not someone I dated. Really.) says there’s an expansion to the game coming out this month.
It looks really fun, but then, I had high hopes for the Sid Meyers’ Civilization boardgame and that was a train wreck. Sometimes the PC-to-dice transition is really disappointing. On the other hand, this could be WoW without the preteens on the chat channel.
Posted in New York City
Tagged Chinese life, Civilization, New York City, WarCraft, World of WarCraft, WoW
Leave a comment
Finding Equilibrium
I’ve known since I was little that gas expands to fill all the available space. I knew this rule like some of my students know their wordlists, so I mean I was able to repeat it when prompted or write it on a test, not that I was ever able to apply it in a meaningful way. It’s still the same amount of gas, right? So how can it fill a small container and a big container? I’m twenty-five and it totally boggles my mind.
Today in the grocery store, I finally understood.
Now, the Chinese do not form lines. Ever. Everything in this country is first-come, first-serve. I didn’t realize how this had affected me until Stick was visiting and I pushed him through the airport at top speed. He tried to tell me that there was no need to rush, we had tickets for reserved seats, and I just laughed. And ran faster. In the supermarket, the correct way to buy meat, fresh bread, fruit or vegetables is to push your way up to the counter and shout what you want.
The Chinese also don’t walk in a straight line. Ever. This may sound like hyperbole, but it’s not I’m not so crazy about the daily near-death experiences that occur when a bicyclist spots her friend or some apples on sale or something shiny. Fortunately, there are no shopping carts in my local supermarket. Instead, shoppers use baskets, usually one between two people, who are each holding a handle and walking in opposite directions. Because most of the aisles are blocked with people, it feels like most of Yantai is in the grocery store.
And yet, when we’re done shopping, this huge crowd can compress into a tiny, tightly-packed mob at the checkout.
Scary Movie M&Ms
We’re playing M&M’s movie title riddle game in the office today. (Yes, M&Ms made it though the great firewall)
In this game, you see a crazy, surreal painting, and then you’re supposed to find the names of 500 horror movies in the picture. this would be kind of creepy, if it didn’t have the little M&M characters in the painting too. Then you click on, say, twelve monkeys, and you type “12 Monkeys”. You can pause the game by hitting the space bar, so you can call your coworkers over to help you figure it out.
Posted in New York City
Tagged cary, Chinese life, gaming, M&M's, movies, New York City
Leave a comment
Not Quite A Mud Mask
Everytime I start to feel like I understand China Yantai my tiny neighborhood in Kaifaqu, something happens to remind me that I’m far away from home.
Today Dorothy, another teacher, walked into the madhouse we call an office, giggling and holding a glossy leaflet. Kaifaqu is full of folks who hand out advertisements on the street. I can usually duck these by shouting can bu dong (can’t read! can’t read!) and running away, but sometimes someone is so pushy that I end up with a glossy ad for aluminum siding or something else I don’t need and can’t understand.
“Meg, guess what this is!”
“Yeah, yeah, my sister already bought porn by mistake. Those girls on the covers just look so innocent!”
“Guess again!”
I searched Dorothy’s booklet for a clue. There was a twenty-something girl in a sundress, three smiling nurses with a huge bouquet. Another girl was napping in her night gown, a couple raised their glasses in a toast, another cute nurse talking to another female patient, and Angelina Jolie in lingerie.
It’s a brochure from a local abortion hospital.
I flipped through the booklet, wondering exactly how one advertises abortions. After safe and legal, what is there to say? I stared at the hundreds of Chinese characters and then I realized that Dorothy can’t read Chinese either. “Wait a moment, how did you find out what this is?”
“I thought it was an ad for a spa,” she said, “so I took it to the office and asked the secretaries to make an appointment for us to go together.”
Someone Else’s China
Most nights, I go to dinner with my co-worker, Zorro. (Dave, we miss you!) He’s really fun, loves talking about our students, and he’s been really helpful with my Chinese. Of course, when we go out, no one will listen to my Chinese.
Waitresses can understand my halting Chinese when Zorro’s not there, but when he is, they check with Zorro on every request I make. Sure, my Chinese is terrible, and customer service is just different here, but sometimes I feel like the hapless victim in a Monty Python sketch.
Zorro can also read a lot of characters so I’m always asking him for help. Me walking down the street in China is a lot like a car trip with a kindergartener, but instead of shouting out letters and numbers, I look for characters I can read.
I ask questions like “What’s that character? Second from the left? It looks like bu written on top of tian… I think I’m going to call it Hell.”
I can’t imagine what China must be like for Zorro. He has an entirely different set of assumptions than I do. He doesn’t get the foreigner price, or giggles everytime he speaks. He does get paragraphs of rapid-fire Chinese, based on the assumption that everyone who looks Chinese must speak it fluently. And it’s hard to be a foreign English teacher when you don’t elicit theHELLO!!! LAO WAI! greeting.
Last night, we went to the local sushi place. After the waitress double-checked my order and left, I realized Zorro was looking over my shoulder.
“A guy at the table over there has been staring at you for almost ten minutes!” he said. “That must get really annoying!”
Behind Zorro, I could see a sushi bar full of diners openly or covertly staring at the foreign girl.
“Yeah, it happens.”
Posted in New York City
Tagged China, chinese, Chinese life, Dave, letters, Monty, New York City, Zorro
Leave a comment
For Love Or Money
This story on Laowai!Laowai! talks about running a speaking exercise for high school age ESL students. This exercise asks each student to choose between Love or Money, and explain why.
Without exception, the boys in his class chose Love while the girls choose Money. I don’t think this would happen in an American high school, but it’s not surprising to anyone who’s spent time with teenage Chinese students. (What I really want to know is how did he get the girls to stop giggling long enough to have this discussion?) Laowai!Laowai! describes the Love vs. Money debate:
In China it’s like this: women dream of love but eventually choose the secure way of the non-perishing banknotes. Men only dream of wealth – so that in the end they actually can get the most beautiful girl in the class. But… isn’t that buying love instead of receiving it? Poor bastards.
I think there’s a hidden variable in this game. LL’s students are choosing which to discuss in class and to publicly prioritize, in front of their peers and a foreign teacher. It seems likely that LL’s students are choosing what they want their classmates to think they value, which may or may not be their real priority.
Because I’m the kind of teacher who tries sociology experiments out on my students, I tried this game for the discussion part of my teenage girls’ class. I wrote LOVE and MONEY on the board, and asked my girls to tell me which was more important.
Two girls waffled for a bit, but when pressed, all six girls picked money. They all seems to agree that love could grow in a marraige, but without money, spouses would fight more. I seem to remember a statistic about American couples frequently fighting over money — but I might have read it in Cosmo.
But I don’t think Chinese dating is really all about the Maos. When I mercilessly hounded questioned my girls about this in practical terms, no one said that they were looking for a rich husband and no one intended to stop working after marriage (although, again, there may be a gap between what’s said to the foreign teacher and what’s really thought). Instead, my class all told me that they wanted to delay their weddings until they were older and were making good salaries.
In other teaching news, today one of my students ate a sticker to impress a girl sitting nearby. He’s 11.
One Man Bandwidth also talks about Laowai! Laowai!’s article
Posted in New York City
Tagged China, chinese, Chinese life, Cosmo, dating, Eric, ESL, Mao, my students, New York City, Stick, teaching
Leave a comment
