Communist Credit Cards

Posted on September 16, 2006 by Meg

Wal-Mart is launching a new credit card in China. This is especially interesting because China seems to really be a cash economy. According to the Wall Street Journal’s article, less than 5% of Chinese consumers have credit cards. Most people I know here are paid with envelopes of cash.

The Wall Street Journal says that Wal-mart’s new card is a joint venture with China’s Bank of Communications. The card is a regular credit card that can be used both in China and abroad, but users will also receive Wal-Mart discounts. If this goes well, it could facilitate currency exchange for expats and travelers by offering a dual-currency credit that works easily in both countries. If not, then Bank of Communications and Wal-Mart will soon be yet another place to hear the foriegner mei you.

Wal-Mart, credit cards… soon China will have all the comforts of home!

In case you missed it: Chinese Wal-mart forms a union.

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罗马, 意大利

Posted on September 13, 2006 by Meg

I mailed a letter to Stick yesterday. The clerk took a look at the envelope, on which I’d slowly and painfully copied out ??, ??? onto the envelope. If speaking faster and mumbling more is the key to spoken Chinese, then sloppy writing is the key to written Chinese. Extra points for not lifting your pen. I have been preparing my whole life for ideal Chinese handwriting.

“Where would you like to send this letter?” the clerk asked.

“Letter to Rome city Italy.” (Oh yeah, this conversation is in Chinese, in case my stunning lack of grammar and vocabulary didn’t tip you off)

“Would you like to send this letter to America?”

“No America. Italy.”

She looked at her coworker. “This foreigner wants to send a letter to America, but she wrote Italy here and she doesn’t understand me when I told her that. What should I do?”

“Letter not to America. Letter to Italy.” I pointed at the characters. “Yi da li. Writing Italy, yes?” The two girls shrugged at the crazed foreigner who’d clearly forgotten her home country, but they did agree to sell me stamps.

When I was in Roman history classes in college, I often imagined situations in which I’d say something like “going to Rome”. I just didn’t know I’d be saying it in Chinese.

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Shrimp Melon Popcorn

Posted on September 12, 2006 by Meg

After my last post (and this one, this one, and, actually, almost everything else I’ve written about China), I need to explain that I don’t really hate all Chinese food. There are some amazing foods here, like scallion-egg pancakes and those little red plums. Most food in Yantai is fine, just fine, in a way that makes portion control easy because I stop eating the moment I’m not hungry.

It’s shocking, isn’t it? How can I live in China and not take every opportunity to experience new tastes? I should have a positive attitude and try new foods! But I don’t like Coke, I don’t like potato chips and I don’t like hamburgers so why would I like cocoons on a stick?

The other day I bought melon-flavored popcorn. I guess that sounds a little gross but it’s not as bad as it could be. When I asked the vendor the green popcorn’s flavor, I thought she was saying Shrimp Melon.* I bought it anyway, because I was so intrigued by the strawberry, orange and chocolate-coffee candied popcorn in the mixed bag.

The bag is clear plastic, so you can see the rows of Barbie pink, Nemo orange, Kermit green and, um, chocolate brown popcorn. With a few more ribbons, it could be dancing in the Nutcracker. It was almost too pretty to eat. It looked a lot better that the chou douf and spicy chicken guts sold nearby.

It turns out that orange, strawberry, mocha and Mystery Melon are really good flavors for popcorn. See? I don’t dislike every food in China!

*Chinese speakers: She was saying honeydew but I thought it sounded like Hai mi gua, Shrimp Melon. Stop laughing.

Edit:
Look, I’m not the only person who makes translation mistakes! Read the full story here.

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Stick In Rome

Posted on September 11, 2006 by Meg

Stick called me from Rome the other night! It was so great to talk to him!

And then he mentioned the Subject About Which We Do Not Speak. A lot of couples have one, an issue that’s tacitly acknowledged but never really discussed. In my case, there’s something Stick does every day while I’m in China and I know he does it. Things would be different if I were around, but I’m not. I know it’s essential to his well-being and keeps him happy and all that, but I just don’t want to hear about it.

“…and the food is really good.” he said, six times zones away and somehow unaware of how upsetting this sentence would be.

“That’s nice. Don’t tell me about it.” I said.

“…even in the dorm, it’s really good,”

“Really. Do not talk about Western food.”

“We’re getting a lot of pasta and tomatoes and…”

“Stick! Stop it! I can’t listen to this! You do NOT tell the party who’s living in China about food that’s not horrible. It’s just not fair! It’s cruel and you’re being totally inconsiderate! If you cared about me at all, you’d pretend that at least the dorm food was yucky!”

“You’re my girlfriend and I’m going to tell you what I did today and that’s final!”

No consideration, that boy. None.

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Saving Those For The Bad Teachers

Posted on September 10, 2006 by Meg

Nick has started a thread on WTH Conversations In China. Whyguoren writes about trying to use his bank card in a bank. Talk Talk China writes about… actually almost everything on Talk Talk China is about the WTH moment.

Life in China is full of these moments when logic and reason are nowhere to be found. I don’t mean hearing mei you when there clearly are plenty of rooms in the hotel or seats on the train. I mean these moments when a simple request goes so horribly wrong that you have to wonder if they’re just screwing with you.

This morning, I went into my school’s office for some extra whiteboard markers for a group project. The secretary opened a drawer full of markers and took out a handful. She proceded to test each marker on a scrap of paper before handing me three good markers and… throwing the dead ones back in the supply drawer.

We repeat this interaction before every class.

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Nerdy Girl Makes Fun Of Popular Hot Girl For Taking Her Clothes Off

Posted on September 9, 2006 by Meg

Apparently, you can make a name for yourself on MySpace. And that name can have as many capital letters as you want.

ForBiddeN is a MySpace user, who posts naked pictures and semi-naked pictures, as well as offering her own desktop wallpaper, screensaver and clothing line. And now, she’s going to be in Playboy!

This is the nature of internet self-publishing. We all have dreams that our Flickr photos will end up in National Geographic and that our Blogspot technology reviews will end up in Wired. (Clive Thompson, call me!)

ForBiddeN (it hurts my English-teacher soul to type that) is celebrating her sucess with a huge Hollywood party. And it really is a success story. Contrary to popular belief, it seems that you CAN sell it when you’re giving it away for free. Her party attracted all kinds of MySpace users, journalists, celebrities and famous-for-being-famous celebs.

When Paris Hilton gets a DUI leaving your party, you know you’re famous. Or infamous. But when the goal is self-promotion, who cares?

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Kermit And Plato

Posted on September 8, 2006 by Meg

After months of asking about Chinese myth and recieving either blank stares or incomprehensible tales about monkeys in magic headbands, I finally heard a fable I understand.

A frog lives in a deep well, and all he can see is the walls of the well and a small circle of sky at the top. The frog looks up at the little patch of clouds and sun and he thinks that the world is small.

Sometimes I think China may not be so strange after all.

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Forget Facebook Fray — Feeds are Finished

Posted on September 8, 2006 by Meg

It seems that the Change It Back! Facebook groups have been heard. The mini-feed is gone. It seems that the issue has become all about internet privacy and not my complaint that the feeds were mind-numbingly dull.

Mark Zuckerburg admits that the Facebook team made a mistake in an open letter on Facebook:

We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I’d like to try to correct those errors now.

Great job, Facebook crew!

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Facebook Fervor

Posted on September 7, 2006 by Meg

I joined Facebook three years ago because I’m internet obsessed hip to all web trends, and in that time, Facebook’s added a lot of cool features. You can list your course schedule and search for users by class. You can search by high school, by major, by dorm or by interest. Facebook also allows you to add friend details, so instead of a pool of a hundred people tagged as friends, you can explain who’s a roommate, a classmate, or and old boyfriend.

Yes, that’s the most important use of Facebook. “Facebook-stalking”, although not yet approved by William Safire, has slipped into our lexicon. I’ve been guilty of checking an ex-boyfriend’s profile more than absolutely neccessary and I’m far from being the only one!

There’s more the Facebook that seeing if the hot guy from history class is single. (Note to all girls currently studying in Rome: He isn’t) Users can upload photos, and then comment on or tag these pictures in a big, interactive photo album. You can send private messages, group messages and public messages to others. Facebook users can also start and join interest groups, from Marry me, Mr. Darcy! to Procrastinaters Unite….. Tomorrow. I am not saying that I’m a member of either group. Just giving you some examples.

But in the last few days, the Facebook folks have made some less-than-popular changes. They’ve down so well making Facebook into a combination of Flickr, MySpace and Xanga, they decided to throw in an RSS reader, too. Only this feed is all about the last ten things you’ve done on Facebook.

And the verdict from Facebook users seems to be pretty universal. This sucks.

The privacy issue seems to have a lot of usuers up in arms. It doesn’t really bother me, because there’s nothing secret on my profile. My problem is simply that the new feed is boring. My Facebook profile is now a mind-numbing list of “Meg said hello to her friend. Meg posted 5 photos. Meg said hello to another friend. Meg commented on her friend’s photo”.

I don’t want to ditch my Facebook account. I like checking in with my friends, and unlike MySpace, Friendster and Consummating, the focus seems to be more on keeping up with classmates and less on finding online love. I love the photosharing, I even like the new status updates. I like how there are so few ads, and the ones I do see are flyers for college events. And I really like how many of my friends and old classmates — even the technologically impaired ones — are on the Facebook.

There’s only one thing to do. I’m joining the Dear Mark Zuckerberg, please change it back Facebook group.

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Closer Than My Peeps

Posted on September 6, 2006 by Meg

Barbara, one of our students, invited Dave, Zorro and me to come to KTV with some of her friends. Now, I am no stranger to getting mildly intoxicated and belting out a Human League duet, but a Chinese Kareoke bar is a little different than at home.

First, you get your own room so you don’t have to listen to any drunks crying ballads or Cyndi Lauper with the six girls:one mic ratio. Unless you brought those people. Second, although there was no pin yin option, so no one got to hear my fabulous rendition of Mice Love Rice, there was a pretty extensive English section. Page one had Africa by Toto… I took this picture because I knew no one would believe me. Honestly, that’s what it says!

We alternated between Two Butterflies and Looking At The Sea and so forth, and the English section.

This is Dave and me singing Imagine. In China. Yeah.

And then I found Angel, more commonly known as “the peeps song”. Usually my version of the song goes like this:

“So then he said… Oh my God! Is this the peeps song? It’s the peeps song! Eric, it’s scanning! How do you take this off scan? What do you mean, the same way as last time? Oh, thanks. CLOSER THAN MY PEEPS YOU ARE TO ME! It’s the peeps song, Eric! Listen! SHE WAS THERE THROUGH MY INCARCERATION, I WANNA SHOW THE NATION, MY APPRECIATION! Yeah!”

I realize now that I am going to a special English teacher hell for singing these lyrics.

Looking back Shorty always be mention
Said me not giving her much attention

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