Shandong stomach — 1) n. Unexplained intestinal disturbance requiring immediate and frequent trips to the bathroom.
Usage: He won’t be in today, he’s got Shandong stomach.
Shandong Stomach
Posted in New York City
Tagged Chinese life, dictionary, Lexicon, mac, New York City
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Populusque
In Qingdao, there’s a stretch of coastline for the tourists. There are vendors with polished seashells, strings of Qingdao pearls, postcards and the inevitable cheap plastic crap. There’s a toilet for which you’re expected to pay admission. (Stick: I’m not paying to get closer to that smell! I’ll just pee on the street like everyone else!) Tour guides and taxidrivers shout for customers. Maybe because Qingdao has so many tourists, or maybe I’m learning to bargain better, but I didn’t feel like my white skin was blood in the water for vendor sharks.
And there are beggars. Old China hands, you don’t need to tell me that most of the beggars in China are scams. I know that begging children are usually part of a pickpocketing scheme, but they make me sad, even as I’m checking to make sure my wallet’s still there.
The beggars in Qingdao are really disturbing, with wounds and scars and missing limbs. And there are so many that I’m walking past people in dire need, because I already gave my money to the first three or four beggars I saw. Somehow you have to accept that, as you’re walking around enjoying the sea breezes, other people are not on vacation. I guess there are always other people in need, but in China, they’re literally lying in your path.
There are all kinds of food vendors, so there’s the smell of melting red-bean ice cream, hot fried fish, oniony pancakes and sausage all around.
Across the street from this hub of commerce is a Starbucks-ripoff coffeeshop. Stick and I went inside for a break from the commotion, and to take advantage of the Western toilets. Like most Chinese coffeeshops, it combined coffeehouse, pizzeria and bar.
Everything was Starbucks green, and even the name was written in Starbucks font. (There are real Starbuckses in China, the one at the Badaling Great Wall springs to mind) But the name of the coffeeshop was SPR, which we thought was a very good Roman name. As Stick pointed out, Populusque is really one word.
Sitting on a silk-covered couch, in the air-conditioning, sipping what was almost a margarita, it was hard to believe that the Qingdao tourist bazaar was just a few yards away.
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Tagged cars, China, chinese, Chinese life, coffee, New York City, Starbucks, Stick
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Imperfect, Tense
Stick called midway through my teenage girls class — I was telling them that they had to be more focused, that they needed to pay attention instead of coming to class with their minds somewhere else, and then my cell phone rang. Universe: 1, Meg: 0.
“I’m here,” he said.
“What? Here? You mean, Yantai? You said you’d be here this afternoon!” I looked down at my blouse and skirt and thought lovingly of my carefully assembled airport outfit, lying in readiness on my bed at home. (I also thought of the pile of clothes that didn’t make the Perfect Meeting cut and were now lying in disgrace on my closet floor.)
“I’ll come get you in one hour,” I said. The girls were lucky — for the rest of the class, none of us really had our brains in the classroom. We had a very creative lesson on imperfect tense, that’s the interrupted or incomplete action. I was teaching when the boy called. And 12:01 I was running down the stairs into a taxi.
I fished in my bag for something to put in my face, thinking of the lipstick, eyeliner and earrings, arranged next to my sink like little soldiers ready for action. I found some strawberry lipgloss, but everyone who’s been in China is laughing at the futility of putting on makeup in a moving cab.
The taxi driver wanted to know who I was meeting, and when he was arriving, and what airline, and how long he’d be staying and all sorts of questions and didn’t bleive me when I said I didn’t know enough Chinese to answer him. But we were in the one and only cab in Kaifaqu with A/C so I just smiled and repeated the few phrases I could say. I imagined a hungry, tired and disoriented boy would be walking though the airport and wondering when I’d show up.
We pulled up outside the airport, and I started to ask the driver to wait a moment while I got Stick and then drive us back to Kaifaqu, when he said “Look, your husband!”
And there was Stick, standing in front of the terminal, surrounded by bags that held peanut butter cups, Nutella, lotion, tampons and — alas for him — only one shirt. My boy. In China.
I stared at him in the cab. He’s been going to the gym with Hugo. I know he doesn’t want to hear this, but there’s more gray in his hair. The stress of dating me, perhaps?
“You look exactly the same,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”
Perfect.
Seventeen Hours Late
Pie2k is a webcomic my old boyfriend Matt writes about a bunch of crazy characters who bear an uncanny resemblance to his college friends. In one strip, a young man called “Miko” is waiting for a visit from his friend “Anja”, who lives in Massachusetts. Poor Anja is unavoidably detained on her way, and ends up seventeen hours late. I’m not saying she’s got anything to do with me, of course. Not at all. And clearly Miko is exaggerating because Anja was really only about 40 minutes late or something. Not seventeen hours!
Stick’s plane to Beijing is now more than seven hours late, so he’s missed the last flight to Yantai by about 4 1/2 hours. That means I won’t see him until he arrives in Yantai tomorrow… seventeen hours late.
Extreme Teaching!
English summer camp started last week. I like my girls, and I’m glad that I have a job, but I still feel a little bit bad for these kids. They don’t really get a proper vacation, sincea break from regular school is a chance to take extra math lessons, tae kwon do classes, English lessons, dance classes. My students have fuller schedules than I do! (That is not hyperbole) Every minute I spend reading a book or acting like a teenager with Dave and Zorro is a minute our students need to spend studying.
I love pre-teens and teenagers. It’s kind of a joke in the office that I wish I had all teenage classes, since the other teachers like to avoid them. Honestly, I would trade my adults for teenagers in a heartbeat. My girls play games, tease each other and ask questions. The adults are usually fine products of the Chinese school system who just want to sit quietly and learn English via repetition and lao wai osmosis. They base their English level on how many words they’ve memorized, not on how much they can express in English.
And that’s why I love teenagers. With girls, though, you need to show no weakness. I spent quite a while planning my first-day activities and my contingency plan in case my lessons flopped or turned out to be too difficult. A slight sign of hesitation, and they swarm like sharks smelling blood in the water. They are a rabid fashion paparazzi regarding the American teacher. But they’re worse to each other, and they turn on each other Lord Of The Flies style in seconds. If it sounds like teaching 15-year-old girls is an extreme sport, well, that’s because is it.
(This is not a photo of me teaching. It’s a photo of me after a few bottles of sake with Dave. But this is how I look in class with the teenagers. Happy, I mean. Not half-drunk. Yeah.)
Today I was covering past progressive with past simple. I started by telling them about the time our class stole a car.
“While the man was shopping inside, I stole his sports car.” I said. “When I was driving it away, I saw it was low on gas,” Recognition showed on their faces, they realized I was kidding. Then they started to add to the story, telling me that they stole a car and robbed a bank. But the bank only had 2 kwai, so they robbed a store with a gun, hid the money in the zoo under the tigers and spent rest of the money on candy.
I don’t know if their English has improved yet, but their creativity surely has.
Posted in New York City
Tagged candy, chinese, Chinese life, Dave, driving, Eric, games, lessons, my students, New York City, Osmos, reading, teaching, Zorro
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Maturity Level
Last night, Dave, Zorro and I went to play pool. Actually, they played pool and I cheered. I tried to take pictures, but as soon as I took this one, an employee told me not to. (I was thrilled when she repeated it in English and I asked her if they served cocktails at the bar, but her entire vocabulary was “Forbidden take photos”. Oh well.)
“If you had to date a cartoon character, who would it be?” Dave asked after a few minutes of playing. Maybe he just wanted a break in our highly-mature stick and ball jokes. “Mine would be She-Ra… or Jessica Rabbit. Meg, you’re next.”
“I don’t know.”
“Optimus Prime is a nice Jewish boy,” Dave suggested.
“Nah… Tenchi Muyo!” I said. “No, wait, can I date Sluggy Freelance? Even if he’s not strictly a cartoon character?”
“You are such a nerd,” Zorro told me.
“Only another nerd would know,” I said. “Go on, who would you pick?”
“Um. Jasmine.”
“Oh, yeah, she’s hot,” Dave said. “Heh, you knocked my balls in,”
I can’t believe we’re in charge of children.
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Tagged Chinese life, Dave, nerd, New York City, Optimus Prime, Stick, Zorro
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RPG Withdrawal
I watched Lord of the Rings the other day, and I started to really miss my D&D group. That’s a nerdy compliment to my RPG friends back home. And then Dave came by with Superman Returns, and even though it wasn’t so great, I started to miss playing Abberrent. Evan, my old GM, would never had allowed such a lame storyline in one of our games! Dave still owes me 5 jiao for guessing the ending.
So today, when I was in Dave’s DVD Store (Hey Nick, where is your DVD store? Is it in Kaifaqu?), and I saw the sequel to the D&D movie… I just had to pay the 5 kwai and go home to watch my gaming movie.
When will I learn my lesson about sequels? I mean, the original D&D movie was barely worth watching, and that was only because I had a crowd of nerds. This time, it was The opening sequence is a lot like the opening sequence of LOTR, only terrible. It’s almost a parody, but parodies are usually funny. Here is a sample of the narration:
I, the evil villian of this piece, am undead, which means I’m not alive any more but I’m still alive and thinking of ways to ruin the protagonists’ lives. I am after an orb of power which will enable to me CONTROL THE WHOLE WORLD!!!!
“An artifact of extreme power? I bet the GM’s girlfriend has it.” I said. My coffeetable thought this was very funny, but unfortunately it responded to this, and all my other witty comments, with resounding silence.
Then later on:
Mages like me use arcane magic, which means we study and read old books. There’s also divine magic which comes direct from the gods. I took that as my restricted school, but if I pick up the Mountain Dew for next week’s game, I bet the GM will let me.
Unfortunately I have no other quotes because I had to turn it off.
Posted in Books, New York City
Tagged Books, Chinese life, coffee, Dave, games, gaming, jiao, nerd, New York City, quotes
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Geography Lesson
The other day I was doing a unit on countries and nationalities with my Korean students. We’re using a British book about Pierre from France, Carlos from Spain, Ivan from Russia and so forth. I realized it wasn’t too appropriate for them, so I added Midori from Japan, Lakshmi from India and Kim from Korea.
I’d barely finished writing “Korea” on the board, when Joh, one of my students, stopped me.
“No Korean in English class! You know that!” I told him. I love when I can actually see my students thinking, and I could see the wheels turning in Joh’s head. He’s in a beginning class so I didn’t expect too much from him.
“Japan tell Korea make K!” he shouted.
Now, I remember reading in Richard Kim’s Lost Names that the spelling was changed when Japan occupied Korea but that was before Joh was even born! I assumed Koreans would look at the Corea-Korea thing as a sidenote, the way a lot of Americans look at their Ellis Island misspellings. But Joh was struggling so hard with such a small vocabulary that it was clearly vitally important to him.
“Ok,” I said, and changed it to Corea.
Then I started to ask them where different people live, and what their nationalities are.
“Where does Midori live?” I asked.
“She lives in Japan!!!” my students all chorused.
“What is her nationality?”
“She is Japanese!!!”
One of my students was staying quiet. “Where does Carlos live?” I asked him.
Once again, I could see the wheels turning in his head.
“Carlos… lives… in…” He paused for a moment. “…in the book!”
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Tagged British, Chinese life, Eric, LOST, my students, New York City, reading
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Connections
One of the cool things about living alone is that my kitchen is full of little bottles of grapefruit juice, single-serve yogurts, instant noodles and beer. And that’s it. One of the less cool parts is that after I finally bought a new DVD player, I had to hook it up myself.
I’ve never had to do that before. I’ve always had a boyfriend, usually a computer geek or an engineer who regards anything with cables as his domain. I think Eric would have taken serious offence to me setting up my own PC. Zorro told me that all I have to do is match up the colors, and if I really can’t get figure it out, he’ll set it up for me when he comes over after class.
He was right, actually. But when I got the picture and sound of Harry Potter 2 on my TV, I still felt like I was splitting the atom!
When I changed jobs, I had to give up my DVD player and move away from my little corner market. I finally got the shopkeepers in my old mini-grocery trained to talk slowly and use short sentences. Basically, if I ask “Where’s the milk?” I can understand turn left, it’s on your right or we don’t have any, but not “Unfortunately, the supply truck is running late this week and we are expecting a delivery midafternoon. Why don’t you come back around 4?”
I found a new mini-grocery, but it’s not the same. The shopkeeper gasped when I spoke to him, and stammered “You speak Chinese! Listen, she is speaking Chinese!” which is flattering, if not accurate. But when I came up to the counter to pay for my warm Sprite, bottled water and yogurt, he punched in my total on a calculator and showed it to me. I just don’t get it. Does he think I learned “Where’s the strawberry yogurt?” and “Do you have any cold Sprite?” but not “15 kwai”? Or is it some kind of misguided politeness? Maybe treating me like I’m slow is an attempt to make things easier for me?
Hello? I can hook up a DVD player by myself! I’m not stupid!
Posted in New York City
Tagged chinese, Chinese life, Eric, Harry Potter, New York City, noodles, Zorro
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Remember that time?
The thing is, everything in China relies on context.
It’s kind of like when you meet your boyfriend’s friends and they’re all “Remember that time? Hahahaha!” while you’re all “Hi, I’m Meg”. They use these half sentences and references to other things, and even an awesome girlfriend just can’t keep up.
In Norse mythology, each line of a story is a kenning, a reference to another story. If you’re well versed in the exploits of Thor and Freyja, the kennings are funny and clever. If you’re not, it’s an epic brainteaser.
There’s actually a Star Trek episode where the Next Gen crew runs into this race that only speaks in references to their history. I’m ok with something like “Caesar and Brutus in the forum,” but it’s hard when it’s “Bob and Joe last Thursday.”
China is an entire country like that. They’re this clique that’s been exclusive for 5,000 years and I just can’t fit in. There’s no need to explain things in China because there’s this cultural hivemind that’s able to understand everything from super-secret contextual clues.
Chinese is all about context. There are so many homonymns in the language, so you need a complete sentence to make sense. In fact, most Chinese jokes are puns that get huge laughs in Chinese but don’t translate particularly well. And there are also many words that aren’t really pronounced the same but I kind of pronounce them the same way. You need to use a complete sentence or a complete phrase because a couple syllables can be easily misunderstood. It doesn’t make sense unless you put into context.
When Zorro was helping me with my Chinese yesterday, he said I should try to speak faster and not draw out each syllable. He also said I’m using a Beijing accent. (Can you believe that? I know about 3 words and he’s criticizing my accent!)
So I try to speed up when I use Chinese. It’s another example of how Chinese is the opposite of English, because when my teenage girls mumble and speed though their answers, I make them stand up and shout each word.
“Shout it like Alice’s mean math teacher!” I tell them. Hey, it’s an inside joke. They understand.
