Ji, what were you thinking?

Posted on May 21, 2006 by Meg

Last week my boss Ji took my class of Demon Children when I went out with Fresca. The Demon Children, and not the homesickness or lack of hot water, brought me closest to going back to the states. I am not qualified to teach nor am I particularly interested in teaching the under-12 crowd, but while my contract promises me work teaching my desired 13-18 range, it doesn’t actually forbid teaching a bizarre assortment of 4 to 11 years olds, whose English level bears no relation to their age. Tim knows all of his colors that start with R and end with ED. Rebecca wants to know if she can play with my daughter when I have one, or if she’ll be old enough to babysit.

Paul repeats everything I say with prefect pronunciation and almost no understanding. I have to say almost because after hearing each classroom instruction repeated back to me, with zero comprehension, I tried to get him to say “I am the very model of a modern major general” but he must have caught on somehow.

But Apple is probably the bane of my Chinese existence. Her hobbies are climbing on the desks, howling, and taking her clothes off. All three at once, if I’m not quick enough. I’ve asked to have her removed from the class, but her father has something to do with business licensing, and this is China. We usually make it through attendance before she attempts bodily harm on one of her classmates and I send her to the office to be someone else’s problem. I feel a little bad for the receptionist, but not bad enough to keep Apple in class.

When I explained to Ji that the little monsters were driving me insane, she told me how easy the small classes are, that I am not trying hard enough, and she offered to teach one lesson and let me observe. Let the record show that the student-inflicted bruises did NOT happen on my watch.

Since then, Ji and I have an armed truce. On occasion, she will ask me how we are progressing though the textbook or she’ll ask what the homework is. When that happens, I remind her of her verbal promise to hire a new teacher and her contractual obligation to provide a bilingual assistant. I make a vocab coloring sheet each week. I praise and encourage the kids who complete it, while I keep the others harmlessly shredding their handouts. If they remember the new words next week, great, but I’m content if they don’t color on their clothes or stick crayons up their noses. [Ok, so a small marker incident happened when I was meant to be teaching, but in my defense, destroying one’s outfit is fast and silent.]

Anyway, these are the monsters Ji got stuck with last week. The words she taught them were, and I quote:

clock
mango
cell phone
flower
pineapple
mirror
eggplant
sweet potato

What? Where did she come up with those? Were they playing I, Spy on Waikiki?

I never laugh at girl students, no matter what they say. It makes them think I’m mocking their English and then they’ll never speak in class again. But in class today, after some surprisingly good behavior, Rebecca was elected class spokeswoman, and after a long nervous lead-in, and she told me they would be very, very good, and could I please not punish them again by sending Ji back again? I practically choked myself trying not to let a giggle out. It was so cute, I almost felt guilty for considering them demons sent from a hell-dimension to drive me insane.

Almost.

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Still Not Over The Staring Thing

Posted on May 21, 2006 by Meg

As Jeff and Fresca both said, mere words cannot describe the constant staring in Kafaqu, but I’m going to try anyway. (Sorry to bore the old China hands.) I can understand it on some level, a foriegn girl playing games in your local net cafe might grab some attention. But what’s with the grocery store stares? Surely it’s not a surprise that Westerners also need to eat.

I’d probably never eat at KFC at home, but sometimes I really want to eat french fries that taste like french fries, and ice cream that’s not flavored with red bean. So I ordered, in understandable if imperfect Chinese, and took my food upstairs to the seating area.

Ok, patrons, you’ve all chosen to eatin a KFC. It’s not that surprising that an American would be eating in the only place which serves Western food. At least swallow your burger before staring opened mouthed, ok? And don’t any of you want to resume your conversations? Oh well, I like to enforce a no-talking-while-Meg-is-eating-Western-food rule, and clearly the entire restaurant wanted to abide by this rule.

Hey Mom, remember that advice you gave me in middle school? I remember a whole speech about how it may feel like everyone is looking at me, but really, they’re all too focused on themselves to really be staring at me? Yeah, I know you remember, I made you repeat it often times. It’s not true, as a point of fact.

By the time I got to my ice cream, the autographs had started. I never know what to write when a preteen girl pushes her glitter pen and English book into my hands and mumbles a request. Best wishes from the American who was trying to eat dinner. I can only assume that the girls know that I’ll be internationally famous soon and they plan to sell their signed textbooks on E-Bay to pay for college. Or they plan to take their books to school tomorrow and show their friends the signature of the lao wei who really does chew and swallow, just like real people.

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Fresca Goes Back To Massachusetts

Posted on May 18, 2006 by Meg

Fresca left yesterday and I’m very sad. I miss her already, especially because without Fresca wandering around naked and singing “If you’re happy and you know it, kick your friend!”, I have developed a lot of antisocial tendencies.

I drink coffee and read every morning, annotating my Chinese history book with crossreferences to Roman customs and notes about life in Yantai. And I write, which I thought was a solitary activity, but actually improves by reading passages aloud. Without Fresca, if I should happen to swear at the complexity of a particular Chinese character, no one will ask if I’ve hurt myself walking into the glass table again.

I’m afraid this is exactly how those guys in Goodbye, Mr. Chips and To Serve Them All My Days started, and soon I’ll trade in my instant coffee for tea from a little caddy. In fact I said this out loud as I drank juice from the bottle because I’m becoming totally antisocial. Perhaps those British academians don’t fall asleep to Harry Potter quite as often as I do, but that’s because they don’t have Fresca to wake them up and send them to bed.

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Space Chase

Posted on May 18, 2006 by Meg

Stephen Follows, the producer of The War On Terror: The Musical has a new movie called Space Chase which is up for some kind short film of the year award at this Cannes thing which is important to people who make movies. I know, I know, I suck at anything that’s related to pop culture but Stephen’s an old friend.

He is responsible for taking me to see the Matrix about 20 minutes after it was released (just before he tragically returned to England) and getting so excited that it should have been clear that his future was in movies. Or in wearing black leather. The last time I saw him, he was a film student in London when I was studying at Cambridge.

Anyway, you should go to http://www.nfb.ca/cannes and watch the movie and vote for Space Chase!

And if anyone can get a copy of the The War On Terror: The Musical to me in China, I’ll pay you in chicken heads.

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The Price of Tea in China

Posted on May 15, 2006 by Meg

One of the most useful Chinese phrases is pronounced “can ee can”. It means “just looking” or in my case “Quit picking up merchandise and banging it against my glasses. I can be trusted to find any items in plain sight.” Once a little bit of Chinese is heard, the vendors usually stop pulling items off the shelves and under our noses, and start a rapid fire of questions.

Frecsa and I were in a local tea shop trying to find a present for her mom, and when the shopkeeper asked what we were buying, we said “just looking”. Instead of asking us the usual questions, from “Are you Russian?” to “Are all foreigners as fat as you are?”, he asked us to have some tea.

The shopkeeper called over an interpreter from another shop, a younger man who said he speaks English. He speaks English the way some of us can remember a bit of bit of our high-school French or Spanish, only his high-school English teacher was not only not a native speaker, but had probably never met a native speaker. Anyway, he was able to ask us questions as long as we wrote down the answers in block letters. The two men were shocked to find out how old we are, and then the interpreter started to practice his next question.

“Marry. Marry? Marriaige? Marring? Marry?” he says to himself. Just when we think he’s going to propose, he asks us if we’re married. The shopkeeper is telling him a list of questions for us, at least I keep catching “wen ta men” (ask them) in the paragraphs of Chinese questions.

After some more tea, the interpreter returns to his store. The shopkeeper takes the pen and paper and starts to write down another question. Fresca and I just look at each other. He’s got to know we can’t read Chinese. The old man finishs his question and passes me the paper.

And I read it. In Chinese.

The shopkeeper had written “Do you like China?”. Actually, due to the peculiarities of Chinese grammar, he wrote China good question signifier but that’s close enough! He wrote it, and I understood! I read Chinese and answered in Chinese!

Then we bought tea for Fresca’s mom, and walked to dinner. Ok, Fresca walked to dinner. I skipped down the street singing a little song about how I’m the smartest person ever and I’m practically bilingual!

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Mei you! Ming tien!

Posted on May 13, 2006 by Meg

Although I only know a few Chinese words, I already have some I don’t like. My least favorite word is ??, which is pronounced “ma-yo” and basically means “have no. I can recognize it in short sentences, like “We have no Yantai beer” or longer phrases like “Elevators are a stupid Western invention and this hotel doesn’t have one. the stairs are to the left, and you’re in room 6204, you creepy American threesome.”

Because of the way Chinese is structured, ?? means not have, have not, don’t have, have none, have but won’t give to foreigners, etc. Chinese manages to be concise and evasive at the same time. (see previous entry re: ways Chinese is like my ex-boyfriend)

My other unfavorite phrase is ??, “ming tian”. I used to love this phrase because of it’s easily recognized (and easily drawn) characters, and because those characters also mean “clear sky” and “bright heavens”, as well as “tomorrow”. Well not tomorrow, actually, more like “at some point in the future”. It’s the answer to almost any question. When will my visa be ready? What time is the next train out of Beijing? When will I have hot water?

Some books describe assimilating to Chinese life with a phrase like “bending with the bamboo”. It’s one of those poetic Chinese associations, like silk dresses and chicken lo mein, that doesn’t actually exist. The real way to sum up Chinese life is ??, ??. And then, laugh, because what else can you do?

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Scenes From a Chinese Restaurant

Posted on May 12, 2006 by Meg

Meg: Fresca, you just asked for a dumpling that doesn’t eat meat!!!

Fresca: Shut up, English mouse.

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Three Months In China

Posted on May 11, 2006 by Meg

On my three-month anniversary with China, it was time to renew my visa. This was complicated enough in the US, a system that doesn’t run entirely on bribes and connections. Dealing with UMass administration for five-and-a-half years of college was good preparation for dealing with the Yantai Public Security. The Yantai Public Security Office is a nightmare, specifically the kind you’d have after reading Orwell and Kakfa right before bed. It’s a day-long process full of “Mei you”, “bu fan bian de” and “The procedure has changed,”
To renew my visa, I needed a small photograph for an ID, not a photo ID as I was originally told. Lily took us to a photo place nearby.

“Maybe the man feels a little nervous to take a picture of a foreigner,” Lily told me as we entered the combined tailorshop and glamourshots headquarters.

“If he does, then he’s the only person in China who does,” I said. I am photographed daily. Strangers wrap their arms around us while their friends take pictures, and Fresca was once handed a squirming baby for a photo op. A group of Chinese tourists ignored the flag-lowering in Tianamon Square in order to take pictures of Fresca and me sitting and breathing. I was filmed one day buying bananas while the cameraman narrated the movie (“Now the lao wei is asking the price. Now she’s saying she wants 6 bananas,”). And of course, the open-minded businessmen in Qingdao took pictures of the American girls who wouldn’t sleep with them.

The photographer agreed to take my picture, but I couldn’t wear my sweater because it’s black and too dark for a photo. I pulled it off, but I wasn’t allowed to wear my white blouse either, because the background is white. Beneath the blouse, I had a burgundy tank top, but when I pulled off my blouse, photographer and his assistant were shocked that I wanted indecent shoulder porn for my visa.

Like most little girls, I wanted to be a fashion model. But usually when I daydreamed about an entire entourage preparing me for a photo shoot, I imagined them speaking English and sharing some of my ideas about personal space.

Once the picture of me in a towel was taken, the photographer started photoshopping my hair. I asked why I needed to look hot, I mean, if I have to impress someone in the visa office, can’t I show a little neck and shoulder? But all my requests to hurry up and print were met with “Just one moment!” “Just one moment!” is apparently a Chinese euphemism like “Ming tian!” and we sat there until the photographer had edited my half-Italian curls into straight Asian hair.

Stick collects unflattering photos of me, the way normal people collect shotglasses or stamps. I think this picture, from the towel over my shoulders to my photoshopped Chinese hairstyle might knock off my GRE ID pictures as the centerpiece of his collection.

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Language Barriers

Posted on May 9, 2006 by Meg

In the beginning of Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw says that English dialects are so varied that an Englishman cannot open his mouth in public without another Englishman instantly hating him. He might have been writing about China in 2006, but instead of disliking the speaker, the listeners are at a total loss to understand him. It’s not just a lao wei problem, most Chinese movies and TV stations are also subtitled in Chinese because residents can’t understand each other.

Fresca and I wandered in to a Qingdao street market as part of our ongoing quest to try all the barbarqued tofu in Shandong. We bought scallion bread and rice dumplings and strawberries, which was a lot harder than in sounds. First, because we can’t understand what they’re saying with Qingdao accents. Even when we use the Chinese handsigns for what we want and how many we want, the vendors seem to interpret “2 dumplings” as “Please call the rest of your family over to see the Americans. Really. And touch my hair, I love that.”

We found a low stone wall to sit down, eat our lunch and attract stares. One woman stared open-mouthed at us as she passed… ok, a lot of women did but I’m mentioning this one because she had pink hair*. Our picnic spot turned out to be next to an office and the men inside all poured out onto the steps to ask us the usual questions “Are you Russian?” and “Are you sisters?”, tell us that we’re beautiful and watch us eat. Once they realize that my Chinese is exhausted by “Hello, we are Americans” they go back inside.

They tap on the window from inside, and point to two chairs in their breakroom. We don’t go in, of course, and after a moment, one man come out to give me his business card and say “Welcome to China!” in English. I accept the card with both hands, but I can’t figure out a single character on it

After eating, and waving goodbye to our audience, we took a taxi to the Tsingtao brewery. The driver asked if we like Tsingtao beer, and told us that we’re beautiful. (sensing a theme here?) I tried to tell him that I’m a teacher but I accented lao shi wrong, and I told him “I am an English mouse.”

*Fresca would like you to know that one of us shouted “WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT? YOU HAVE PINK HAIR!!!” and that it wasn’t her.

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Qingdao Adventures

Posted on May 8, 2006 by Meg

We decided to wander around Qingdao to find a good place to have dinner. Ok, that’s not exactly true. I remember saying something about finding a German place for dinner, because I remember thinking that a town that was a German concession and holds a huge brewery, there would be lots of German restaurants. Or at least a few. Or, um, one.

After a pedestrian tour of Qingdao (get it? that was funny) we wound up at a hotel restaurant, the kind with no menus, where you walk up to the saran-wrapped buffet and pick which dishes you want cooked for you.

Fresca and I walked around the buffet, accompanied by no less than seven waiters and waitresses, to point out what we wanted to eat, at which point the staff would tell us we can’t have it.

“Listen! They’re saying Bu fan bian de!” I tell Fresca. She gives me the look that means Chinese culture, while fascinating, is not more important than food and sleep. (Did I mention that I just got a book on China since Mao, and I spent most of the ride to Qingdao waking her up to read interesting parts?)

Bu fan bian de is a Chinese phrase that means “not suitable” or “not a good idea”. Basically, I asked for a dish that consisted of pancakes and halved cherry tomatoes and then I was told I couldn’t have it.

“I must tell you, this dish contains tomatoes so it might not be suitable for you,” said one of the waiters.

“Tomato good,” I tell him, because my comprehension has far outstripped my speech.

We also pick a plate of thin-sliced salmon and cucumbers. This time, the staff tells us firmly that this is not sushi. Fresca asks me if maybe they think we think we’re in Japan. I ask her if maybe the unintelligable words are the Chinese for bagel and dilled cream cheese.

Fresca orders an orchid salad, and when our food arrives, we’re suprised to learn that tonight, the part of orchids will be played by spicy peanuts.

I also order beer, but am told that Yantai beer is not suitable. When in Qingdao, drink Tsingtao, I suppose. We try to get tea, and the waiters ask Fresca what kind. Without a list of options or any idea how our food will taste, Fresca defers to the waitress. The waitress, stunned by the responsibility of choosing for tea for the foreigners, consults the other four waiters watching us. We picked ou the words “chrysanthemum” and “10 kwai” and say ok.

When our food arrives, the salmon adventure turns out to be Chinese lox with a lemon-wasabi dipping sauce. The entire staff watches us eat, including men in aprons from the kitchen, and all the other patrons. The food is awesome, and I am pleased to hear kuan xi (chopsticks) and hen hao (very good) from our audience.

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