Mandarin Chinese reminds me of my ex-boyfriend. I mean, it’s so complicated and confusing, there are a few rules but no one really understands why it does those things it does. Sometimes westerners are attracted to Mandarin, but after struggling with it for a while, they give up in disgust. And yet, I’m sickly fascinated by it’s logical beauty, and I stay up late at night, thinking about it.
Man, I hope this works out better for me than he did…
Last night was Calvin’s farewell dinner because he’s leaving to go home to Wales. We went to eat with our boss, her husband, some of their family, some parents of our students and their assorted family.
Once we’re all gathered, everyone stands around the table for a little while. It’s kind of like MeatFest when Mama Hoffmann’s almost done cooking…. There is a hierarchy of seating arrangements, but Chinese modesty and my rather limited Mandarin vocabulary doesn’t tell me if I’m being honored or insulted. Once everyone is seated, we unfold our napkins from the Bishop’s Hat (Ok, so there aren’t any bishops in China. Maybe it’s the Defective Pagoda here) and place them under our plates. Next, we take our chopsticks out of a decorated case. (Why would a culture who makes such gorgeous silks glue rhinestones, little bows and applicae flowers to make a chopstick bag look like a summer camp project? And then, why put these cases next to thin, painted china on a crysanthemum-print silk tablecloth? WHY?!?!) A waitress walks around the table, collecting these cases, and I have to wonder if she’s the one who put the chopsticks out in the first place.
The first dishes are cold, usully some kind of pickles. The pickled innards take a little adjustment, but cold radish and cucumber pickles are a refreshing appetizer. As soon as the first dish is on the table, the fellow next to me slowly asks me in English if I wanna f*ck. Now that I’ve been to a few formal dinners, I’m ready for this. I respond with “No, thank you, I don’t need a fork,” and try not to make eye contact with Calvin. (The abilty to be snarky in a secret language has not been good to either of us) The information that the American is going to use chopsticks is repeated around the table, and when the first dishes make their way to me, all conversation and movement stops so everyone can stare.
Before anyone has a chance to eat much, the drinking begins. The waitress fills sherry-sized glasses with rice wine. I take a sip on the first toast, and wonder if I accidentally ordered paint thinner.Every person at the table raises a toast to someone or something, taps his or her glass on against the lazy-Susan and says “gambai!” when means “drain your glass!” but after a few of them, I am able to switch to red wine. Yantai produces more that one-third of the red wine in China, so far I’ve found that it all tastes like decent table wine.
Stick asked if I think the food is gross because I can’t get over my Western mindset about what’s food. I don’t know if this is true, since I’ve eaten pickled heart, chicken necks and boiled abalones (Not together! That would be gross!). Some of the hot dishes just smell revolting and I can’t bring myself to eat them, regardless of what’s actually in them. Others fool me, I think something is a simple stir-fry but it turns out to be chopped vegetables in vinegar. You reach for the bites you want in the serving dishes with your own chopsticks, and eat them with a bowl of rice. (It’s rude to ask for more rice or to empty your bowl, which is annoying when the rice is the best part of the meal. Still, one can get surprisingly full just trying each dish.
One dish is a whole fish, fins and tails and head, just like in Dinner With Trimalchio. Calvin, as the honored guest, receives the fish head, and must eat the cheeks, a valuable delicacy. Again, we don’t make eye contact, but personally, I think it’s what he deserves. I mean, he could have caused some kind of distraction while everyone was watching my chopstick preformance!
More and more dishes come out, more than our group could possibly eat. As we eat, the waitstaff stands nearby refilling glasses and replacing dirty plates with clean ones. It’s a little disconcerting to be watched so closely as I eat, but it’s very Roman! Chinese people don’t often eat desert, since some sweet dishes are served throughout dinner along with the salty and hot and just plain weird dishes. And there’s no lingering and chatting after the meal, once everyone’s eaten, we get up and leave immediately!
Since you asked: When you eat a Chinese meal in China, you’re not hungry a few hours later.
Later Addition:
Chinese dinners have been described over and over again, but I have narrated this one, as I think few have given an idea of their tediousness and the absence of all that we deem comfort. — Archibald Little, Through the Yangtse Gorges, 1887
Today I had a new student in my Saturday class for middle school kids (their names are Andy, Grant, and Eric… and I am only responsible for Eric’s English name). The new student is a seven-year-old Korean boy, who was saved being named Patrick because he already has an English name. He’s been studying English for 2 years but his mother wants him to come to my Saturday classes to improve his conversation. Also the boys like these classes — they are as impressed by a girl gamer as older boys are.
What we usually do in weekend class is talk about videogames and play some English Hangman (which I call Alien Abduction and the victim goes into an UFO instead of a gallows. Because Hangman’s pretty morbid, if you think about it) or Bingo or Meg May I? and I correct their grammar and give them some new words and new forms.
Anyway, this new boy. He takes English and Korean, in addition to regular school (which is longer in China than at home) and also plays the violin and piano. Once I got him off his cellphone, we started class. But my lesson was on verb tenses. I started by asking everyone what they did over the weekend and what they like to do so we could say “last weekend I playED football, next weekend I WILL play football”. The poor kid had no idea what he does in his spare time because he doesn’t have any!
I tried to remember that he’s only wee, but he spent the rest of class asking for harder vocabulary words. He didn’t want to admit when he didn’t know them, which was extra fun for me. (Hello? I didn’t ace my GREs to take crap from seven-year-olds!)
After class, his mom came by to ask me why I didn’t give him any homework. Um, he’s SEVEN! He’s taking a Saturday class in his third language! Shouldn’t he be off coloring or poking bugs or something? And besides, he has homework — he can look up “legionnaire”, “paleolithic” and “passive periphrastic.”
Mandarin has a separate word for older sister and younger sister. There is a difference between an aunt who’s your mom’s sister, and one who’s married to your uncle, between an uncle on your mom’s side and an uncle on your dad’s side, between the uncle who’s your father’s older brother and one who’s your father’s younger brother. There is a dazzling array of terms for in-laws, step-families and every kind of blended family you can think up. There are varying levels of affection and politeness, from “mother comes late” to “father’s wife.” (as a foreigner, I haven’t been privy to any of the really insulting names, but they exist)
My students, native speakers of this language and the second generation of one-child families, do not have any brothers, sisters or first cousins. The ratio of two parents and four grandparents, and only one child, leads to bizarre situations and unexpected problems in a country which values family so highly.
My Chinese friend Lily asked to see pictures of my friends at home, and when I got to my own “brother” Scep, I tried to explain the situation. I usually just say he’s like a brother, and leave it at that, but Lily nodded said he’s qing mei zhu ma, which means a brother-sister “adoption” between two families. It’s amazing how love of extended family is such an inherent part of the Chinese character that is comes right through the one-child policy.
But I’ll probably tell Scep it means “dumb as pickled chicken hearts.”
Yesterday I went to the hot springs with my school’s headmistress, her husband, and another foreign teacher, Calvin from Wales. People tend to socialize with their coworkers a lot, and questions about an applicant’s marital status and social activities that would never fly on an American job interveiw are important factors in the hiring process here.
I was a little self-conscious when I came out of the dressing room. You know when you put on a bathing suit and you feel like everyone is staring at you? Only this time, everyone really was staring at me! Conversation died. I had to keep reminding myself that the women were looking at my pasty pale skin and lack of a chest, and wishing they looked like me. I’m not kidding. I have a little too much cheekbone and backside to be a model, unfortunately.
The baths are very Roman, full of men discussing business and employees standing ready to bring a robe or a drink. There is a swimming pool, shaped like a ying-yang, with hot water on one side and cold on the other, and one huge stone sphere in either side. There’s also a sauna, tennis courts, massage tables and all kinds of other things you’d find at a spa.
Upstairs from the baths, where I expected to find a grumpy Seneca, is a “resting room,” with recliners, giant TVs and employees to bring you snacks, coffee, beer, blankets and anything else you can think of, as soon as you think of it. I thought about how much Stick would love to chair-coach his Vikings from here, but maybe it’s better that he doesn’t raise his standards. “Baby, could you get me a beer?” is probably the best he can hope for.
I can’t even begin to describe my culture shock! There’s a market near my new home in Yantai full of stands selling fruit, noodles, vegetables, breads, dumplings, seafood and any other kind of food you can imagine. For a few dollars, you can buy more groceries than you can carry, and that’s the ripoff price for Westerners who don’t know any better.
However, they don’t seem to refridgerate anything so the fish market is just a guy with dirty tupperwares full of headless fish and oysters! They also sell animal parts I can’t recognize, and I thought I’d have kind of “live and let live” attitude but it smells awful!
There are street vendors selling meat on a stick, cooked over a fire in what looks like a metal trash can. Others sell big warm pancakes like buttery naan, charred sweet potatoes on a stick and peeled juicy pineapples.
I’ve eaten at a few restruants here, and tried everything that was put in front of me. Including sea cucumber and blood tofu. So far, the food is groos beyond belief. When I find something that I can tolerate having in my mouth, I get really excited and memorize the name so I can ask for it again. Ok, I’ve only done that that twice, actually. Once was an omelette with scallions in it, you rip it into pieces with your chopsticks and eat it with a bowl of rice (which is served cold, not out-of-the-fridge cold, because that would imply a fridge, but sitting-at-room-tempature-for-who-knows-how-long cold).
I went to the grocery store here, there’s a table in the middle where a butcher just hacks an animal to pieces, with a cleaver, sending blood flying. Customers point at the animal part they would like to buy, and it’s not just chops or ribs… I stared at it, like a train wreck, until an assistant wheeled in a new skinned animal. Blood is tracked around the store. There’s a section like a deli, with batter-fried fish, with heads, tails and bones and all, the omnipresent chicken feet and other things I can’t even think about!
The bakery is next to that, and I shop there while trying not to think about what’s behind me. I can’t read Mandarin, not that the names would mean anything to mean, so I point at some kind of cake or buns and say “one, please” in Chinese. I have no idea what I’m getting, sometimes it’s filled with sweet bean paste or sesame seed concoction or revolting cabbage-y pickles.
On the plus side, I’m learning a lot in my travels around town. I can easily recognize the words for “beautiful foreigner” in Mandarin because people say it in the streets as they point at me and stare and sometimes take photographs.
Happy Hallmark Day! I taught my first lesson today, which wasn’t supposed to happen for a week yet, and also I was supposed to have someone observing my first lesson. Yet another example of how schedules don’t exist in China, and I must remind myself to adjust. It went well, though, we talked about Valentine’s Day and then we played winter Olympics hangman.
Speaking of Valentine’s Day, Kristin sent me an e-card, but I can’t read it because it was censored! Must be dirty! And Stick sent me Catullus 32. It begins, Amabo, mea dulcis Ipsitilla… although if you’re a classistic, you’d recognize it by novem continuas fututiones instead.So if anyone else wants to send me something steamy, do it in Latin.
When I arrived in Yantai, after thirty-some hours in transit (and yes, wandering the Beijing airport wondering if I made a huge mistake DOES count as transit time), I was not met by Ji (my new boss) or the promised fluently bilingual staff. Ji had to go to a meeting in Beijing, and so I was met by a girl called Lily holding a paper sign with my email address on it.
We take a bus to the taxi, and in retrospect, I wonder if this is Ji’s inherent stinginess or whether the needs of the disoriented, jet-lagged foreigner just haven’t occured to anyone. The taxi lets us out at my new apartment complex, where it turns out that Lily doesn’t actually know which building we’re going to. She starts to ask passing people and I realize that even when I know she is saying “Where is building seven?”, I can’t recognize even a single word from my Chinese tapes. We circle for a while, pulling my suitcase through the snow, and I’m wondering more and more if I’ve made a collossal mistake.
Lily plunks me in a corner shop to wait while she looks for the building. I sit on my suitcase while the shopkeeper and his wife stare at me. I try out my baby Chinese, but they can’t understand me.
Before I can really wonder if Lily is a kidnapper, she’s back with directions. As we get closer to my new home, a red-haired young man comes out to help me get my bags up the unlit stairs. He introduces himself as Calvin, and, by the way, he’s my roommate.
Lily leaves, and Calvin helps set me up in our apartment. He shows me how to flush the toilet (turn on a tap behind the tank, wait for the tank to fill, flush, turn off the tap) and use the shower (turn on a tap behind the washing machine, wait for the water to warm up, turn off the tap after use) and use the stove (turn on the gas from a can, turn on the burner, give up in the burner, use a match, turn off the gas when finished). We also have a TV screen to show who’s arriving downstairs, an in-building telephone to speak to visitors, a DVD player and the hugest television set I’ve ever seen.
About an hour later, Ji and her husband show up. She tells us she’s just come back from spending Spring Festival in Mongolia in order to meet the new teacher. That’s me, but I tell them that I’m too tired to go to dinner. I mention that it’s over 30 hours from New Jersey to Yantai (Does no one here understand that I’ve been sitting up for over a day?). She says she understands and she went to graduate school in Canada. I ask where, we chat about Toronto for a moment, and they leave.
Calvin and I wrap ourselves in blankets because the electricity went out on the previous day, and the heater is still running overtime to catch up. We lie on the couches — for some reason, we have huge leather couches — like cocoons and talk.
Last night was Lantern Festival in China! This is the first full moon after Spring Festival / Chinese New Year. Lantern Festival is celebrated by spending the day with your family and eating a lot of a certain kind of dumpling together. If you don’t eat them, then your ears fall off (ok, that’s what I THOUGHT he said, but it might be a translation problem!).
After eating dinner, you go outside the foreign teachers’ apartment and light off as many fireworks as you can. In every direction. All night. The louder the better.
