invading china

lessons from my first day of PIB ("Putting It in the Butt")

2008-06-24T16:45:00.003+08:00

Sorry for not updating this thing for two weeks; I've been lazy. So this time you get three posts, all written at different times. I didn't really want to make the effort to upload the pictures, but Jia has nothing better to do than read my blog. (She's in Kentucky. Pity her.) Anyway!

1. Yale's Chinese program isn't amazing. Sorry, Light - you might even already know that, as you're sending us to other schools' programs. But anyway, the Princeton students who are at my equivalent level know so much more than I do. Dear god, this is hard. Thankfully, as Yale takes this as a pass/fail grade and I probably won't apply for credit anyway, I have been able to customize my curriculum and focus on learning vocabulary instead of writing. They really know how to run a language program here, with a lot of one-on-one time that has improved every facet of my Chinese.

2. Speaking of improvement, a teacher told me today that I was pronouncing about a third of the Chinese language incorrectly. SO looking forward to correcting 18 years of bad habits.

3. I also discovered that I was using an extremely inefficient method to learn how to write characters. I decided to try a new method here, and it has been working pretty well. I don't know whether I should feel good about myself or feel stupid for wasting about 500 hours last year.

4. Princeton girls are ugly. I have to go clubbing with Matt this weekend.

5. Alcohol is too cheap here. What's that, a bottle of rice wine is the equivalent of 66 cents? Let me see if I have enough change on me. (Disclaimer: a Heineken is like 10 bucks.)

6. Chinese is sooooo hard.

7. Listening to music with English lyrics screws with your Chinese learning ability. Romanian music (I don't know either) might work, or string quartet tributes might do it for you. Me, being Asian, didn't really like those, so I started listening to techno. I never used to like it, but it makes for great background music.

8. When you take a language pledge to not speak any English for eight weeks, it helps immensely to learn some Chinese curses. Favorites:
烂屄 - "rotten cunt"
公共汽车 - "public bus" (for the more...friendly girls out there. "Everyone gets a ride.")

9. Speaking of friendly girls, apparently there are widespread cases of girls coming up to you in clubs and, without any kind of action on your part, will start dancing with you. (This may be an indication of how bad Chinese males' game is. The girls do the initiating.) Wait, it gets better - then she'll want to hook up and take you home. So you guys leave, and she insists that you go to her place. She takes you up to her pitch-black apartment (or a dark alley), and two huge guys jump out, kick your ass, take your money, swipe your credit card on a machine to get your information, and leave you in a puddle. (This is, thankfully, a lesson that I did not have to experience for myself.)

10. Saying, "Can you introduce me to some Chinese snacks? I don't really know what tastes good. Do you know?" to a not-so-skinny convenience store attendant could be a mistake.

they don’t have particularly clean water, but at least they have sprite

2008-06-24T16:42:00.005+08:00

I am on the train from Nanchang, Jiangxi to Jinhua right now. I just spent the last few days in Nanchang, living with my dad’s side of the family. I have been bored to death. Of course, in a wonderful example of you-want-what-you-can’t-have syndrome, I will immediately wish I were back here in two days, when the super-intense work starts in Beijing. But for now, I’ll just sit here bored-but-free and blog about Jinhua.

Anyway, a few days ago, we went to my grandma’s old village, a mere thirty minutes outside of Jinhua. As soon as we got out of the van, it stank. And that means a lot in China, where some streets literally smell like shit, and you have to hold your breath before you go to the bathroom.

We were looking to buy a burial place for my grandparents, and the location we settled on, next to the large water reservoir and surrounded by mountains, had pretty good 风水 (feng shui—not the hipster kind).

Then we found the source of the stink—a soap factory. Its construction was the stimulus for the village’s recent economic development. For some reason, government officials did not find its location—across the street from the water reservoir—particularly disturbing.

After digging for graves, we went to my 姨婆’s (my grandmother’s sister’s—anyone know what that is in English?) house for dinner.

This was where there were forty mosquitoes in the room. We saw where they used to keep the pigs, the lily pond behind their house, and—what I found most fascinating—their stove. They use real fire. Real fire as in you don’t get gas or electric, you get branches and twigs and make fire every night. See picture below:

You go around the left side to feed the fire; a lot of smoke comes out of the right side and colors the ceiling completely black.

As my friend Eddie has also found in rural India, local water is never completely trustworthy. On one hand, you are really disgusted by it. But on the other hand, you realize that your family drinks it every day, and you might as well suck it up. The good news is that the factory-stimulated economic development has given the villagers the resources to buy Sprite, 10” TVs, and the undeniable notion that it was totally, totally worth it.

My 姨公 (my grandmother’s sister’s husband) also gave me some of his homemade white wine. That stuff was at least 120 proof. In the latest example of my Asian heritage, I was buzzed after a shot and a half. My grandpa was amazed I could hold it down, and in his eyes, I completed my transformation from boy to man.

"i'll have some of...that"

2008-06-24T16:33:00.010+08:00

My grandparents’ new apartment is literally right next to a Westernized supermarket, which is kind of hit-or-miss. As Lena thankfully warned me ahead of time, they don’t sell deodorant. But they do sell four mint-covered Oreos (ohmygodsogood) for 7 kuai = one dollar = some people’s hourly wage. I am really lazy, so here are some pictures that take up lots of space and make my job easy. (By the standard of a picture = a thousand words, this post is more than six thousand words long. Imagine if we could do that on papers.)

This is the market in front of the old apartment. See that red thing spinning around in the middle? It’s actually a plastic bag attached to this motorized string. The plastic bag spins around to scare away flies. Each stand has one. The Chinese will invent everything.

Amphibians. They’re what’s for dinner. (In case you were wondering, frog is much tastier than turtle. It’s kind of like a chewy chicken, with slimier skin. Mmm.)

We really do like our rice.

Modern “grocery stores” are basically department stores. (Walmart has one floor that’s a supermarket, and another floor of other goods.) They sell everything, from ergonomic car seat pads (some of you know what I’m talking about) to computers to gems like this. The text reads, “Have a boty and the happy wondog toming cat.” Super-cool!

Completely irrelevant:

Boy in blue stripes: “Hold up, baby, my room is that way. Baby! Don’t go…”

the exorcist

2008-06-09T22:56:00.001+08:00

Mosquitoes are direct proof of intelligent design—when Satan sat down and tried to figure out how to screw over the human race, he created the mosquito. Mosquitoes are more prevalent on the outskirts of the city, where I’m living—my grandparents’ apartment doesn’t have space for me and my mom, so we’re living with my great-aunt-in-law. I think at this point, I have gotten around 30 bites. They are mainly on my legs and arms, the only parts of my body I leave exposed at night. I have also slain around 30 mosquitoes. Here is my mosquito journal:

Days 1-3: What the hell. I have at least 16 bites on my legs and feet. There is one on the fricken bottom of my foot. There is a mosquito flying around this very room. I tried to kill it, but it flew away. So I shall lie in wait and bide my time.

Day 4: My mosquito problem seems to have been solved. My great-aunt-in-law is a really awesome host and burnt this Chinese coal that’s designed to scare mosquitoes away. You buy these coils, and you just light it with a match and let it burn for a while. It smells exactly like hookah. Maybe the mosquitoes just get high and don’t feel like bothering you anymore.

Day 5: My great-aunt is amazing. She bought a mosquito net for us. It is pretty high-tech, with a dome and zippers. I haven’t really gotten any bites at night, but my grandparents’ apartment is another story. To my surprise, mosquitoes can fly 15 stories to bite you. In fact, a lot of them will. We even saw one on the elevator, but I chased it out onto the 12th floor.

Day 6: Over the last few days, I have been honing my mosquito-hunting skills to a tee. The first few days, I was smushing them between my hands in my great-aunt’s bathroom. The bathroom, I’ve found, is the best place to hunt—they flock to the bathroom in search of water, and more importantly, all of the surfaces are white, so they can’t hide (dark floors and furniture = mosquitoes’ best friend). My hunting reached its peak today; armed with a fly swatter, I killed around 15 mosquitoes in my grandparents’ bathroom. It is holy work. The way I see it, mosquitoes are clearly spawn of Satan, if not the devil himself, split into a million pieces. (Imagine that—all of the mosquitoes in the world uniting to form a body. That could totally be Satan.) So by killing them, I am exorcising bad spirits from this world.

Day 7: Ugh. We just went to my grandmother’s old village to look at potential tomb sites and have dinner at her sister’s house. The village is rural—mud roads and rice fields rural—and it is chock full of mosquitoes. During dinner, I kept fidgeting (it’s the best way to avoid bites) and tried to not think about the fact that I counted at least 40 different mosquitoes in the room. Yeah. Forty.

"coming back only to move out"

2008-06-09T22:42:00.007+08:00

So to bring you guys up to speed, I’ve been spending the last few days in Jinhua, a relatively small city of 4.5 million. It’s in the same province as Hangzhou.

Gross. The bottoms of my feet are actually black. Jinhua is dirty. I’ve spent the entirety of my stay helping my grandparents move out of their apartment, and they live in the middle of the city, complete with construction sites, garbage heaps, and dust everywhere. I wash my feet when I shower, and when I step into my flip-flops in the morning, I can feel a layer of dust. Also, although it gets bright every day, I don’t think I’ve seen the sun itself—the sky is cloaked in smog.

My aunt put it really well: I’m “coming back only to move out.” I thought packing up my stuff at school was hard. My grandparents are literally packing up their entire lives—75 years’ worth of clothes, pictures, and heirlooms. My back aches. Still, I don’t mind cleaning up their mess while they sit around and do nothing—after all, I’m sure they did it countless times for me when I was a baby.

Speaking of which, while cleaning and setting up the new apartment, I organized all of my grandparents’ old photos. Looking through the pictures with my grandparents was very warm and fuzzy, and I gained a new appreciation for those shutterbugs out there who take pictures of everything. It really does help you recall old memories.

I'm having trouble uploading some of the pictures, but this one works:

I always liked to dress up.

chris goes to the hospital (again, but in china)

2008-06-04T22:15:00.008+08:00

So the second day in Hangzhou, I went to the hospital. But before I tell you why, let me tell you about breakfast!

Haha, it looks like food will be a hot topic for this blog. Anyway, I had some great 肉包子 (meat buns) and 豆浆 (soy milk) for breakfast today. Chinese soy milk isn't the stuff that you get in the fridge at Wawa—it's freshly squeezed (like orange juice, but not) and it's served really hot. You can either have it sweet (good choice) or sour (bad choice). The sweet version just has sugar added to it; the sour version has soy sauce, fried dough, and chives added to it. Gross.

Because standards of hygiene in China and the U.S. aren't exactly the same, it's difficult to determine whether or not to eat at a street stand. Not many are clean. We were fortunate enough to find one that was part of a chain of breakfast restaurants which is known for good service. Still, I realized that it's nice to eat earlier than the other customers—that way, I know that my chopsticks and bowls weren't washed in some grimy, bacteria-thriving solution in the sink. The early bird doesn't get the worm(s).

Oh yeah, this guy had sweet reading glasses. You do what you gotta do to keep up with the news.

I brought my camera around with me on the second day. I really regretted not being able to take pictures the day before—the paths around the lake are right at sea (lake?) level, and the scenery is amazing. I also wanted to get the crowds doing tai chi in the morning and the slow-dancing class of old couples by the lake, but we drove by too fast.

Hangzhou, like pretty much everything else—the U.S.'s human rights policy, public opinion of Paris Hilton, my feelings towards working out—is a clash of opposites. It's full of beautiful gardens, yet at the same time, the skyline is full of skyscrapers. The city isn't set up like New York City, with Central Park and then some trees here and there—the gardens are EVERYWHERE.

So, about the hospital! Don't worry, this trip was planned. My grandmother is growing old, so she had to make the two-hour trip to Hangzhou to see a specialist at the hospital. I've never been to an American hospital except to go to the ER, so I don't know how they really work. But this is how they run hospital service here: the front desk opens at 7:00 am. You line up to get a ticket from the front desk, and your ticket has your number for a certain department. It's like a deli, except the lines are huge. The desk attendants are extremely efficient, though—everything in China is based on mass consumption.

The line in front of us.

The line remaining when we left.

We had gotten there around 6:30 to wait in line, and we got to see the doctor at 8:00. Then we had to go to testing, where we waited for a while, and then we saw the doctor again at 2:00. I think we left the hospital around 5:00 pm, and made the two-hour trek to Jinhua, where I am now.

Oh, one final note—in line with the whole "heaven on Earth" thing, Hangzhou is supposed to have the prettiest girls in all of China.

I have very low expectations for the rest of the country.

a good dumpling

2008-06-04T08:22:00.002+08:00

What makes a good dumpling? The question never occurred to me until a few days ago, when the pathetic existence heretofore known as "my life" was given new meaning. This trip is already a success. I have eaten the best fried dumplings ever known to man.

The first two days I was in China, I was in Hangzhou, a city famous for two things: 1) being a former capital, and 2) being one of two locations in China known as "heaven on Earth." There's a (horribly translated) saying that while heaven exists up there, on Earth we have Hangzhou. It's a beautiful city—there's a giant lake in the middle, and mountains surround the city. Trees line all of the streets, and botanical gardens are everywhere. It's also great for tourists, although there aren't that many foreigners—I saw a Hooters, lots of clubs and expensive restaurants, and lots of pretty photo spots.

(I'm in Jinhua now, but I figured I'd write about my first few days here. Will update with current happenings later.)

Me and my mom stayed at the Pod Inn—it's this new international chain of cheap, made-for-students hotels. We got a room for two for $18 a night. The room was okay. It was smaller than our individual rooms at Yale, and it came complete with bunk beds and two computers with Internet access—but no dressers, soap, or toothbrushes. At least they know where students’ priorities lie.

Traveling with my mom is interesting. On one hand, we spend a lot of time haggling for really expensive clothes in silk shops. On the other hand, she is a wonderful guide and knows exactly what I like to eat. On the first day, we had dinner at this really expensive buffet on the lake (which cost $12 per person hahaha). We tried some things that worked (ostrich meat is SO tender and juicy) and some things that didn't (duck feet and ox tongue—meh).

Earlier in the day, we had lunch at a famous fast-food restaurant whose name, 知味观, roughly translates to "Temple of Eating Knowledge." (It sounds elegant in Chinese. I swear.) Fast-food, Chinese style, involves buying tickets at the front desk and then going to different counters around the room to order. Picture a food court, except five times louder, ten times more crowded, and with people pushing and shoving to order instead of waiting in line. Fun times. We ate 猫耳朵 ("cat ears"), which is one of my favorite Chinese dishes—it's basically small balls of dough soaked in a simple broth with some small pieces of meat and vegetables.

We also had these wonderful, blessed dumplings. I had no idea fried dumplings could taste so good. A good dumpling requires many things—it should be small enough for you to eat without stuffing your mouth, and it should be hot but not scalding. The bottom of the skin should be crispy, while the top should be so soft that you want to sink your teeth in and chew it all day. Most of all, the pork and chives inside and the dough outside should be soaked in oil, so that the flavor explodes in your mouth when you first taste the skin—and then continues to please when you bite in. Yum.

first blog post ever.

2008-05-27T11:56:00.001+08:00

So given that this blog is about my escapades in China, there is not much to write about right now. However, being extremely OCD, I felt the need to fill the empty space with something. So here's my schedule for the rest of the summer:

5/30: 14-hour plane ride. God, I hate planes. It has nothing to do with fear of flying--it's more the stale air, crying babies, and fat guy to my left who likes to hog the armrest.

5/30-6/20: Visiting family in Jinghua (Zhejiang province) and Nanchang (Jiangxi province). When I will probably realize that choosing to spend 3 weeks with my grandparents may have been a bit excessive.

6/20-8/16: Princeton-in-Beijing language program. This is why I'm going to China for free. Thank you, Yale's huge endowment (hahaha).

8/16-8/27: Olympics? Traveling? Who knows. All I know for sure is that I'm homeless. In a foreign country.

8/27: Another god-awful plane ride. Two days at home, then Camp Yale (going back to my second home, I guess).