That Pope and his Rock Music

I am getting pretty good at being able to tell if my employee, Mark, is understanding what I'm saying. Sometimes he doesn't, and I'll have to ask him two or three times before he finally admits that he doesn't understand one of the words of the sentence. He thinks he gets it anyway, but usually it's one of the rather more important words.

And I can tell when he dismisses a throwaway sentence, knowing what I mean without knowing the meaning. And--I actually started doing it without thinking about it, and only realized it yesterday--I've started throwing in extra phrases when I know he's not understanding/listening.

For instance, yesterday. I was talking about how we're going out of town again on Monday. I said we'd get back on Wednesday, "and--" (in reference to preparing for/meeting with a potential landlord) "rock it out." I saw Mark's eyes glaze a little, and he glanced to the left. The sign. So I quickly added, "as the Pope would say."

And yeah. Not a flinch.

It happened too fast for me to have willingly, consciously done it. I really hope that it keeps happening, though. I'll let you know how it progresses.

Sitting with the Fruit-Seller

I probably spend at least 45 minutes every day walking down the street--I try to walk pretty much everywhere I need to go unless I'm late, especially as the weather's been getting better over the last few weeks. Normally every day I would greet, and maybe sit down with, a man who has a tent where he sells fruit about halfway down my street. Lately he hasn't been there--his tent's been closed down--and today it made me start thinking about him a lot.

I remember one time in particular that I sat down with him. He sits there all day, and different friends come, sit for awhile, and go. Normally no one says very much--we all just watch the people walking by, maybe exchange a few comments about the weather. He's a man who knows how to pass the time.

Well, this particular time I noticed that he had a bird in a cage--and I told him that it was beautiful. And it was--it's one of the dark-colored mountain birds that are beautiful, yes, but untame. As you walk up, each will glare at you with a wild, yellow eye and beat its wings against the cage.

Well, when I commented on it, the look in his eyes immediately showed me that I'd said the right thing, and it's clearly something he cares for. And he reached over, opened the cage, and took it out to sit on his hand.

The bird obviously didn't share his sentiment. It immediately started pecking his hand with its incredibly sharp beak. When it started pecking one spot over and over, he would slowly turn his hand, so that it wouldn't start tearing out a lot of flesh. It had to hurt, but he just continued to look at it in love and wonder, offering only a soft smile, handling it gently.

After about a minute he put it back in its cage--and I saw flecks of blood all over his hand where the skin had been punctured in several places. There was something really special about the moment. But something would be lost in the interpretation. I'll just leave you with the story.

Hua'er Cafe?

So! After a ridiculously busy week that included a last-minute trip to the big city to get the company's name approved, I got the company's name approved! The good news is that now we know the name of, if not the coffee shop, at least the business. The bad news is that it doesn't translate very well into English. Go figure.

It's the 花儿餐饮有限公司. The last part basically means that we're a company that deals with food and drinks--basically it indicates that we're in the business of starting restaurants/drink shops. The first two words, "Hua'er," are a little more difficult to explain.

Basically, a long time ago in our area, men would be way too embarrassed to tell women how they felt about them. So, instead of going through the immense embarrassment of a red-faced "I like how your shoes are so sparkly," they would instead sing a song they would make up as they went along, that implies that they like the girl. To me, impromptu songs are a few more rungs up the ladder as far as embarrassment goes. But anyways: those songs are called hua'er.

Mark gave me an example of what a hua'er would be like: "Everywhere I look, I see pairs. The doves in the sky are two, and every railroad track has a mate. But I am alone. I use all my strength to climb the highest mountain. I look down, and I see a beautiful flower." THE END. Sorry, girls--we're too manly around here to actually say (sing) anything directly about a woman ever.

I told my friend that I'm going to sing a hua'er to the next girl I date. But it's probably going to just be an out of tune rendition of the following: "I climb a mountain... and I see this flower, right? It's a really beautiful one... and its name may or may not rhyme with someone's name who's in this room right now. Hint hint."

Eventually it became a genre of folk song, and a man and a woman would, at festivals, stand on different ridges of mountains around here and sing hua'er to each other. Nowadays, there are still hua'er festivals, but they sound slightly less dramatic.

I like the fact that it was a spontaneous, impromptu love song that rose in spite of embarrassment. You get the feeling that the guys had no other ways of expressing incredibly strong emotion, so eventually they just had to start to sing--and the only way they wouldn't be completely embarrassed was to sing something that would take some interpretation. It makes me think of the love song that stirs in our hearts when we see those first buds of spring, wake from a nap on the couch to a light breeze blowing through the apartment, or lay in bed in the early morning, inexplicably awake, listening to the rain.

Although, admittedly, Spring's not coming easy. It snowed again today. But I didn't mind. Something about the sound afterwards of it melting--like the whole world was dripping to the ground.

That whole Spring thing?

Yeah, scratch that. It's been sleeting and snowing for the past couple of hours, right in the middle of the day.

Popsicle Scandal Shocks Small Town

Newspapers today probably read, "Tempers flared today as the foreigner accused respected local businesswoman of trying to cheat him on popsicle purchase." The dialogue went something like this, as I approached the smiling, laughing proprietor, who was obviously having a wonderful day before I ruined it:

Me: "I'd like to buy [this popsicle]."

Her: "That'll be 1.5 kuai."

Me: "Really? It's not 1 kuai?"

Her: "No, it's not 1 kuai. It's 1.5 kuai everywhere. I'M NOT TRYING TO CHEAT YOU. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BUY IT, DON'T BUY IT."

Me (handing her 2 kuai): "Ah, I'm sorry. Really, 1.5 kuai is okay."

Her: "1.5 KUAI IS NOT 'OKAY'. IT'S THE PRICE. ASK ANYONE. ASK THAT OTHER WOMAN SELLING POPSICLES. I'M NOT A CHEAT."

Me: "I mean, 1.5 kuai is really good! I'm sorry! Thank you very much!"

Is that Idaho? Or a kidney?

Every day after class, I walk to lunch through a street where people are butchering sheep on the side of the road, with large numbers of carcasses just hanging up next to them. And today, I wasn't really paying attention, and I came *so* close to stepping on a random organ that had made its way to the street. It's the type of thing where you see it at the last moment, and immediately exert all your strength to lunge forward and step past it.

I think maybe it was a sheep's kidney.

I feel like I should be able to be a little more definitive about that. I think if I saw where it was positioned in the sheep I could've figured it out--but when it's lying in the street, it's a little more difficult. It's like how you can name a state if all the lines are drawn, but it might be difficult to draw Idaho, for instance, in the exact right location on a blank map (Idaho in this way--and maybe others?--is much like that nameless internal organ thrown in the street).

Spring!

Now, it snowed here last Wednesday. My heat actually runs from November 1st to March 31st, and it snowed on October 31st and April 1st. Awesome.

But it seems like now we've finally entered spring. Just in the last two days I've seen a lot of trees budding and flowers blooming.


I went for a long walk today to enjoy the sun and warm weather (and because I didn't have anything else to do), and tried to snap a few pictures on my way.


I'm assuming that this is home-made incense out drying in the sun--perhaps because the family used all theirs up during last weekend's GHOST FESTIVAL. Which, unfortunately, is nothing like Halloween. There are a lot less costumes and candy involved, and a lot more burning your possessions (including cars and houses) to appease your ancestors.


A shot of the 70-100 or so mosques in our city.

So! At one point in the day I went over to Red Park Square, which is pretty near my home, and read for awhile. While I was doing this, a *really* old man wandered over and started looking at my book. He tried to start talking to me about it but his accent was so strong, at first I could barely understand what he was saying. Finally I realized that he was pointing at different letters and saying them, like 'M. C. B." And really, those were the only ones he knew. He kept finding M's, C's, and B's.

So finally these two young boys came over, and started laughing at him when they saw what he was doing. Finally he asked, "What, can you speak English?" They said yes, and then he asked, "Well, then what does 'M' mean?" And the kids started dying laughing again. And the old man furiously starts yelling at me and everyone within a mile radius, "These kids think they know English, but they don't even know what 'M' means!"

I was trying really hard not to laugh, and mostly succeeded.

In other news, I just ate a hot dog type of thing without properly cooking it (I just microwaved it)--which I only realized afterwards may be somewhat more ill-advised in China. Well... I've always wanted to check out the inside of the local hospital--be crossing your fingers!

Vegetarians and Paper Shredders

A few days ago, I was in class learning about food from my employee, Mark.

Mark : If someone is trying to cheat you, and you are getting angry, you can say, "[DON'T TRY TO CHEAT ME! I'M NOT A] CHI SU DE REN."
Me (writing it down) : Ah, okay.
Mark : Or, you can say about someone else, "[Don't try to cheat him. He's not a] chi su de ren."
Me (with a look of realization) : Wait. Wait. "Chi su de ren"? Vegetarian?
Mark : Yes!

So, basically here 'Vegetarian' is an insult reserved for the gullible. Sorry, Michael and Amy. When you come, I'll do my best to explain that you don't eat meat, but you're not 'vegetarians,' per se.

And then, yesterday:

Me (seeing a paper shredder) : I want one of these so bad.
Mark : Oh... what is it?
Me : It says in Chinese what it is.
Mark : But what does it do?
Me : It cuts up paper!
Mark : I know, but... why?
Me : So other people can't read it!
Mark (laughing) : But you can just burn it!

Silly Americans with their paper shredders.

It's sort of been awhile. I make no apologies!

So. Instead of waiting and making some massive post about EVERYTHING that's been going on, I'm going to put a few random pictures on here to try and sum up the past few months. But this doesn't mean that my time was divided evenly between the actions present in the pictures, or I would've spent about a month just eating Holethings. Which doesn't sound like a bad idea, but sadly wasn't a possibility.


One might think that a Holething would be something like a donut hole, but One would be wrong. In fact, it is a donut on a plastic stick. Note that Valentine's Day Holethings are available, next to the normal Holethings that you've come to know and love.


This speaks for itself. I think with this kind of name, you're not exactly giving your business the chance it deserves. It doesn't exactly bode well. Anyways, when we went to this place Michael paid probably a little too much to get "Sandwiched," wherein the cooks get to throw sandwiches at you for about a half hour. But I guess it was a pretty interesting cultural experience.


Would've been nice if I wasn't brutally ill basically the whole time I was on vacation.


This mall really, really felt like America. But a little bit cooler than America. And at the moment, significantly hotter than America.


And... back. I wish my apartment wasn't always this messy. But, as the Rolling Stones song "You Can't Always Get What You Want" wisely says, you can't always get what you want.

And now I'm running out of batteries on my laptop. But! You guys should know, I've begun the process of starting the coffee shop. As soon as we find an actual location (cross your fingers), we're on.

You can call me Bond. Mister Bond. Mister Bond Coffee.

My computer has been making funny noises. If I appear to drop off the face of the Earth, I wanted you all to know what likely happened.

More posts to come about the winter! But for now, I felt like I needed to leave some mirth in my wake. But, how can I best acquire mirth, you may ask, in a culture in which happiness is perceived so differently from the one in which I was socialized?


I buy it! And here is a reproduction of the text on this can of (sort of) coffee-like mirth:

Mr.
Bond
coffee

American pattern

>> I'm young...I'm coffee

Friends from Afar (But Not That Afar)

So! It is going to take a few posts to really describe everything that's been going on here. First of all! As some of you may know, a certain high school friend came with a friend to visit me in December, as he was on Winter Break from his teaching position in Hong Kong. Call it an FHS 5 1/2 year reunion, I guess.


It was really great having friends in. Scott stayed with me and we put Diana up at a nearby hotel. In the mornings we'd run around the city a little bit, I'd work in the afternoons while they continued to poke around, and in the evenings we'd have dinner with friends and see whatever sights we could manage. Scott and I stayed up late every night talking, and it was a wonderful, though exhausting, few days. It was also during Korban, so tons of people were herding rams down the city streets twenty and thirty at a time to the mosques for people to buy and slaughter, celebrating Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son.


Not only that, but one day I took a day off work so we could take a one-night trip up to a city in former Tibet, the site of one of the world's most important Tibetan Buddhist temples. We stayed in an amazing little American-style lodge called the Red Rock Inn, which put us back about 20 yuan ($2.50) for the night.


We had a heck of a lot of fun while they were here. It was great hesitantly introducing an old friend to a new home that I love, and seeing him and his friend begin to love it as well. It was great getting to know Diana. It was fun talking about books, movies, and music. And I have to admit, the fact that I won basically every time we played cards or Settlers of Catan didn't hurt. I'm hoping that this semester he'll take the time to practice a little. Next time he comes to my city, he needs to bring his A-game.

Also! They came bearing gifts from Hong Kong, and they bought me even more housewarming gifts while they were in my city, including a set of coffee cups and a sweet clock that matches my furniture. It was really kind, not to mention the kindness of traveling out here just to see me in the first place. And I hope that they enjoyed themselves, and I genuinely feel like they did.

To be continued...

A New Home

I've had a new apartment for awhile now. But I guess I'm finally starting to have a new "home." Many of you have probably heard me wax poetic on that word plenty, so I won't go into it again here. But I thought you might like to see the progression of my living space over the course of the past week and a half or so.

12/11/2007 - The Beginning


12/12/2007 - After Carpet Installed on 12/11


12/12/2007 - After Light Fixture on 12/12


12/23/2007 - After Furniture Bought on 12/15 and Christmas Tree Put Up on 12/22

Thanksgiving, Etc.

So. This is actually something I wrote a while ago about my trip up to former Tibet for Thanksgiving, and now I thought I'd go ahead and put it on my blog.


I left our city on Saturday with a couple of friends. I suppose we got up there at about one o'clock and started eating almost immediately. We had chicken; stuffing; garlic mashed potatoes; rolls; tacos and fiesta chicken care of the Brazilians, Mexicans, and Peruvians; sweet potato casserole; a pork roast; spinach with cheese; and desserts including, but not limited to, apple pie, pecan pie, Tollhouse pie, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake, and regular cheesecake. It was pretty unbelievable.

After lunch, the guys all headed out to this field in the middle of *nowhere* for some good, old-fashioned flag football. There was nothing around but plains, and then massive mountains in the distance--it looked like we were playing on the moon. We ended up playing for three hours or so, at the end of which I was personally covered with dirt, and with my fair share of wounds. I went ahead and told the others that I wasn't even going to try to catch any long passes, but I ended up playing a good game--scoring a couple of points and making an interception.


That night, one of the couples there had us over to their apartment. It's very warm, and decorated like Christmas. And we were all packed in, laying all over everything, and just drinking coffee and chatting. It really reminded me of all the late-night talks we'd have with friends in college.

The next morning we had a pretty unbelievable gathering, where we all talked about what we were thankful for. I talked about how thankful I was just that I could be there with so many close friends, having something that really felt like a holiday. I also talked about being thankful that things are allowed to happen to us that we wouldn't have chosen, because we would always choose poorly. We also talked and sang about Christmas coming up.

I ended up staying another day, rather unexpectedly, which was really more of the same--excellent times with people that I hope to continue to get closer to. Then, the next day, it was back home.

As another random piece of information, the next Sunday, I ended up leading an English corner of about ten students.

Afterwards I had dinner with the teacher who'd set it up, one of his old students, now about 30, who'd come to the English corner, and my best friend here. It was one of the best times I've had in China so far, with everyone interacting very pleasantly, everyone relaxed and engaging each other. Even though most of the conversation was in the local dialect which I can't understand at all, it was just... perfect. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I felt incredibly comfortable around each of the individuals. But something about it reminded me of home.

Put on your red shoes...

A post is pretty long overdue here--so much has been happening! For now I want to talk about three weekends ago, when I took a trip to the Big City for my friend's birthday.

I took a Santana (read: car) to get there, and as always, it wasn't without incident. At one point we came up on a huge crowd of people standing in the road. We stopped, and they all started shouting and banging on the windows. As it turns out, a man had just gotten in an accident and was very badly injured--he was covered in blood.

We all got out of the car, they put him in, and he was rushed to the hospital as we got on a bus. It was disturbing--I think everyone knew he was going to die. I hope he made it, but I don't know how likely that is.

The bus went to the hospital and dropped us off to get back in our original car (well, our original car, but with a little more blood everywhere). And we continued on to the city.

I'll just give you the highlights, the first of which is the school dance that three friends and I attended that night. First of all, my friends all told me that they weren't going to dance. But anyone who knows me knows that I don't put up with things like that. So when the music started, sure enough I had them all out on the dance floor, and we were having a great time.

However, then the slow dancing started. They all sat down, with all kinds of excuses--they didn't know how to dance, they were shy, etc. Well, almost immediately a girl asked me to dance. I danced with her for about a minute, and then said, "Actually--can you help me? Can you teach my friend how to dance?" She reluctantly agreed, and I had a teacher for one of my friends.

This happened two more times, though, so all my friends had teachers, and ended up having a blast. It was nice to be in one of those situations where I knew how to be the hero--where I just knew how to help my friends have a great time. So many times I feel like that's all but impossible here.

Then, the next highlight was the next day at the SNACK FESTIVAL 2K7.

Which apparently was going on. They had foods from all over, including Hong Kong, Japan, and India. I had rice cooked in bamboo, Japanese tofu, some type of... other... Japanese... thing... involving eggs, Shanghai dumplings, and some other interesting types of rice and teas.

I opted out of some of the *most* interesting foods (pictured above), as I was about to take a three-hour bus ride.

Road Work

What would a place be without its evil geniuses, hatching plots deep in the city's streets? You're right; not much of a place at all.

Thankfully, we've got 'em in droves. Doesn't this look like something you'd see at Universal Studios? I bet Batman would love to break up this party.

The Big Chill

So, at this point, writing this as my heat is on and sunlight is pouring through my window, it's hard to even think to write about just how cold it was Before. Before my heat turned on on November first, that is.

I guess I'll let pictures tell it for me.


This is pretty normal night-time attire. Fur boots, long underwear, jeans, shirt, sweater, fur vest, coat, scarf, fur hat. Well, sometimes not the hat. But I wore all that more than you'd think.


Wait--you thought this post was about things Before. So why the pictures of snow?


Well, it actually snowed the night before my heat turned on. Awesome. This is part of the truly beautiful view from my window.


This is another part of the view out my window. You couldn't really see it in the other picture, but this mosque dominates the view here from my desk. It's really delightful just to stare out over the city--it's really a beautiful place.

HK

Did I mention that I was in Hong Kong for a few days?



What a unique place. Unique, and exhausting. It seems like every time I tell people here that I was there, they are SO jealous. To try and describe why it would be a less than ideal place to live, I tell them that if you see your friend on the street, while you're still walking you tell them, "Oh, goodess, I'm so busy but I'll give you a call sometime, yeah going to be late gotta go!"



Whereas here, if you see an acquaintance on the road, by the time you walk away you know that their daughter-in-law's brother is going to be married in a few months, as well as their general feeling about various ways of cooking lamb. I don't know. It's just very different, a much slower pace here.

However, I will say that HK is a great place to visit. There are so many beautiful and interesting things there. And my city... maybe isn't. But to live in? We win hands-down.



As far as what I was doing in HK goes, I was seeing Scott, one of my best friends from high school, and staying with a family from near where I went to college. And it was really good to be able to spend time with him in a foreign country (though, admittedly, very unusual), and the family made me feel so at home. It was a really good time, that left me exhausted, but in a different way, entirely content.

Person I Would Most Like to Meet

Open Note, to a Chinese Person Who Has Wisely Chosen to Remain Anonymous:

I understand that you live in a place where manners as Westerners understand them many times are not part of the socialization process. What may be a folkway in America usually doesn't even reach acknowledgment here. People hack, cough and spit on the ground even indoors or on buses, people blow their noses straight to the sidewalk (finger holding closed the other nostril), people push and shove instead of standing in lines. They will pee on the side of the street. In times when it doesn't matter, grown people will sprint to get on a bus before anyone else. They will yell. They will be near-violently physical in insisting that you buy their product or use their method of transportation. They will talk right in your face for several minutes, when you've told them that you don't understand English. They will try to cheat you every time because you are a foreigner (we call it 'foreigner tax').

That is all fine. I understand that it's a culture thing.

But for goodness' sake, if you're going to throw dirty water out of your 2nd floor apartment window, take a look downstairs just briefly. I mean, a casual glance, less than a second. Because it wasn't like that splashed my shoes. It landed right on my head, bull's-eye, to where I took a taxi the last five minutes of my walk home so I could towel off. I would think it was purposeful except that I couldn't bear to. First of all, it's literally freezing outside, and being soaked doesn't help. Then, the smell was somewhat less than ideal, though I've been avoiding that thought pretty persistently. A friend was waiting for me, and so I had to wait for an hour and a half to take a shower. Before I finally did, my hair had dried and stuck together. It was at the end of a long day, and while now it admittedly seems pretty funny, at the time it was almost the last straw.

And if you ever see me around again and want to learn some interesting new words in English, please, please introduce yourself.

Most sincerely,
Drew

Learning some common sense.

You know, it's always a little strange, even disconcerting, to be approached here confidently by someone who doesn't speak English. I mean, it's wildly unusual to be approached confidently by anyone at all. So, when a woman came up to me tonight as I was walking through the city square, I was a little confused. She started talking pretty quickly in Chinese, and when I didn't understand, she said that she didn't speak much English.

Now, I know this may sound a little strange, but I immediately knew she was a prostitute. She was dressed modestly, but after all, it's pretty cold outside. It was in an area of town where there are a lot of hotels (almost any time you stay at a hotel alone in China as a male, you'll get phone calls from callgirls, and if you unplug your phone or don't answer, you may even have some knocking on your door). Pretty much the only women in most big cities that will approach you are prostitutes, especially with that kind of confidence. It was at night, in sort of a darker place in the square, without many people around. I mean, it just made sense. But she didn't seem like she was propositioning me. It sounded like she was asking for my phone number (yeah, right), or maybe she wanted to give me her phone number in case I was interested. But she was acting so strange. And she kept saying something about me coming in the morning to see her (huh?). She kept saying the word phone. And she kept saying something about electricity, maybe. Really, my Chinese isn't very good.

Okay, so all of a sudden I realized that she was one of the attendants in China Telecom, which I'd visited this morning to try and get a phone line connected in my apartment. She wasn't the one I was talking to, she was at the other desk. I'm surprised, honestly, that I even vaguely remembered her. Immediately I'm sure my entire demeanor changed (from "Why are you talking to me?" to "I am so excited to see you!"--a big switch). I had said I'd come in this afternoon, but I didn't have time, so I let her know that I'm going in again tomorrow morning. I'm glad I didn't just say, "I don't want it" and walk away.

There's a pretty deep lesson here, boys and girls: don't assume people are prostitutes just because they're talking to you.

Jump

Old people here are afraid of escalators. They leap on and off, and before each jump you can see them mentally preparing themselves for a possible ugly demise.