Left-handedness and KTV

Almost every Chinese person that I written or eaten in front of has noticed that I am left handed. They always tell me that in China, left handed people are considered smart. But, they also then tell me that I should write my characters and use chopsticks with my right hand. Apparently Chinese left handed people must learn how to use chopsticks, write characters, or do calligraphy with their right hand. After taking my calligraphy class last semester, I can definitely see the advantage of being right handed (all the strokes have angles that are not only advantageous to right handed people but rather uncomfortable for left handed people). I am surprised by the large number of people that have noticed this and called me out on it, suggesting that (while/since) I am "smart," I should learn to use my right hand to use chopsticks and write...

Tonight we went to a very popular weekend activity for a lot of Chinese people, both young and old: KTV. We rented our own room, complete with couch, tv, and kareoke equipment and sang our hearts away for the next (almost) 4 hours. The KTV place we were at was so full we had to wait 1/2 hour to get a room. When we finally left at about 2:15, there were many rooms still full of people singing and having fun. While it was definitely a fun night, with a few Chinglish translations of English songs, I wonder what about the activity is so incredibly attractive. We went to the cheapest one in the area, and with 8 people, it was about the price of a medium priced cover charge for a bar in Beijing. In some respects, if you compare it to other entertainment options, the price is not an issue. The group gets its own room and can eat and drink and be merry until the wee hours of the morning (our room was rented until 7:00 am). However, what about singing kareoke is so amazing that a KTV bar on every major corner can stay busy and attract such a large age range?

On one hand, pessimistically speaking, I might not want to be holed up in a room with 7 of my close friends singing off tune kareoke for hours. However, the Chinese people that came with us were really good singers so maybe that is not an issue here.

On the other hand, maybe Chinese people just like to sing! Perhaps it provides a way for families and friends to get together: they don't have to worry about it being crowded and noisy (like a bar), it's kid friendly (unlike a bar), and they get to spend some quality time together (unlike a movie or show) while also enjoying a fun activity. Also, while in the US we would probably just invite our friends over to our house and buy or rent a kareoke machine, here, the average house/flat is too small to host a large group of people and transportation to people's houses are more of an issue, so getting a big group together in a comfortable situation can be unrealistic, but not at KTV!

*Edit* I asked my roommate why they love going to KTV and she basically gave the exact same reasons as the ones I mentioned above. She said they like to go because they get their own room and they can chat and hangout. Their houses are too far away and too small to have a lot of people over. She said Chinese people also don't like making food for a large group of people, so they can go to KTV, eat, hangout, and then sing kareoke. Even if they can't sing very well, they still like going. She also said in high school they would go there a lot after lunchtime!

Food, Taxis, and Bartering

I just went to a cooking class so today seems to be a good day to explain a little bit about Chinese food. Today, we made jiaozi. Jiaozi and baozi are very popular here and are basically dumplings with chopped meat or vegetables. Delicious! I have been eating a lot of rice and noodles, but have also tried some very strange foods. They have a lot of green vegetables, all kinds of meat (most of it with the bones still in), and not a lot of sweets. Sweet bean paste is kind of like their chocolate and we have had watermelon every day for dessert in our dining hall. I would also just like to point out that health and restaurant standards here are much lower than in the US, and I now see why Chinese restaurants in America are the way they are. That's what they are used to!

I will now share some "food highlights". At the Lan Club we had stinkhorn (see picture), which is basically a very stinky white fungus with a strange texture that is considered a delicacy in China. As you can see, we only got a very small piece at the best restaurant in Beijing. Look it up on Wikipedia. Along the way we also had duck tongue, chicken feet soup, Peking Duck, caramelized pineapple kabobs, seeing live scorpions and dead seahorses on a stick (but not eating them), waxberries, snail meat, cow liver, bamboo shoots, aloe, red rooster, and fish head soup. Someone here ate dog, but I was not with them. A lot of the meat comes out with body, eyes, tails attached (mostly the fish).

I asked my roommate about taxis in Beijing. Gas here is about 3 yuan/pint, so if I did the math correctly, it comes out to about $3.20/gallon. Pretty expensive, especially in China. However, my cab fares for a 15 minute ride or so are always about 15-20 kuai. Split between four people, 4 kuai to get to another part of the city is pretty cheap. I asked her how the cabs can be so cheap when gas is so expensive. She said that her dad is actually a cab driver in Beijing! How interesting. Apparently, only Beijing residents can be employed as a cab driver in Beijing. The government regulates how many cabs can operate in the city at one time (much like the US I think), but, unlike the US, the government pays the cab companies money to basically subsidize the cab fares and keep them low for the citizens. I don't really know much about the taxi industry, but I found this interesting. The government at work!

Vocab words of the day:
Taxi - 出租汽车 chu1 zu1 qi4 che1
Watermelon - 西瓜 xi1 gua1

Bartering tip 101 (from tourist books and my roommate):

Point out every flaw possible in the product.

It's ok to say "too expensive!" "this is sort of ugly!" "the writing is hard to see and poorly written!" "I found a bigger one for cheaper elsewhere!" Don't feel bad. You don't don't do this everyday...they do. You aren't offending the vendors and they're probably already making a huge profit on their "special price just for you." So try going lower. They will ALWAYS say "this is one of a kind," "special price just for you," "I'll give you a good price for 2," etc. Vendors will make you feel like you are cheating them out of a good price for a good product. I say, don't "buy" that! Haha. In fact, don't buy it, walk away, hear the vendor call you back, and see the magic of bartering in action...

Rain stimulates innovation

Today I wrote my first official essay in Chinese - 400 characters about my views on love and marriage. My specialty.

I am strangely obsessed with a Chinese invention that is extremely useful in China: the bike poncho. I just think it is such a clever solution to the inevitable pain of riding your bike in the rain. The ratio of bikes to humans in Beijing has to be pretty close to 1:1 and people ride their bikes even when there is a typhoon. I have tried to think of every excuse to buy one, but since I can't find one, I'll probably just buy one anyway.

Speaking of rain, it is currently raining. I wonder what is in the rain that is falling from this sky. And I also wonder whether the blue skies in all the postcards I wrote yesterday are real or photoshopped. I saw a sign today advertising the 5th Annual Asian Wind Energy Convention, which I think would be an interesting convention to attend.

Today I went to a Chinese church (one of the Chinese roommates regularly attends this church). When Bill Clinton came to Beijing, he came to this church. I listened to the sermon in English (with headphones), but sang and listened to the rest of the service in Chinese to see how much I could understand...which was not too much. The service was much like any church service in the US, and the sermon was very interesting. We talked about Daniel and the lion's den story, with the minister paralleling the recent earthquake and the Cultural Revolution as times of trial which test our faith. She knew someone that cut up their bible and hid it in different places during the Cultural Revolution so that it wouldn't be confiscated and she could still read it - would we have done this?

CHINGLISH ALERT:
(I really can't remember where this is from, possibly the zoo, but I don't think the context will really help anyways...your guess is as good as mine.)
Prohibit playing Kongming, latent we are all safe.

History is Fun!

Yesterday we went to the zoo and saw some of the Sichuan panda bears that had been displaced by the earthquake. The Sichuan region is known for its pandas, so the Beijing Zoo now has 4 Sichuan pandas. Some nice Chinglish as well: China was spelled Chnia on an Olympics/Panda advertisement. Remedy: tape a piece of computer paper over it with the correct spelling.

Vocab word of the day:熊猫 Xiong2mao1 = Panda bear

Today we went to Houhai, a beautiful area with 3 small lakes, lots of history, and a really nice hangout for both tourists and locals. Among the many places we visited was the home of Sun Yat-sen's (one of the most significant political figures of the 20th century) wife Soong Ching-Ling, also a very prominent figure in Chinese political history. I was also born on her birthday.

We also visited Prince Gong's palace, which is one of the best preserved historical palaces/gardens in Beijing. Being in all these beautiful places made you forget about the pollution around you. Today's sky was actually almost blue and there was much less pollution today. I would like to think that it is because yesterday, June 20th, was the day they were supposed to stop construction in Beijing. However, we saw construction going on today, so either there are special extensions for some projects, or it was my misunderstanding.

Finally, we visited some hutongs, which are traditional Chinese housing that people still live in today. They are basically narrow alleys with small courtyard housing that is all connected. There has been a push and pull by the government to both destroy this housing to make room for development but to also protect this housing to preserve history, a tourist attraction, and also people's homes. Some people's families have lived in the same hutong for over 100 years. The man we talked to had lived there for 12 years but said his hutong was over 100 years old. Pretty incredible! I would love to explore the history and the "rise and fall" of hutongs more through research and interaction with the residents.

CHINGLISH ALERT:
(At the Nocturnal Exhibit at the Beijing zoo)
Slow lager
Lesser slow lager
...so the take home message is: if you see two species of lager at night roaming around and get them mixed up, just look for the less slow one. 好吗？

First Test Tomorrow!

Our first test is tomorrow and I am very nervous!

Our UNC study abroad advisor came to visit us in Beijing. We were treated to an awesome dinner at a famous Beijing restaurant. It's been fun having someone visit us while we're abroad - it definitely makes you feel less detached from home. Tomorrow we are meeting with the rest of the UNC students studying abroad in Beijing and are having the world famous Peking Duck!

My roommate and I talked about college life today. At Chinese universities, there are separate guys and girls dorms. In addition, people of the opposite sex are not allowed in your room. Curfew is usually 10 p.m. on weekdays and it is strictly enforced. Rui (my roommate) was very interested to hear that in the US, most campuses don't have a curfew and you can pretty much go anywhere at anytime.

CHINGLISH ALERT:
(two signs at a museum in Hangzhou)
Onwards, Visitor
Visitors, Declined

(the rooms at our hotel in Shanghai)
Interesting Room
The Lobby of Luxury and Bright
The Banquet of Including More Functional
The Restaurant of Holding Concinnous Circumstance

(one lady's sign at an outdoor market)
My dear friends,
Welcome to my home, my
sellings are the cheapest
in the town.

Zhongwen and Harry Potter

Classes started yesterday, and they are pretty 难 (hard). We also started our language pledge yesterday morning at 8 am and it's been quite the challenge to communicate any sort of complex thought. I can already tell the difference in my fluency though.

Exciting news! I bought Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Chinese to add it to my HP language collection! Harry Potter (哈利波特 - Ha li bo te) is not as popular in China and there are a lot of knockoffs as well. The book is a different shape and also is much thinner since it is written in characters. It is interesting to think about the translation process, especially into Chinese where the meaning of the character is very important. Most of our names mean something, but it is usually derived from another language and we don't necessarily name our kids based on the meaning, but rather how it sounds. It is interesting to think that when we hear the name, for example, Draco Malfoy, we automatically know this character is probably going to be mean and have some sort of enemy role. His name just sounds mean.

In Chinese, the job of translating names seems to be extra hard because not only do translators need to find a sequence of characters that sound like the English name, but they also need to find a name that means something menacing. They also need to understand the nuances in names that make them sound 'mean' or 'pretty', etc. so they can capture these nuances in the Chinese translation. For example, I heard that Draco Malfoy's name is something like Ma-fou, which literally means "horse shit." For all you Harry Potter fans, this should amuse you. I definitely have a bigger admiration for translators, especially Chinese, now and I think that translating names specifically would be a tough job.

CHINGLISH ALERT:
Created for bathroom harmony (the message on the toilet bowl in my dorm room)

Roommate!

My roommate came yesterday! Her first name is Rui and she seems fun. She is studying information technology, which was really interesting to me. She is also taking a class in Java. She showed me her Javascript book and I realized that they learn the same Java that anyone in the US would learn. Can you imagine coding Java in Chinese characters?!

Her boyfriend is a roommate on the floor above us so it will be interesting to see how Chinese relationships are similar and different from those in the US. From everything people have told me, they take relationships very seriously here. Holding hands in public typically signifies that both people have made a firm commitment and that they have been dating for about a year. While dancing with someone in a bar or holding hands with someone after a week may not be as big of a deal in the US, Chinese people can sometimes hold expectations that include long-term plans, including marriage. While this is certainly a generalization, I am definitely interested in learning more about the expectations people have here with both friends and significant others.

We had a scavenger hunt today which was basically designed for us to get more comfortable with the city, find out how to use the transportation, and meet some more people. Our roommates were supposed to come with us, but since Rui has a final exam on Tuesday, she is not coming back to the dorm until after her test. One of the Chinese roommates, Xi Ning (Last name First name), was telling us about his English class (he spoke pretty good English). He said that his English name is Jack Barbossa (yes, both references from Pirates of the Caribbean). Ning told us that his teacher made him change his name. When we asked him what his name was, he said that his ex-name was Parrot (that sits on Barbossa's shoulder). Haha!

Party in the Park

So, a slight edit to my last post. A doctor from the same hospital that will be providing services to the Olympics came to talk to us today and addressed the culture behind getting into lines. His approach, rather than part of the collective culture, was that getting in the front of the line is part of the "every man for himself" culture. The system used to be that if you were in the back of the line, you may not get a bowl of rice, for example. So, to revise what I said in my last post, if you can get there first, do it because it may be advantageous: advantageous not necessarily because you will get there first, but because everyone may not get there eventually.

Today was full of meeting new people that will be studying with us. After meeting the people we will be studying with, we went out to explore our local neighborhood and try to meet as many locals as we could. We talked to some ladies working at a department store, danced with some people in the park, and finally talked to a couple (that work in finance) who were playing hackey-sack in the park. To give another example of #1 from my last post, after inquiring where they got their hackey sack, they gave it to us!

It was interesting to learn so much about these people, and try to communicate in a mixture of english and chinese. The parks here foster a great sense of community, from morning tai qi (spelling?) to nighttime dancing, you can choose to do exercise on your own or in a group. Another park had exercise equipment IN the park as well as a ping pong table. What a great stress reliever! I wonder if having simple exercise equipment (non-electric, simple, treadmills and ellipticals) in local parks would help America's obesity problem at all...

CHINGLISH ALERT:
No Louding

Beijing, here we come!

So, my original blog was konganhe.livejournal.com, but it hasn't worked very well for me in China so far, so I'm trying out a new one.

We arrived in Beijing today (June 11th) via overnight train. There is a LOT less pollution here than any of the other cities we've seen, probably because they are preparing for the Olympics. It is almost like a cloudy day with a hint of blue sky! My room is in Donglou (West Building), where only about 12 of the 76 people are staying...the rest are in the Xilou (East Building). I am excited to meet everyone!

Classes start on Monday with orientation the next few days, so I hope to work on outlining my visit to Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou.

A couple of cultural observations I made in the past couple days.

1) Rule: In China, if you comment or compliment someone on something, they are likely to give it to you.

Truth or Fiction: We were walking on the streets of Hangzhou at night and saw an older couple relaxing and enjoying their watermelon (xigua) outside of their family restaurant. We said hi and I said "Xigua zenmeyang?" (How is the watermelon?) They immediately cut up the second half and emphatically insisted that we eat it and take some to the rest of the group across the street. I felt kind of bad after this incident because I'd just denied this couple the rest of their watermelon! However, I decided I should put past my feelings and learn from this experience. My innocent (and intended to be in passing) question turned into a gift of 1/2 watermelon as a sign of respect? kindness? generosity?. Whatever the case may be, this experience was an excellent example of this cultural tendency.

2) Forming a line is an abstract concept. We've experienced this in many places; checking tickets at the train station, waiting in line at the museum, waiting in line for food. Similar to their driving habits, it is not uncommon to have people "ditch" you in line or simply walk in front of you. Just as with sneezing or burping, bumping into someone (unless it is a hard bump) does not warrant an excuse me. In fact, there is no word that means "pardon me" as it does in the English language. If I were to accidentally injure someone in some way, I would say duibuqi, but simply going through a crowd involves making way for someone else or pushing your own way through. This is probably the easiest way to feel the sense of the collective society: in some ways nice because people don't think it's a problem if you push through them, in other ways annoying because when you are hefting a 60 lb suitcase through a narrow hallway, it's hard to get anywhere. The feeling is that if you get there first, go for it. If you are slower, you will get there in time. We'll all get there eventually.

Typhoons = torrential downpour

My theory is that livejournal was blocked in Shanghai and Suzhou, so I couldn't access it. However, I made it to China! I'm currently in Hangzhou and will detail these cities later.

It is the "rainy season" and today there was torrential downpour as we toured the LinYin Temple. More on this later too.

Kong Anhe is (almost) ready

I got my Chinese roommate a few gifts today, which I will be excited to "present" to her. Haha. I got her some chocolate and peanut butter Buckeyes to represent Ohio, a UNC hat to represent UNC, obviously, and a piece of Chinese calligraphy I made last semester in my Chinese calligraphy class. It has the four elements in Chinese characters, but in China, they have five elements, so I will just tell her that this present represents the USA. I am excited to meet her and I hope we become good friends in the next two months.

I met someone today at Starbucks (Vocab lesson #1: 星巴克 - Xing ba ke) that had worked in Hong Kong for 9 months and told me that people that haven't had asthma or allergies sometimes come back with respiratory problems because of all the pollution. He also said that the pollution sometimes causes the sky to be bright orange during the day. I know China has been trying to fix some of these problems to cater to the Olympic games, but they could simply be putting pollution on hold instead of fixing the problem. Something I will have to pay attention to. Respiratory problems wouldn't be too fun either...

This man also said his experience was the best experience he's had.

Getting ready to travel

location: Columbus, Ohio

I got my visa today. Finally. I haven't started packing or finished unpacking from college and recent travels, but I'm sure the panic of procrastination will set in soon. The limbo of being home for 7 days will end Wednesday with my 14:35 hour flight from Chicago to Shanghai.

Some plans for China: The Phillips Ambassadors program requires that we read a novel about the country while we are there. I'm planning to read To Live by Yu Hua while I am in China and have some others that I may try to read when I get back to school. I also plan on visiting or contacting a few businesses in Beijing while I am there to explore the business culture. I think it would be interesting to compare the businesses that have strong ties to Europe, Australia, and North America. I would also like to look at how the government regulates innovation, entrepreneurship, and small v. large businesses. I think it will be interesting to look at businesses with strong international ties and businesses that haven't taken a major step towards international expansion.

So enough about business.

I plan on making a serious effort to meet lots of people and learn about their experiences. It will be both fun and stressful to experience a culture shock, a different standard of living, and get used to the small things, like not drinking the water, etc. I will definitely be outside my comfort zone.

A couple of issues/topics I want to pay attention to: the Olympics and its perception from many different lenses, environmental issues, human rights issues, the effect of China's changing demography on its future (especially the effect of the one-child policy and economic factors), exploring business customs and the role of and lack of "middle managers" (according to a US News article). I also plan on comparing my recent experiences in Germany and Hungary (specifically in terms of types of businesses, urban planning and renewal, social activities and customs, and attitudes towards innovation) with what I experience in China.

I'm planning on coming back to the states inspired and pumped up to study more about Chinese culture, history, and language and ready to go back for more.