I Saw You; in Amazement, Stumblin’ Through the Day..
November 13, 2008
[Will be updating this post until I fill in all the gaps, just wanted to get something up now, incase it all gets postphoned]
Been trying to write up a post for a month now and constantly find myself with something unfinished and not worthy updating, not so cool. As such, I’m just going to do a bit of a bullet point blitz through the last month or so. Here we go.
13th – 19th October
I think that for a good portion of this week I spent coming to terms with the fact that my most significant Chinese problem is my speaking – and listening comes with the package. This week showed me that – even though a little bit of it is required – I simply cannot bear sitting at my desk and crunching down on characters and articles. I couldn’t stand doing this in Australia and I can’t stand it now. As such in this time I decided that I needed to find myself a ‘language partner’, that is someone with whom I can just practice language with.
In a way it feels a little silly that I am over here, in China, and yet the best way for me to learn is the same way I did in Australia; spending time one-on-one with my friends speaking Chinese. The experience of being here is -without a doubt- worthwhile, but the crux of good language improvement is..well, what I’d already been doing. I don’t want to discredit the merit of being over here, but, well it’s true. I guess it’s reassuring to be right.
Also during this time and the weeks surrounding it, I found myself becoming ever more frustrated with the system in place over here. The fact that people have to struggle through the mind-numbing education system (and, at times, culture) just to live a barely decent life. What frustrates me most is that all of the problems in China can be avoided with a little reform. Yet the people have been trained to not believe in such ideals and as such, the hard life carries on. It hurts me deep, really does. I will have to write up a “list of things that piss me off/are great about China” article soon, to make clear the issues I am talking about.
20th -26th October
The core thing about last week’s revelation regarding language partners is that, without them, I have such a hard time learning my material. I need to “learn through experience” as I often day and as such this basically ensured that this week I’d start my search. The previous friday my classmate asked the teacher about this topic who directed him to a billboard with a post of someone offering to help put people in touch with students from the school. I was going to take a slip but my teacher said that she had a friend who would be better/the two of us could be language partners.
On Monday I asked her more about it, she took my phone number and said that he’d call me sometime. That didn’t really end up happening, but that’s okay. On Tuesday I went out to an itallian restraunt with my Egyptian and French classmates. The French guy suggested that we share an entree of snails, and so we did. Quite chewy.
Wednesday I had some internet troubles when trying to set up security. The problem was essentially with the user ID and password they had provided – I had to reconfigure these options as Windows chucked a skitz. The service agent had illegibly scribbled it down and after trying every combination of interpretations possible, it still didn’t work. Basically we called a guy out who generated a new password, he said that the old one was broken…ah yes, that makes sense? Internet ID and passwords, which you provided, can suddenly break?
Thursday night I went to Hanxue’s and met her Grandparents who had come in from Anhui. After saying a few sentences in Chinese to them, they gave up all effort and just ignored me over the TV. Little disheartening. Got to try some ½ mandarin, ½ rockmelon like fruit from Taiwan…yeah, maybe I will discuss that later when I talk about Chinese fruit and meat. Hanxue was glad to see me -poor girl, so exhausted- and that was reassuring.
Friday afternoon, my French classmate told me that his language partner exchange went well and with this confirmation, I decided to finally take a slip as I didn’t think my teacher’s friend would pull through. That afternoon I sent off an email to this person and after a little organising, I got a response confirming that I could meet someone on Monday, awesome. Something also clicked which prompted me to check out one of the expat websites that I originally checked out to find an apartment. I’m not sure why but I took a squiz. Something on the site (some news article, I think) mentioned something about finding language partners in Shanghai, directing my attention to their personal classifieds page which featured a section for language partners (infact, easily the largest section in the classifieds).
So I spent a few hours setting that up, grappling with the system in place and then giving up after realizing that you needed to pay for a subscription to contact other members and there was no way around it.
On Saturday I gave up, but decided to look around for more classifieds and try my luck, sending off multiple emails and so forth. Hanxue also invited me to go with her and her Grandparents on Sunday to the Shanghai Botanic Gardens which is close to where live. Come Sunday afternoon, she contacted me to say that her Grandpa had a sore leg and even though he had a wheel chair, he still didn’t wish to go. Quite unfortunate considering that the weekend is the only time that Hanxue effectively has to take her folks around the city.
Later I found out that the Grandpa actually didn’t want to go because of my presence and what people would think of a foreigner and a young girl together in public. Hmmm…
Come that night though I had already received a few responses to my emails and postings. I began chatting with one of them and arranged to met up the following night. Awesome, things were finally working out.
27th October -2nd November
On the Monday this email correspondant showed up between the lesson breaks and brought along one of the students. Tall guy, about my age, lives on campus and is quite friendly. We talked for a while, exchanged numbers and I went back to class.
After class I went home, relaxed and then went out that night to have dinner with this person. I waited for them one subway stop away from where I am. After a little while they showed up, name Ashley, female, 23, fashion designer. We then together walked around looking for a restraunt and a place to get some money out. The latter was hard to find but eventually we found a a machine.
We then crossed the road and went to a self serve restraunt, also had fish hot pot as well. I forget the name of the fish but it is meant to be a good quality one, athough supposively the ones they serve in Shanghai aren’t very authentic. The meal was good, except for the fish, it all got cold quickly. Ashley and I talked a bit, I was surprised at how many words she said that were perfecty suited to what she wanted to express. Shows a good deal of understanding which a lot of people here lack. She also seemed much more culturally apt and able to understand this place better than most of the other people I speak too. All good properties. Unfortunately though, since she is working and mainly free during weekends I don’t think that it’ll work out.
On Tuesday I met up with the guy from Monday. His name is Adam, 20/21, quite tall (enough to make me look uncomfortably up) and lives on the campus which I study at. He seemed nice enough, although he makes me feel very uneasy about Chinese young people. I can’t quite put my finger on it though. We spoke mostly english, I don’t like speaking Chinese with him, that’s not so useful.
In class I was discussing clothes with my Egyptian clasmate who handed me a card (she gives me a lot of cards to shops/restraunts/entertainment she likes) to a place that she liked. It was one of those multi-storied complexes, packed to the rafters with fake goods. *clicks* fake market, that’s what! I’ve been to places like this before in Beijing, so I took her card and decided that after class I woud go with Adam to this place, since he could help me snuff out the best price. My Egyptian friend warned me that Chinese people have no idea when it comes to buying clothes (for a reasonable price), but I didn’t think too much of it.
After class, having waited for at least another 30 minutes for this guy to rock up, he finally showed and together we walked. He told me that he didn’t like the place suggested to me by my friend and offered to take me to some other places. So we walked a few blocks down to HuaiHai road (guessing, to many roads here) and popped into a few stores. Each of them were random designer stores that he prefered. He started spurting off names of brands and suggesting that they’d have something that I’d like. God, what is wrong with this kid, I can’t understand this brand language. Maybe that’s why he makes me feel uneasy, because he wastes money on expensive labelled shit instead of getting an airconditioner for his dorm.
Of course, I hate designer. Well, I like attractive clothes, no doubt. But I don’t like going into stores only to find the price of everything being twice the price I would pay Australian…while at the same time being in China; a country that should be giving me basement prices. Everywhere we went the prices were ridiculously expensive. The fashion was considerable…but when you match it against price it’s unavoidably daylight robbery.
So, we spent a few hours of me squabbling through designer stores, trying to find the right shade of brown to match go with the other hues while praying that the price would be reasonable (as well as proper croutch room).
Eventually, after turning down every piece of expensive tripe thrown my way (bar a vest) we headed off to this place on Nanjing road, as recommended by my friend. Luck didn’t prevail there either but I chalk that up to exhaustion and the fact that my friend just wanted to scoot through. So, on the whole, not much success…. actually a failure. At least I managed to pick up one of those prissy beanies with the ear flaps at the fake market.
As soon as I got home I received a call from my Egyptian friend. She asked how it went and it didn’t take long for her to understand. I told her what happen and she seemed totally unsurprised and offered that the to of us go out together next time. Done deal. By this time the number of responses from my postings was increasing and I had already organised to meet with two people on the weekend on either days.
On Friday, I went with my friend after class back to this market. We had lunch together before we left and discussed the various issues egarding our lives in China. She explained to me –with many examples and references- how Chinese life is all about money and how Chinese people like to use westerners for money. She also expalined how she finds Chinese people to lack manners in many circumstances as well. I told her that I have never come across these things but kept it at the back of my mind. We also discussed the issues regarding control, freedom and so forth, she agreed with most of my opinions on the topic, providing her own side of the story as well. Very interesting conversation.
I must confess, I thought that I was good at this bartering business, but I tell you, my friend, she is something of a professional. She was strict with her prices and often we would just throw our cash at them, take the clothes and run for it. That is, when our requested price was within a reasonable difference from the sellers. I managed to pick up a jacket, two pants, two long sleeved winter shirts and a jumper. Lot of laughs along the way, very pleased.
I had to stop off on the way home and drop off my garbage bag of goodies before I went out to tea. As soon as I returned, Auntie and a friend proceeded to critique my clothes and ask me for prices and so forth. I guess this fulfills one part of what my Egyptian friend was saying about Chinese people. From here, I have become evermore frustrated with Auntie and her pathetic clammer for attention.
On the Saturday, I went to the People’s Square Park (that’s a guess translation) and met another person for the first time. Yang, female, 20, very short. It rained on us so we took refuge at a small drinks bar with a group of old dudes smoking their lungs out and making too much noise in the local dialect. The exchange was fine, no worries, after a few hours we packed it in and headed off.
On the Sunday, I had to wait until my contact finished an exam first. I was expecting that to be maybe at around 2:00pm but I received a call at about 10:00am, not long after I woke up. So with that I headed down, near my school, met with this person and together we walked down to some place they wanted to go to and looked for a place to get lunch. The road that they selected was quite nice actually, very traditional in style.
My friend pointed out some restraunt which was like a snazy, chill-out kinda place. Together we went inside, I ordered a beef, avacado and cheese ficashia sandwhich, she had some sort of pasta. BTW, CiCi, 20, Uni student.
So we talked for a while,quite a while perhaps. Plenty of foreigners in the restraunt as well, several of them didn’t speak english though, that always makes me feel kinda wiereded out. Afterwards we went to an art gallery nearby and had a squiz, much better than the Translocomotion one that I went to with Hanxue. From there the two of us walked back to the station, diverged and that’s the week. Been busy for like almost everyday, I did take the Thursday off to rest if I remember correctly.
3rd November – 9th November
On Monday I managed to have tea with Hanxue which was unexpected. I think I just made a mess of myself dribbling about how much of a headache Chinese culture is. Seriously, I find this to be such a difficult issue to tackle. Maybe I will talk about it sometime, if I can find a beginning and end.
I also had my speaking and listening exam on the Wednesday which was bad news. I’d been so busy looking for language partners that I hadn’t had enough time to prepare. And I needed the language partners to improve my speaking, partly for the exam, so on the Tuesday before I spent most of the day with CiCi. We met up in the morning, had breakfast at a bakery (a lot of elegent, sweet stuff) and then had lunch at an Italian restaurant. We met up at an area not so far from her place and together discussed a variety of issues.
On the Wednesday I had my exam, didn’t go too good. I guess I should have seen it coming. I never do too well in Chinese exams. I can master the words, grammar and expressions perfectly, use them in my natural talk as well and yet when it comes to the questions I don’t know what they want from me. I can understand the contents within the tasks put forward but I don’t know how they expect me to answer. The questions all seem so formulaic and fixed, with a binary answer to it. The exams hardly fulfill their purpose.
Friday I met up again with CiCi, I gave her a bottle of Bundaberg Sarsaparilla as I love the stuff and it’s something Australian that I can give as a thank you. I find the bottle collection remark on the pack to be amusing too; can be recycled in SA for 5c. While at the import store I bought a pack of Tim Tams and 100s and 1000s biscuits for Auntie and Hanxue respectively. I was also planning on giving Hanxue a bottle of ginger beer from Australia too, as one night I couldn’t open the damn thing. Urges persisted and I eventually drank it, I told her that I’d buy another one though.
I told Auntie that I bought the the Tim Tams for her. Of course, she shrugged this off, saying the same old phrase which translates to “it’s nothing”. I think that she has a problem with someone gaining face on her. It’s a cultural nuance which she exemplifies with gleeming success. I hate it because she always tries to make her presence so overhwelmingly dominant. I’ve learnt now to just mumble my way out of it, eventually she puts on a cranky attitudes and storms out like a child. Problem fixed.
In anycase, I pointed out that the Tim Tams were for her, for being so good to me. I hate saying that she is ‘so’ good to me, as she usually makes me say that to her (again face), while at the same time trying to convince me why my good friend Hanxue is such a bad person. As much as I hate these parts of her, as well as her lazy son, inability to remove stains from clothes, monsterously loud and ugly accent, and her disrespect towards me, she does wash my clothes and ocassionally give me food to eat, so its the least I could do.
Auntie was talking over me again as I told her about the Tim Tams and basically didn’t heed my message. So I just put the biscuits back in the fridge along with the 100s and 1000s. And yes, I didn’t really need to put the latter in the fridge, I just did for some reason.
Later I checked and 3 of the Tim Tams were already eated. Silent victory.
Saturday morning I decided to check the fridge again and to my surprise noticed that both packets were missing. My victory was short lived.
Puzzled, I decided to let the matter rest while I attended to more important matters, like bringing my thermals in from outside. Auntie usually does this…as well as folding my clothes and so forth – my resistance is just wasted energy against her forced take on politeness – but I needed to wear my thermals on that day. I went in search for the giant bar with the claw at the end, as I couldn’t reach my thermals from the cage gating my window from the outside world. I thought that it might have been in the son’s room, so I peeped in there too. Oh and guess what I found? The packet of Hanxue’s 100s and 1000s, half eaten, lying infront of his sacreligious computer. Bastard.
Furious at the possibility that this lazy, do-nothing slob got tucked into my overpriced imports, I had to call someone. So I called home, at this time Auntie also came back, I told her that I was angry that he ate my stuff, she laughed and said that she gave him some, made me even more angry because even if I explained to her what happened she wouldn’t care since the biscits were for Hanxue.
For the rest of the day I met up with my language partner. On Sunday, I went out to take some photographs of the People’s Square. My fears were realized, taking a photo in this country is son very difficult, at least if you want to captue the sky as well. The sky here is so dark that -unless it’s a bright morning- it’s almost impossible to get balanced exposure between the colourless sky and the ground below.Usually it is a case of opposite pollarities, the best photos that can be taken, still make this place look like the end of the earth…or almost completely drowned in monochrome.
10th November – 16th November
I spent Monday after class again with CiCi, we met up at the school and practiced for a few hours. Afterwards we had tea together, which was pleasing since I was getting sick of using the local university’s canteen for my beef n’ noodles. Good stuff though, I love those noodles and the chef is always sure to give me a heads up.
Wednesday was…quite a ride, I must say. I had my second exam which as expected didn’t go to well. I shared my frustrations with my teacher after class. During the breaks, when I went to grab a drink from the water cooler, one of the office ladies asked to speak with me after my classes. So after class I did just that.
Not good news. She told me that staff from the international office called earlier, notifying them that I had actually finished studying my Chinese course. There reasoning was that because I was studying intensively, I had aleady fullfilled a certain allotment of hours, meaning I was done. Yet, the University had originally told me that I would study a semesters worth of Chinese at their school (meaning I’m only ½ way thru, with another 2 months left). All of the paperwork given to me and my university said this and suddenly, they were going to chop my course in half, with a lack of any prior notice.
The office at my campus tried to call back but they were out for lunch. So I decided to call Mrs Hua (my contact at the office), who couldn’t do too much to help. I feel sorry for her, as her position is not to help me with these matters, yet the others are so useless, I’m often left with little choice. As I was calling Mrs Hua, I hurriedly made my way to the subway station to meet CiCi. She’d invited me to see the latest James Bond movie and due to the hold ups I was running late. I got to the subway station in good time and she hadn’t arrived, which was okay, I needed some time to compose my ideas on how to tackle this nonsense that the university had just thrown at me. I figured that after the movie, I might get the chance to go back to the school and check again. Anyways, CiCi arrived, I explained what happened and the two of us headed down to the cinemas. We were quite early, so I ate my lunch and we discussed a few things.
The movie theathre was very quiet, especially considering this movie had just been released, infact we would have been there on launch day since the movie still hadn’t been released in America. Should be noted though that Quantam of Solace was supposively the second highest grossing western movie in China ever. Tickets cost $AUD5.
I must say that all of the internet spillage regarding this movie is dead on. I was petty disappointed, feels like a semi-sequel to Casino Royale, about half the thrills, decent characters and excitement. Action scenes were wildly sporadic and hard to follow, kinda like Spiderman 3, which also wasn’t great either.
After the movie, we had a bit of time to kill, so we went back to the Uni. On the way some Brittish chap called me about a company specializing in retirement funds for expats, said he got my name from a friend called Josh…I have no such friend. I told him to call me later.
At the Uni I got them to call the office again, still not there. I practiced for a little while with CiCi. The guy called back, turns out he was trying to sell me a retirement fund and not a job, which I might have been interested in. After he babbled for a few minutes in a corperate, financial language I couldn’t understand, I asked him: “You know I’m 20 right?” and with that he politely finished up. Nice bloke though.
CiCi and I went to the Italian restaurant where I previously ate the snails. No snails this time. I ordered too much food, which is starting to get a little troublesome. I feel that when I am out, I should stock up on veggies and other nutrients since my regular diet is kinda lacking these a little. I ordered some mushroom pasta stuff, we shared a pizza and had some small sausages for an entree. CiCi also ordered a slice of cheese cake. We (that is, I) needed some time to let the food settle, so we talked for a bit before heading home.
Thursday I called the office back and had a frustrating call with the head of the office who actually didn’t understand much more about the problem herself. She said that I’d have to wait until Monday for the teacher who organised this mess to return from Mongolia. Argh.
Friday I met up with CiCi again (yeah, we both have too much free time, I guess). This time we went to her University, which isn’t too far away from my place, although a little awkward considering how close it is. I brought my laptop along as she was interested in listening to some western music.
We met up at the subway station, caught a bus out and went to a Korean restraunt on the campus. We had a sort of hot pot like dish, although it was more like a really hot, insulated bowl which kept the heat in. It was like a soup, but with a few things we could add. Quite good. Also we shared a smaller dish of spicy octopus and veggies. Also quite good. The chopsticks were metal too which was quite good.
Afterwards we found a classroom to hide in and started scrobling through the tracks. Basically, she hated anything remotely rock, some of the alternative stuff was kinda borning (how can anyone hate Bittersweet Symphony?) but the slower stuff, as well as the popular was not surprising her favourite. They don’t really have rock over here in China, let alone some of the other stuff. You can basically pidgeonwhole it all under the ‘popular’ label and you be 7/8s of the way there.
Afterwards she invited me to play badmington with some of her online forum buddies (hometown board). So we had tea at a restraunt which is completely derrivative of this restraunt my French classmate and I use to go to. I mean, same dishes, same style, same menu, same mugs, same typeface…complete knock off, but just as good. Awesome though, since I liked the other restraunt.
Afterwards we caught the subway, all the way up to where she lives, got a taxi to her place, she grabbed her raquets and then we headed out. Played for a few hours, until 9pm. I originally started off terribly, couldn’t get the hang of it, afterwards though I suddenly click and was surprisingly good. Although, like tennis, I overuse my wrist, instead of using my arm.
The weekend felt like a real waste of time actually. On Saturday I met up with one of my language partners. I don’t really know if I like practicing Chinese with her though. She is great but I am kinda not so much use to practicing with her. We did head out for snacks in which we stumbled across one of the many weekly match making gatherings that goes on every weekend in China. Basically there are a bunch of parents selling their kids soul to be wed, old fashion style, with boards listing their various details and requirements. Most people are just after security (car, house, good job). As you’re probably thinking, soooo far behind the times, this place still needs to execute a little more open thought in this department. Maybe later I will bitch about why I dislike Chinese old people.
On Sunday, I was going to do stuff with people, but kinda let it slide. Stayed at home and played the role of lonely bum. I don’t really feel like doing any study over here to be honest, even with the prospect of returning to school. So I just played some Quake and listened to some a 2hr long Retronauts podcast instead. Man I forgot how good these podcasts are. And that rounds out the week.
Posted in Life | Comments (0)
Post RSS
For your consideration, a blog about video games as written by myself:
