Talking with Tennis

One thing that goes without mentioning about my time in China,
(evidently it doesn't), is that I do not speak the language at all.
So far we have all had about 16-20 hours of language class a week and
are functionally bilingual when talking about the price of something,
food we like/dislike, or the weather in Chengdu. The cool thing about
the latter is that you only need to know how to say two words: hot &
rainy. The good news about my language deficiency, besides having
zero expectations and thus constantly impressing myself, is that I
have had to find other ways to 'communicate' with the Chinese people
around me. Charades have been a total disaster (see "Chinamerican
Differences 10101" article-5), but I have managed to find a common
language in tennis. I try to play everyday but only have time about
every other day. I just walk up to a court with a racket and all
language barriers fall almost instantly. I don't need to say, "I'd
like to play," "Nice shot," or even "40-love." We all understand
already that everyone on the court would like to play because we are
there in 90-degree heat playing with flat balls that have almost lost
all of their fuzz from so many previous days of people wanting to
play. There is no need to say "nice shot," because everybody already
knows what's nice… and also what's bad. If they can't tell, they need
only listen to the passersby who stare into the court to watch the
"laowai" (foreigner) play. For the first time, I think my egocentrism
is actually justified in assuming that people are watching me and not
just watching tennis. Lastly, calling out a score of any kind is
totally unnecessary because we often play without keeping track of the
score. If a game is actually being played, there might be a score,
but there probably won't be any teams; whoever else wants to play
simply rotates in and takes over where the other left off. The
philosopher inside me is reminded of Theseus ship and laughs about the
possibility that my Chinese tennis mates might be thinking the exact
same thing without me even talking about it… or maybe not. I guess
there are some limits to the language of tennis. I'll need to keep
studying Chinese then.

Chinamerican Differences 10101

Since I've gotten here, I've noticed a few things that seem
interesting enough to mention here.

1. Beds: When my host brother asked if the bed was ok, I jokingly
said, "I'm sure it is. I'd be fine with sleeping on the floor,"
without testing the bed first. It turns out that the typical Chinese
bed is actually harder than the floor. I guess it's good for your
back but horrible for your shoulders and hips if you are like me and
sleep on your side. Luckily, with the creative folding of my blanket,
I can eliminate most pressure points and get a very good night's
sleep.

2. Toilet cleanliness: This does not at all mean that the bathrooms
here are not clean, because they are. The only difference is the
concept of cleanliness that reveals itself in the architecture of the
toilets. Basically, the toilets are the exact same, but picture the
rim lowered to the same level as the ground. This is seen as
'cleaner' because nobody ever actually touches the seat with any part
of his/her body, transitively touching another's butt indirectly with
his/her own. I actually have to say that I agree with the Chinese on
the 'technically' superior cleanliness of their toilets. (Not to
mention that there is never even a discussion about leaving the seat
up). That being said, I would gladly sacrifice the bit of cleanliness
for a lot more relaxation.

3. Commercials: Every commercial here seems to be just the
enthusiastic repetition of a 5-10 word catch phrase while somebody
holds the item being sold and extends it intensely towards the camera.
I still can't understand anything they repeat, but after hearing the
same phrase 10-15 times in a 20 second commercial, I can at least
imitate certain slogans which probably translate as something similar
to, "Head On! Apply directly to the forehead!"

4. Basketball: The weird thing about basketball is that I'm actually
kind of decent here. It turns out that the only thing holding me back
from a promising basketball career was people being taller than I was.
Here, we are all on the same level, literally and figuratively, and I
have been able to overcome 22 years of absolute basketball failure.

5. Gesticulating: Much to my chagrin, gestures mean totally different
things here than in the West. I am writing specifically about the
day-to-day gestures I would normally use if, say, for example, totally
hypothetically, I had no idea how to speak the language of the country
I was in. I find that beyond expressing 'No' by shaking my head and
pulling my chin to my neck while making an
I-just-ate-something-really-sour face, my gestures are entirely lost
on my Chinese counterparts. Gestures like 'Money' (rubbing your
fingers together) or 'read' (pretending to hold a book and advancing
through an imaginary text with my finger) are not understood until I
look in a dictionary and give the translation. Similarly, I do not
take such gestures as pointing to the ceiling or rubbing your wrists
together to mean 'China' and 'do the dishes' respectively. Ironically
enough, writing this post was interrupted by a five-minute attempt to
charade 'hot-pot,' the dish I mentioned in my last post. Apparently
we which will be having some with my host-mother's extended family
tomorrow for lunch. I have now been here for just over 15 days, (10
fingers then 5 fingers OR crossing both index fingers then touching
all five together as if you were making your arm into an ostrich
head/neck), and it's been nothing but awesome.

Hot Pot

So it has been just over a week, and my time here seems to be passing
extremely slowly. I moved in with my host family, which consists of a
mother, father, and their 18-yr old son, who speaks pretty good
English. The first night here, we all went out to get some "hot pot,"
a dish which gets its name either from the boiling bowl of
Sichuan-spiced broth out of which everything from ostrich eggs to cow
intestines is eaten OR the typical transformation of the household
toilet the following morning into a pot of hot… well… ya know.
Anyway, at the dinner with us was a large group of family friends who
all came to congratulate my host brother on his graduation from high
school as well as to welcome me to China. Both these ends were met by
toasting our shot glasses of beer incessantly over the course of the
dinner. From what I pieced together, it pretty much works like this:
Any time you would normally take a sip of your drink to stifle the
rising flames in your mouth, you simply address the table or certain
members of the table and your personal imbibition is transformed into
a reason to collectively celebrate. I realized (only after my host
brother translated it) that the never-ending attempts by numerous
members of the table to refill my glass after each toast was a sign of
friendship and not just an attempt to get the American drunk on his
first day in Shiling. The whole dinner was in Chinese, so to stay
engaged I imagined that I knew what everyone was talking about. All
in all, we had some insightful discussions on topics like juggling and
the rising polio epidemic among South American poultry populations.
Nearing the end of the dinner, I garbled out a toast in broken Chinese
expressing that I was happy to be in China. A statement that is very
much true.