Just to be Frank

As I sat through meeting after meeting discussing challenges I think I would face in China and how I would overcome them, one challenge repeatedly surfaced with no real solution: communication.  I have always been an inordinately loquacious individual and have employed an extensive array of words for an equally expansive variety of reasons.  Basically, I talk my way through life.  My silver tongue has earned me unwarranted admiration from my peers, it has attracted girls who were way out of my league, and has gotten me out of many sticky situations.  Coming to China, I was not worried about communication on a basic level, such as ordering food, thanking a host, or asking directions.  To be honest, I was worried that I would slip into verbal mediocrity and no longer be what my site mate refers to as a 'conversation artist.'  After 3 months here and a small number of Chinese lessons, my Chinese is improving slowly but surely.  Nonetheless, I must admit that at this point, I would be grateful even to be considered among the verbally mediocre.  FEAR NOT!!!  For I have found another way to flex my body's strongest muscle.  Instead of wooing my entourage with a silver tongue, I have chosen to use the golden pipes.  A few weeks ago, I went to a local bar with some friends.  Because this is China, there is KTV (karaoke) every night until 9, when the live band begins its performance.  We all took turns choosing songs, and when my turn came around, I settled on "Fly Me to the Moon," as performed by Frank Sinatra.  Had the evening ended here, this would be a very inconsequential and thus boring story.  When the band came on at 9, one of the members said he had heard me sing KTV and would like me to join the band to sing their opening song.  I make a habit to make a fool of myself as often as possible, so with no shame, I took to the stage to live out a life-long dream… singing "It's My Life," by Bon Jovi, to a sparse, mesmerized crowd of Chinese adolescents.  (Bonus points if you know why "It's My Life" can also be considered a Frank Sinatra song.)  All in all, it was a decent performance and led to my also closing the show with a rousing rendition of "Knocking on Heaven's Door."  A week later, we showed up at the bar with some friends, and I was able to join the band again to sing "Every Breath You Take."  Outside of KTV and public jam sessions with the local band, I also sang at a welcome party for new students, serenaded students during office hours (on request of course), and have been helping out with an on-campus a cappella group called K-VOX.  (More to come about K-VOX in a later post.)  So until I can finish 'polishing' my Chinese and use my silver tongue again, I'll just keep on singing.

2 + 2 = it is not snowing

I just finished my first week of teaching and have a few things to report.  Firstly, inside the classroom I am treated like some sort of celebrity guest teacher.  I get a standing ovation at the beginning and end of most classes, and students attempt to take pictures of me while I am teaching.  The majority of my jokes are lost on my students, but they seem to enjoy themselves nonetheless.  My site-mate, Andy and I both taught a lesson on western logic, which is surprisingly different than Chinese logic.  Before the lesson, Andy told me, "In America we think that if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal.  But in China they think that if my teacher tells me Socrates is mortal then Socrates is mortal."  This point was too perfectly proven when multiple students made the following "logical" conclusion. 

 

If I only speak English in class, my oral English will improve.

If my oral English does not improve… then it is not snowing.

 

They did this because "It is not snowing" was the response to the initial example of 'If…then' statements.

 

If it is snowing, then it is cold.

If it is not cold, then it is not snowing.

 

I must try my hardest not to abuse what seems to be a God-like power of determining what is and is not logical for my 350+ students.  Then again, this could be interesting… 

 

Anyway, outside of the classroom, we had a department basketball game versus student affairs and/or the PE department.  (Ask 2 Chinese people the same question and get 3 different answers.  I've given up on trying to answer such questions.)  I was originally not on the team because the dean was not sure if I could play or not, but when I assured him of my ability, I was welcomed onto the team with open arms.  He even gave me his own jersey to play in.  After a hot mess of cherry-picking, shameful officiating, and more traveling than a year with Rick Steves, we lost the game 15-17, with yours truly scoring an astonishing 6 points.  Put on your rally caps though, because from here on out, the Kaili University foreign language department will go undefeated and walk away with the championship. JIA YOU!!! (ADD OIL!!! [LET'S GO TEAM!!!])

Silver Fox and Argyle Socks

In 1959, a group of Russian scientists began to selectively breed
silver foxes based on a single criterion, docility towards humans.
Within several generations, the temperament of the foxes switched from
being aggressive and fearful to tame and almost endearing. Oddly
enough, while selecting only for one trait, other visible traits
emerged ubiquitously among the newly docile populations: floppy ears,
curved tails, and lightly colored fur. Unexpectedly, the changes in
comportment correlated with widely shared, physical changes. One
thing I have noticed during my 9 weeks in China is the high density of
argyle sock wearing males among the Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs). In
a non-selective sampling of American males, maybe 1 out of 30 men
might report to be regular argyle wearers (more than 3 pairs per
week), whereas among male PCVs, this proportion is closer to 1 out of
every 5. The figure is even more notable when measuring for wearers
of eccentrically patterned socks, where PCVs put up figures closer to
1 out of 3. I am not arguing for causation, i.e. wearing argyle socks
compels one to join the Peace Corps or vice-versa, I am merely taking
this chance to expose the correlation between selecting for one
characteristic, namely desire to be a PCV, and the corresponding
fashion sense. As a habitual argyle wearer myself (more than 5 pairs
per week), I am delighted to be in the company of so many like-minded
individuals with a taste for haute couture.

Me Hear no Understand!

I just got back from a 5-day visit of the city where I will be working
for the next two years, and from what I saw, it is an absolutely
fantastic place to live. The whole city is about the size of a large
university campus, and a 25-minute walk in any given direction will
lead you straight into the robust, mountainous wilderness that
surrounds the city. The university where I am teaching is tucked away
in the mountains and can only be reached by taking a 20-minute bus for
teachers and students. I wish I could say more about Kaili, but I was
inadvertently kidnapped and accidentally placed under house arrest by
my new host-family, who actually felt that they were acting out of my
best interest by not letting me leave the house between 11:30am and
3:30pm. This restriction plus a 'somewhat' more reasonable curfew of
10pm till 10am every night led to me finishing about 500 pages of my
book, studying a lot of 普通话, and firmly annihilating any sleep debt I
might have accumulated in 4 years of college. I tried to tell my host
brother that I did not share his passion for computer games (the only
activity that prevented him from doing absolutely nothing at all and
fading out of existence), but he did not understand my alien desire to
not spend all day in one room. A few other notable misunderstandings
arose over the course of the 4 days I spent with my new host-family:
The first misunderstanding was between me and myself. Apparently, I
didn't know when I was and was not hungry; rather, my host mother was
the only person privy to this information. The second was between me
and my host family. My limited ability to speak Mandarin gave them
the impression that I could speak fluently in the Guizhou dialect.
They would speak to meet at speeds which even native Chinese speakers
would have difficulty understanding and then be shocked when I would
respond, "Wo ting bu dong," (Me hear no understand). The third is
between me and watermelon. I always perceived watermelon to be one of
the most uncontroversial fruits in existence, but it has now become
one of my greatest enemies. He/she strikes only when I'm not at all
hungry, have just washed my hands, and have nowhere to spit seeds.
Also, he/she always comes in large hoards to ensure that even if the
first two slices were refreshing, the 3rd and 4th will make me finish
my dinner with a stomach ache, sticky hands, and stains on my shirt.
Lastly, I think there is some misunderstanding between some Chinese
people and themselves. I fail to understand how anyone can understand
a language perfectly and still be unable to speak it. Physical
deficiencies aside, somebody who watches TV in Mandarin, listens to
music in Mandarin, and understands the American living in their home
speaking Mandarin should be able to squeak out a few Mandarin words
from time to time to ease communication. Oddly enough, I learned that
this is not the case, and absolute, one-way language abilities can be
fully perfected if one makes a notable effort to totally avoid
speaking the understood language. All misunderstandings aside, the
story ends well, because I did succeed in breaking out of the confines
of my home long enough to hit up some Mahjong tables, swim in a nearby
river, and check out my new apartment. I am pretty psyched about next
year and can't wait to get started.

You might be in China if…

…people honk their car horns to express everything EXCEPT frustration.
…planning ahead means giving 5 minutes notice.
…being 5'7" makes you considered tall.
…having brown hair makes you considered blond.
…how much you eat is determined more by your patience for utensils
than by the size of your stomach.*
…a street-cleaning machine plays loud, ice-cream-man-style music just
outside your window every morning.
…your internet only connects to 8 different websites, none of which is
g00gle.c0m.
…you can taste the difference between cow stomach and chicken stomach.
…butter is more convenient to make than to buy.
…your car has an in-console TV screen whose only function is to play
the karaoke for every song on the radio.
…you find yourself bathing with great wall scented soap.
…every steak, fish, chicken, pork-chop, and rabbit comes "bone-in."
…half the channels on TV are some sort of singing competition
apparently aiming to uncover the most mediocre singer the world has
never heard of.
…every play kitchen for children comes standard with a plastic chicken foot.
*recently amended to "… how much you eat is determined by how much
your host-mother forces you to eat."

Kaili (Kye-lee)

The answer to the question so many people have asked me recently was
finally given to me today when I found out that I am going to spend
the next two years in Kaili, a small city just outside Guiyang, the
capital of Guizhou province. All in all, I am more than thrilled
about my placement. The 'city' has around 500,000 people, which by
Chinese standards is absolutely tiny. I will spend the next week
exploring my new home while staying with a host family, so I will have
more to say about my site then. Nevertheless, at this point, I still
have some information gathered only from word of mouth, wikipedia, and
google.cn. So far, I have been told that Kaili is a hub of minority
culture (specifically that of the Miao), boasts some of the most
beautiful topography in all of China (search for "Karst mountains"),
and has breathtakingly –more like breathGIVingly– fresh air (once
again, that's by Chinese standards). The only bummer I've encountered
thus far is learning that my month+ of Mandarin will be of little use
in a province where over 129 different dialects are spoken. I guess
that makes me feel a little less guilty for watching Harry Potter
XVIII last night instead of practicing my Mandarin.

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.

Two Bags and a Carry-on

"You should own nothing except what you can carry on your back at a dead run."

-Jon Krakauer... Into the Wild

Packing a suitcase forces a certain reflection on what does and does not matter, what is and is not 'necessary'.  There are several different ways of packing for a voyage, and each style reveals something about the voyager.  First, there is the pack-rat voyager who just brings everything.  For pack-rats, packing is easy.  They typically just throw everything together with little discretion and even less folding.  Transporting everything, on the other hand, becomes very difficult because the bulk of a pack-rat's baggage typically exceeds his own body weight.  I think that this style is only really worthwhile if you're packing a truck instead of a suitcase.  Second, there is the voyager who maximizes their allotted space.  He is like the first voyager, but with smaller suitcases and a bigger wardrobe.  Choices have to be made, but the maximizer will make as few as possible.  With the focus of a defending world-champion Tetris player, he folds every shirt, sock, and pant uniformly before sitting on his suitcase to get the zipper shut around the final side.  Though the maximizer makes the fewest number of initial sacrifices, he sacrifices the possibility of any future changes.  If the complex packing order is not duplicated perfectly or if too clunky a souvenir makes its way into the suitcase, the zipper may not shut, and an impulse decision to sacrifice toiletries for extra space may come back to haunt the maximizer.  After making the mistake of being both a pack-rat and a maximizer, I have adopted a minimalist style of packing.  The minimalist leaves extra space as eagerly as a maximizer crams his socks deep into the toes of his shoes.  To the minimalist, a weight limit is determined by what he can carry up and down five flights of stairs, and not by the airline he happens to be flying.  Much to my chagrin, I will not be able to carry my 50-lb bag, guitar, and backpack at a dead run, but I will have plenty of room for souvenirs when I come home.  Hopefully, I will analogously leave some of my intangible baggage in America to allow me the room for a many new Chinese experiences and memories.