I am going to miss this place.

Since I am leaving in less than 4 days now I've started thinking of switching back to leaving mode which is always depressing for me. I have become quite used to things here and strangely fond of crazy driving that lets you feel like you're riding with Steve McQueen in Bullit everyday and of being able to swear at people at the top of my lungs in English when something really pisses me off because A) no one cares since they get yelled at all the time and B) they don't understand my expletives anyway - though I think the butt-plug that completely cut us off and almost caused a big accident on the freeway last night did understand the bird I was flying at him out the window. Also as some of my friends know I can become mesmerized by the colors and variety even in an American store that I've been in hundreds of times and just sit there staring at the aisles. Here where nearly all the products are new to me and have new exciting designs, swirls and colors it's like baby got a new mobile to play with.. and he's loving it. And I've gotten hooked on the added awareness and perceptiveness that one needs to have here merely to keep yourself alive walking the streets. I'm a virtual zombie when I'm in the USA by comparison. I mean you could sleepwalk around most American cities and folks would stop for you and you'd be ok. Not here baby. You have to keep your eyes focused and watch out for those street cleaning machines.

I've promised traffic talk for a while so it's time put my colgate where my wallet was as they say. I don't know that means either by the way.

I'll just give a few highlights of some of the crazier or more fun moves I've seen in action. On a 5 lane street with 2 lanes in each direction and a turn lane in the middle I've seen cars routinely cross into the 5th lane of oncoming traffic in order to pass cars not moving fast enough for them in the other 4. It's just a game of chicken at that point. In fact, now that I think of it, traffic here is really almost always a game of chicken and usually the bigger vehicle wins. 

On certain bigger streets there is a fence setup to separate some road space for bicyclists however if traffic is moving a bit too slow the smaller  Chinese cars (Ford Fiesta size) will just drive right in there horns blazing and forcing moped riders and bicyclists off to the side.

On all but the biggest street intersections all directions including people turning are going at once, who gets their first, has biggest vehicle and honks loudest wins.

One of my favorite moves that the driver who drives me to class each day often uses is to use the turn lane or even an oncoming traffic lane to stop in at a red light when there's a queue and then peel out at the green and merge in ahead of those suckers waiting in the correct lanes behind.

On one of the new Nanjing freeways  there are about 7 or 8 lanes and in the distance you can see a huge advertising billboard. As you approach it suddenly becomes clear that the left 4 or 5 lanes end smack into this billboard! There are no lights or signs warning you, there are just a few guard rail fences set up in a small curve way to close to the sign to be of much use if you were traveling at freeway speed. On the other side of the billboard is a 20 foot drop to a lower freeway going in the opposite direction.  Dang! You'd make some awesome international news coverage if you plowed through that baby.  I asked if this was just a temporary thing but no this is how it was designed and meant to be!  Its like a hazard in a driving video game. Perhaps the makers of Project Gotham were brought in as consultants on this design. I'll try to get some video and pics of it before I leave.

On all the freeways people still walk and ride their bikes and cross on foot, even when the freeway doesn't have a shoulder or  has just one lane. 

To sum up, the basic rule of egress that I've seen in action in China is: if you can physically do it, go ahead. I.e. if your car happens to fit on the sidewalk drive up in there fool, if you can reverse the wrong way back a freeway entrance at night with no lights on then do it! No one to stop you. Oh but watch out for that 3 foot construction hole in the road with no warning signs or lights...

Babies poop for free

WARNING. this blog entry is gross, puerile, infantile, and generally disgusting. In other words, just my style.

I couldn't keep on blogging without talking about this most hallowed topic at least once. There comes a time when each one of us has to take a load off and if your bowel system is operating at full capacity that time is at least once per day. The fascinating tie-in to my continuing trip here in China is that similar to some restaurant or airline promotions babies here in China poop for free.  And in case you didn't know pooping in public in china is not always free (hence the need for this sign at a park in Kunming).   It's a fascinating system of baby care that is so simple you'll wonder "why didn't I think of that". Instead of investing time and money in disposable or washable cloth diapers many parents here put their little tyke in some skivvies that have a big split right down the back side so that the baby can offload a delivery whenever they want. That's right there pants have a bit split right down the middle of the backside and their baby butts are hanging out there in the wind.  I have many practical questions and issues with this method but I haven't been able to get a good straight answer yet. I'll keep trying though and let you know if I do. For instance, 1) what if you are carrying the baby at time valves are opened? Messy to be sure. 2) What is the public cleanup protocol in this situation? A little plastic baggie like we use for dogs in the States. Some how I don't think so. Thankfully I've never seen evidence of a left over dropping on the street but I wouldn't disbelieve that possibility given what else I've seen people throw and do on public streets here.

Speaking of that have I mentioned that the full on clearing of the bronchial system, aka, hocking a loogie, is fully encouraged here in public? At least by men. It's difficult for me not to get grossed out by this but people do it everywhere and it doesn't seem to be considered rude in the least. Every kind of person does it from what I can see businessmen, street vendors, students, you name it.   Kissing cousins of the loogie hock is the nasal clearance. If you're not familiar with this maneuver it consists of holding one nasal passage closed with a finger and blowing forcefully to clear the other one.  This also regularly occurs on the street. Adds a new understanding to why you take off your shoes when you come in the house. Who knows what those shoes have stepped on afterall.

I'm a bit lonely now that I'm by myself and have read all the books I brought with me. For the most part I'm too lazy to do something creative like work on a novel so I'm just observing life but then thinking about it which gets in the way and wondering if I should be recording what I'm observing in some way (either digitally or mentally for later use here on my xanga blog).  The hard work required for 4 hours of Wushu study each day takes care of any lasting blues though. And that's at the heart of why I love it. A form of self expression like Wushu or dance that uses the body and requires rigorous training that involves coming to understand and know your own body better and better so that you can use it to express yourself is something I admire. Especially given that my work is so cerebral I need something physical to balance it out.

Not sure why I'm thinking of this now but I'm remembering the 50 or so western (non chinese) people that I've run into on streets, in restaurants, sharing my Wushu classroom.  We never talk to each other and or even hardly look at each other for the most part. It's odd. I don't understand it yet. Perhaps we all don't want to interfere with our fantasy lives we've built up about being/living in a foreign land by introducing someone from our own culture. It steals our uniqueness and we get lumped in with the others as laowai, waiguo ren or da bizi when we'd perhaps like to imagine ourselves as different in some important ways. I'm not sure. It might be something like that but it definitely happens. I was inclined the first couple times to say hello, or introduce myself (to the couple westerners who share my training space) but didn't do it and found that they studiously ignored me as well.

In general white people, and I guess all foreign visitors though don't know for sure, are treated well in China and given more polite treatment, more attention  etc than if we were fellow Chinese.  I think this is partly due to cultural trends of hospitality to guests which I feel is a good and heart warming thing but also partly due to internalized racism of feeling that western culture is better, more sophisticated, more modern, more beautiful than Chinese. This is an uglier aspect of it and I'm just voicing my own opinion based on observations here which might be way off base.  As an example of this attitude though, if you ask a Chinese person about a married a couple one white, one asian they will almost invariably say that the child of that couple will be more beautiful than a pure chinese child would be or the child of a mix between say a chinese and a japanese couple. I don't see any other explanation for that other than internalized racism and I've heard that sentiment expressed a lot. I think in Vietnam there are or were severe cultural trends the other way around against mixed children left behind by American GIs and I'm not sure about Korea but its definitely not the same belief here. Perhaps because the US never occupied and fought a war here? The other reason I brought up the favorable treatment as a foreigner here is that I think perhaps it is connected to how we fellow westerners ignore each other here. If we were being treated badly with discrimination or treated rudely I bet we'd be sticking together and talking to each other allright.

and before I end this blog I have to add my latest consistent language blunder that I think is very embarassing and funny. For some reason I keep getting the words for young "nian ching" and cheap "pian ying" mixed up. As you might imagine this can result in an inadvertently quite insulting sentence. For instance last week I said to someone "Wow you really look cheap!" I don't think that has the same insulting meaning that it has in English though, thank god because they had the baffled puzzled look on their face  not the insulted I can't believe you just said that look .  That's the beauty of multi-lingual communications using idioms that don't translate cultural boundaries and just plain old silly mistakes that can insult and alienate everyone around you

The object stares back

I just haven't been able to get used to the full on staring so I've started staring back. This usually causes starers to at least stop for a little while.  My leg has healed enough to start jumping and kicking again though not for stretching. Including jumps and kicks makes my 4 hour daily class a lot more tiring and sweaty.  So far my kicks are slow and my jumps are low. Work in progress. I was drenched by the end of today and just when my leg was doing better I cracked it pretty good on the knee with my broadsword.  Dang it!

Today was my first day of training without Su Hang here and getting around a bit on my own. However since my parents-n-law have taken care of most of transportation it was no big thing. It sometimes gets difficult trying to communicate with my wushu teacher since she doesn't speak English and I speak baby talk but we can almost always just show each other what we're talking about. Lucky that I didn't come here to study Chinese philosophy or something abstract.

Gotta go to bed now peeps.

These blogs were allegedly going to talk about Wushu and hurting your leg. If you've been waiting for that recipe I have it but you must read on.

 I take lessons at a big athletic complex in the middle of the city in a multi-purpose type room that gets used for Wushu, Tae Kwon Do, Jeet Kune Do (Bruce Lee's no-style style), little kids ballet, Tai Chi and more. Fortunately for most of my class time its just me but there's usually an hour or two each day where I have to share the room which gets kind of crowded. Wushu is performed and often practiced on big rugs. Yep you heard me. Rugs. and not the shag variety either.  The rugs in our room are too small and the lights are about 10 feet off the floor which when I have a weapon in hand puts them in slashing range. Then there's the bossy assistant tai ji teacher who is always making no-no-no sounds at me when I'm practicing and then coming over and grabbing the broadsword out of my hands and showing me how it should be done.  He kind of reminds of me Oscar the grouch actually except with the body of the fat happy buddha you see in statues and necklaces.

But my classes are great. My teacher Zhang Mei Ying is excellent. She was on the professional JiangSu province team for many years and then was a coach there so she really knows her stuff. She treats me with the kid gloves too which is funny to me when I hear how she yells at some of her other students "what are you looking at? Do you think you're that good? Get back to work" or "You're left hand I SAID your LEFT hand!" and other kindly remonstrances.  Actually there is no real heat or meanness in this or most yelling that I hear in China. Yelling at people just seems a way of life here and most people seem totally inured to it and don't seem to take it personally. Often, on the street when a taxi driver bumps someone's bicycle or someone is blocking 3 lanes of traffic so they can do a U turn in the middle of a busy road, you will hear this stream of abuse, honking and name calling but the recipient barely ever seems to show any response.

Let's get to the leg hurting you say? Okay then here we go. The story of my leg went from looking like an eggplant to a beautiful sunset.  I came to China with an injured left hamstring that had never fully healed from some previous high impact bagpiping that I was into last year.  Not wanting to waste my precious 4 weeks of training time I hit the stretching hard by putting my foot as high as I could on a wall and then grabbing my toes and stretching for 10 minutes. Result was a dark purple swollen hammie that was hard to move even to waist height.  This bird was grounded baby. Like a big ostrich running on the serenghetti. The treatment was acupuncture (which didn't hurt at all surprisingly) and bamboo fire cups and a little accupressure (which did hurt like a mother*).  The accupressue was administered by what looks like a pen though the end is not sharp. It gets pressed into the muscle just where the pain is so as you can imagine it hurts. The accupuncture on the other hand which I thought I'd be scared of thanks to lasting mental scars of seeing the movie NeedleMan when I was 9 years old actually didn't hurt at all. The bamboo fire cups are bamboo cups that are held briefly over a flame then quickly applied to problem area where they stick and contract the skin. My leg is now doing much better lately and has a very light purple and yellow but I'm still unable to do stretching or low stances or kicks for now.

I've also had a cold for last 4 days and been receiving accupuncture and fire cup treatment for that too.  Which reminds me ...We went to visit the JiangSu professional team and watch them work out last Friday. That was an amazing experience. I've seen video of that level of athleticism and wushu but seeing it live from a few feet away (we actually had a spear thrust quite close a few times) was something else. The jumps were of course amazing. 720 degree spins has now become the standard for each jumping kick and when done from a stationary stance its all more awesome. What impressed me the most though was the speed and focus of the players. I don't think I've ever seen people move so fast and with such focused energy. Really beautiful. And the ironic part is that the coaches were still yelling at them that they were too slow and to move faster. I think I only heard the coaches say "ok", which was the most positive thing they said, a couple times. The head coach of the JiangSu team is a really old school wushu player famous for his monky staff form and so they call him the old monkey "lao hozi". He was watching the practice from sidelines and one of the men's  team members came out onto the carpet for his turn and sort of sighed because he was so tired. Even just that small sigh and tired look earned him a tongue lashing and extra repetition something like "Oh you're tired huh? Well you can do a few more reps and then see what's called tired".

The point that reminded me of visiting the JiangSu team was that while waiting for warmups to start we watched the Gymnastics team working out and they were all getting accupuncture and bamboo cup treatment too. They would all come back out of doctor's office with gray circles on their backs. My coach said that Chinese traditional medicine is about all they use to treat their athletes so it's got to be the real deal.

I haven't been able to collect any really good funny translations since I'm usually moving by in a car or taxi but I'm not giving up.  The mistranslations generally fall into the following categories: 1) simple misspellings - these can still be funny and can often be totally puzzling until you find the few letters that have been left out or replaced with incorrect ones., 2) Grammar mistakes such as wrong tense of verb, etc. These can often be funny too. There's one example below, 3) Using archaic or antiquated words or expressions, eg. elizabethan language - I think these are often hilarious. Su Hang has an electronic pocket dictionary that spits out a lot of these for various words, 4) Poetic translation - this is one of my favorite variety and there are several huge billboards around town with examples which I will copy down one of these days. One has something about the power of dirt and end of an era. This kind of translation actually makes more sense to me since Chinese is a very poetic language, 5) The bizarre - Unexplained by any of the above 4 categories you sometimes just find the inexplicable blob of Roman alphabetic characters slapped together that make no sense at all.

And in the meantime I offer a few nuggets from previous trips:

On a sign at a scenic spot outside of Beijing : "Telphep Wicket -->"

The arrow was pointing to an office that was closed.  I still have no idea what this means but I love it. This is a classic category 5 bizarre translation. Telphep???

The other was on a billboard featured on the Nanjing -> Beijing trains that had a picture of a businessman relaxing in a chair that said "Classic, We are insisting". I don't know what it was advertising but I would have bought one. I mean when it's classic and they're insisting, how can you refuse?

Baby talk

I thought I'd blog a little about my forays into communication so far. I have no formal training in Mandarin Chinese just what I've picked up from Su Hang, previous trips to China and language cds so my vocabulary is a bit odd and my ability to express myself resembles baby talk plus a healthy dose of charades more than anything else. I often end up saying "not something", for instance I'll say not tall because I don't know the word for short. And I don't know the name for hardly any types of buildings or places specifically so I have to say "the buy food place" or "the cut hair place".  Learning the word for place was one of my biggest coups. I often mix up I, with you and he/she. This makes for some confusing sentences. I also substitute daughter for woman a lot which is more funny and embarassing than confusing, eg. "is that daughter you talked to your coworker"

Still, I find that I can often say, or pretty much approximate, my intention but the trouble always comes when the person I'm talking to replies. I just can't process the words fast enough, even if I knew all the words they were speaking which I almost never do. However, I can notice some definite improvements in my abilities even thus far. Someone had mentioned to me before that when learning a new language you often can get used to hearing certain people's voices speak it and understand more from those people. Makes sense to me since every one has their own diction and mode of speech etc. This has definitely been true in my case as the two people I can speak most easily with are my parents-n-law. I think that also may be in part because I'm not afraid of sounding stupid or making some big mistake with them either.

The problem for me with speaking and understanding Chinese is that being a monosyllabic and tone based language there are just so many similar sounding words and its easy to get confused fast when listening or make a mistake when talking. I'm sure my tone when speaking is almost never correct but people understand me because of context of what else I say.

I think in general Chinese people assume you don't understand the language, which odds on is probably true most of the time, and so they speak about you in front of your face often times. I find this mildly irritating because when combined with the full on staring and lack of personal space here it just all comes off as rude. However since I almost always have native speakers with me I know they're not saying anything bad or intending any rudeness. Mostly just curiousity about what a waiguo ren or lao wai "foreigner" is really like.  My usual response when I hear the usual "ta ting bu dong" or "ta ting dong ma" which means he doesn't understand or does he understand is to say "wo ting bu dong" (meaning I don't understand) myself before any of my chinese family speak for me. It's kind of fun and then they're not sure how much I really understand. 

One good side of being a foreigner and not knowing much Chinese is the social freedom it gives you. Chinese have an intricate system of social niceties similar in complexity to British social rules though more relaxed in modern times as are the British. Anyway I'm not expected to know or obey any, or at least many, of those so I can generally stop eating when I'm really full instead of eating for a1/2 hour more like Su Hang has to do. I can tune out conversations and do my own thing and just pop in once in a while with some random remark. In a way not understanding much of what is going on around you both verbally and in terms of reading signs is kind of freeing. 

I like to string together the limited vocabulary I do have to make new phrases. My favorite thus far "wo da si ni yi dian dian hao bu hao?". This means I'll hit you to death a little bit okay? 

This blog is already pretty dang long and I didn't even start on the myriad of crazy English translations you can find here on the streets or go off on my favorite topic of all time "Ain't my money green". I'll save that for part II.