Archives for July 2009
I Hate Shopping for Clothes
Oh, big surprise. A man who doesn’t like shopping for clothes. What are you going to tell us next? You don’t like wedgies, either? My problem with clothes shopping, however, isn’t that I hate the process of looking for things to buy. Well, okay, I hate that part, too, but I actually take longer to find what I want than my girlfriend does. She’s the one who doesn’t like going shopping with me. The hangup is that I have very simple tastes which are becoming harder to find as ridiculously large brand logos are all the rage now.
The bigger hangup is that I also wear a very selective size, forever caught in that frustrating transitional period between the boys’ and the men’s sections. My wardrobe has always consisted of a meager handful of both. So when I finally do find clothes that fit, I tend to wear the hell out of them to the point where they can’t possibly be patched or sewn up anymore. The seamstresses who hang out on the streets of China give me a funny look every time I ask them to stitch my sad pants back together. “Why don’t you just give up?” they want to ask… but don’t because the money is good.
So there’s the setup. Now imagine if I had no men’s section to fall back on, and that’s how shopping in China feels. Even with my skinny build, loose-fitting clothes are hard to come by. I bought a pair of extra large pajama bottoms, and they were still too tight. Extra large was the biggest they had! I went shoe shopping today, too, and was not able to find anything that comfortably fit my average American feet. One seller tried to blame it on my socks, saying I needed to convert to a thinner brand (i.e. most Chinese brands) in order to squeeze into a pair of size 44 Nikes. 44 was the biggest they had!
I ended up buying a pair of Kappa shoes, though I don’t know why. I don’t even like them. They hurt my feet. Part of me was just desperate to finally have some new shoes. The other part of me was stupid enough to name a price and commit myself to the bargaining rigmarole. Word of warning: don’t name a price. Even if it’s low, the vendor may end up giving it to you, and then you have no choice but to accept.
Chinese shoes, as I have now discovered, are all padless pieces of crap, anyway. I only found one pair with a decent amount of cushioning, but, alas, they were the Nikes that would require me to switch sock brands and cut off my big toe (the seller didn’t mention that part, but I knew it would have to happen). Sure, you can buy additional shoe padding, but it all sucks. When my US shoes reached their breaking point, I invested a lot of time and money into mixing and matching different shoe pads and never did find the right combination.
Obviously, I have to keep my wardrobe as American as possible if I am to continue being comfortable. It’s a good thing my parents are coming in two days and are bringing some extra clothes. For Westerners who live in China long-term, though, and who didn’t stock up on clothes beforehand, I don’t know how they manage to survive.
Harry Potter Now Playing… on DVD
Yeah, Harry Potter is big here, too. No, I haven’t gone to the theater yet. What’s the point? It’ll be dubbed in Chinese with Chinese subtitles, and several scenes will be missing. Since there is no rating system in China, movies (particularly foreign movies) get “edited” down to suit the general public. This would explain why, when I saw Quantum of Solace and Night at the Museum 2 in the theater, there were so many abrupt transitions and odd cuts. I’m not sure what’s getting cut, though, because the Chinese blockbuster, Red Cliff, still had quite a bit of violence.
To avoid the trouble, you could always go buy the DVD instead. Those bootleggers are pretty good about getting a copy of a new release on store shelves within a few days of a movie’s premier, regardless which country it played in first. It used to be that movies took a while to come to China, but now I’m seeing the bigger names show up nearly the same time as they do in the US. We even got Dragonball: Evolution a few weeks earlier. Sorry, guys, I should have warned you.
I suspect distributors have started taking the Chinese market more seriously, because they realized if they waited too long to bring a movie over, everyone will have already seen it on DVD. Of course, airing a movie in China just makes piracy easier, but when the DVD and the movie experience come out at the same time (and the movie experience is only a few yuan more), some people are bound to choose the latter. Plus, initial DVD prints suck.
Deja Vu Deja Vu Deja Vu
We were talking about expenses and how much the students spent on certain things every month. One of the girls said she spent very little on entertainment, because her husband was able to get free movie tickets. And then BAM! I realized I had already heard this before. Then she said she only spent 50 yuan a month on entertainment. BAM! I had already heard that before. Then the guy sitting next to her said, “She is a good wife.” BAM! That sounded familiar, too. In fact, the remaining 20 minutes of class was one huge helping of deja vu.
The culprit isn’t me losing my mind but rather the small selection of lesson plans that repeat the same topics. When I told the students we were going to talk about the weather and movies today, they all groaned, “That’s what we talked about in our last class!” Plus, as an overworked foreign teacher at a language center, you end up doing the same lessons several times a month. Every time I look at the schedule and see that I’ve been signed up to teach Beginner 1, a part of me dies. Oh great, we get to discuss countries and nationalities again.
I’m very reluctant, then, to begin working at the middle school, where I’ll be teaching the same lesson to 16 different classes every week. At my primary school, I did one lesson ten times a week and another lesson nine times, and that got rather old after a while. Like, the next day. Obviously, the first time you do a lesson, you’re nervous and end up changing a lot of things afterward. The next 2-3 times are okay. But after that, you get really sick of saying the same things and asking the same questions and hearing the same answers.
No Love for China’s Solar Eclipse
Typical of Chinese weather, it was a rainy, miserable, overcast day when there was finally something worth doing outside. Everyone knew it was going to be a bad day, and yet everyone still showed up at the park, umbrellas and special visors in hand, hoping determination would somehow trump the forecast and bring the sun out. It didn’t work. But the entrepreneurs continued to peddle visors even after the park announced over the loud speaker that there was nothing to see here, folks, move along, now, move along.
I guess I shouldn’t be too disappointed, because I didn’t find out there was a total solar eclipse happening in China until two days prior. But when the subject came up in class, you better believe I was excited. I had never seen one before and expected it to be a very surreal and humbling experience. Yeah, it was still cool to see the world turn dark for six minutes, but not being able to witness the actual phenomenon was a major letdown, a huge missed opportunity. The next eclipse to last this long isn’t due until 2132. Mark your calendars!
Five Important Chinese Measure Words
Measure words should be nothing new to you. They show up in English, as well. A sheet of paper. A bar of soap. A cup of hot lava. The difference between Chinese and English is that every noun in Chinese needs a measure word. You can’t just say you want one apple. You have to say you want one (measure word) apple. Not surprisingly, there are hundreds of these to memorize.
Don’t worry, I’ll keep it simple. My lists are not aimed to teach fluent Chinese but are, instead, designed to help first-time travelers get familiar with the basics before making a fool of themselves in the motherland. Well, that’s bound to happen, anyway. Sorry.
1. ge (个)
If the concept of measure words completely blows your mind, at the very, very, very least, remember “ge.” Commit it to memory. Because it is used for so many things, it’s easier to fall back on “ge” and risk being corrected than to take a shot in the dark.
Example: yi ge ren (one person)
2. zhang (张)
“Zhang” applies to things that are flat, like a table or, of more relevance, paper. The reason why a traveler would want to know this is because you will often be ordering tickets. Train tickets. Bus tickets. Forbidden City tickets. Paper tickets. Bingo.
Example: yi zhang piao (one ticket)
3. ping (瓶)
Then you decide to have a rest for you and order a round of bottled water… or beer… or shampoo. Hey, I’m not judging. “Ping” means bottle, so it naturally becomes the measure word for… well… things in a bottle. Crazy, isn’t it.
Example: yi ping shui (one bottle of water)
4. fen (份)
A “fen” is a portion, whether you’re at a nice restaurant or KFC (but as a traveler, you’ll probably be at KFC more often than not, amiright?). Now you can start ordering food like a civilized person instead of grunting and holding up fingers.
Example: yi fen shutiao (one portion of French fries)
5. kuai (块)
While “kuai” can be used to mean a piece of something, I am not sure to what extent you should toss it around. It’s important to know, however, because “kuai” is also the measure word for money and is frequently used as a standalone.
Example: yi kuai (one yuan)
Don’t Mail a Computer to Beijing
Remember when I said my students don’t like to think hypothetically? Well, I got another frustrating dose of “but, but, but” today when talking about the postal service. All I wanted to know was how much it would cost to send something big to Beijing (in this case, a computer). All I got in return was a carton of eggs. A carton of nonsense eggs. Or… something like that. If this doesn’t give you a headache, I don’t know what will:
“How much would it cost to send a letter to Beijing?”
“It cost… maybe… eight or ten yuan.”
“What if I wanted to send something big, like a computer?”
“Wa! I think you should take it to Beijing by yourself!”
“But I don’t want to go to Beijing. I want to mail it.”
“Why not go to Beijing? I think Beijing is a good city.”
“I can’t go to Beijing. I need to mail it.”
“Can’t this person just buy a computer from the Internet?”
“Yeah, but… let’s say this is a special computer.”
“A special computer? Why?”
“It doesn’t matter why. Maybe it’s for a friend.”
“I would tell him to come get it.”
“Sure. That makes sense. But how much would it cost to mail?”
“I still think there are many fun things to do in Beijing. For example…”
“I know, I know. I’ve been to Beijing before. I don’t want to go again. So if I’m not going to Beijing, and I need to mail this computer, how much would it cost?”
“Oh, but nobody would send a computer to Beijing.”
“Well, I would. So how much?”
“……..”
“How much would it cost?”
“So expensive.”
“All right. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
None of them could give me a close estimate, since nobody has ever bothered to mail anything that large. But I would have taken an “I don’t know” from the start and moved onto the next topic. Please, let’s move onto the next topic!
Legend of Zelda: Games for Windows Edition
Leave it to the Chinese bootleg market to package an emulator and ROM together and sell them as a standalone game on a different platform for only ten yuan:
Those crazy Chinese.
Tell Me No More Lies
It’s difficult for an EFL teacher to really decipher what his/her students’ personalities are, because the students come to you with a limited knowledge of English and can’t freely express themselves. So you get this impression everyone is sweet and innocent and can do no wrong. It isn’t until you start working with some of the more advanced students—and move beyond simple-minded conversations about the weather—when you realize maybe you passed around a little too much benefit for the doubt.
Many of my students don’t like to play “what if,” either, complaining how they would never do this thing in real life and, therefore, aren’t able to comment. But when I brought up the question, “What would you do if you were invisible for a day?” I got some pretty interesting responses. Suddenly, the guy who refused to pretend he had gone to Africa had something so secret in mind, he wouldn’t even share it with us. Two other students said they would rob a bank. And the quietest, shyest girl in class proudly admitted, “I would kill this girl I don’t like.”
Sometimes, it’s better not to ask.
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