Archives for Category "China"
Crossing the Street in China
The following video doesn’t highlight the most chaotic moments of crossing a Chinese street. This is just a normal day in Changzhou, after all. But count how many close calls you see. It’ll be fun!
How to Remember Chinese Tone Order
There are four tones in Chinese, they’re numbered from one to four, and Chinese speakers often refer to them as “first tone, second tone, etc.” To review, the first tone is flat , the second rises , the third dips , and the fourth falls .
Okay… that’s swell and all, but how do you remember which one is first and which one is fourth? It’s easy to get them mixed up and makes reading typed-out pinyin a pain (wo3 yao4 gen1 ni3 shuo1 hua4).
Then one day, I wrote the tone markings side by side: . Revelation time! They looked like a minus M, or -M. The M can even stand for Mandarin. The minus stands for… look, I’m not going to do all the work. Now, whenever I forget if the falling tone is second or fourth, I just have to think of it as it fits into the -M formula.
The Best Amusement Park in Xuzhou
One weekend, a friend and I decided to visit Xuzhou, a city in northern Jiangsu province. Xuzhou is significantly bigger than Changzhou, though it has very little going for it. They do have a small terracotta warrior museum, but the city itself just felt very sleepy and boring.
While there, we walked around the city’s lake and came across a small amusement park. This particular ride made me laugh, and I had to get a video of it:
It’s a little hard to tell from the video, but the ride is playing the song “It’s a Small World,” and the people in the carts are shooting animals and dinosaurs with laser guns.
One Month After China
… and I’m ready to go back. Nah, just kidding. There are certainly things I miss about China (my girlfriend being first and foremost), but I really wasn’t getting much enjoyment out of teaching, and there are so many things about China that drive me crazy and would have continued to do so had I stayed. For the sake of my sanity, it was important to leave.
But being back in the US has been rather stressful. A lot of chores pile up while you’re away, and the job market ended up being considerably bleaker than I imagined. That’s a rude awakening. But there are some good things about being back, too. It’s nice to be around my family again, and it’s nice to have Mexican food and legitimate copies of video games readily available!
On the other hand, it’s hard to go from being a foreign teacher and being treated like a celebrity (for better or worse) to being just a plain, old US citizen again. I don’t stand out at all, and few people even bat an eye when they hear that I’ve been living overseas for 18 months. If that time has done anything for me, it’s just put me way out of the loop.
Part of the problem is that I’m from a small town in Utah. The population here has yet to break 10,000. Changzhou had a population of 3.5 million and enough shops and restaurants and fun things to do to support that many people. In a city that big and crazy (this is China, after all), every day was an adventure (again, for better or worse). Believe me, I’m hoping I can move soon, but for the time being, I really feel like I’m just treading water.
Making Sense of Chinese Bus Stop Signs
Riding the bus in China isn’t exactly a fun experience, especially when you’re trying to get on during the busy hours (also know as all hours of the day). Eventually, though, you’re going to need to figure out the bus system in your new Chinese city. I know many expats don’t like bothering with the bus stop signs, because they’re too confusing, so we’re going to walk through this together.
The big mass of characters above the word BUS are the names of the bus stops read from top to bottom. The red highlighted one is the stop you’re at right now. The two characters next to the bus stop number, 下站, refer to the next stop. The red numbers in the top-right corner tell us when the first and last bus run (frustratingly, most of the buses end before 9:00).
Don’t forget to look at the top of the sign, which displays the current stop in characters and pinyin. This is a great way to start tying the two together. If you can start recognizing simpler characters like 大 (da) or 中 (zhong) in the names of important bus stops, it makes it a lot easier traveling around town. But if you don’t care to learn how to read Chinese, at least copy the characters (the best you can) in your notebook so you can compare them with other bus signs when you’re ready to return.
But on the bus, none of this will do you much good, because the stops are announced (if at all) in Chinese, and the marquee (if there is one) doesn’t always work. The easiest thing to do is count how many stops are between you and your destination on the sign, then keep track of how many times the bus stops while you’re on it. I know all of this makes perfect sense already, but the first few times you get on a Chinese bus can be pretty scary. Good luck.
A Fat Chinese Person is a Normal American
On returning home, one of the first differences that struck me between the US and China was the size of the people. Americans are big. They’re taller, stronger, fatter, just… bigger all around. In China, you go to the store, and it’s packed with people who all look like super thin supermodels. There’s not a single fat person to be found anywhere.
Well, fat Chinese people do exist, they’re just very rare. I only saw one or two truly obese people the entire time I was there. Maybe it’s their diet (of KFC and ice cream) or all the walking they do, or maybe Asians just got lucky in that sense. But not everyone is scarily thin. Some of my students were obviously spoiled and well-fed, and, in the summer, the men do like to roll their shirts up to reveal their beer guts.
Because the majority of people are thin, though, they have a twisted view of what normal weight is. Anybody who has any bit of meat on them is labeled fat, and the only thing that garners more chuckling and pointing than a white person getting on the bus is an obese person. It’s sad how a beautiful Chinese girl by American standards faces constant ridicule for being “chunky,” and it’s sad how people have no qualms about informing said girl she needs to lose weight.
This is the part I will never understand about China. Why is it acceptable for people, even first acquaintances, to tell others they’re fat, that they need to lose weight, that they need to eat less, that their boyfriends will never love them if they continue to eat so much? Yes, these are all common jabs. Even more obnoxious is how my students would always refer to their slightly bigger classmate as “the fat one.” Those kids loved pointing out fat people. It was an obsession.
Apologists like to bring up that China is simply a more open society. And that’s definitely true. Frequent comments were made about my acne and my big nose and even my lack of weight. Open or not, though, if you call somebody fat, even a Chinese person, you run the risk of hurting their feelings. Nobody likes being reminded of their physical flaws. Remember the “chunky” but beautiful Chinese girl? Yeah, her feelings get hurt, too.
Chinese Marketing: Clapping for Customers
Another Youtube video. Sorry, China users.
Many of the clothing stores in China will have one or two employees standing in the doorway, clapping. That’s all they do. They clap. I gotta admit, though, when I hear the sound of two hands smacking against each other, I’m compelled to buy something. It gets me every time. Occasionally, these employees will yell out specials, but… their job is mostly clapping. And that’s the best job ever.
Haibao’s Expat Guide: Ordering Noodles
Youtube warning for those reading from China:
When my brother and I were in Changzhou, we wanted to do a series of videos about the Shanghai Expo mascot, Haibao, giving advice to new expats in China. The first (and only) one we did focused on breaking away from the McDonald’s habit and eating local food (”la mian” and “dao xiao mian” noodles).
Alas, the weather got too cold after we finished “ordering noodles” to do anymore filming. Going around town with a Haibao puppet garnered a frustrating amount of attention, anyway. It’s hard to film when everybody wants to stand in front of the camera to watch what you’re doing.
We had some help with the puppetry and voice acting, but all filming and post production was done by JR.
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