The Long Silky Road

Graduation

2008-06-19T03:10:00.011-04:00

Today was graduation at Lanzhou University.

Apparently everyone was graduating today - undergrads and grad students - all at once. I don't know how many that is, but it sure seemed like a lot. People have been wandering around campus for the past several weeks wearing caps and gowns for photo shoots, at least some of which were officially sanctioned by the school. Today, though, everyone was wearing them for 'real'.

It started at about 7am, out in the stadium right next to where I live, with some kind of ceremony. I can't tell you much about this part because I tried to sleep through it (does anything official start before 9 back home?). I can say that it was loud and lasted several hours. I think it was speeches from various school administrators.

The actual graduation ceremony took place in front of the library. There's a decently big space there, and they'd set up a stage and bleachers. Students congregated, donned caps and gowns, with hoods colored or designed to indicate major, and waited for hours in what seemed a lack of serious organization and good amount of boredom (I came across many card games). Cross the scene to the stage, though, and there was an orderly, efficient processing of graduates. The department and degree was announced, followed by a series of names as students filed across the stage, bowing to the head of the school so he could turn their tassels and hand them cased diplomas (see video below). The new graduates lined the bleachers behind the president, and one class after another was photographed, achievement in hand.

Sounds fairly normal as described, but in reality it seemed a strangely warped version of graduation as I know it. Most significantly, there were no spectators. Not a single parent was there. There were a few people watching, probably a mixture of people happening to stroll through the campus 'gardens' which spread out just past the scene and a smattering of friends. The area was roped off, but you could cross it to greet somebody if you wanted to. The few security guards looked bored and hot, and didn't seem to be paying much attention. The students started lining up on the right of the library, then filed around in front of the stage to eventually go up on stage from the left, finishing on the right where they had started. This is to say, spectators didn't have a really good view anyway (see photos) because people waiting to graduate were in the way. Finally, the names were read much faster than the procession to greet the president, and so would end a while before the line of graduates. Consequently, names didn't match up with faces. And in the interest of efficiency, the next group of graduates would start being called while the previous was just starting to get off the stage.

Math majors who have just donned their gowns, loaned to them on site by the school for the few hours of the ceremony.

Students pause as they cross in front of the stage from the right, waiting their own turn to walk up on stage from the left.

Waiting to graduate. I have no problem getting this close, though I am still behind the tape barrier, which is marked as 'limitline.'

Does an official ceremony lose meaning without the crowd there to support and celebrate and appreciate it? I asked friends what they thought they were dressing up for, and though a bit puzzled the answer seemed to be for the school president. Maybe for the photos. Maybe just because it's graduation. Nobody seemed to think it was a big deal, and maybe even this much ceremony was a bit overdone. The school is funny too, I don't think many of the graduates knew for sure what day the ceremony would take place until this week (I have a friend at another university who still isn't sure when hers will be), and they've been finished with everything for longer than that now. I don't know how they used to celebrate the end of schooling before this western-influenced kind of event, but I get the feeling that though some surface elements transfer over, little if any of the deeper meaning we attach to our graduation made the trip. Graduation isn't just about finally having diploma in hand but is about marking and celebrating the personal and intellectual growth students have achieved by working hard over the course of years, in the presence of people who care about them and who have contributed to their achievement. Isn't it?

Chinese medicine, by prescription

2008-04-11T12:34:00.011-04:00

Initially, it was supposed to be for a concoction to treat asthma the Chinese way, and I was just going along with a friend who was more knowledgable and eager about the plan than I was. But according to the TC doc, you can't treat specific diseases in Chinese medicine. You have to treat the whole system. It's a matter of qi. I was roped in and, it just so happens, my qi that day was 19 plant products and a scorpion low.

I've actually finished taking that first prescription, so today I went back along with three friends to get my prescription adjusted to my new health state. Here's how seeing a Chinese doctor works, at least in this case.

The doctor's office, on the corner of a busy intersection, is straight inside. The door remains open, covered only by the plastic fringes so common here, as long as the weather is decent. There's a partial partition which shields it from the rest of the area, but it's not a room to itself.

The whole consultation, besides a brief glance at the tongue, consists of sitting across a desk from the doctor as he 'listens' to your wrists. He puts three fingers along the right wrist first, applying light pressure in different combinations for a couple of minutes. During this, he was explaining what the points are, how they apply to different body parts and circulation pathways, but it was tough to follow. In any case, according to my friends, he was astonishingly right. You have a weak stomach, he'd say. Do you have a pain in your lower back, or perhaps related to your kidneys? Some of it I think could be easily guessed by chance, and I'm a skeptic. But, some of it was remarkable.

The left wrist follows, in the same way, with the tongue glanced worked in along the way.

The doctor never asked for symptoms, only asked for details or clarification once he came up with them himself. Since none of us are actually that sick, and coming for general health instead, I don't know what treatment for very acute issues would be like.

Next, the prescription is thought over as it is written out:
My prescription, as illegible as doctors back home, so far as I can tell.
This is then taken to the cashier, in the other, larger room of the establishment, who calculates how much is owed. The consultation with the doctor costs 5 yuan (70 cents), and the medicine preparation (including putting the product into individual packets) costs the same. The rest is the cost of the materials, which varies, in our experience between 75 and 150 yuan ($11-21). So it's sort of expensive, but it's a lot of herbs. I can't imagine what it would go for back home.

The prescription is passed to other employees, who seem extremely knowledgable. They gather the various herbs from a set of drawers behind the main counter in the room, weighing by sliding a marked metal rod until it balances at the length representing the weight desired. These are piled neatly along reusable sheets of pastic-y paper as you chat with the gatherer and try to figure out what's what and what it's for.

There are roots, seeds, berries, leaves and if you're lucky, a bit of scorpion or seahorse. None of us got the seahorse, but we did have a look at it up close, upon request:

I had scorpion in my first concoction, though I didn't realize what it was until I got back and looked up the character. It's sort of a funny story. When the doc was writing the presctiption I had asked if they were all plants, and he had chuckled and said almost but not all, for I had 'xie' in mine. Now, I know the word 'xie,' and it means crab. So I put my hands up like pincers to confirm I had the meaning right and he nodded happily. When they put a pile of it on my sheet, it wasn't really identifiable as anything, most of it was powdered or at least crumbly, though you could make out small pieces that looked very faintly spiky or shell-like. After looking up the character, I learned my mistake - crab is 'xie' pronounced with a fourth tone, starting high-pitched and sharply going done, while scorpion is 'xie' pronounced with first tone, at a very even, relatvely high pitch (oh, and second tone can mean shoe and third tone write, by the way).

But back to the pharmacy. Once the ingredients have been double-checked, they're bagged up in a black plastic sack and you're given a ticket, sort of like a coat check, which matches the ticket attached to your bag of goods. Coming back in a few hours, the piles will have been processed by this machine, which whistles and whirs and looks like cinnamon toast crunch should pop out:

But out comes a brown liquid that is distributed and sealed into 15 packets, to be drank hot three times a day for five days half an hour after meals.

Does it work?? After my first treatment phase, I'm still not sure. I feel fine - good, even, and perhaps with extra energy. It's hard to say, just yet. I'm thinking I'll go once more, a 15 day cure for my qi.

Space

2008-04-11T11:59:00.003-04:00

Being gone for over a month gave me new perspective on my life here. It's funny how taking time away from something can actually make it clearer, make you more perceptive. You get lost in day to day routine, in day to day exposure to the exact same things. You forget that what you eat is spicy, because you don't sweat anymore. You forget that it's unnatural for you to agressively yell out your lunch order and that you can never get to the front of the crowd if you're still trying to wait in a nonexistent line.

I got an abrupt picture of my progress. Coming back on the exact route I took over a half year ago when I first moved to Lanzhou, I could feel my cluelessness reawaken like deja-vu. But this time I could suppress it - I knew what I was doing. I knew how to check in at the airport, get to the University, how to find food and groceries, how to talk to my roommate and classmates. Returning to Lanzhou after having been away for a while I was startled to realize that I did actually live there. Last semester I struggled with making my life coherent in my mind; it felt like a bunch of pieces, made up of things I did in disparate places with very different intentions, almost like I was a new person each place I went. And it doesn't help that all the people who don't know me, no matter how long I live here, will look upon me as a visitor. But as I welcomed the newcomers, recommended places to eat and buy clothes, shared stories from the holidays, and picked up my old routines, I got a bigger picture of the life built here. I don't know everything, by far - the city holds many unexplored corners and I'm still constanty learning new secrets from friends and strangers. But I live here, I know here. I can see when things change. I can make plans for weeks ahead and I can talk about last fall. This isn't travel, this is life.

I can see my Chinese improvements a little clearer too, and since that's a big reason I'm here, that really is big. I was a little scratchy at first, having not spoken much at all back home, but it came back swiftly and smoothly, again in stark comparison with my first arrival in Lanzhou. Even writing characters flowed more fluidly than I remembered, easier and more natural.

The weather changed immensely since I left. In January I was wearing long johns and using an electric blanket; in March I was back on the tennis courts and sleeping in shorts. Construction projects were finished (a new cafeteria has opened right next to my class building!), and new ones were begun (the pavement has been destroyed between where I live and the nearest gate to the street, with scraps piled 10 feet high. this segment had also been of interest to me because it previously was broken or chipped in many places such that you could see evidence of at least 5 layers of different cement or tiling patterns. Now they've all been removed by workers sledgehammering them to bits).

Having that gap in space and time was nice - I discovered that I live in Lanzhou and that I speak Chinese, even if both in a rather strange, abnormal way. Things aren't perfect, and after a few weeks some of that shock has turned back to the view of the road ahead, which is still steeply uphill. Maybe we need to take vacations and weekends more seriously.

One Child

2008-04-01T12:06:00.001-04:00

Talking about brothers and sisters with Chinese peers is not always a comfortable topic. I avoid asking directly if my friends have siblings, though I am happy to talk about mine when asked, and it can lead to a very interesting conversation. Often, my counterparts make a comment like, ‘we are all only children, you know.’ They don’t seem bitter about this, mostly objective, or even a little proud. This is a unique policy, evidence of the prominence/dominance of the Chinese (there so many Chinese that if uncurbed they’d probably take over the world). And, being among those who did get the chance to be born, they feel very lucky.

I know that a few of my friends do have siblings (though it’s sometimes hard to be sure because people often refer to cousins as brothers or sisters, and sometimes even childhood friends). Last week, a guy I met on the tennis court from Shaanxi province, where he said his parents were ‘peasants,’ admitted to 5 siblings, topping mine. What is the actual population policy in China, and why does everyone claim that all are only children when it’s not true??

I reread an article I remembered seeing in China Daily, which I’d gotten in Beijing on my way to Lanzhou a couple weeks ago, about a decision to leave the one-child policy unchanged in the foreseeable future. It mostly quoted reasons of stability and ‘it’s working,’ and that changes would create more problems than they would solve (though admitting issues of gender imbalance and an aging society were problems). It gave the current birth rate as 1.8 children/woman (a strict one-child policy would be 1 child/woman, or less). Contrary to what seems to be the popular notion of the world (including China itself, it seems to me) that everyone in China is limited to having one child, only 36 percent of the population is strictly affected by this law. These are mostly people who live in big cities. Then, 53% of the population, living in more rural areas of most provinces, can have a second child if the first is a girl. That leaves about eleven percent of the population unaffected by the law, mostly minority groups, according to this article. I checked the figures with a few sources, which all more or less agreed, though most wouldn’t quote such concrete figures as this article. Additional children can be had so long as fees are paid. This kind of population policy was first implemented in 1979.

Interesting. This must affect population dynamics quite a lot – some sectors, sorted by various factors, will be increasing faster than others. Also, it creates rural/urban and ethnic divides about whether you have siblings or not. I’m not sure of the reason why some of my friends have siblings - some may be because older siblings were born before 1979, at least one has a half brother (no idea what the law says on that) and another definitely comes from a very rural area.

Back to the lab again (figuratively, not literally until next year)

2008-03-12T15:40:00.004-04:00

After a two month hiatus, I'm back to blogging. Exams finished off the first semester, I visited Beijing for a week, flew home, and flew across the country six times to visit grad schools. I figured there wasn't much to write about, but actually it was an interesting experience: being home for break from China, reverse culture shock (e.g., getting abnormally excited by the Arby's menu), attending ambiguosly defined recruitment/interview/visit weekends at seven schools and thus introducing myself and my somewhat nontraditional circumstance to about 30 people at each school (that's a lot of explaining why I'm in China. it's funny to see who asks 'why do you study Chinese?' and who asks 'why do you study Biology'). Perhaps there will be a future post on how to (or not to) choose a graduate school from China. In any case, the word will be out when a decision has been made on the matter.

Meanwhile, my current circumstances: I'm up at 4am, battling jet lag and the exhaustion from such a long trip. Going over 24 hrs with almost no sleep and then having day and night officially switched is not easy. I find myself drained but unable to sleep well, and sorta sick on top of it. I don't know if that's the travel or the air now that I'm here. I'm constantly thirsty, so I'm on constant tea and online for now, glad I bothered to pay for my internet reconnection yesterday, being quiet for Yuri sleeping behind me but her phone beeps every 10 minutes with a message she hasn't read yet, and on rare occasions she mutters a slew of something in Korean (in fact, it's very nice to see her again). I'm thinking over my first day and a half back:

-coming in on the bus, from afar, Lanzhou sure looks like a city. I saw a lot of cities while I was home, and from where we were crossing the Yellow River outside of town, it looked like it could be anywhere. Maybe the buildings were a little shorter, but they were many, and lit up, with even one or two with notable color schemes like you get in a metropolis.

-but alas, it isn't anywhere, it's the middle of China, and the guy next to me was showing me his lawyer's certificate and inviting me to visit his homeland sometime, which is somewhere in shandong province. I smiled lightly and noncomittally complimented his province as a great place to visit. Chinese occasionally but regularly invite me to where they're from, a place they're very proud and fond of, and which I mostly don't think they expect me to take them up on which is a good thing since I wouldn't.

- I walked 15 minutes down the street and through the university to Zhuan Jia Lou. I could have taken a cab for a dollar, but was so eager to walk at all that I ignored the weight of my bags and the looks around me, figuring that as a reinitiation rite for Lanzhou foreigners.

-it's been incredibly nice to see friends and people here in general (the office, the desk in my building, etc.). With few exceptions, I don't communicate by internet with people here and so haven't been in touch. It's a reminder that I do live here, with six months of habituation behind me.

-Class started last week, and though I've only been to one so far, I've gotten some of the lowdown from classmates. I've moved up to the advanced class, the top of the ladder, and although I'm not sure I deserve that status yet, I think it'll be better than last semester. The atmosphere is more serious and skilled, but in a very good way. I've only got three classes this time - reading, speaking, and newspaper-reading. There's also a prep class for the HSK, the Chinese equivalent of the TOEFL, both of which (the class and test) I'm undecided about taking.

So, basically I just want to let you all know that I'm back in Lanzhou, back on the web, and planning to be back in the lab next year; but first, I'm planning for a super five months here, and even more first, planning to get back to the Korean sitcom dubbed in Chinese that I've been watching, until I'm sleepy or have class, whichever comes first.

Brown liquid to cure my cold

2008-01-08T02:41:00.000-05:00

I've had cold symptoms for well over three weeks now, no doubt affected in nature, and likely intensified, by extremely dry air laced with pollution and dirt. It started with the hoarsest throat I can remember, where I had to explain over the phone three times before anyone believed who I was. Since then it's moved around regularly, confusing me into thinking I was nearly cured. Yesterday, the cough was back, and my nose was running. It was time to consult a professional.

There's a clinic on campus, just around the corner from where I live, which had always looked kind of mysterious. So today, I finally had my chance to walk into the simple, dark entryway and wait in line to register. Once at the front and having briefly described my problem, I was given a ticket for 'internal medicine' and a blank slip for the visit’s prescriptions. I was also charged 1.5 yuan visit fee, about 20 cents. I was confused about where to go, and in the not-so-helpful manner that often characterizes Chinese customer service, was pointed in a vague direction but didn't know whether to stand in the corner indicated and wait for something or continue down the hall to the left. I stopped for a minute at the edge of the room and then pleaded with someone in line to be more specific about where to go. Finally finding several doors not far away marked 'internal medicine,' I waited outside because someone was already being seen, but was motioned to come in. Conditioned to the privacy and confidentiality of medical visits in the US, it was a bit uncomfortable to share my walk-in appointment with another person. We were talking with separate doctors, but side by side. I wasn't too surprised because I'd already gone through the medical tests upon arrival in China which involved drawing blood and other procedures in a similarly open setting, but still was a bit taken aback. My cold complaints were nothing difficult to talk about, fortunately.

The doctor asked a few questions relating to my symptoms and what medicine I'd already taken, and took a listen to my breathing. I took the now filled out prescription slip to the in-house pharmacy, where they wrote down how much I owed, returned to the first window to pay, returned to the pharmacy to pick up my meds, and to the doctor so she could tell me how to take them. At least I started to understand why everyone seemed to think I should know where to go - I know the place well now too.

I got home to inspect my yield. I had antibiotic pills, unidentifiable (to me) pills, and tubes of brown liquid. I was fine with the pills. The brown liquid, in its little vials you could poke a hole in the cap of to insert a straw, provided, were cute. The taste however is nasty, and straw is so skinny you can't gulp it down and get it done with. However, I am hopeful that treating a Chinese cold with Chinese drugs will be effective, more effective than my attempts at using donations from Korea, Singapore, and Krygysztan.

So it’s not Chinese medicine I saw today, but something of a Chinese approach, and it was not bad. The clinic was about business and efficiency, with no time wasted filling out forms (a simple question about whether I was allergic to anything before prescribing). I'm not sure if I was treated a bit differently being foreign - I didn't even have to show I was a student, and others seemed to have a little booklet that maybe was a health record or record of their visits to the clinic. It was affordable (I think even to Chinese, 1.5 for the visit and 30 for all the meds I got is not too expensive?). Interestingly, the doctors were women, and those working in the pharmacy were men.

Though I’m tired of being sick, it’s nothing serious and I am pleased to have gotten to go to the doctor. Though I registered in England, I never had the occasion to go. I went once in France, where I was amazed at the quantity and variety of medicines prescribed for what also was just a lingering cold, including a nasal spray. I think we must purposely avoid uncomfortable distribution methods in the US.

So I'm crossing my fingers this will kick my cold back out on the street. Then I won’t have an excuse not to go to the gym anymore.

Christmas and New Year's

2008-01-01T06:52:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!!

Both Christmas and New Year's have passed most uneventfully in Lanzhou. But this doesn't mean they went by unnoticed by me. In fact, it would have been impossible for me to forget about Christmas because so many people asked me about it. What was I going to do? Was I very sad not to spend it with my family? Did I see that they were selling little stuffed santas in the supermarket? Most of the time, I took the time to explain that no, I didn't really mind missing Christmas. Even though Christmas is an important holiday in the US, I don't celebrate it because it's a Christian holiday and I'm not Christian. Even after explanation, these same people would wish me a Merry Christmas a few days later. Christmas is very much understood as a holiday from the west, a big part of which is the US. I just couldn't possibly not care about it.

And partly, they're right. It is a holiday for me -- it can't not be. At home, everything is closed that day and many many people are celebrating with family, thus forcing it to be spent in a way that distinguishes it from other days (e.g., at the movies and eating Chinese food). I sort of looked forward to not going through Christmas hassle for one year, but the interest from those around me made it stand out just as much. I must have been asked a hundred times about my plans for Christmas.

Christmas has come and gone. I didn't have class on the day, perhaps because of this seemingly set idea that foreigners observe Christmas (in fact more of the foreign students here are Muslim, I would guess). I went shopping, the absence of crowds rather striking (and pleasant). Then again, there is always a lot of advertising and selling going on here. I'm scared to even think about what a peak in these for Christmas would look like.

January 1, 2008. Wow!!!

Though the Chinese traditionally used a lunar calendar with a new year that falls around early February, they now refer to all dates (including historic, current, and dates of birth) using the solar calendar as we do. Therefore, I assumed that the signifance of the holiday would at least be on the same scale as back home. Wrong. I think schools were off today, but they start up again tomorrow. Walking around, it seemed that everything (notably excluding my gym) was open. Even more dramatically, last night there was little midnight activity. After asking a few Chinese friends and finding out that they had no intention of celebrating, I went to dinner with a group of schoolmates from Kazakhstan. It was a very big deal for them, and they were excited. Still, they couldn't muster up the celebratory atmosphere that a whole city - a whole country - in suspense could. I truly missed it. I passed the midnight hour in 'Tango Club,' one of the few night clubs in town. I think that half of my dormitory was there, plus a handful of Chinese. There was no countdown, or even any clock in sight. With a few minutes to go, I got scared they wouldn't even tell us when midnight came. To my my relief, with ten seconds to go, they did a brief countdown. There were cheers when we got to zero (almost exclusively from my counterparts) and the staff handed out little sparklers which we lit for another 10 seconds (adding to the already eye-stinging smoke inside the establishment from cigarettes, fog machines, and zero ventilation). There was an announcement to welcome the new year. That was it.

I didn't realize before how much I like these holidays to mark off the cycle of the year. Especially New Year's, which I hadn't expected ever to pass so unremarkably. Other holidays belong to a country or a religion, and I thought this one was pretty universal (I love watching the replays on TV from cities already in the new year while waiting in the US). I bet this will change - it probably already is in bigger, more westernized cities in China (see next post). I did enjoy talking to my family this morning, when I was well into 2008, as they counted down the last few hours of 2007. Of course the change in digit doesn't mean much, and if I went to sleep last night and woke up this morning without seeing it happen it wouldn't mean any less. It's just where we decide to etch the stick, but it gives order to our lives. We count in years and decades. The Chinese do too, but they also like to count in rounds of the zodiac. Though it technically won't start until Chinese New year in Feb, this year is the year of the rat -- my year. It's gonna be great!

-- cuz you have to believe -- this'll be my year --

Eel waffles

2007-12-18T12:04:00.001-05:00

Tonight I ate out at a 'western' restaurant again, the third time I've used a fork and knife since I got here. Though the restaurant offered some Chinese food options as well, it was western in it's decor - red couches surrounding the tables and Christmas decorations, including a 'Meery Christmas' (sic) sign on some of the windows. I ordered spaghetti, and a waffle. To be honest, I didn't know it was a waffle when I ordered it, I thought maybe it'd be more like a crepe. The options for topping were: eel, meat, fruit, or honey. I opted for the first, which turned out to be something of a sweet eely mush spread on two quadrants of the waffle, with whipped cream and an quasi-marachino cherry in the center.

The Chinese have a strange attitude towards sugar, I find. They don't have this clear cut idea that it belongs after the meal, in a course called dessert. My spaghetti was sweet. My friend ordered fruit pizza, which was sweet. I also tried to explain that having fruit - which included apples, pears, and candied cherries - on a pizza with cheese was strange. And, tomato sauce on pizza is something of a must (though this was absent from, and indeed did not sound appealing with, the fruit topping). The last time I was at a western restaurant, they served watermelon and an apple salad with the 'steak,' and cherry tomatoes with the cake.

It's not just in foreign foods that sugar is put in weird places, but in Chinese food as well. There are 'sweet and sour' dishes, but these taste quite different those in the US -I find them to be better described as sweet and garlicky. Popular ice cream flavors include milk flavor, various kinds of beans, wheat, and green tea. This sweet bean idea - strange at first - I quite like. And the milk ice cream is decent too. The other two ingredients most notably and unfortunately absent in the diet here are cheese and chocolate. Neither have a long history here. Cheese is not found in any traditional Chinese dishes, and I have yet to see anything beyond a processed American-esque cheese in a store or restaurant. (Oh to be back on the French organic dairy farm for a few days.....). You can buy chocolate, but it's expensive and not very good. The couple times I have tried to eat chocolate cake, though the color is decent, any flavor is hardly noticeable.

Fortunately, though I miss these foods very much, there are a million new and developed flavors to stimulate my taste buds and make up for it, most of the time.

Spelling and word games

2007-12-14T21:40:00.000-05:00

Some things about this Chinese separation of phonetics for writing are pretty cool and some pretty strange. You can read without saying the words to yourself, for instance, and you can understand things you read without being able to communicate them to someone else. You can say things you haven't got a clue how to write. Doing this makes me realize how much I rely on spelling, and how closely my spoken language is linked to it. When I say something, the written version is a split second away, or even closer, hanging somewhere inside my head. When learning French, I remember noting that I was never able/willing to say anything which I did not know how to write. But here, I can't insist on that, and it's strangely liberating. The characters I know best I still sort of 'see' when I say them, but I am perfectly fine saying things I wouldn't be able to recognize on paper. I guess I still insist on knowing the pinyin and tone of everything, but that's because it's essential information if you want to be able to say the word correctly. In English, you can say things totally right without being able to spell them correctly (though you'd probably have a good idea). It's sort of hard to explain.

With no alphabet, you can't ask someone to spell a new word for you. You can look it up in the dictionary by its pinyin, but there are so many homophones it is often not easy to figure out which is the one you heard, and in a quick conversation setting you need a quicker option, and there are several. The most common is to try to figure out if the character is used in another character combination you are familiar with. As a simple example in English, say you learn the new phrase red-eye, and you want to know what the 'red' character is. You might say, 'is that red as in 'I read a book?' And your friend would say, 'no, it's not, it's red as in 'red bull' or 'red, white and blue.' This option only works if you already know the character but haven't yet associated it with this particular meaning/phrase. The second possible method is to have the person write the character out for you. This seems obvious, but what I mean mostly is not with a pen, but usually by tracing the character with a finger on a hand or a table. You've got to watch carefully for this to work. Thirdly, they might explain what radicals make it up: 'well, it's got a tree radical on the left, and then a sheep radical on the right.' There are names for each of the strokes, too, which can be used to help 'there's a horizontal line then a downward hook, and a little dot.'

Along with no spelling comes no spelling bees, no crossword puzzles, no word searches, no boggle, no ghost and no scrabble. Instead there are other word games based on characters, which I am just getting to the surface of, and looking forward to more of. There are lots sort of like rebus puzzles, where you have to put together clues about the radicals that make up characters and maybe some clues about the pronunciation. While the commonality of puns makes them not very funny or clever in most situtations, it opens a lot of possibilities here. Another I really enjoy is to start with a simple character (like 日) and try to come up with all the characters which can be made by adding only one stroke (申，电，白，旦，旧）, or two strokes, etc.

Music

2007-12-09T08:52:00.000-05:00

You probably have some melody in your head that you associate with Chinese music, likely having to do with the traditional 5 note scale. I've been learning a little bit about it, and playing traditional tunes from different time periods and regions, but I've been learning more about the Lanzhou approach to music these days than anything else. I've got a lot of experiences saved up to talk about here: playing with a Chinese orchestra, a concert given by an orchestra of traditional instruments, a month's worth of Chinese violin lessons, a student singing talent show, and yesterday's harmonica concert. I'm still not sure what this means about music in general here, something about a strong appreciation and pride, a sort of confused mix of influences from different traditions, and a lack of musical experience in the general public (if you play, you're good, with few dabblers). I'll start from the end.

1. Harmonica concert
I usually play tennis on Saturday afternoons, but this week my tennis friend Tian wu xing asked if I'd be interested to come along to a '口琴/kouqin' concert. He'd recently started taking lessons, and his teacher had organized a concert bringing together kouqin experts from all across China or something. So I looked up 'kouqin,' which literaly means 'mouth instrument,' in my dictionary. My faithful dictionary said it meant 'harmonica,' but I didn't believe it and decided it must be some kind of Chinese wind instrument that didn't have a proper English translation. This was eing taken way to seriously to be about harmonicas. To my surprise, which I had to keep my insides from laughing about for a good 15 minutes, it was indeed a harmonica concert. I even got to hear 'eine kleine nachtmusik' performed by five harmonicas. It was even better than the lady who plays baroque melodies on the flutaphone. Unfortunately the concert was preceded by an hour long 'meeting' held by these harmonica experts which I don't think anyone in the audience paid attention to, and whose purpose still evades me.

The empty stage:

The kids warming up noisily behind us:

Wu xing and I discussing the program, learning useful new vocabulary such as 'arranged by' and wondering why the actual composers were not listed for most of the pieces. Plus you can see my hair slowly turning brown again:

Another friend, Wang hai feng, who also came along:

And here's an idea, though dark, of what the long pre-concert meeting was like:

Honestly, though, I enjoyed the concert, because practicing even the harmonica for years has good results. My friend's teacher has been playing the harmonica for over 60 years, and his son and grandsons also performed impressively. It was something else to watch teenage boys playing four harmonicas at once, stacked on top of eachother. It was even wackier to see full-grown men in suits pecking their heads from side to across a tiny instrument, or sliding a really long, deep one like a typewriter. There were groups of little children, too, and at the end they all came together for a finale. Harmonicas played classical works, and various kinds of Chinese or Chinese minority tunes. I've never known anyone to really take this instrument anywhere near this seriously. I don't know if this is a cultural difference, there may well be harmonica players in the US and they're just not very public about it? Or, I may just have happend on the rare case of it in China. I wish I had a recording, but I forgot my camera (pics are not mine). Here we go:

The kids go first:

And a soloist with a table of about 7 harmonicas in front of him, usually playing 2-3 at a time:

A grown trio:

A combined medley across generations to finish:

2. Student Talent Show
A couple weeks ago, I tried to go to the Lanzhou University Graduate student singing talent show. I went because my friend Travis, one of my two American friends, was performing. This was the final round - there were only 15 contestants left. He was quite the talk around campus, apparently, because it's very unusual for a foreigner to participate in this event. Frankly it's no wonder because it's impossible for us to figure out anything that's going on on campus. I still don't know where things are posted or how to sort through the Chinese even if I find something that looks like an activity (and is why I find myself saying over and over, 'a friend helped me find..., a friend told me about.... that's really how I get to know most things here). Anyway, the place was too small and packed, but I was trying to show support for my fellow countryman and fought my way in the back, where I could stand on tiptoes, squeezed in neck to neck with a whole lot of people.

This was definitely the place to be. As the first singers went through their routines, though, I become really unimpressed. The sound system was terrible - sometimes you could hardly hear the singing, and they just weren't very good. I've heard much better at KTV (karaoke)!! Thinking about it later, I think the kids just don't have any experience either performing or watching their peers perform. Also, most have little musical background. Only a small percentage have had the opportunity to study a musical instrument, which is very different from the US where a lot of kids have at least dabbled in a school band or orchestra. Maybe my expectations were too high. Travis, honestly, was decent -- he just started Chinese this past summer but he's a really eager, happy-go-lucky guy...he played the guitar to accompany his song (the only performer who played an instrument), which was half in English and half in Chinese. As he walked on stage I heard murmurs of 'he's so tall!!' as they had to raise the mike as far as it would go for him. He was pretty good, but still, his guitar was all blurry and his words hard to make out. Maybe from the front the sound was a bit better but I doubt it. He got a lot of shouts for singing in Chinese, and I was glad I had suffered through the near suffocating body heat that was surrounding me. After his number, I booked it out of there.

3. Orchestra of Chinese instruments
Back in October, the school took us to see a performance of Chinese traditional music and dance, especially featuring various ethnic groups from here and nearby regions of northwestern China. I absolutely loved the first half, which was a concert by an orchestra of traditional instruments -- I'd heard of the erhu, which has two strings and is held on the lap (see instruments on left, video below), but didn't know much about what others were like (you can see lute-like pipas and hear some great Chinese drumming). Then there were cymbols and a bass drum and a couple out of place looking cellos. If you look carefully in the back you can see a string bass or two, as well. I have no idea if this is some modern arrangement, if there once were Chinese instruments in this range, or what. Below are a couple photos of the orchestra and later a smaller ensemble that played, and some from the second half which was dance, filled with elaborate costumes and visual effects. The Chinese also have this thing about putting you in couches -- most of the seats were couches rather than chairs or auditorium seating. I find this a little too comfortable and a little too low, and makes me feel like I'm watching TV. A lot of western restaurants also have this idea, and sit you in a couch at your table. Here are some pictures. You'll notice the red banner above the stage stating what the performance is and why it's being held. The Chinese love their red banners. Which appear for various events and to convey various messages, both inside and outside.

The orchestra:

The Chinese Flinstones:

Dance acts:

4. Playing with a Chinese orchestra
When I was looking around for a violin teacher, my friend He wen juan went to the effort of finding out that there was no orchestra at the university, but there was one at the best high school in town. Her painting teacher's daughter played the cello in it, and with their help she'd arranged for me to try it out. If I liked it, I could probably join. So, I went along on a Saturday afternoon last month. I should have found out a little more about it before. Or maybe I should have just figured it out for myself. The musicians were all high school students, about 16-17 years old. I really enjoyed experiencing the rehearsal, if only to find out that it was much like many rehearsals I've been to before. We played one piece, by a Korean composer, which I didn't care much for d'ailleurs, for 2.5 hours. It was, in short, a high school orchestra. The kids didn't pay much attention, they chatted and passed messages on their cell phones, some trying to find out who I was. The cymbal player kept giggling when she was called out several times for coming in at the wrong place. Though I felt bad because my friend had put such effort into finding this orchestra for me, ultimately it was an easy decision not to join. My strongest feeling was how familiar this felt - I've been in this kind of orchestra before - and that's not what I was looking for. Instead, I have found something else...

5. Violin lessons

Another friend, who's father teaches dance, connected me with a violin teacher or works and lives in the same place. So for the past month, on Sunday evening, I go for my hour long violin lesson and have dinner with my friend and his family. This friend has recently left town, but I've become a weekly regular, and enjoy both eating meals in a home (though it isn't by any means home-cooked with any warm cozy connotation), and studying Chinese/English with my friend's 13 year old half brother, who's actually a pretty good teacher :). But anyway, about the lessons -- I was initially impressed by the way my teacher picked up on everything I knew I do wrong from the very start. He recommended books for me to buy and gives me a variety of things to practice from them each week. I've got a book of Chinese pieces, and one of western classical pieces. As you might imagine, the vocabulary can be pretty tough. They're on the do-re-mi system, like France was, so instead of referring to the notes by letter names, they get a name on the do-re-mi scale with do set as C. The classical pieces are still marked with Italian, just as I'm used to, and there's a handy glassary in the back of one of my books defining them in Chinese.

Chinese is extremely logical, but sometimes that logic doesn't fit with my idea of what is logical. I am ever confused by two directional terms: 上 and 下. These are opposites - in front of words like 'month' or 'time' using the first then means 'last month' or 'last time' and using the second means 'next.' But these terms also mean above and below, respectively (can't you tell from the characters?). For whatever reason, I have trouble though with the association of 'above' and 'last,' because to me these just don't seem like the same idea. And now I've got another, which is that a downbow is '下 bow' and upbow is '上 bow.' Another example is that the strings are numbered from top to bottom, with the highest being 1 and lowest 4. I can't remember if this is how I would have done it before, but in any case I got it wrong at first. Mostly though, I like learning this vocabulary - spiccato (jumping bow), staccato, vibrato, harmonics, quarter note, etc. And I like playing Mongolian shepherd's songs, and songs for Spring Festival, or celebrating a return from service in the Chinese army.

I also enjoy the metaphors my teacher comes up with to explain techniques or feeling in the music. Sometimes they take a really long time to understand because I'm missing vocabulary, like when he tried to explain that this bowing motion should resemble the way lotus root has all these gooey fibers that gracefully but resistantly stretch out when you cut it into slices. Or when he explained that I shouldn't bend my right wrist because it would prevent the flow from my shoulder through my arm and into the violin like a kink in a hose, and instead should be like the spout on a tea kettle. Figuring out who the pieces are by in my book of western music and exercise books is also not easy - as I said before, the Chinese adapt names from any other language into their syllabic system, making them often unrecognizable until you already know who they're supposed to be. For instance, Vivaldi, since Chinese has no 'v' sound, is 'wei er di,' and Kreutzer is Ke lai cai er. I remember loving the sound of 'mesopotamia' in chinese, and it cracks me up at times to hear famous people's names - you can imagine brad pitt and arnold schwarzenegger, perhaps, chinese-icized.

A Day in the Life 1: Friday (morning)

2007-12-06T23:40:00.000-05:00

High time for an update, again. I think I'll tell you what my day was like today. It was very uneventful, which makes it great to write about, right?

I woke up just before 9 o'clock, and rushed into the bathroom to get the last of the hot water to wash up a bit (no time for a shower). I usually have oral Chinese class at 9 on Friday mornings, but my teacher had to go out of town this week, so painfully squeezed extra classes in last week. This morning I was thankful. I heated up water for my morning green tea, and made up some oatmeal with honey. Chinese milk is a strange beast. You can buy it in little one-serving bags which keep for 30 days. I dont know what they've done to the milk so that it will last that long, but it's not fresh, and inevitably has flavor. It's usually not a bad flavor, but still, I like my plain milk to taste like milk. Sometimes milk brands admit to actually flavoring their product, which is a pretty popular commodity. Since unflavored milk is flavored too, it sometimes feels good not to be lied to and I too occasionally buy walnut or peanut or wheat flavored milk. Generally not for my oatmeal though.

So I sat at my desk and had my breakfast, putting on a TED talk. I don't know what I'd do without TED and BBC documentaries. Chinese is stimulating to study, of course, but there's some kinds of challenges that it just can't provide. For instance, I just can't think complex things in Chinese, and as noted before, I can't read what's around me, and media in English is sparse to say the least. So, I rely heavily on online news, BBC documentaries (I'm almost done with 'Days that Shook the World') and TED talks. The TED talks (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) are from an annual conference which invites really interesting people working in any field that touches even remotely on those topics to give a 20 minute talk or performance. Speakers have included Al Gore and Richard Dawkins, but most of them are people doing really cool stuff I've never heard about. Today I watched a biology professor at Berkeley talk about designing robotic feet from a combination of strategy ideas inspired by, among others, octupi, spiders, crabs, and geckos especially. Yesterday, I watched a mathemetician who talked about his project to study the way African villages were often constructed in the form of fractals. Anyway, site is highly recommended (www.ted.com).

Breakfast over, I started to preview a bit for my 11:00 listening class. I find I have to be careful with the previewing. I like to look up the characters I don't know ahead of time so that I won't waste my time listening to a whole discussion featuring one or a few words I don't understand, when if I'd just looked them up before I'd have been able to follow the whole thing. But, if I preview too thoroughly, class can get really boring. The biggest complaint I have about my classes here is that they all strictly follow a book. Honestly, the teachers are just there guide you through the book. They don't come up with exercises or activities, they rarely assign or look at homework, and every single unit of the books takes the exact same form, as does the way the teacher goes through them. Personally, I learned how to read and do exercises in a textbook by myself a long time ago, what I want is a teacher who is able to get me to use what I'm reading, able to explain it orally in a way that a book can't, and answer my questions about the language. There is time for questions, but I tend to either have none, or have too many, because I haven't understood anything we've just done. Plus, since the classes are all in Chinese, it's hard for the teacher to give an explanation for something we don't understand that's simple enough for us to understand...it's very easy for the explanation to turn out to be harder to understand than the original concept.

Back to listening class. I particularly dislike this class. First of all, I feel like most of my life here is a listening class, so it's not very useful. We've recently changed teachers, but I don't find either of them particularly inspiring. The first teacher used to talk unbearably slowly. Many of my classmates didn't mind, but I was particularly frustrated by this. We all spoke faster than him. How could he possibly not notice this? Finally we (I) were sort of complaining to another teacher about this and she told him. After that it got a bit better. Still, he struck me as condescending to us, and treated everything as if we didn't know. Every other sentence was 'do you understand?,' he'd even ask us silly things like, 'do you know what 'time' means?.' I just really didn't understand - we were studying difficult words too like how to say the nape of your neck and latitude. Last week he announced that something had come up and he wouldn't be able to teach us anymore.

I was apprehensive about what the new teacher would be like, and rightly so. I mean, she's ok, but again it goes back to the point that I don't really need a teacher if all she's going to do is read the book to me. Basically she just tells us which exerciese to do in the book, turns the tape recordings on and off and goes over the answers (which are in the back anyway). At least she speaks quickly, but she has a habit of translating words absolutely unnecessarily into English. I wouldn't mind if she were translating words that I didn't know, but she's not. She'll translate 'heart,' for example, or 'baby'. I'm the only one in my class who's first language is English, and though some of them speak quite well, nearly all speak better Chinese than English. Plus, I'm not very patient.

This makes me think of another issue which has been something to deal with - how do I want to be treated in conversation with a Chinese person? Ideally, of course, the answer is that I would like to spoken to the same way as if I were a native speaker. I do hope to get there, but at this point that's not necessarily the best scenario, because I'm likely to miss things and not understand at points. I have some friends who do this, and I like them for it. Sometimes I just have to let things slide by that they say, but I learn the most from them. I have always thought this was important when speaking to foreigners in the US or in England -- not to dumb down the language at all because hearing it the way it is spoken is why they came, and is essential for improvement. There is also the case of Chinese who want to speak to me in English, of course. I am generally strongly against this -- I came to China to study Chinese. If you, friend, want to learn English then why don't you displace yourself and go to the US? The argument doesn't work as well here as in Europe per se, because it's not so easy for my peers to go abroad, even if they do want to. So I occasionally tolerate it, but my response is always in Chinese. Most Chinese students my age have studied English for many years, but can hardly speak. They're mostly happy to slip into Chinese then and have some discussion. Their vocabulary is extensive, but are uncomfortable with conversation.

So I sat through my Chinese listening class, which involved listening with lots of numbers, and writing them accurantly in the blanks in the book, distinguishing between similar sounding sentences, and deciding on the 'mood/tone' of a sequence of statements. Oh, and there was also a dialogue about the growing elderly population in various countries in the world, following by questions to check comprehension. The class is an hour and forty minutes long, as are all my classes. Afterwards, I went to have dumplings for lunch with some classmates. I don't eat dumplings very often, but I like them a lot because they're good, and because they change things up from the usual rice or pulled noodles. We went to a chain this time, and each ordered about 20. I had a combination of lamb and turnip, three mushroom, and a toufu/vegetable mix. Dipped in a mixture of vinegar and hot sauce, they're quite tasty.

I apologize for only getting through the morning, but that's a lot to read already. Maybe next week you'll get to hear about Friday afternoon :)

To bargain or not to bargain

2007-11-26T06:42:00.000-05:00

Tonight I sat down at my computer determined to complete at least one personal statement for graduate school. I find it quite difficult, however, to flip the switch and return completely to English, especially something resembling artful and expressive written English. Not to mention that to do so I've got to put myself in a mindset where next year does not seem completely abstract. So I'm going to do some warm-up writing here. It's about time anyway.

I've mentioned that things are cheap here, particularly food and services. I can eat quite easily, especially within the university campus, for $1-2 a day. Mostly I average a bit more than that, but still, the cost of each meal is almost always under $2. In other examples, it costs 1 yuan (13 cents) to ride the bus, and 5 mao (1/2 a yuan) for a simple clothing alteration.

Prices on the street are rarely fixed, and often in stores are negotiable as well. The question this has been bringing up recently is when and how adamantly I should bargain. I've thought this over before, most notably in Madagascar where things were even more inexpensive and bargaining was an even bigger deal. When the first price quoted is an amount you're easily willing to pay, should you bargain it down anyway? If you know someone is trying to get more money out of you than the going rate, but it's still not very much to you, and you know they need the money, should you just pay it?

Example 1: Pay toilets
Last month while visiting Bing ling si caves, I knew it should only cost 5 mao (1/2 a yuan) to use the bathroom, but the attendant tried to charge me 1 yuan. I called him on it and announced that I wasn't going to use the bathroom then if it cost that (I was paying for two friends as well so it seemed a little bigger of a rip off than it sounds). The attendant then agreed to the 5 mao rate and let us go. On the way out, a German tourist asked me what I'd been arguing about and I explained. She scolded me for it, saying that I could easily afford the 5 mao(about 6 cents), which was worth nothing to me, and should have just paid it.

Example 2: Buying fruit
I know you're supposed to bargain for fruit from stands on the street, but when I'm discussing whether a pomelo should be 3 or 4 yuan, or whether my collection of bananas and mandarin oranges should cost 8 yuan or 10 yuan, the struggle for cents starts to seem ridiculous.

Example 3: Violin lessons
A friend's family helped me find a violin teacher, and I agreed to the initial price of 60 yuan (about $8) for an hour lesson. How could I bargain this price when it actually is worth this much to me? How could I bargain this price when I could make twice as much to teach little kids English?

Sometimes I'm just not up for bargaining and accept whatever the vendors say. Other times I'm in a stubborn mood and refuse to budge on my price, walking away empty-handed or getting into a bit of an argument. I think I've come to the conclusion that it's important to bargain, most of the time. Bargaining is in the culture, as part of learning how things work here, and even showing respect for this custom, I want to understand when and how people bargain, and emulate it to some extent. But once I've bargained some, it's not worth haggling over a few pennies. The German lady was right, 6 cents is not much to me. On the other hand, I don't think the attendants or fruit vendors mind - they're used to it, they know what the going rate is, and they won't let you get away with any less. Plus, I'm not here as a tourist, I'm here for something of a long-run, and my 'income' is not a foreigner's income.

Written Chinese, and being illiterate

2007-11-16T09:15:00.000-05:00

It's a strange feeling to be illiterate here. It's different from being able to read a foreign language but not understand it (such as we can do with Italian, French, or Spanish, for instance). I guess it's comparable to being surrounded by Russian or Korean or any language that's written with a different alphabet. Then, too, you can't read the names of places or look words up in the dictionary. But Chinese illiteracy goes a step further because that initial overwhelming illiteracy goes away painfully gradually. The difference is that in most languages, there's an alphabet to learn, and after a short struggle, you can read anything. Written Chinese, though, is not phonetic, and two months in, I'm still frequently surrounded by incomprehensible, inaccessible material.

So those rumors are true - Chinese has no alphabet. When you look at written Chinese characters, you can't sound out how they should be pronounced. Each character does represent a syllable, but may have a different pronuncation depending on its usage, and many characters often represent the same syllable. There are only 411 possible syllables (I don't really know how this compares with other languages, but one of the particularities is that you can't create any more. You can't 'rearrange the letters' to make a new sound combination, because there are no letters to rearrange.) Multiply those 411 syllables by the 4 tones, and you get 1644 possible monosyllabic pronunciations (the actual number in use is less because not every syllable exists in all four tones). Yet this 1644 is not the number of Chinese characters either since each one is represented by anywhere from 1 to over 40 characters - which character is used depends on the meaning. I've read that the total number of characters is upwards of 50,000, though many of these are rare and you only need to know 3,000-4,000 to be literate. I think most educated Chinese know over 10,000.

How in the world can you learn even 3,000 characters? It definitely involves feats of memorization to instantaneously recall the correlation between written character and phonetic syllable. It's kind of like a giant game of memory - a multi-dimensional memory game, in fact - because you also need to associate other information somewhat arbitrarily with each character: one of the four tones, a meaning, and some information about how to use it. Put this way, it sounds kind of impossible or at least tedious, but the characters are aesthetically pleasing to read and write, and are interesting. Though some characters' representations are arbitrary, or the reason for them has been lost or distorted, many make some sort of sense. The characters are built of smaller units called radicals that can be found in various combinations within them. There are about 225 of these radicals, though some are much more common than others. Each radical has a meaning associated with it -- for instance, 氵means water, 口 means mouth, and 刀 means knife -- and are found in characters which have something to do with that meaning, such as:

渴 - thirsty, 海 - sea, 泡 - bubble
唱 - sing, 咳嗽 - cough
分 - to divide, 切 - to cut

Besides the radicals making up a single character, many words are made up of two or more characters (such as cough above), and this combination of characters is also often interesting and creative. In a way, learning characters is like studying Latin roots to understand the meaning of English words, or even just considering the reason our words and phrases are constituted the way they are. While I'm on the topic, one of my favorite examples of the radicals adding to the meaning of words is in the Chinese periodic table -- just from looking at the characters, you can till which ones are gases, which are metals, and which are non-metals because they have the air/gas (气), metal (钅), and stone (石) radicals respectively (see http://www.limestone.on.ca/ibuild/davies/chinesept.html). This doesn't seem very fair for a chemistry test, though.

But back to this issue of illiteracy - the reasoning within the characters only gives a hint, at best, to the meaning, and doesn't tell you how to pronounce the character. To be fair, sometimes there is a radical within the character which hints at the sound - has nothing to do with the meaning, but is either part of another character or is itself an independent character which has the same or similar sound. For example, the above character for bubble is pronounced 'pao,' while the right part, when independent, is itself a character，包, pronounced 'bao.' Still, you can never be completely sure that what you see in new character is a pronunciation clue.

So, as in the pao/bao example above, there is a standard way to write Chinese pronunciation using the Roman alphabet. Very, very occasionally these are printed on signs. This is called pin yin, and is essential for studying Chinese, but can't really replace the characters for several reasons (the most important probably being the issue of homonyms and the fact that many dialects of Chinese do not use the 'standard' pronunciation but can still read any Chinese text because the characters are the same).

Not being able to read unknown words is quite an obstacle for learning a language, and I would say slows it down considerably. First, it takes a long time to learn each character. It is generally not enough just to look at a character to be able to remember it and write it, I find that I must practice and write it myself many times first. And, how can you look up words you don't know in the dictionary if there's no 'alphabetical order' to follow? The traditional way to solve this involves counting the number of strokes in teh major radical in the character and then in the rest of the character, and is a rather cumbersome process. In general, I bypass this by either asking any Chinese person in the vicinity to read the character to me and then look it up by its pin yin, or by drawing it into my electronic dictionary or my computer, which then skillfully recongnizes it (or rather giving me a list of characters it thinks I might be attempting to draw). Still, not very convenient.

Typing Chinese is also not particularly convenient, but also kind of fun. I type to use online dictionaries, to chat on the web with friends, and most often to send text messages on my phone. The keyboard can't have thousands of characters obviously, so entry is by the standardized pin yin. Once you type in a syllable, you're presented with all the options of characters which have that pronunciation. You can type a whole phrase or sentence, and the software tries to adapt and guess what you're saying, though you often have to correct it. My phone system doesn't have this, but it does try to offer suggestions for what the next character should be, based on the previous one or presenting the most commonly used characters. I worry a bit when I think I'm typing something very common but the computer doesn't come up with my phrase for me, and I can get an idea of how difficult my vocabulary words are by how far back they are in the list of characters the computer presents to me. It's still kind of astonishing for me to see it come up with characters, though I suppose it's not a very complicated computer program. I wish it was a bitter smarter though, and maybe could learn what phrases I commonly use and adapt to suggest these more readily. It's also rather inconvenient to be constanty alt-shifting my way between the four languages installed on my computer (English, French, Korean, and Chinese), to activate the right keyboard at the right time.

Despite not being able to read, I like going to the bookstore here - there are many of them. There are huge sections on learning English (which unfortunately can't very easily be used in reverse to learn Chinese because there's no pin yin). Most remarkably, there are always lots of people there. There aren't nice couches and coffeeshops, but there is space in the aisles and on the stairs and this can and is used for the same purpose. I like to look around at the different subjects, the way the books are organized, and see what people are reading. I bought a dictionary, and I bought a book for 8-12 year olds about ecology.

Books are cheap. They range from about about $1-6 generally. Also, there is a rather big business of photocopying them. You can take a book to one of many places on campus or in town where someone photocopies each page by hand and then uses glue to bind them together for you. This is bad for copyright reasons, but it's good for books which aren't available to buy -- such as books from the US shared among us foreign students, or for copying a book of violin exercises lent by my teacher, published in 1962 in Russia, and not available in China (I'm taking violin lessons here! more on this later).

I guess that after all, I shouldn't say I'm illiterate now. Being able to read is a slow process and I have a long way to go, but I can read so much more than before. And, the biggest difference is qualitative - even considering the characters I don't know yet, Chinese doesn't look so foreign anymore.

Caterpillars turn into...

2007-11-10T10:06:00.000-05:00

I was walking down the street yesterday with a Chinese friend after dinner and noticed a strange sign. There are signs lit up all over the place advertising a restaurant or some new product and I often take advantage of my company to learn what things around me say and mean (photographing signs is also not beyond me). Usually they're not very interesting, but I often get a new vocabulary word or two. This one looked particularly strange -- it said something about a worm, so I was very curious why a huge yellow sign, posted vertically sprawling five floors, had something to tell me about worms. There were four important characters on the sign -- 'winter worm summer grass.' I still didn't get it once these were identified, so my friend started to explain that there was this caterpillar that, instead of turning into a butterfly, turned into a plant, from which you got this expression, in the winter it was a 'worm' and in the summer a 'grass'. I still didn't quite get it, so my friend, being a good scientist in fact, went into more detail, explaining that this wasn't quite the whole story. The caterpillar doesn't actually turn into a plant, and actually the summer phase isn't a plant at all. In the winter when it should be metamorphosing into a butterfly, it often gets infected by a fungus, and in the summer a mushroom sprouts from it. This mushroom is extremely valuable in Chinese medicine, especiallly as a nutritional supplement for strength. Anyway, I later looked it up on wikipedia and indeed it's a pretty cool organism interaction that sort of does look like it results in a half worm/half mushroom type of thing (.

My friend was initially astonished that I was so puzzled by this situation - why hadn't I heard of this very well-known thing before? It's easy to forget that the things so well known to you can be unheard of to others. I forget this often too, and it's nice to be jolted to remember that there are a million things you don't know, and a million things that don't necessarily have to be the way you know them to be. An example, perhaps with the table turned, was in a conversation earlier in the week with this same friend. We somehow came upon the topic of time zones. China is roughly the same size as the US, but is all on the same time, whereas the US spans four different zones. I have thought this ridiculous for China and tried to explain why -- it means that the time of sunrise in the east must be 3-4 hours different from the time of sunrise in the very west. For example, some people may have sunrise at 5am, and others at 8 or 9am, and I would guess it means that someone is having sunrise and/or sunset at a rather awkward time. (I guess we're all on Beijing time, which to my calculation should mean I get more sunlight in the evening than I should, so I'm not too upset by it. Still, I find that acknowledging that the earth spins is more reasonable.) My friend though, thought it was equally ridiculous that a single country could split itself into time zones, making unnecessary complications for domestic affairs. What about live telecasts? What about national exams? What about phoning someone across the country? What about traveling on business to the opposite coast? I still argued that regulating daylight hours was more important, but admitted that sometimes making phone calls, or waiting for election results, or probably arranging important national live speeches, was inconvenient. I realized someone living with this alternate situation might quite reasonably hold this opinion I had previously not considered. I think we both came out with a bit better understanding of the two sides. We're used to the inconveniences that come with having time zones, but we also have states with power that allows some domestic affairs to be taken care of on this level, and state boundaries to serve as time zone dividers. While people do often talk about different provinces and who's from where here, I think that China places a lot of importance on being a single, unified entity. I guess we do too, but maybe we're more comfortable and stable in this identity. China is large, populous, and has a large income gap between rich and poor, but it maintains a unified front to the world, and wants it citizens to feel that they belong.

Happy Halloween!

2007-10-31T12:43:00.000-04:00

Happy Halloween, which I sort of forgot about until someone reminded me late this evening. I had been counting down the days until today, but for a rather different reason - rumor has it that the heat will be turned on tomorrow!!! Though I love sleeping on my electric blanket which warms up beneath me when I switch it on at night, the current temperature is an inappropriate indoor temperature. I don't want to wear my coat and gloves in class. I hope the rumor are true and it really heats up tomorrow. Meanwhile I hope lots of you are dressed up as witches and eating candy.

Numbers

2007-10-31T10:21:00.000-04:00

Math, and numbers in general, are really interesting to observe in another culture. I guess it's because while I've known all along that languages are wildly different around the world, I somehow thought that counting should be the same. I got some feeling for this kind of difference in France where, possibly along with most of continental Europe, for example, the decimal point and comma have exchanged functions - a dot marks off the thousands place etc., and a comma separates the units from the tenths position (e.g. 1,300.5 in France would be written as 1.300,5).

Chinese has even more numerical surprises. First of all, it uses Arabic numerals, but when numbers are 'written out,' they of course get written in Chinese. 1, 2, and 3, correspond to 一, 二 and 三, for example, which is all very well and good. Even four through ten, now, are easy (4,5,6,7,8,9,10 are 四,五,六,七,八,九,十）. From then on Chinese is extremely systematic, using a simple combination of the digits from 1-9 with ten (two tens through nine tens, or 二十through 九十, and then a simple combination with 100 (百), and one thousand (千). For example, the number 3,846 would be written 三千八百四十六, or 'three thousand eight hundred four ten six.' The difficulty begins with 10,000, because instead of starting over after 1,000 and so grouping the powers of 10 into groups of three, Chinese has a word for 10,000 (万,another term akin to thousand, hundred, and ten) and groups the numbers ever after by fours instead of threes. So instead of saying one-hundred thousand, you have to say ten ten-thousands, and instead of one million, it's one-hundred ten thousands. And is 100,000,000 ten ten-thousands? No, a new term, 亿, is introduced. What about 1 billion then? Ten 亿, of course. It's not like they're using some other base or anything, but it's surprisingly difficult, at least for me, to quickly convert, and I can't yet understand large Chinese numbers without writing them down.

Another numerical difference is just the pronunciation of numbers in different contexts, such as in phone numbers, in dates, or in bus lines. In most cases the Chinese like to say the numbers each individually, such that bus line 82 is not eighty-two but eight two. and I was born in eight four year, not nineteen-eighty-four. This year is two zero zero seven year, not two thousand-seven. And yes, age is often asked by what year you were born, I think mainly because it lets people know your Chinese zodiac sign.

Tally marks are also not the same. At the gym today, I noticed a sheet of paper on the main desk filled with the character '正.' I had already kind of guessed, but asked about it to find that indeed they were keeping track of the number of people using the gym at various times with these 'tally marks.' Instead of drawing four lines and then crossing them like we do, they were writing a stroke of this chacter zheng, which has a total of five strokes, for each person who came in.

Hand signals for numbers are also different in different countries. I already knew that some places tend to use the thumb and idex finger to indicate 'two,' instead of the index and middle finger that I am used to. Chinese also has a system for indicating numbers greater than five, such as that putting up the thumb and pinky means six (such as when the bank teller asked me to create a six digit pin number), and putting up a hooked index finger means nine (such as in a giant advertisement for alcohol on a screen in town, because the pronunciation for the number nine is exactly the same as the pronunciation for the word 'alcohol'...but that's all a little complicated).

Finally, the last numerical difference I've noted so far is the presence of abaci/abacuses. They're not that common, but they're around -- they're sold in the store in the school supply section, and I've seen them in the bank, and in some stores to help the attendant count back change.

This is all very simple numbers and mathematics, and I am curious what kind of differences there are between higher levels and more complicated concepts. Maybe I'll be inspired sometime to ask around.

Street food: fried noodles

2007-10-31T09:11:00.001-04:00

I used to have the idea that street food was dirty and cheap and something to avoid at all costs. But in fact I'm started eating it regularly, now that I feel my stomach has mostly adjusted to Chinese microbes, and I'm becoming convinced that it's one of many alternative, tasty ways to eat in this country. Even rather upstanding Lanzhou denizens, and especially college students, enjoy it. Just outside the university gate nearest to where I live lies a street lined with carts and cooks at most hours of the day. In the morning it's filled with 'breakfast' carts - e.g., people selling steamed or fried buns, egg and scallion crepes or thicker 'pancakes', rice porridge and soy milk. Over the course of the day, the composition of the carts changes, and slowly (at least I think it's slowly, but I am still getting a handle on the operating hours of the various carts) these become replaced with carts serving up fried rice or fried noodles, dumplings, cold thick rice noodles, lamb kebabs (a bit of meat grilled on a stick), or offering grilled corn or sweet potatoes. There's also a common type of stand with many types of vegetables and meats on sticks, which you select and then get fried , spiced, and chopped up for you to fill that bread which resembles pita but is much denser than pita. These kinds of stands aren't everywhere, and there are certain intersections where they congregate and create a rather lively atmosphere and quite a lot of choice for dinner:

I guess I try to be careful to only eat at stands which look clean and where other people are eating, and eat food which has just been cooked. In any case, tonight I ate fried noodles on the street near the gym I've joined (more on that in some future post). It's pretty cold these days, and so I hesitated, listening to the nearby KFC also calling, but the prospect of those steaming hot, just cooked fried noodles drew me nearer. I ordered my small bowl and sat down, while waiting, to be served, a small bowl of 'soup' which I'm pretty sure is the water previous customers' noodles were boiled in (strangely ok...). Feeling a bit warmer, I decided to photograph the production process:

Cutting strips of dough, this lady hand-pulls my noodles

and chats with me at the same time (see video below).

The noodles are in to boil.

Fellow customers

Various spices in the bowls on the left, the raw ingredients
(e.g., cabbage, beans, peppers, onions, tomatoes) in the baskets.

The chef fries the raw ingredients up with the noodles and flavors them with who knows what, though I know the ingredients include tomato paste, oil, soy sauce, and likely MSG (see video 2)

The table is set with everything I might need: the white kettle contains vinegar, the metal kettle contains 'soup' to drink, the white jar with lid has a hot pepper sauce, the blue container has single-use chopsticks, and the green bin has a roll of toilet paper serving as napkins.

My noodles arrive in a bowl covered with a clean plastic bag so that after I finish the bowl can be reused right away without washing, and if I want to take my noodles away I can easily transport them in the bag. The small bowl is my 'soup' to drink.

Sorry the videos are sideways, but I can't figure out how to rotate them. And please don't laugh at the first, the lady just happened to choose the moment I was filming to ask where I was from and to compliment my Chinese...

Toilet talk

2007-10-19T22:51:00.000-04:00

Maybe this is a gross topic, but I think it's actually interesting, and something I didn't give much thought to before I left the US. There were the automatic toilets that first appeared in Pennsylvania when I was little and especially scared my sister ;), but otherwise all toilets I'd seen looked pretty much the same, and were used the same way. I have since truly learned not to take for granted the pleasant omnipresence of bathrooms (free, clean ones at that) in the US. In at least some other countries, it is not so. From my first experience with 'female urinals' and paying for the use of public restrooms in France, to the lack of any plumbing in many places in Madagascar, I thought maybe I'd seen it all. Not so.

First, China takes the 'female urinal' - which I use to refer to a bathroom stall with no toilet, just a place to stand (or rather squat) and a built-in basin which can be flushed - to a new level. Usually in France, it was just an option alongside 'normal' toilets. Here, it's frequently the only choice. Next, you always have to bring your own toilet paper. I've gotten used to always having some in my pocket, and to squirreling away the paper napkin packs given at many restaurants for future use. What's more, you're not supposed to flush your toilet paper. To be frank, the first thing I did when I arrived in my room at the university was stuff the toilet and have to call in the janitorial staff - I didn't know you were supposed to deposit the used toilet paper in a trash bin next to the toilet. Apparently the plumbing can't take the paper. Once the bin gets full, you take it to the garbage chute yourself. Doesn't it smell? Strangely, not really. It gets emptied farely frequently.

I'm in fact quite spoiled, living where I do. I have an actual toilet, a shower with hot water, and only one roommate. Chinese students generally have shared toilets, no shower, and at least 5 roommates. They have to go to another building which has large public showers in order to bathe. I just have to wait until 6pm.

The toilets in the building where I have class are similar to what what they have in their dorms. There's basically a tiled trough sectioned off to make 'stalls' with no doors:View walking into the women's bathroom down the hall from where I have class. There's a sink with cold water and no soap on the left, and six or so 'stalls' on the right.

Here's what the 'stalls' look like - no doors... you put one foot on either side of the 'trough' and squat... the red basket is for your toilet paper.

It's not the cleanest or most pleasant situation, but when this is what you have, you deal with it. I already don't even blink twice when confronted with a dirty, un-private, squatting bathroom. Just don't touch anything, go fast, and use your chopsticks to eat, not your hands :)

When it rains it pours. Or, my worldy items turn to dust and back again

2007-10-19T21:51:00.000-04:00

What I mean is, when things start going wrong, it really does seem they all do so in quick succession. Over the past two weeks, I have managed to lose the use of my phone, my computer, and my money. The good thing about blogging is that I can wait until I've sorted through everything, which is basically now. In this way, on here, everything has a happy ending though while the events are occurring it does not always feel so. I'll give away the ending first, just because I can: I've since regained all of these items (almost).

I'll start with the computer. I had heard that viruses were common in China, and my neighbor claimed to have had one attack his computer within hours of opening it in China. But for me, over a month had gone by with no problems, and I stopped thinking about it. I thought, the internet is the internet is the internet, why should it be different here? But I guess it is...

Slowly things started malfunctioning. This program would't open. That one crashed. I restarted but just got a blank screen. Each of these on it's own might just be a fluke, but put together there was a problem. Conveniently, Iluk's computer (that same neighbor) had crashed as well. One afternoon we determinedly set off to solve these problems, maybe once and for all. The first stop was the technology market, where at least a hundred different sellers had booths set up with digital and electronic items for sale, such as mp3 players, computers, cameras, and external hard drives, our target. After at least an hour of shopping around and trying to bargain the price down, I ended up with a 60G hard drive for about $6 less than the initial price I was quoted. I'm not sure it was worth that exhausting hour of my time .

Iluk was an old hat at this and found the Samsung fix-it place with no problem. I set to work transferring all my important documents to the hard drive, and he tried to explain his problems to the Samsung employees. After about an hour, I'd finished, and they were still working on his computer, so we left. Asking at several stores selling HP, we were directed to walk for several miles (or so it seemed) down a street lined to bursting with stores selling computers and shouting out with big dirty signs which models they offered. I kept getting excited to see the HP logo but no, there were still more miles to go to get to the one that would actually have a look at mine.

The HP fix-it place was full, but somebody still managed to get to work on mine right away. I figured maybe the Chinese would be experts on fixing Chinese virus problems, but they gave up quite quickly and just reset my system. At least it was free, and they even refurnished me with a version of Office when it was done (though entirely in Chinese). I asked what I could do to try to avoid viruses in the future, but my friendly technician said there was nothing to be done. Next time I could reset the computer by myself.

The next story is of my wallet. Last weekend I took a trip to Yinchuan, an 8 hour sleeper-train ride traveling northeast from Lanzhou. Yinchuan is the capital of Ningxia autonomous region, which is meant to be the region home to a Muslim Chinese ethnic groop. It turns out Yinchuan isn't really a tourist destination, and though it was nice to go somewhere other than Lanzhou, there wasn't much to see. We visited a very empty lake resort on the edge of a very small piece of desert, which looked like it would be decent fun in summer but mostly enjoyable for its off-season calmness during our visit. We ate steamed lamb dumplings, and strolled around Ningxia University. It was about this time that I noticed my wallet was gone. It can't have been more than an hour since I last used it, since which I had gotten off a bus and eaten dinner. After confirming three times that I did not have it anywhere on my person, I wailed in distress but then calmed down. It was 5:30 AM in the US, and so I called my parents with instructions about which credit cards I needed to cancel. I wasn't too concerned because I hadn't even yet been successful at using them in China (though I'd only tried a couple times).

I lost about 500 yuan. In China, that's a lot of money, and people felt quite bad for me, assuring me that not all Chinese were like that. 'There are so many Chinese people, naturally there are more Chinese thiefs too,' they said. The whole trip was a bit frustrating in this way - my friend lost/had his cell phone stolen as well, and we were lied to countless times by taxi drivers who whole-heartedly told us that there was no bus going to our desired destination, when the Rough Guide (correctly) asserted otherwise. I consoled myself by converting the amount I lost to British pounds (about £33), which I find an extremely effective strategy whenever I think I have been cheated.

I've since arranged to have most of my wallet reconstituted, meanwhile borrowing the kuai necessary to keep eating. I even had a kind of fun trip to my Chinese bank to request a new ATM card. First, I went to the branch where I'd opened my account only to find that it had disappeared overnight. It was covered in a red and blue striped tarp, apparently under total reconstructive surgery. I walked down the block to the next branch. Taking care of this type of official business in China can be very confusing. I walked in, and people were queuing up in several different lines, but I had no idea which one was appropriate to me. I asked the security guard, and he directed me to a desk on the side, which is where you seem to go first to fill out paperwork and have your ID photocopied. The attendant at this desk was particularly helpful - the form was entirely in Chinese and he helped me by writing out each of the characters I was worried I'd write wrong on a scrap piece of paper and letting me copy it to the form. It's funny how under pressure it's harder to be confident that each stroke of the character is remembered correctly.

Finally I joined a queue with my completed paperwork and photocopy. After initial confusion about whether my account could be found associated with my passport number, my visa number, or my residence permit number, I was reassured that my account had even more money in it than I had thought (must have received this month's stipend). Eight days later, I could go back and pick up my new card for a 5 yuan fee, back in business!

And last but not least, my cell phone:
I don't get a whole lot of calls/messages, but after a few days receiving nothing, I became suspicious. My roommate told me she couldn't get through. After struggling through the prompts on the China Mobile info number, I enlisted the help of a Chinese friend and she reported that i had a 144 yuan charge and so currently had been cut off from receiving calls or messages. After more discussion, it turned out that, basically, this was an additional roaming fee for using my phone in Yinchuan, and especially for using my phone from Yinchuan to call the US. If I call from Lanzhou, it's only 1.2 yuan a minute, which is not that expensive. If I call from outside Lanzhou (or maybe from outside Gansu province, still not really clear on that) it's five times that. There are all kinds of international and roaming fees that get added. Now how was I supposed to know that? So I just swallowed my frustration, paid it off and then some, and chalked it up to more money generously donated to my wallet stealer.

Finally, as of today, I can use my computer, my phone, and have the promise of being able to access my money in less than a week. Am I happier for it? I'm a little more relaxed, but otherwise about the same. One more reminder that between me and the one small suitcase I brought with me to China, those goods aren't nearly as valuable as myself and my experiences that I brought with me and will have here. All the rest is fluff and details, necessary but not so meaningful support.

Black like me

2007-10-07T04:04:00.000-04:00

Who's that girl? What girl?

That's me. I dyed my hair black last week. Initially it was just for fun - Yuri wanted to dye hers brown, so I joked that we should trade. The joke turned into reality for 2-3 hours and $20 at the salon. It also turned into a surprising effect when I walked out on the street.

There aren't very many foreigners in Lanzhou. There are the students studying Chinese at the university, but even among these, a good number are Asian. There are a few foreigners teaching English in the local school systems or in private schools. There's an occasional tourist. Other than that, everyone is Chinese, and everyone has dark hair. Most are black, though some approach a dark brown, and dying brown or reddish brown is relatively common.

My friend noticed it first. "You know, Ellen, people aren't staring at you now." I had kind of stopped noticing - my adaption to being stared at was not to look at people. If I didn't see them staring at me, then they weren't, right? At the beginning it was strange, but people didn't stare in a bad way, more in a marveling way, like they couldn't get enough of seeing something unbelievable. Some days I sure got frustrated - I wanted to go out and get something to eat, or go shopping, and mind my own business while doing it. I wanted to blend in. I thought of walking on the streets of New York, where you can do anything and not get stared at. I thought of how I missed people-watching, since half the people I looked at here were already looking at me. I thought of walking in Cambridge, or pretty much anywhere else I've lived before, where I blend in so completely it's kind of a pleasure when someone notices something particular.

But my friend was right. In the few days that have passed since I dyed my hair, it is clear that the stares I get are remarkably fewer than before. I still don't blend in, and people still look, but there's no red light flashing from a mile away to say that I'm a novelty. It's only when people are close and happen to look my way that they see. I don't catch attention from the corner of an eye anymore. From the back, you can't really tell at all.

I like this change. I have wanted to try out black hair before (I've done very short-term dye before). It's not that I'm trying to be Chinese, obviously that's silly. And I dont even mind being stared at that much - I actually hope it might help people realize that foreigners aren't that foreign after all (I'm eating, shopping, walking, riding the bus, just like anybody else...). But I like this change - it relaxes my everyday life, let's me walk around that much more peacefully. It's kind of ironic how what would make me stick out more at home - having an unnatural hair color - helps me fit in here. I'm thinking about keeping it all year. What do you think?

Yuri

The switcheroo is complete

Mountain bbq and ma jiang

2007-10-02T01:46:00.000-04:00

This past weekend, Yuri's friend invited us along on an outing with her fourth-year accounting class at the university. To celebrate the start of the Chinese national holiday (because of which I have no class this week), they had planned a bbq on top of a mountain just outside of town. Of course this wasn't your American burgers and hot dog bbq. It was a Chinese version roasting a huge variety of things, from meat to tofu to lettuce, which we first all worked together to put on metal skewers.

Climbing Xujiashan

Preparing eggplant and potato skewers

Cutting tofu skin

Wrapping tofu skin around lettuce and skewering it just right

So that it looks like this

And this

Finished skewers of lettuce wrapped in tofu skin, plus rice cakes

Tofu and potatoes

Waiting for the coals to get hot

After dipping them in oil and various spices, including hot pepper, everyone grills at once

Lots of hands :)

Most of what's on the side looks like tofu, with some rice cakes and hot-dog like meat in the center

After most of the food had been eaten, we started grilling bread and then spreading a spicy oily paste inside. The girl on the right is Yuri's friend Zhouye.

Yuri enjoying a grilled, spicy crab stick

Learning ma jiang, with the help of the guy on my right

After the meal, everyone relaxed to play games of cards and ma jiang. I can't tell you how excited I was to find out that ma jiang is basically a complicated rummy-like game. It's so nice to learn a new game/skill that you know you'll enjoy working on and getting better at for many times to come.

View of the Yellow River and power lines on the way down

Finally back at the bottom, taking a rest with Bin gui

Random photos and Bing Ling Si

2007-10-01T23:17:00.000-04:00

I'm sure I haven't put up enough photos yet, so here are a few more from the past couple weeks.

Mainly pedestrian bridge over the Yellow River

Overlooking the Yellow River at night. Next to me is my neighbor Yiyu

The entrance to Zhuan jia lou, the place I'm living.

In my room, hard at work

Yiyu walking in front of one of the first 'restaurants' I went to when I first came, inside the university campus, specializing in beef noodle soup (牛肉面 - you can see it says this in the big lettering above the door, towards the right) as well as fried noodles and fried rice dishes.

Yuri and I

Out to dinner: drinking chrysanthemum tea and waiting for our food.

Mmmm

After dinner posing with the wait staff in their pretty uniforms outside the restaurant

One early morning at the Yellow River

Bing gui and I in front of a well known statue in Lanzhou known as the Yellow River mother, I think supposed to signify the importance of the Yellow River in supporting the Chinese people over the years.I like seeing the different traffic signs in different countries. China is
particularly good for this. The above has the Chinese character for yield on it.

Yuri, Bing gui and I at Bing ling si

Last weekend, Yuri, Bing gui and I took at trip to Bing ling si caves, which is the one place near Lanzhou which my guidebook says is a must-see. Indeed it was lovely - the weather was great and the scenery was impressive. We made it a day trip, leaving very early in the morning (though had to wait until after 9 to depart, it turned out, seeing as we didn't have bus insurance). The travel was fun, first on a bus winding through the mountains, and then on a long speedboat ride across the liu jia xia reservoir, chatting with fellow passengers. I don't think I was able to appreciate the caves and cave art as much as I might have because I didn't really understand the background of how old it was and what purpose it served, but it certainly was interesting, and the scenery seriously great. There were a bunch of foreigners there on a guided tour, and I was excited to join in for the explanations, but it turned out they were all being given in German.

Lanzhou West bus station, point of departure

Yuri on the speedboat crossing the Liujiaxia reservoir

At Bingling si

Me with giant buddha carved into the hillside

Vladimir Komarov and Censoring

2007-09-28T22:05:00.000-04:00

The second text in my Chinese reading class is about Vladimir Komarov. Besides learning such useful phrases as 'return to base' and 'the universe,' I've also scratched the surface of censorship and (re-)writing history. Vladimir Komarov was a Soviet cosmonaut who in 1967 was the first man to die in space. The space shuttle's parachute malfunctioned, and so he was unable to slow down and crashed upon landing. My Chinese text recounts the hours before his death, when he learned of the unsolvable technical problem, was communicating with ground control, and saying goodbye to his family. In the text, he insists on first giving a lengthy mission report before spending his last moments with his loved ones. He is worked up but in control of himself and gives a coherent account to ground control. He announces that in spite of everything he is happy to have devoted his life to space exploration. Then, he speaks in turn to his mother, wife, and daughter. His daughter tells him she wants to be an astronaut just like him. Finally, his lover's husband comes on the transmission, and says that he forgives Komarov because now he understands why his wife loved him. It is all very emotional, and the text basically concludes that everyone looks to him as a hero, and that he unquestionbly is one.

After some searching on the internet, I have found that the facts are true, but the dialogue and situation are distorted. The 1967 story published by the BBC reports the following:

"Mystery crash
The announcement from Moscow gave few details surrounding events leading up to the disaster, and there remain a number of mysteries surrounding the last moments of the doomed flight.
The Soyuz 1 is known to be a new and heavier type of spacecraft, built as part of the Soviet attempt to land a man on the Moon, and Colonel Komarov was thought to be testing it when the disaster happened.

Correspondents in Moscow had indications that all was not well with the flight from as early as yesterday, when earlier reports on Moscow Radio suddenly stopped and there was no mention of the space flight for nearly 13 hours. Experts have questioned why Colonel Komarov did not use an ejection system to get out of the spacecraft. The cosmonaut was also known to have suffered from heart problems."

The online BBC article then follows up with current, retrospective information:
"It is now thought that the Soyuz 1 space flight had been dogged by problems from the beginning, and that the craft was not ready for manned flight. But objections from the engineers were overruled by political pressures for a series of space feats to mark the anniversary of Lenin's birthday. The Soviet Union continued to dominate the space race for another two years, until the United States put the first man on the Moon with the Apollo 11 mission in 1969."

Finally, wikipedia goes so far as to say:
"On his second flight, Soyuz 1, Komarov was killed during a return, when the spacecraft crashed owing to failure of the parachute. Just before impact, Soviet premier Alexey Kosygin told Komarov his country was proud of him. An American NSA listening post in Istanbul noted Komarov's reply was inaudible, though persistent rumours stated that Komarov died cursing the spacecraft designers and flight controllers. Whatever the truth of the matter, a tape from a West German tracking station bearing some of Komarov's brief phrases was forwarded to the Command-Measurement Complex of the Soviet Union after the disaster and was reported to contain the word "killed", mixed in with Komarov's distraught unclear transmissions, among other flight data recorded on radio by the West Germans. The recording was made, apparently, on one of the last orbits, if not the final one."

Also, the fact that I've managed to read wikipedia at all is an issue of censorship. Indeed, it is blocked in China. I've managed to get an add-on that lets me around the national internet censoring when I want (perhaps I shouldn't be writing this...). I can also see my blog using this, which means that blogs on blogger.com are blocked by China.

Who do you believe? I obviously have more trust in the BBC, and even in wikipedia, than my Chinese text book, but even the justification for this trust, I suppose, should be questioned. Perhaps this is just a simple example of Chinese propaganda - the text encourages values such as devoting ones life to a common goal, to duty before anything else, and also to loving relationships between relatives. The China-Russia relationship also seems to be rather complex and interesting, and here in this part of China, particularly important to people.

Of course my Chinese book doesn't claim to be a news report, and I figured the dialogue wasn't exact, but the very different accounts are still surprising to me. If any of you know any more on these events, I'd be interested in hearing what you think actually happened. For now, I'm first reminded more concretely than ever to really keep my eyes open and question what I hear. Second, living in China now, I wonder, should I even be posting this?

Tennis

2007-09-28T21:24:00.000-04:00

In Chinese, tennis is 网球 (wǎng qiú), and it's a bit of a different game than I've seen elsewhere. Well, that's not quite true - it's the same game, but playing it on the Lanzhou University Courts is different from anywhere else I've played.

I was very pleased to see four hard courts in a prime spot on campus, and soon after arriving I bought a racket. When my classmate and I got there, there were no open courts. We inquired about whether it cost money to play, and whether there might be an open court in about an hour. The peopel sitting by the entrance at a sort-of-official looking table only seemed interested in knowing whether we had student IDs (which we did not yet). Finally they seemed to agree that we could play, and said something about a half an hour. After some more confused conversation, it became clear that the courts were going to close in a half an hour for lunch, but that we could go play now. At these courts, you don't have to wait for a free court, you just have to wait for a free half a court. Four people can play on any court, even with strangers. You can join anywhere there's a spot. Particularly, elderly men seem to show up by themselves and join in. In fact if all the courts are full, I would later learn, you can still play between courts, if you really want to.

This means that no one is ever playing matches, since anyone at any time might come and take half of your court. It also means, since the courts are often full, that you don't get much cross-court practice. It means you can meet people easily. The courts have many regulars who hit every day, regulars who are interested in a foreign girl who hits decently. Many dont look like they've had much or any instruction, and I can easily keep up with most, despite not having seriously played tennis since high school.

Another difference are the tennis balls. When I first started, I was shocked at how everyone was using really old balls. I later realized I was partly wrong -- the courts were covered in a layer of dirt such that even after playing a short while the balls looked old. I still think people don't often buy new balls (the wal-mart-esque store where I bought my racket didn't even sell them - you got two free with your racket, though they were not in a pressurized container and already going a little flat). The balls I got with my racket came with a long length of rubber band which I could thread through a tight loop accessible through a small gap in the ball's surface, attach the other end to my racket, and hit with myself.

All sort of strange, but not in a bad way. I also like Chinese tennis for its characters -- the first is 网，which means net and absolutely looks like a net. It's used in words having to do with the internet and any type of network as well. The second, 球, literally means ball and is found in the name of any sport that is played with a ball.

兰州大学/Lanzhou University

2007-09-20T05:37:00.001-04:00

My year studying Chinese in Lanzhou, China has begun. I've been here nearly three weeks now, and had time to set up my room, begin to familiarize myself with the city, start classes, and get to know a few people. Months of gradually gaining a deeper understanding of the city, country, people, and language now lay before me. I've already come quite a ways since my arrival, when I had no idea who or what awaited. Below you'll find an overview of my first couple weeks and first impressions, and future posts will have more details about these topics and others. You might want to start from the bottom to read in a more chronological order.

I've added some of you to a list to receive an e-mail when I update. If you find you're not receiving these and would like to, let me know. As for contacting me this year, here's how:

Address
Lanzhou University Zhuan Jia Lou, Room 104
222 South Tian Shui Road
Lanzhou, Gansu 730000

e-mail
ellenleffler@gmail.com

I have a slight problem in that I can post to this blog but can't view it, so I can only hope that the formatting is ok. Also, I want to include some Chinese characters which your computer may or may not be able to read. If you want to, you should be able to easily install an add-on which allows you to read them (though I forget how). Also, e-mail me any questions you have about China or Chinese or anything I've written! I'd love to here from you about any and everything.

Week 2: First Week of Classes

2007-09-20T02:17:00.000-04:00

Before classes began, there was a placement test to help sort students into levels, but I didn't end up taking it. I put it off for a while because I wanted to study first. I knew it would be hard for both them and me to figure out which class I should take. I took two years of Chinese at Amherst, but that ended three years ago. Besides listening to the occasional song and trying to spit out one sentence to a foreign classmate or Chinese waiter, I really haven’t touched it since. I felt like I remembered quite a bit, but would it come out right away? I didn’t want to repeat what I’d already done. In the end, I explained my situation and only did a small portion of the test. We'd be allowed to switch classes during the first week, anyway, once we got a better idea of the level of the classes.

Upon starting class, I soon discovered a few things about my Chinese: first, I could say much more than I could read, and I could read much more than I could write. Second, there a whole lot of incredibly simple words I couldn't remember and some strangely difficult words which stuck (why could I not remember how to say ‘soft’ or ‘reply’ but could remember how to say ‘self-contradictory’?) Third, my pronunciation is decent, such that if I only say a few things, my listener thinks my Chinese is a whole lot better than it is. This probably helped me get the recommendation I wanted for an intermediate class. Especially because my results this year don’t mean a thing, I figure I might as well err on the hard side. In the end, I chose to take Intermediate 2, mostly since that was what my roommate and neighbours decided to take. Being able to work together on homework and use new vocabulary words in conversation sounded really good to me.

I've got five classes basically:
1)汉语：Chinese (reading texts and learning difficult vocabulary) - 4.5 hours/week
2)口语： Spoken Chinese - reading dialogues and focusing on common expressions - 4.5 hours/week
3)听力：Listening - distinguishing between similar sounding words, between tones, and listening comprehension - 3 hrs/ week
4)写作：Chinese writing and grammar - 3hrs/week
5)HSK: preparing for the Chinese equivalent of the TOEFL - 2.5 hrs/week

The first is incredibly difficult - the teacher speaks very quickly and doesn't stop to ask us questions or make sure we understand, and the vocabulary is tough. I got really excited though when the first text was about apes and humans. Also, the book for this class translates the vocabulary words into both English and French, so besides learning the Chinese, I also find it interesting to see how they have decided to translate it into both English and French. The other classes vary in difficulty...the listening teacher speaks painfully slowly and I am impatient. The writing teacher is very demanding and holds us all responsible for having prepared for class and knowing something.

My class has about 10 people in it, though it's hard to say because a number of them come irregularly. There's me, my roommate and neighbors from Korea, and then the rest are from Uzbekistan, Krygystan, and yes, Kazakstan. There are a lot of students from Central Asia here. I've met a couple others from the US (though not in my class), but by far the more common language spoken among foreign students is Russian, followed by Korean. I know I have trouble thinking beyond Borat when hearing someone is from Kazakstan. I am looking forward to getting beyond that and maybe helping you to as well...

For now, these classes are overall very challenging. There are a million characters to learn, it seems, and sometimes I just want to close myself into my room and learn them all before coming out again. I know it doesn't work like that, though.

Week 1: Before Classes Start

2007-09-19T21:37:00.000-04:00

It turned out that classes were to start on September 10, so I basically had Wednesday through Sunday to settle in before thinking much about school. The first day, my roommate took me around to get something to eat, and shop for things I would need in the room. Her school has an exchange set up with Lanzhou University – each year five Yeungnam University students go to Lanzhou and five Lanzhou University students go to Yeungnam. So, she came with four other Korean students from her school, and they’d all been here a week or so already. I really can’t overestimate how helpful that was – actually, how helpful in general it has been to ask people who have already gone through the first days here how to do it. I like to figure things out by myself – read the manual, look at the company or school’s webpage, etc. But here, that’s not so easy, sometimes because things aren’t written down or accessible, often because my Chinese reading skills are currently rather slow and limited. It takes a long time to look things up in the dictionary.

Another thing that made things easy is that there’s a large wal-mart-esque store across the street from the university. This actually makes some things easier than in England, where there were no such stores within walking distance. I indeed breathed a sigh of relief when I walked in and knew that every essential item was in a few minutes walk. Plus, I really enjoy shopping in such stores in different countries, seeing the similar but different products catered to a culture’s taste and taste buds. For example, in Vanguard, this Chinese Wal-mart, there was a large section dedicated to moon cakes gearing up for Mid-Autumn festival, huge bins of rice, and a large the selection of rice cookers and cups for drinking tea. The store also has an amazing cool feature that I hope appears in other stores – there are free lockers to put your things in while you shop. You push a button, and a little white slip pops out. When you take the slip, a locker pops open and you can put your things inside while you shop. When you want your things back, you just scan your slip on the same machine and your locker pops open. A really good idea, and I was surprised to see it first in Lanzhou.

I guess before I left, I didn’t really think of Lanzhou as a whole, complex city. It was just this foreign, far, unheard of place I got randomly bumped into to spend a period of time. But it’s a city as any other – there are parks, there are shops, there are restaurants. People go to museums and they go to concerts and they go shopping. They go out to eat. But they also do strange dances in public squares in early morning hours and sell lots of food and small items on the street. Some places are dirty and not taken care of; people don’t follow the traffic laws and they spit and stare.

This is the main gate to Lanzhou University. The guys are my neighbors, and the girl is Yuri, my roommate.

This is along the path from the main gate to the place I'm living.

Similarly, Lanzhou University is like other universities I’ve known. It’s clearly a campus - there’s a library and a gym, dormitories and classrooms (though I often can’t tell what is what). There are students walking around all the time, there are places to eat and little stores selling student necessities. There’s a bank branch, and a China Telecom branch. There are even construction sites. But then again, it’s extremely different. There are a ton of outdoor ping pong tables and badminton courts, and no grassy fields. Instead of a ‘green,’ there’s a big very Asian-feeling park, with a curvy pond and stone benches. The buildings are mostly old and not very attractive. At certain times of the day, everyone walks around with big hanging canteen-jug things, filling them with hot water to drink (even the Chinese don’t drink straight tap water). There is a place where the newspaper gets posted ever day and anyone can walk up and read it.This is where newspaper gets poted, and several people have stopped to read it.

I’m living in the “International Guest House,” or 专家楼, which is at the back of the main part of the university campus. (see photo below). My room is pretty basic, with two beds, two desks, two armoires, and a TV. We’ve also got a little entryway with a bathroom off of it. There’s a normal shower and toilet (which is not the case in Chinese student dorms I hear). We only have hot water between 6-9am and 6pm-midnight, meaning that I have to get up before 9 to have a hot shower (something I did not know on my first morning here...). Also, this is actually the first time I have ever had a TV in my room. We get 50-60 channels, but naturally they are all in Chinese. For now, I watch the occasional sports match and sometimes turn it on for ambiance and osmosis. We tried watching kids’ shows but even they were tough to follow. One good thing is that most of the channels have Chinese subtitles running across the bottom. Once my Chinese gets a little better, I think it will be a really good learning device.

So in case you’re wondering – I’m basically speaking Chinese all the time. Sometimes I get frustrated because I can only express simple ideas, or I try to say something a little complicated and completely fail. I miss being able to joke, too, and have to settle for a very situational-based type of humour. But I have been pleased so far by how easily my conversational Chinese comes to mind. I don’t know how correct it is, but that’s a nice thing about talking with other foreigners – they don’t know either and if they do, don’t mind. My roommate and neighbours are often conversing in Korean, but they have agreed to stop doing so in my presence after one month, and I plan to hold them to it (Oct. 6!).

Another very important topic – food! The food is really good and really cheap. We’re still figuring out where are the best places to eat, but have one favourite restaurant just outside the campus, where a full meal comes out to $1 or so (50p!), and you can easily get full elsewhere on half that. I’ve made progress in deciphering a Chinese menu, which is no small feat. I am developing my repertoire of foods that I can identify on the menu, and a vocabulary of key food terms (e.g., 炒 is fried, 丝 means cut into thin strips, 血means blood so stay away, etc.). In the morning, sometimes I just eat a piece of fruit in my room, sometimes go out to eat beef noodles in soup (牛肉面), which are hand-pulled and renowned in Lanzhou (I hope to post a video of this sometime – its pretty cool to see them made) or steamed dumplings (包子). I still don’t really like eating what seems to me like lunch food for breakfast, but maybe I’ll get used to it yet.

Yuri at what's for now our favorite restaurant.

Also, it’s most fun to eat with a number of other people here. Mealtime is very different – there are almost always many dishes served and everyone eats from each. You have a small bowl of rice, but you don’t serve yourself helpings, you just take bite by bite (with your chopsticks!) from the general serving dishes. If your group is larger than four, the table generally has a lazy-susan which gets turned periodically throughout the meal. Also, out at a restaurant, the servers put down one menu and then one person orders all the dishes. At a lot of the inexpensive restaurants, you write down your own order on a piece of paper they give you. If someone invites you out to go eat, they will do the ordering. They might ask what you like to eat, but they are in charge of choosing a good, varied selection of food. I am already yearning a bit for certain foods (someone mentioned alfredo the other day and I just about melted. It’s funny how I hardly ever eat this in the US, but when it’s not around I still miss it). As for western food, I hear there is a place serving pizza in town, and there are several KFCs. I’ll put it off for a while, and then go. No McDonald’s, though.

This is a street not far from the University. I'm on a pedestrian bridge crossing the street.

Lanzhou is a strangely built city – long and skinny, stretching for about 30km along the Yellow River, mostly on the south bank. I bought a map, and it’s funny how it keeps folding out and out and out. I guess that’s pretty convenient, actually, for the printing press. There are mountains on both sides of the river which have prevented the city from growing much in a second dimension. This is also part of what has given Lanzhou a name for being quite polluted, even for China. The mountains prevent air circulation and the pollution produced stays in the area. The other part is the quick industrial and population growth of the city (it now has a population of over 3 million). However, I haven’t found the pollution (or the population for that matter) to be unbearable. Often the mountains sort of look like they’re behind an opaque screen, and you know they’d look a lot prettier if you could see them clearly. And maybe the airs a bit dirty and smells funny, but I’ve gotten used to it. I hear winter is the worst. For now though, it’s better than I had feared, and I’ll leave that worry on the shelf for a while.

Another street view from near the University, with the mountains in the background.

The University is on the East end of Lanzhou, and the shape of the city makes distances kind of long. Still, I can get to the Yellow River in about 30-40 minutes, and to most parts of the town centre in an hour or less. There are several parts to the campus, and I’m still figuring them out.

During the time before classes started, I also had to take care of some official business in order to be registered at the university and stay in the country legally. By far, the most exciting step was the medical exam, followed at some distance by getting a bank account. Everyone had to do the medical exam, regardless of what doctors’ in their home country had said about their state of health. Early my second morning, Yuri took me onto bus number 33, which we rode out east to the last stop. Tucked away behind and through several buildings was a door marked with something about “international entry and exit inspection and quarantine”. After filling out some forms, they ordered me to the 2^nd floor to get my blood drawn. After that, I got shuffled around from floor to floor, room to room, and doctor to nurse, each pointing me where to go next in a well-oiled but very strange sequence of events. The drawing blood might have been the scariest – I waited in a line where each person in turn, once at the front, put his/her arm through a window where a nurse tied a rubber tube around the upper arm and drew blood into a few small tubes, everyone watching. During this same step they also asked for a urine sample (at least you got to do that privately). I went for a chest X-ray, an ultrasound, did an eye test (though of course there’s no alphabet, so I was just pointing which direction an “E” was facing. I was following around two British guys starting a gap year teaching English in a more remote part of the province and one of them comment that because of this his vision was much better in China than in England). They poked and prodded, took an ECG. Finally, it was over, and I was told to come back next week to get the results. It all cost about $35, and I found out I’m blood type O. My Korean friends were all surprised that I hadn’t known my blood type before – to them it’s kind of important, and they even have theories about what the personalities of people with certain blood types tend to be. Anyway, I eventually went back to get my results and have since delivered them to the security bureau of Lanzhou, along with paperwork from the school and my passport, as an application for a residence permit.

I now have two bank accounts in China, both with about $2 in them (I first opened at the wrong bank for the school to deposit my stipend money). At the second, China Industrial and Commercial Bank, I had to fill out the application form three times. After the first time, I thought maybe I just had to fill out the form in duplicate so I wrote exactly the same thing again. After the second time, the bank worker frustratedly showed me that when I marked which type of account I wanted, I had put an ‘x’ in the box. In China, this means you don’t want the item – you have to put a check in the box to indicate your selection. Third time I got it right.

The first weekend I went with a group of people (including some Chinese students) to a mountainside park just outside of town. We ended up waiting around a long time for everyone to arrive so didn't make it very far up the mountain. Still, it was very interesting to see the city from a bit of a distance, and to see the activities of Chinese people out in the park on a Sunday morning. There were lots of people doing Tai Chi or group dance-like exercises (Chinese line dancing! - see video at bottom). There were people playing badminton, and lots of old men doing whatever you call it in this picture:

September 3-4: Arrival

2007-09-11T04:57:00.000-04:00

I’m at the end of day 1. That is to say, the sun tells it’s been a full day, but I can’t tell when it’s time to eat from when it’s time to sleep and can’t tell whether I’m hungry or tired or not. I guess that’s what you get when you travel for 30 hours to get halfway around the world. The time difference here is 12 hours – which on one hand probably gives the worst possible jet lag, but on the other hand, you don’t even have to change your watch!!

I first flew to Newark, where I had a three hour layover and spent some of it with my uncle and has family. I got a goodie bag of fresh tomatoes, some good questions about what I was about to do and other varied, energetic conversation. I recalled that for many of my ventures I have flown through Newark or New York and met with family over a layover, which has always been a nice way to start a journey. This time it didn’t even make much sense to go to Newark (what? Go east and then go west??) but it turns out the route sent me north, sort of through Canada and over part of Russia. I don’t think we actually crossed over the pole, though. I sat next to two ladies from Montreal who were going on a three week tour that they had organized among friends and friends of friends. So on the way to China I practiced my French. During the 13 hour flight, I don’t think I slept more than 2 hours. My continental plane had a new video system installed (as had my Virgin Atlantic flight back from London a month ago) allowing you to choose movies, TV shows, and games at leisure. You could start and stop then at will and choose among 200 films and a lot of other programs. There are still some bugs they need to work out, such as that fast forwarding is too slow and the games load frustratingly slowly. Also, continental didn’t offer any new releaseses. On Virgin Atlantic they had a cool system where you could send messages to the screen of any other passenger (thought it didn’t do me much good travelling alone) and you could challenge others to a game of tetris or bowling or play a trivia challenge with others logged in on the plane. So I kept myself busy watching a French film about a lighthouse off an island in Brittany, a Chinese comedy/drama about a woman with breast cancer, Sweet Home Alabama, and a number of Simpsons and America’s Next Top Model shows. Seriously, not a bad way to fly.

Once I arrived in Beijing, I was not looking forward to another flight, that’s for sure. Customs in China didn’t take long at all, and my visa was accepted no questions asked (even in England they had requested to see my admissions letter to Cambridge). I was too early to check in to my next flight on China Eastern, so I went to find some iced tea (the airport was not air conditioned. Actually one of the first things I noticed when I got back from England was the excessive air conditioning in the US. We sure like it cold inside). Finally, I checked in and all that good stuff and sat waiting for the flight. I looked around and didn’t feel so out of place - there were lots of foreign looking people there. A few minutes later, though, most of them got on a plane to Xi’An.

Finally aboard my Bejing-Lanzhou flight and despite the scarcity of foreign passengers, I ended up next to a Scottish ecologist who was going to Lanzhou for a few days to meet with a potential collaborator for research out in the highlands and mountains west of Lanzhou. What a nice fortuitous encounter – I had thought about contacting biologists with research in the area but I never did. And, for the first time, after a conversation throughout the flight between bouts of trying to sleep (but between nerves and excitement unable to despite my exhaustion) and trying to read and trying to eat the meal served, I exchanged e-mail addresses with someone met on a plane. Maybe I’ll end up on a field expedition next year, or at least in touch with biology students or professors at the university.

My flights were particularly interesting, which seemed to me a good omen. They finally ended in... Touch down in Lanzhou!! Indeed, just outside baggage claim there was somebody with a “Lanzhou University” sign. The ecologist was already there chatting with him but we figured out that he was there to get me, and shortly after someone else showed up to pick him up. There were two people there to greet me actually – a driver and a CSL (?) teacher. We waited around for another flight to get and in the end there were two other foreign students coming as well, one from Hungary and one from the Philippines. They were both there on an exchange arranged by the Gansu provincial government, though I think they will be in the same Chinese classes. Anyway, I tried to sleep on the ride but was still too nervous/excited to get any quality Zs. After an hour and a half or so, at about 10pm, we arrived in Lanzhou. From (really) tired eyes, I saw the Yellow River with just a couple bridges across it, and lots of people out on the street.

Luggage cart at the Lanzhou Airport

We arrived at the university campus, where only cars with business there are allowed to enter. My first impression was just that it wasn’t well lit, but that nonetheless there were people walking around, and there were a few restaurants or shops within the campus limits. We parked at the place I was to have a room. The front desk looked kind of like a hotel reception area, with a counter and clocks showing the time in different cities around the world – Beijing, New York, Tokyo, Moscow...). It was sort of a nice touch, except that all the clocks were wrong except for Beijing (n.b. about a week later they fixed most, but New York is still wrong. I’m not bothering to tell them though because after the change for daylight saving time it will be correct). I paid a deposit for my key and located my room, on the first floor. My roommate, Yuri, was getting ready for bed, but greeted me warmly and started telling me a bit about the city. Yuri’s Korean and doing a year-long study abroad here for a Chinese and International Studies major.