September 16, 2005
lotuses
that was a little large; this is smaller
is a picture of a lotus flower-seller in motion
Posted by ltuddenham at 5:16 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Pictures, perhaps
this may be of kunming city hall, or of a temple, or of erhui lake. Not sure which
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Note to self:
Wear red underpants in the year 2007.
Today I heard another fabulous Chinese saying: Apparently during your year ( that is every twelve years on the Chinese lunar calendar, during the year that is your sign) they say that you are supposed to wear red underpants for the entire year so that you will be spectacularly lucky all year. Better yet, if you happen to have an unlucky day, on which you gambled and lost a lot of money, or missed the bus etc., you can sigh and blame it on not having worn red underpants!
The specifics of this aren't exactly clear to me�is it one pair of underpants for the whole year? Like lucky championship socks? Can you lament "I should have worn red underpants!" every day? Or just during that year? And can you maybe switch it up a bit by rotating a few pairs with stripes or polka dots, or hearts? Or do they have to be a lucky national flag red every day? If so, I'd better start stocking up for the year I turn 24.
This I learned on my way to check out the First Annual Agricultural Expo, which must have been quite grand last week, but was mostly dismantled by the time I got there. Nonetheless, I wandered around with a friend, a'prospecting for rocks and slightly battered roses left over from the many displays, and managed to gather a rather nice bouquet. The only stands left were mostly the ones selling baskets and baskets of fragrant black wood-ear ( mu-er) fungus. I somehow got coerced into buying some expired blueberry Burmese gum and 5 yen worth of something deliciously sweet, crunchy, and charcoal-colored made with potatoes, peanuts, and who knows what else. My mouse is going to love it.
When I was in Russia, I was told that the key to looking Russian and not American was to walk with your head down and not smile (Americans smile too much), but I'm afraid that I've mastered looking inscrutable too well, and it's starting to depress me and affect my personality, like that outside-in method of acting ( can't remember the name) where by physically acting something, you can create the more subtle inner aspects of a role.
For some reason my presence causes people to suddenly exclaim or mutter the first English phrase that comes to their mind; usually "hello", but sometimes "I don't know"- in response to nothing, or "ooo oooo oaaa." I tend to ignore it, probably to the point where it's getting kind of unfriendly; I only responded to one hello today because he had a beautiful dog. I don't like sticking out, but there's no avoiding it, so I might as well embrace it, I guess. But it annoys me to have people remind me of my differentness. Then again, maybe I'm just getting "uppity."
Fortunately, this is no Latin America, ( nor even Boston) where the catcalls and whistles I am so intolerant of would be common, but I merely get these quiet (it's only in my imagination that they're leering) hellos and usually a full pivot of the head as they stare me past. I had been gazing studiously into the distance when people stared at me on the bus to give them the opportunity to look their fill, as I'm sure I would want to have the same chance. It's too bad my profile isn't more elegant. But lately I've been getting tired of being LOOKed at, and starting meeting their eyes and looking back; probably I just look owl-eyed and angry.
Right. Standards are different, maybe and it's good for me to get the merest taste of the minority experience which I've always sort of laid claim to but never actually had to deal with. For that was one of my first impressions, and perhaps it's naïve but it's the same realization I get every time I go to a new country: That these people have grown up and been surrounded by this language and culture for their entire lives, being and looking how they are, as the majority, and forming a part of the standard, but never a monolith. And truly, I had never imagined so many permutations on Asian, nor realized how many stereotypes I held or how narrow my comfort zone is.
Living here is daily a mix of weirdly familiar and distinctly strange. It's somewhat comforting that many things that I was used to growing up that were just a bit odd/unique then, like eating by shoveling food directly from the bowl into your mouth with your chopsticks, or all sorts of bizarre preserved fruit and dried meat, or certain sayings or holidays, are suddenly the norm. Of course there are a million more things that are new, but it gives me somewhere to start from. I've also found that I'm not as exhausted by listening to Chinese all day long , as I sometimes have been by being in other countries by listening so hard that my forehead aches, because I'm used to it, and can tune out and let it wash comfortably over me when need be. Sometimes the problem is remembering to tune in, but I'm not as bothered by not understanding everything as my german co-worker Sylvia is.
Also, I've been realizing that certain admonitions that I heard frequently while growing up, and which I attributed to the sometimes odd asian notions of health held by my Taiwanese "Ahyee" are of a rather different nature than I'd always imagined. I'd always ignored them or brushed them off, because I considered them about as silly as the Russian idea that girls will become infertile if they sit on the cold ground. But it turns out, that some of them at least, are used as friendly greetings or goodbye's. For example, I always thought it odd that no matter what time of day it was at home or in Boston when I talked to Ahyee, her first question was always "Have you eaten yet?" ( Ni chile mei?) But now I've encountered it as a morning greeting from co-workers, and realize it's just a friendly way of saying hello with a little tinge of extra concern attached. And not at all surprising considering the importance of food in Chinese culture, and the prevalence of famine in the country's history. Similarly, the farewell " Walk slowly" (Man zou)has been given to me by storekeepers and bakery employees as I leave their shops, and has little to do with the fact that my walking pace, honed by years of being late to class and meetings, is considerably faster than the average Chinese person's. It gives me a small feeling of warmth to understand this.
On the other hand, I've discovered that I'm not very into eating tube-like parts of the animal. ( Nostrils, large intestine, esophagus, etc.) but I'm afraid I may need to be more adventurous and stop using the excuse that "It would probably give me avian flu." Doesn't work so well for pork, anyway.
affectionately,
Lexi
Posted by ltuddenham at 4:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 14, 2005
Navigation, some fauna, and sprite
Tips for Navigation:
Not being able to find a place to sit down is a stupid reason for not looking at one's map.
You already are a foreigner to them, and asking directions or taking out a map can't make it any worse. And if they don't understand you when you ask them, the worse they could tell you is "No you can't play MahJohng with us."
As I can't keep seem to keep street names straight in my head even while I'm walking down them, so I've starting making up names for streets based on sights seen and defining characteristics. So today after getting off the bus I walked on the street of computer equipment shops before turning right down the street of office supplies and MP3 players. Later, I went down the wide street where the orange spice and black charcoal remnants of grilled-meat vendors smelt peppery when tread underfoot., the street with the DVD shop that gypped me ( two dollars down the drain), the street of many bakeries�and! Wonder of wonders, a chocolate shop--.the street with glitzy women's clothing shops that smell like Japanese candy, and finally down the street of eating skewered stinky tofu-chou dofu- on roller skates ( not me, a little boy).Unfortunately this broke down somewhat on the street of motorcycle shops, which is where my home bus stop is.
Rule: Even if you think it is your street, having a lot of motorcycle shops on it doesn't make it your street-it's not and if you keep walking on it long enough you won't reach home.
Walking takes longer.
But it's still not really that far.
I've also started taking detailed notes on bus routes so that I can try to navigate by bus stop- the only signs to reliably contain pingying because bus stops are really my only hope for navigation, as they are pretty much the only pingying around ( i.e. I don't have to be able to read characters to make a guess at where I am)
At the zoo:
The much persecuted sparrows here have black cheek-patches, and appear to have recovered considerably. During the "4 pests" (sparrows, rats, mosquitoes, and flies) campaign of the Mao era, children and adults followed flocks of sparrows around banging on pots and drums to keep them from alighting anywhere, until reportedly the birds dropped dead of exhaustion. However, they were extremely abundant in every cage at the zoo.
For some reason, the raccoon exhibit at the zoo was larger than all the many bear and tiger and lion exhibits combined. And not a one to be seen. Huh.
I don't know if it's a clever marketing ploy or a bad translation, but on my sprite bottle under nutrition facts instead of calories it has "Energy" in kJ. Taken way beyond what it probably actually means, what a different perspective on life this represents. What if instead of counting calories, dieters merely budgeted for the amount of energy they were planning to use that day, and made up for the loss if they went beyond that. If it was a decision between being energetic or listless, would that make any difference, for who would ever choose to be listless?
Posted by ltuddenham at 1:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 12, 2005
Contact info/Parks
Ok so maybe it's not actually that clean here. But it could be much worse.
First things first.
My cell phone:
You probably need a phone card of some sort to call, but rates should probably be better from there to here than vice versa. China's country code, is 86 ( and you might have to dial a 00 or something before that) and then my cell phone number is 13529214645. I have my co-worker Wang Wei to thank for babysitting me through the process, about which I would have been utterly lost.
Next up, my mail address is
Lexi Tuddenham c/o CBIK
3rd Floor, Building A, Zhonghuandasha, Yanjiadi,
Kunming, Yunnan 650034, P.R. China.
and finally, the Blog site that PiA set up for us, and on which I have done shamefully little, is
http://blogs.princeton.edu/pia/personal/ltuddenham/
if anyone actually checks it I promise to write more.
I've been trying to maintain the illusion that I am actually pretty busy, hence the lack of email for a week
Today was the first day that I convinced myself to go for a run/walk. I don't know what had me more worried- the lack of a map or the pollution. Perhaps I had an unnaturally rosy conception of how clean Kunming is both because I had just come from L.A. and because I was expecting worse of any Chinese city. It doesn't have the same brown cap over it that L.A. does, but I think that the ground-level pollution might actually be worse, and at a certain time of afternoon, watching the cars roll in and out of the PetroChina ( yes that one) filling station, you wish that they might smogcheck just one out of every five buses that comes by, because it would make a difference in how angry an orange the sun is when it sets over mountains whose outlines I have only glimpsed. Also, I was told that this is one of the driest major cities in China, and yet there are canals around much of the city, as well as lakes in nearly every park, large or small. However, the canals, though somewhat pleasant with shady trees overhanging them and bridges across them, are generally filled with grey, smelly water and a few bits of oil or trash floating in it. Even the clearer canals are sludgey and anoxic on the bottom. The air certainly gets cleaner when it rains, though, as if each drop were accumulating so much smoke and dust out of the air that by the time it hits the ground and runs into the drains it must be a veritable bomb of small particular matter. No wonder the canals are grey.
I was headed for the edge of the huge lake called Dian Chi, to which Kunming owes its lovely climate. Since the Mao-era campaigns which aggressively filled many of the surrounding wetlands, however, the climate has been just that much drier and less temperate. After crossing a highway and finding myself on a mostly dirt road bordered by a (smelly) canal and rows of warehouses and brick walls, I got sidetracked by a park and never made it to the lake.
First I explored what seemed to be the goldfish-rearing part of the park, which must have been a fairly fancy waterpark back in the day, with many slides, concrete grottoes, and crawl-through hippo statues in the middle of a number of colorfully-tiled pools. Now, however, all of the many pools had been converted into goldfish ponds full of murky green water, bright fish, and the occasional concrete dinosaur slide. The main purpose of the area now seemed to be to provide an area for people to play mah-jong and cards in small thatch pavilions clustered on the concrete walkways. Indeed much of the park (as well as the city zoo, and the other parks I have seen) seemed to be devoted to providing people with nice places to play mah-jong and sip tea outdoors. Not that one should assume that it's all tea and games. I saw a fairly serious fight break out today over a mah-jongg game--shoving, overturned chair, shouting face-to-face and all.
Kunming is very well-endowed with parks, and so far I have found that they share a few common characteristics. Dry as this city is, even the smallest parks have a little bit of water, in the form of a small lake or at least a fountain. These ponds are usually overpopulated with koi and full of green, stagnant water, often with some plots of yellow water lilies, pink lotuses, and barely restrained water hyacinths. There are always a few old men fishing in them, I think overly optimistically, but who am I to say- it's been at least ten years since I caught my last fish.
It also seems that parks are often there not just to be sat or strolled in, though there's plenty of that. I was determined to get my full 5 yuan-worth, and though it only took 20-25 minutes to walk slowly around the whole thing, I passed mah-jong, card games, and teahouses galore; tents that could be rented out to lie in; hammocks, benches, and lawns; a mini-amusement park; a bunny-petting pen with small children attempting to force lettuce down the poor creature's throats; clay-molding and sculpture painting; a wading pool; at least 6 linked ponds; and a workout-oriented playground with signs demonstrating the kind of excercises that you could engage in while watching horse-drawn carts trot past on the other side of the canal.
It was at this last that I met a little girl who was staring at me as I struggled across the monkey bars. I attempted to make conversation, and after she finally acknowledged that I could understand her, we had a good, 5-minute conversation, in the course of which she tested my ball-handling skills, told me about her sister who broke her leg falling off of the monkeybars that I had just been on, and, sticking out her hand to pinch my hip ( which was about at eye-level for her), informed me with admirable frankness that I was growing too fat( Ni zhang de tai pang). I told her that was why I was at the playground, and wasn't too taken aback by the comment. After all, this is a country of miniscule women ( and the older the smaller) with perfect skin and amazing collarbones.
I spent the rest of my day cleaning my kitchen of an astonishing amount of accumulated dust and unidentifiable liquids left by the elderly lady who is renting to me. Maybe she thought that I could use them, and perhaps I could if I could figure out what they are, but in the meantime, I've cleared them off to the side, and tried not to think about what the can of RAID under the cupboard implies. If there are cockroaches, then at least we haven't yet been out at the same time, which is really best for everyone involved. I have confirmed the presence of at least one mouse, though. Sadly, I had to throw out an entire bag of amazing granola from the missionary cafe, because it had a neat chunk eaten ouf of the side. I'm considering bearbagging from the hooks on the ceiling.
That's all for the moment, but I suspect arthritis in my knuckles from those damn monkey bars.
Posted by ltuddenham at 4:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 11, 2005
Some disparate unorganized thoughts.
Traffic: frightening, but over all not usually all that bad.
Quite a few large cars (SUVs or sedans)and many smaller ones.
But still not as many as the bikes.
The bikes are numerous and incredible in the things that are frequently seen on the back of them. This may include large bookcases, immense amounts of packing material with a small child perched on top, screens with little bits of drying/rotting fish spread across them, small dogs, girlfriends, crates upon crates of packaged milk, and bananas.
Taxis are a pleasing aqua-green color and are convenient and somewhat reckless. The horn is used frequently and seemingly without provocation, mainly to signal bikers or motorcyclists that they'd better move or get run over. However, they will not flinch at merging into oncoming traffic to get around a particularly stubborn biker. Buses also frequently sneak up behind the unwary pedestrian to honk in her ear.
On crossing streets: I find the motorbikes the most dangerous because I usually forget to look for them and they come from all directions and are at liberty to decide at any given moment whether they will follow the car laws or the bike laws ( though there probably aren't any). This means that they may or may not ( probably not) stop for stoplights and may be found weaving through the cars on the main street, passing bikes in the bike lane, or occasionally on the sidewalk. I find that the best method for crossing streets is to take cover behind a confident looking business man or two and follow a step or two behind when they judge it safe to cross. The pairs of girls or middle-aged women clutching each other and giggling when they find themselves stranded in the middle of the street are generally a worse bet, though it gives you a certain sense of camaraderie to get stuck with them.
One interesting contrast is the still surprising numbers of horse or mule-drawn carts, ( bony horses with wide wooden carts and drivers perched far back on them wielding long, thin whips)that trot along many of the streets and highways. They are a relatively rare occurrence, but it's still quite startling to see them alongside the large tanker trucks.
Night markets in the day time are overrated.
A woman on a bike with a long broom dragging behind on the ground makes a good street cleaning machine.
A construction hat makes a good motorcycle helmet.
A basket with a chinstrap makes a good construction hat, if ineffective against falling objects.
It is perfectly acceptable to pick your nose/butt in public. Go on, I don't mind, it's liberating, especially if you stare at me while you do it.
Smells of smoke or burning from charcoal grills on the street, people roasting corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, filled omelettes, meat, vegetables or meat on skewers, fried dough, and blech, chou dofou. A thick heavy smell somewhere between sulfur and smoke. It permeates sickeningly for blocks and renders other food stalls unappetizing as it melds with smells of exhaust, trash, and rank public restrooms.
Posted by ltuddenham at 8:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 7, 2005
Day at work
I'm finally going to catch up here, having been inspired by Ari's example, so soon I will do the lazy thing and post some emails I've written in the past week. But just briefly for today it's rainy, I attempted to have a conversation with my friend and co-worker about racial disparities and demographics in the U.S. triggered by trying to explain why so many of the pictures of refugees in New Orleans contain a lot of African Americans. I'm not sure how well I managed it, especially as I was waxing passionate and incoherent, but I hope to have more serious discussions in the future, hopefully more and more in Chinese as possible.
Otherwise, new words I have learned today ( or have been reminded of) while grammar checking a translation about traditional paper-making in Yunnan.
laterite
ret
whilst
fastigiate
bequeath.
Off to buy some bedding.
Posted by ltuddenham at 4:17 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)