internet

I am writing you all from a hostel in Chengdu. My mattress is on the floor, and there is a cat right next to me. We can't get it to leave our room. Luckily it is the cleanest cat I have seen in China so far. We arrived to this captial city of Sichuan province late last night, and after having a bad experience at the so called "Backpackers heaven" Dragon Town Youth Hostel. To briefly illuminate one of the problems, below is a picture of a typical toilet in China, we call them "squatters" :

[ok, scatch that, the internet will not let me. essentially imagine a hole in the ground.]

Aiming is difficult, and the floor is always wet. Also, toilet paper can not be flushed, so instead all paper is placed in a small trash can. I'm sure you can understand how this might be problematic. But don't worry, each stall is equipped with an ashtray--something apparently more important than toilet paper, which you must bring on your own.

But enough whining! This is quite an experience, to say the least. Tomorrow we will ride a 9 hour bus to Jiuzhaigou, a nature preserve in China. They say this is one of the only places not contaminated by the Pollution Problem of China, but then again there is an airport there so I highly doubt it.

Today we went to a 三星堆 Sanxingdui, an excavation site of one of the world's earliest civilizations, the Shu Civilization. It is really striking how their art (they lived from 4800- 3000 BCE, if I remember correctly) so closely resembled that of Latin America. I wish I could attach pictures, but it looks like the internet won't let me :( Rats.


Well, as tired as I am, describing the Shu civilization without pictures appears to be a large endeavor, so I am going to cut this blog short. Hope everything is well wherever you are! I will write when I'm back in Chengdu.

课结束了！No more classes!

First, some nice signs from assorted locations across China: (This is an earlier post not finished..

I hope you can see the little spittle that is an important part of the No Spitting sign. And if anyone knows what this other sign is supposed to mean, please tell me--I can't recognize the traditional characters, either (we study simplified, which are used in mainland China).

so! on Wednesday I gave my final presentation for the Chinese Society Thru Film Class. Somehow I managed to babble for 20 minutes using a powerpoint in Chinese, discussing the concept of "loosing face" as presented through the modern movie, 《一声叹息》"Sigh." It's really amazing how much we have all progressed--for the last film we viewed on Monday, we didn't even have to use English subtitles (the Chinese subtitles, however, were a necessity). On Thursday was our big CHINA NIGHT Performance, which I hope to post pictures of soon!

Weare about to get on a bus to go to the train station, which will take us to Xi'an (that one place with all the Terracotta warriors!). Then me and two friends depart on the travel adventure! So bear with me--hopefully I will make a post in Xi'an, I truly apologize for posting so infrequently!

SIDI

understandings

So, I realize it has probably been 2 weeks+ that I have not posted--I apologize for that. In that interim the blogger website somehow changed to a Chinese interface, so succesfully making this post will be the true test of my Chinese ability. And if it's in Chinese for you all, hah, I'm so sorry.

Ah! so much has happened recently--we only have six more days of class--four more quizes, three more essays, two more tests! I must admit I am excited for classes to end... at some point staying up until 2am each night and waking up at 8am for 3.5 hours of class got old. But I certainly have improved--my conversational skills are quite far from where they were in May! I just hope I can remember all of the formal vocabulary we have been learning for essay writing, hah.

It's been fun also learning how to slightly alter my meaning/words so that they can be better understood by my Chinese teachers. I'm sure they do it, too. But there is one example that sticks out: I heard that The Go! Team, a band I like from the UK, was coming to Shanghai to perform. I have seen them before in DC and it was a great show, so I decided this would be a great opportunity for some teacher-student bonding. Five of our teachers (grad students) came with me and six other students to see the band play at Absolute House, a space that has began to host indie/alternative music concerts. As we were all waiting for for the band to start and watching the instruments being set up, a teacher asked me (in Chinese of course... that silly language pledge still holds even when we go 15 minutes from campus), "What is that paper being taped on the floor near the microphone?" I told them that it was the set list, and that at the end of concerts fans usually try to grab it off the floor and take it home. They couldn't understand why. After clumsily fooling around with words and grammar trying to explain, I just said, "Because it's lucky!" Then they instantly understood.

Another fun part of that concert was the opening band--it was a local Shanghai band called "羽果", which translates (I think? even the teachers didn't know what was going on) as "Feather Fruit." Anyway, they were like any hard rock band from the 80s--really, really bad. The bass player was wearing black denim jeans that, if you looked hard enough, sparkled. And the main singer wore sun glasses the whole time. And all of the lyrics were in Chinese except for two or three songs' chorus, which were in English. This was my favorite: "You Lied, You Lied, You Lied, You Lied, You Lied," then back to Chinese again. it's really funny, though-- just about every popular song incorporates English lyrics in the chorus. One song's chorus goes as follows: "很 easy 很 easy", which means "very easy very easy". I wish I knew what the rest of the song was talking about... haha

Last Friday we all had our first experience with that very important instrument of friendship-building in China: "卡拉OK" -- Karaoke! It was a teacher's 23rd birthday, so we rented a large room for two hours of embarassment, beer, and Chinese.

The teacher furthest to the right is actually coming to UVA next year to be a "visiting scholar." Her chosen English name is Doris, her given name Diao--Doris Diao, so obviously she's pretty awesome. In fact she is living on my hall next year as she will be the "native speaker" for the Chinese dorm. It should be pretty great, especially because we've already gotten into two heated arguments about Tibet and Taiwan (both in a schoalrly 'explain your viewpoint' kind of way--though she always has the leg up as I have to speak in Chinese...).

Another interesting experience I had was last weekend at my homestay. I lived with a Chinese family from Saturday-Sunday. The father's job was with a small company that helped high school and college students study abroad, and the mother was an Antrhopology Professor who taught courses about Western Culture at a local University. Their daughter, "Peggy" is her English name, is in her last year of high school now, but this past year she was in Flushing (if I remember correctly), Indianna. Below on the left is a picture of her:

On the right is my friend Lidun, who actually met Peggy last year, said that Peggy has become almost completely Americanized now. This was obviously to me on the first day I met her, because she was wearing a lowcut tanktop and a jean miniskirt. I'm only half serious, but I did talk in length with her mom about the affect of her daughter going to America. The mom seemed to take the opinion that it was neither good nor bad, but at the same time she was disappointed when her 17 year old daughter spoke back to some guests at their home last week. Her mother said she thinks it might even be good that her daughter has learned how to question other people's viewpoints, but at the same time it was very embarassing for her as a host to have a daughter speak so unconventionally, according to Chinese standards.

But one thing that I found quite funny was when I said, "I have some pictures of my family, if you'd like to see." We had been told in America to bring just a few pictures, as Chinese families (to make a big generalization here) really value knowing what your parents look like and what your family enviornment is like. Well, it ended up being a three hour affair--after I had shown them the 20 photos I had with me, both the father and then Peggy went through all of their photos on the laptop, pointing out cousins, nephews, sister-in-laws, and everything. I was almost afraid there would be a test at the end. But I really enjoyed it, they were all so proud of each other and happy to be sharing with me.

Time to go now--this weekend I will go to Nanjing with three friends, but I hope to make another post soon. Hope everything is well!