A sky filled with paper scraps and plastic bags

I have yet to see it, but it is common enough that there is a phrase to describe it. 纸屑塑料袋满天飞。 It is supposedly a frequent site in the country side whenever there is a slight wind. Disposal of modern garbage/manmade garbage is mostly in piles where it will set for who knows how long. Along comes the wind and puff its gone. Into the trees, rivers, fields, and sky. Blown away to become someone else's problem. The results are easy to see. Trees are decorated with american pride, full of red, white, and blue plastic bags. Fields are littered with wrappers, bags, newspapers, and bottles. In the rivers plastic bags and bottles swim by.

These little insights into chinese life keep coming up in conversations.

Another dichotomy, this one about interpersonal relations

USA
Blunt, frank, put everything on the table (ie no secrets,hidden motives or opinions)
Dont like someone, think someone screwed up, just say it.

China
Read people, then base actions on your perception of their demeanor and disposition.
Speak in circles, around a topic
Use tact
Implied meanings, indirect approaches
Say one thing, and mean another (Good job, you worked really hard =*this is terrible, maybe you'll do better next time)

I asked where these ideas come from and apparently there are chinese books on Chinese vs. American psychology and interpersonal relations differences.

坐月子
A month of sitting.
A traditional custom/practice for new mothers in China. After the birth, the new mother is confined to the house and her bed for one month. During this month she is to lay in bed and breastfeed. She will be attended to by her mother or her mother-in-law and fed a diet of boiled eggs and millet porridge to replenish her nutrients.

Sparrow Eradication
Back in the days of the big MZD. Someone got the idea that sparrows were pests and eating all the grain. Grain production was very big in the planned economy. A sparrow eradication campaign was begun. Sparrows were netted, stoned, and killed in mass numbers country-wide until there were very few left. Lo and behold, an ecosystem imbalance ensued. While sparrows are seed eaters they also happen to eat insects. With the sparrows gone, a plague of locust was unleashed causing far more damage than the sparrows ever did. It is unclear whether the locust plague and the sparrow eradication were related or just coincidence, but the sparrow eradication campaign was dropped.

Thank you, Driver for considering our safety

We returned this morning from a short jaunt to Dandong. From the train station we got on a bus and headed for campus. The streets were surprisingly lively for 4am on a sunday morning. Lots of people shuffling about and cars coming and going. Not even 5minutes from the station we were stopped at a red light when a taxi flew by from behind and blew through the red light. No hesitation, just plain bravado. I took the moment to thank the driver "Thank you, Driver for considering our safety."

It was overall a good trip. We went to a relaxing little island on the yellow sea. Ate some seafood, had a bonfire/disco party on the beach, rode tandem bikes, and I went for a swim. The disco beach bonfire party was unexpected and ridiculous. Three unenthusiastic dudes played crazy russian disco music accompanied by absurd music videos that had nothing to do with the music. The music videos were of the same genre offered at the karaoke bars. Most of them consist of a guy and a girl in some sort of romantic situation. Walking down a beach, riding a motorcycle, in a hotel... There is no plot, just lots of shots of them from various angles for the duration of the song. They shot with handheld cameras, and the "actors" probably got paid less than $10.

I ate some interesting food. Had some crabs, what i think were clams, and some snails. I also ate a whole rotisserie rabbit for lunch one day. There was plenty of free/dead time on the trip which gave us time to practice our jianzi (a feathered hackysack) game.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/DanDong
http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/Food

Fire response

Back from a short vacation to Dandong, a city right across from n. korea on the Yalu river. Returning at 4am this morning I was greeted by two bright little signs. Both advising us to avoid fires by reducing our use the electric fan.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/Ads

Air Raid Siren

It turns out the Air Raid Siren test was not really a test. It actually served as a reminder to northeast china residents that in 1931 on Sept. 18th. Japanese soldiers, in response to a railroad bombing, invaded and occupied northeast china until the end of WWII. The sirens served to remind people what the Japanese did to them.

Snippets from the last week

Apparently one of my teachers has a history of making her students cry. Male students. She said "they looked big and tall, but then they just cried." I asked what she did to make them cry and she said it was just the normal stuff..."say it again, say it again, dont you remember?, didnt you prepare for you class?" In the midst of crying the students told our teacher that it wasnt her fault, it was their's, they were upset with their own failure.

While running in the rain to the badminton courts last night, wearing only a t-shirt emblazoned with the words "go china/中国加油" and athletic shorts, I overheard two ladies talking. I only picked up a sentence as i passed. "one pair of pants just isnt enough, you have to wear two." Fall has arrived here. Day time temps are in the 50-60's and jackets, long pants, and longunderwear have come out. I am still sporting shorts, t-shirt, and sandals...

Our dorm caught on fire yesterday. Just a small fire, but enough to melt some serious amounts of plastic bathroom decor and fill the place with putrid burnt plastic smoke, and black ash. We are being told it was the fault of the the occupants of the room for leaving the bathroom exhaust fan on too long, causing it to catch on fire. That might be true..but exhaust fans are there to exhaust the perpetual sewer smell and thick moistness of the poorly plumbed plastic lined bathrooms. I am prone to think the fan had a little quality control problem. Either way, all is well and supposedly some fire investigators are coming to check all the bathrooms soon. By the way there are no smoke detectors or fire sprinklers, but there is a big fire hose on everyfloor. I think it was the burnt plastic smell that tipped someone off. Although I did here someone say they just someone was cooking in the kitchen. Plastique ala char.

There was an air raid siren test this morning. Either that or japan came back to reclaim a part of the continent.

Motivation

little bits of chinese wisdom are everywhere. some sound like wise sayings, others like rubbish. i am sure most have some basis in confucius, taoist, or buddhist teachings, and others are cultural beliefs or practices.

here are three, more to come later.

peaches care for people, apricots harm people, plums kill people. The meaning is eat more peaches.

Big round eyes are pretty eyes, for girls at least. This is a basic belief here and I have run up against it many times. However the other day in class while my teacher was talking about self encouragement, while saying people tell themselves they are pretty, she simultaneously used her fingers to spread her eyelids, thus creating the illusion of a big round eyes. now if you didnt know about the big eye thing, you might have though pretty meant something resembling a little kid making googely eyes.

Out of the same conversation i learned that many chinese, especially older chinese, have self encouragement sayings that they will write and hang of the walls of their house and say to themselves everyday. I immediately thought of those motivation posters, that I think are particular to business minded people. the posters with a photograph of a mountain or a forest. on the bottom is printed a word like "Determination" "It is the size of one's will which determines success." I think most of these posters are a joke, and some of them are.

But my teacher was very serious about this self encouragement phrase. Apparently there are lots of popular ones passed on by important people. I dont have a complete list of these phrases, but things like "hard work can overcome all problems" or "From where there is no hope, find hope" are common. She was also very surprised that I did not have a phrase of my own. 'if i dont have a phrase, what motivates me?' I replied, 'I just am motivated, i didnt know people needed phrases to be motivated. ' Who knows I could just wake up one day with no motivation and need a phrase.

Whats your phrase?

Return from the south

I am back. If you didnt know I was gone, i was for about 10 days. Which did follow about two weeks of a ferocious chinese cold. So am I am back in more than one way.

I spend the last 10 days in Changsha, Hunan and Chengdu, Sichuan. Both are possible cities for my next semester here in china. I went to scope them out, as well as get a taste of southern/central china. Both cites were great, especially compared to Ha'erbin. I also got a good taste of strange mandarin accents. I met several people who spoke utterly impossible for me to understand chinese dialects. Luckily everyone understood whatever I said using my 'standard' chinese. Luckily most of the people spoke some standard chinese, or something close to it.

Changsha was a nice enough city, although fairly characterless, unless you call shopping a character trait. It is a provincial capital which makes it big, similar to harbin with an ambiguous population estimate of 4 million. I rode a bus for an hour and didnt get but halfway across the city. That being said, it was far more enjoyable than Ha'erbin, more of a relaxed feeling, less traffic, smaller roads, and fewer soulless concrete massifs. There were tree lined streets, cozy little restaurants and friendly people abound. There were also several rather large and very nice public parks. Most importantly there was a 2000+year old mummy chinese lady preserved in vinegar. Preserved with her, although not in vinegar, were lots of neat artifacts, including some of the most intricate silk clothing i have seen.

From Changsha, I took an overday-overnight train to chengdu. 11am-8am. Got to see lots and lots of farmland. The only things that interrupted the farmland in the over 600 miles between the two cities were tunnels and other cities. Arriving in chengdu I was met by a representative of the hostel that resembled a member of the gorillaz, the small one with the shifty eyes. Got settled in the hostel then walked down the street to find a small place cranking out the breakfast fair, enormous steamed dumplings dripping with sweet msg laden oil and tasty goodness.

The highlights of Chengdu were the tea gardens, especially at the Taoist temple. I think I spent about 3 hours either at the temple or chatting up 80+ year old retired professors and various other retirees all the whilst sipping delicious jasmine tea. I also managed to venture out of the city to see the world's largest/tallest buddha. I didnt even know the thing existed until the day before I got on the bus to go see it. It was enormous, but even more impressive was its location on a cliff overlooking the convergence of three rivers. There were plenty of other smaller buddhas in the vicinity and swarms of chinese tourists. I had lunch at fishing village nearby. Just after starting to eat I was approached by smiling chinese guy. He asked if I wanted to joing him and his wife and told me he want to treat me to lunch with him and the three large fish he had ordered. I gladly accepted. I ordered some pretty good food, especially this dish of stir-fried green onions and bacon. The fish was really good too. Although only a short while before I had witnessed the fish removed from its bucket and then swung by a rope against the stone floor a few times to kill it. I talked about chinese life, improving quality of life, travel, chinese liquor, and toasted warm beer to warm welcomes to china. By the end of the meal the couple invited me to go with them to a near by scenic buddhist mountain (12000ft) for the weekend and to come visit them in their town. I had a catch a plane back to ha'erbin the next day, regretfully, I had to refuse both generous offers. Although we did exchange contact info for when I do return to sichuan.

http://picasaweb.google.com/xisphias/chengdu

Eastern Russia

so i was just playing translator for the dorm staff and some newly arrived russians. the russians didnt speak chinese and the dorm staff sure doesnt speak russian. they speak a little english, but mostly just a few nouns scattered amidst some chinese. turns out the russians dont really speak much english either. even basic slow english was not working too well. either way, after the exchange, i was talking to the dorm staff about all the new students arriving and i mentioned that the russians didnt really understand what i told them in english. she was astounded and said something along the lines of I thought english was the international language that everyone understood. I need to practice my english. I guess russia gets excluded from the international sphere, or at least eastern russia.

there are some pretty interesting stereotypes/prejudices against eastern russians here. Most of them stem from a belief that they are too dumb and lazy to help themselves. Apparently, the situation is quite bad right across the border. I can vouch for the validity of the story, but i talked to a local who had been to visit some cities in eastern russia. they said tomatoes were $5US and potatoes were $1US each. They also said all the russians wanted to buy his 20cent lighter because they couldnt buy lighters in russia.

from another perspective, one of my teachers believes the russians that come study chinese are rather smart, but dont apply themselves.

olympic regulations

this is a bit outdated now, but still interesting. I was reading about the olympics and came upon a list of regulations for behavior while attending events. Most of it was pretty straight forward like no bombs, knives, other weapons, poisonous gases, etc. Some was a little more amusing. Drunken belligerence is banned. as is streaking, disturbing events and breaking laws.

I was also reading and talking to people about behavior suggestions/ codes beijing residents may have or may not have received or been able to watch on tv/ listen to on the radio. Included in this list were going shirtless for men (pretty common especially in the summer, although not as common as the roll-the-shirt-up-over-belly move), spitting, and wearing your pajamas outside.