How to Really Speak Chinese

I had a revelation today about speaking Chinese. It can serve a whole other purpose in my little expat world, I discovered when WeChatting with a couple of friends.

To preserve their privacy, I won't name these friends.

But one of them offered me a glass of wine at her house the other day. Another unnamed friend's little one eyed my red wine and yelled out "SHUI!" (water)

"No, honey, that's Mommy Shui," I said.

Another friend admitted just now that she told her ayi she was going in the bedroom to "study" when she was really planning to nap. Why she needed to keep that information from the ayi is not clear, but it gave me an idea for a new term.

"Xue xi" -- naptime. After all, studying a language is only as good as the uses you can put it to.

Now I'm going to get a glass of water and study. 

More Fun with Chinese

It’s a Saturday afternoon, and I’m trying to study my Chinese, even though the air is clear and it’s not that cold out yet.

But I’m being virtuous. Even so, I’m stymied by the bizarro nature of the conversations that the protagonists of my book, “New Practical Chinese Reader,” engage in. I realize that these are not REAL conversations, but it’s distracting.

Our hero, Ma Dawei, wants to buy a CD (a guangpan). Yes, I know, who goes out and buys CDs anymore? Anyway, he runs into his friend Wang Xiaoyun in the CD shop. He tells him he’s buying an English music CD. His buddy talks him into buying a Chinese music CD, “liang zhu,” which is “butterfly lovers.” (Thank you Google.)

And then the conversation gets really weird. Suddenly Dawei asks his friend if he could also buy books and newspapers in that store. Right, Dawei. You can’t fool me. You’re just trying to make sure that the students remember shu (书) and baozhi.

I put away the ever-engrossing “New Practical Chinese Reader” and get out my iPad, which has two good apps: Writer and trainchinese. Trainchinese in particular likes to give examples of the way a word is used in context, and the more you dig into that well, the more you learn about what’s really on the mind of Chinese people.

Take, for example, the word “ji,” which means engine or machine. You get all the iterations that use ji, and as you scroll down the list of examples, you start to get longer sentences, like this: “The airport was forced to be closed due to the heavy rain” and “Chances only favor those who have got well prepared.”

Okay.

Trying another word, I look at bao, newspaper. (Keep in mind that bao, same tone and same character, means “to report, to repay, to revenge.” And other versions of bao with different characters and different tones mean to hug or carry in the arms – little kids will scream “bao bao!” when they want to be held – and also, with a different character and different tone “treasure or baby.” But I digress.)

Bao the newspaper’s example sentence is: “They have reported about this incident on the newspaper.”

I have no comment.

I move on to jiao, to teach or instruct. Here’s one usage: Jiao shi you bei cheng zuo yuan ding. Teachers are also called as gardeners.

Because?

And then I find this: Jiao cai zhong de hui hua yao sheng huo hua. The dialogues in the textbook should be lifelike.

Hear that Ma Dawei?

Update: I realized today that I got two Chinese words confused: baozhi (newspapers) and baozi (buns). I'll never learn this language.

Thailand Idyll

We're just back from a week in Thailand and, despite the usual travel hassles (I hate you Air Asia, you deceptive, money-grubbing, runway-hugging, hard-seated excuse for a business), the rest of the trip was a respite, a rest, and a revelation.

The sensory delights of Thailand will linger in my head: the careful and graceful way an elephant will grasp a bunch of bananas in her trunk and toss them carefully into her mouth. The look in an ellie's eyes when I scratch her behind the ears. The guttural crunching of a small watermelon as an elephant chews.

The array of colors in Chiangmai's wats, dragons made from tile, and Buddhas covered in gold. The smell of incense.

The soft sand on Railie beach, against the volcanic rock that juts from the earth, the same mountain range we've marveled at in Guilin, Halong Bay, El Nido, and now Thailand, those karsts that seem to be made simply to make you smile. The blue-green water that is so warm your body enters almost without noticing the transition from dry to wet.

The curries and noodles and spices that make Thai food the world's comfort food. The welcoming warmth of Thai people. The blue skies.

Here is a rather long photo record of the trip. I've done enough on Facebook.

First night at Puripunn hotel in Chiang Mai

One of Chiang Mai's many, many wats.

Ancient wat,  blue skies

Blue skies, white wat

Leaving Chiang Mai: comfortable seating for monks only.

A beautiful day for elephants

How to water an elephant.

Mud baby

Elephant on the right is saying, On Wisconsin!

Our cottage at Railie Beach

Railie Beach

Railie sunset

Happy China-versary to Us!

Two years ago Friday, we flew into Tianjin with a very frightened and skinny kitty, a couple of suitcases filled with not-warm-enough clothes, and a certainty that whatever it was that we were about to embark on, it would not be boring.

How true that was. And now that we’re marking two years into our time here, I want to write a short summary of all the good stuff and all the bad stuff, and what it all adds up to in the long run.

The good: Chinese people are unfailingly warm and interested in everything we do, even if they’re laughing at us much of the time. It’s not mean-spirited. Chinese food can be delicious, especially Yunnanese cuisine. Living in Asia has given me a different sense of the world and most particularly the contrast to life in free, clean, wealthy, blessed America. I’m learning every day about China and yet even if I lived here the rest of my life, I’d never fully understand this place. And yet I enjoy trying to understand, from the courtyard living that is so different from DC’s front-porch culture, to the arid craggy mountains outside Beijing where I’ve been hiking recently.

Living in an apartment has freed us from the sorts of weekend house-related chores that prevented us from having as many adventures back in DC. I’ve made some incredible friends here in China, people I hope I’ll have as friends forever. Some of those friends have little ones who are truly the light of my life. And the travel has been wonderful, from the northern reaches of China to its tropical south, as well as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Korea, and Cambodia.

But the bad: As I type this, my internet is balky and slow, and it’s taking me five minutes to send through each email all day long. Facebook and Twitter are blocked and when I want to post something on my blog, I turn on my VPN – which refuses to stay connected.  It can take me hours online to do what takes me minutes elsewhere, like download an issue of the New Yorker or stream a video. And earlier this week, the air was hazardous for 24 hours, causing my head to pound and my eyes to itch. I have barely been outside today. I’m staying indoors with three air cleaners blasting. Even so, I wonder what I’m doing to my lungs and if I’m setting some kind of DNA groundwork for cancer later on. And speaking of being indoors, I also have two space heaters going because the heat won’t be turned on in our apartment until November 15. When I try to figure out what to make for dinner, I immediately reject half the things I used to make in the US because I don’t know about food safety: chicken, pork, beef, fish. All could come from very very dirty places. I eat lots more vegetables but I don’t know how coated with pesticides they are.

So the sum is lots and lots of good, and lots of bad on top of all that. I think the answer – or at least the answer that works best for us – is to make this a limited adventure. Some expats here say that the three-year mark is significant: people either extend their stay or decide to go home. I think we have already made that choice.

Bob tells me that I’m in danger of idealizing and sentimentalizing our life in America. Since that’s kind of my natural tendency anyway, I’d have to say he’s got my number. But I still do look forward to sitting on my front porch and reading an actual newspaper. I look forward to channel surfing. I look forward to getting in a car and driving somewhere, wearing a seat belt. I look forward to seeing blue skies every single day. 

Meanwhile, I’ve got a lot to do in the next 365 days.

Halloween Fun and Games

This year in Beijing we were invited to three Halloween parties: one “China Moment” party, one traditional party, and one “super sexy” Halloween party.

I embrace any opportunity to dress up, especially with the added potential of making a total fool of myself. And thanks to social media like Facebook and Twitter, I can still successfully embarrass my children even if they have fled China. I think they call that a triple threat.

The “China Moment” party was first. For those of you who haven’t experienced the wild creativity, the What Not to Wear-ness on steroids, that so many Chinese women flaunt, the party was an opportunity to capture that.  First, Rachel and I hit the stores. The hodgepodge of individual stalls under the Wu Mart on Gongtibeilu offered a wealth of possibilities. I kept buying things, until Rachel very practically said to me, “What are you going to do with all this stuff, Debbie?” Excellent question, but also irrelevant. I enjoy the sudden appearance of a hat so blinged out it hurts your eyes, the Chinglish t-shirts, the colors not found in nature, the overall awesomeness of so many over-the-top choices, added to the chance to haggle merchants down to 25 or 30 RMB. It’s all in good fun if you keep smiling, and especially when you might bring along a cherub who chirps out “Ayi!” to every Chinese woman who passes by.

I scored: leopard print stockings, a leopard baseball cap with little cat ears, and other animal-print items. For the first party, I decided to go the stockings-under-the-short-shorts route, a very popular year-round look for Chinese women who have great legs.

For me, the task was to find a pair of shorts that – how can I put this – actually fit. Granted, some of the shorts that sit in my summer attire drawer are as old as some of my young friends here in China. I finally found a pair that fit, and wore them with a fake fur sweater that I actually love and a sparkly yellow top, both straight from my own closet. Then I used the cool fur-and-diamond short boots that I bought for last year’s China Moment party, and topped it off with a sparkly headband in blue. This was actually a fairly subdued look compared to what I’ve seen walking the streets around Dongzhimen, but good enough.

Then Seasons Park hosted a Halloween event for the kids. Before trick-or-treating, the kids gathered in the amphitheater below our apartment. I would say it was 90 percent Chinese, and 80 percent of them were witches, all made with costumes bought from the same basic designer, capes and hats embossed with gold.

We had quite a few come to the door – many more than on Burlington Place – and one big group of about 10 kids banged on the door and then just poured into the apartment. Two big boys in the front refused to move out of the way when I gave them their candy and started snatching from the bowl. I actually took one candy back from one kid. Then I looked over and a tiny boy -- dressed, I think, like a tiny emperor -- was standing at the door of the kitchen just looking into the kitchen.

Parties two and three were on the same night, so I decided it was sexy all the way. I wore more animal prints than I’d ever worn: leopard print stockings, leopard print low-cut top, leopard print bow tie a la Playboy bunny, leopard print earrings, leopard print kitty ears, and a leopard print tail. All of that leopard, plus a short black skirt and high short boots added up to – you guessed it – a cougar.

The first party had amazing costumes – the Dude and Maude from The Big Lebowski, Khaleesi and John Snow from Game of Thrones, and a couple portraying Beijing’s blue-sky and hazardous air days. If political costumes are a sign you’re in DC, costumes portraying the actual air are classic Beijing. At the second party, billed as the sexy one, we had one belly dancer costume, a policewoman in fishnet stockings, a Playboy bunny, a caveman, and, my personal favorite, a woman in a green wig who was the absinthe fairy, pouring generous rounds of absinthe to all. (Note to self: absinthe plus South African-recipe punch, plus prosecco = bad idea, even for a cougar.)

In any event, I was named a “finalist” for sexiest costume, but I clearly won in the over 50 category, since Bob (the emperor) and I were the only boomers in attendance. All good fun, even for those Aussies, Brits, South Africans, and others who complain that the American tradition of over-the-top Halloween festivities are too much for them. 

How Do You Say Drip-Drip-Drip in Chinese?

Today was another adventure where I could have used a few more language skills.

We needed to have our heating-cooling system switched over from AC to heat. Now mind you, this does not mean we actually get heat now, even though the temperatures have dropped into the 40s many days. Apartments in China don't get the official heat turned on until November 15, which is almost a month from now. We do have a nice space heater or two, but we're also solving the last days of that problem by heading off to sunny Thailand for a week.

Anyway, the fellow came to switch over our system this morning. While I was FaceTime chatting with Joanna, he was trying to get my attention. He pointed to two places where water was dripping, one from the system that sits in a cage outside our laundry room, and one underneath the pipes in our bathroom. Then he handed me a piece of paper that had English on one side and Chinese on the other. It said:

"Kind reminder
Dear tenants, Seasons Park was built has reached 10 years, the original warranty had expired. As a result most of its interior decorations and facilities have slowly started to deteriorate. Among it, the air conditioning equipment (including hosts, fan coils, valves, and expansion tanks) are particularly vulnerable to failure and leakage incidents which may cause a lot of inconveniences and damage to you and your family."

The letter went on to suggest we buy insurance so that this kind of damage to our family was covered. I mean, why should we expect anything in China to work after ten years? That's a lifetime to most other places.

So I called the 24-hour hotline that the paper helpfully provided.
"Do you speak English?" I asked the guy who answered the phone.
"No," he said with an embarrassed chuckle.
I proceeded to explain that our "shui" was dripping. I don't know the Chinese word for drip, and I couldn't make a dripping gesture on the phone, so I just said:
"Drip, drip, drip."
Then, in Chinese, I told him our apartment building and number, and he asked me something else, the gist of which I heard to be "xianzai" -- now?
"Dui, xianzai," I agreed.

I emailed Bob. "Okay," I wrote. "I may or may not have asked for someone to come. But maybe I just ordered a pizza. Who knows."

"Impressive if you did it by phone," he answered.
Within minutes, another fellow showed up at our door. You might be able to criticize China for many things, but the rapid response of workmen to fix a problem is impressive. In the U.S. I'd be arranging for someone to come a month from Sunday.

I showed the guy the problem, but when I opened the door to the outside cage, the dripping had stopped. Of course.
"Mei you wenti," he announced to me. No problem.
I showed him the other leak. Again, no more dripping.
Then he said to me in Chinese that when you switch over the AC, there's always water. At least that's what I think he said. He may have been wondering what time the pizza would get here.

Beautiful Labagoumen

Just a few shots from a mid-week hike, proof that China can be as beautiful as Meiguo.