long legged fly

ahoy! moving!

2007-08-17T21:28:00.000-07:00

Tilt your browsers over to Barking at the Sun.

That's my new blog. If you're one of the two people who link to my site, please update your links.

screen shots of the new website

2007-08-03T23:30:00.000-07:00

Front page:

Blog:

Still aiming to have it all finished by the end of August. I'm having trouble making my design into a wordpress template because I am not a talent when it comes to HTML and, more specifically, PHP.

Let me know what you think of the design.

back--stuff from a newspaper--wherein i ask important questions

2007-08-03T22:48:00.000-07:00

So I'm back from AMERICA and it was everything I thought it would be--bright and sunny and filled with lots of my parents' tasty desserts. I think I gained like ten pounds over there. I also did many other important things when I was there, such as eat ribs and numerous potato dishes.

But, I must say, the most important and exciting part of my trip was actually on the way home, on my China Air flight from San Francisco to Chengdu, when I discovered that somehow I always get aisle seats on plains. Due to the small size of my very active bladder, this quite obviously means that god both exists is intimately concerned about the quality of my life.

***

Anyway, China Air is actually a pretty good carrier, with pleasant staff, fairly roomy seats, and food that is both free and not awful (well, on the international flights, anyway). They also provide complimentary newspapers, including a number of Chinese papers and also USA Today, the most colorful paper in America.

With a 12 hour flight looming ahead of me, I snatched one of the USA Todays quickly and firmly, keeping it close to breast in case any fellow travelers got any smart ideas related to stealing it from me. After sitting down and losing myself in the giant full-color weather map on the back page for about three hours, I scanned the paper for any China news. I found one article and it was absolutely colorless--I mean, really, there was one picture and it was, like, only black and white. Regardless, I dove in and read the entire thing, "Hidden culprit of product scandal made in China" (online version here).

Thankfully, it was just about light and fluffy enough for me to feel like I learned something. Of course, it's the feeling of being knowledgeable on a subject that's most important to me and, thankfully, it's just this kind of feeling that American media is more than happy to provide me with. Sadly, I like to have color images so that the feelingness of my knowledge is even more intense, and this article simply failed to deliver.

I should try to be fair, however. Its contents almost took it past pure feeling into the realm of solid knowledge. The author rather bravely attempted to show China's side of the product safety scandals, and to explain how at least part of the blame ought to be placed on American companies and consumers. In fact, despite the worthless personal anecdote at the start of the story, I was actually only partially completely dissatisfied with it. That is, until I got to the last paragraph:

Recall that for a thousand years, China was the source of nearly all the world's finest products and luxuries. It is capable practically and culturally of enforcing the highest standards, so long as we are, too.

Uh, what?

I guess the author received his education on world history from a mainland history textbook, because he clearly suffers from a common disorder over here, which is to distort China's history to the point where it is pre-eminent in world affairs prior to, I don't know, say 1842. That's not to say it wasn't pre-eminent at some points nor is it to say that it wasn't pre-eminent for a long time nor is it to say that it wasn't the most technically advanced country for some time; it's just that power balance back in the day is pretty tricky to quantify at present, as was the speed of progress and the proliferation of new inventions. When Europe was in its dark ages China was certainly the far more advanced of the two; but beginning with the European renaissance, that all began to change quite quickly.

I can think of a couple things that were considered luxury items and came from China--silk, porcelain, and tea; but I as far as I'm aware, many of the world's luxury items came from locations as diverse as, well, all the entire world. Did pearls orginate in China? Aged French wine? Caviar? Mink coats? Diamonds? Rolls Royce? Scotch? Lapis Lazuli? Snuff? Any of the worlds thousands of spices? Opium and its derivatives? Cashmere?

Why do writers on China, both Chinese and not, so easily fall into this trap of
skewing world history to being China-centric? Is it because for so long Western writers have unfairly skewed world history to be Western-centric, and this is some kind of unconscious correcting of the scales?

in AMERICA

2007-07-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

So, I'm back in the US for about three weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to recuperate from China and cool down and refresh the Chinese speaking portion of my brain (which during the last few weeks in Chengdu had melted and started leaking out my nose).

I'd also like to register and finish the design for my new site, which will hopefully be up by the end of the summer. My plans at present are to have separate sections for the blog and the fake news, and hopefully, eventually, a section with longer, article style posts.

***

Anyway . . .

Off the plane my first impressions are that America is sunny and full of air that is not composed mostly of solids. I like it here but I know already that I'll be very much ready to return to Chengdu by the end of the trip. Why? 1. The girlfriend 2. The food (god damn it sichuan food really is the best on the planet) 3. All that Chinese (it tires me out, but it sure is useful) 4. The job (well, really just the fact that I earn money, and actually have much more purchasing power in China than I used to in the US)

Needless to say, there will be no Sichuanhua Primer updates for the next three weeks.

sichuanhua primer--四川话入门--sǐcuáhhuǎ rǔmen*--part 2: pronunciation

2007-07-06T01:08:00.000-07:00

Sichuanhua Primer

四川话入门

sǐcuáhhuǎ rǔmen*

from longleggedfly

by k.m.m.

Part 2 Pronunciation

KEY PRONOUNCIATION DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SICHUANHUA AND PUTONGHUA

This is the part where most casual readers will throw up their hands, say “what the fuck!?” and give up. Sichuanhua does, indeed, sound quite different from putonghua, with numerous consonants, vowels, and diphthongs changed, as well as a few irregularities in pronunciation and just general strangeness—even asking “what” and “how” are different.

Well, there’s no choice but to deal with it now, at the very beginning. But don’t despair. Once you have mastered the first three portions of this primer, you will find that grammar, vocabulary, and syntax are largely consistent with putonghua. Despite the rather numerous changes in pronunciation, if you are exposed to these differences on a daily basis you will very quickly adapt to them.

(Of course, if you don’t feel like putting up with the boring stuff, you can just wait for the part on swear words.)

Anyway, let’s begin with consonant, vowel, and diphthong changes. There are a whopping twelve changes in total.

NOTE: Changes in vowel pronunciation occur only in the case of terminal vowels. For instance, in the word ren, the ‘e’ is not pronounced ‘oe.’ Only a word such as he, with the ‘e’ at the end, should be pronounced ‘hoe.’

ZH-->Z
CH-->C
SH-->S
W-->VW
AN-->AH
–UAN-->–UAH
–IAN-->–IAH
–O-->–OE
–E-->–OE
–UO-->–OE
–UE-->–UOE
R-->ZR

Here are samples of each sound, with an accompanying audio file.

住zǔ
车cé
十si*
五vwù
饭fǎ
川 cuáh
电diǎh
破poě
河hoe*
火hoè
学xuoe*人rzen*

AUDIO

THE “OE” SOUND

OE is pinyin invented by me, because no adequate pinyin exists in putonghua. It is neither the same as the “ou” sound, nor is it the same as the “o” sound. I originally wanted to represent it with an umlaut (ö) because showing it as a diphthong is misleading, however there is no way I could put pinyin tone marks over an umlauted “o”.

I do want to emphasize, however, that there is no “E” sound—it is just a straight "o" sounding like the English “hoe,” “low,” “bow,” or “po’ ” (as in “we po’ folks!”)

I don’t know if Chinese language books have their own representation of this sound. If they do, please let me know, and I will change it here accordingly.

AUDIO

THE “VW” SOUND

Sichuanhua’s “w” is quite different from the putonghua “w,” and contains much more of a “v” sound at the beginning, hence it’s representation here as “vw.”

AUDIO

THE “AH” SOUND

“AH” is distinct from the Mandarin “a”; here it sounds like the “a” in “bad,” “mad,” or “sad.”

AUDIO

THE “NG” SOUND

Special sound unique to sichuanhua. It will be explained more in part 3.

update

2007-06-28T01:00:00.000-07:00

Part three of the Sichuanhua Primer will be up next week. Even though internet strangers don't seem to care much for sichunhua (so far I've had about three downloads of the files I put up), that's pretty much what I expected, and so I'm going to continue with the series.

Also, let me just apologize for the fact that the first few portions of this will be incredibly boring. Until I start posting dialogs I will not at all be interested in making this stuff interesting or fun--there's a lot of boring rules that have to be explained first, and I'm not one for pretending that boring rules can be made interesting. I always find that language books that simply list rules of the language are, if a little bland, at least far more useful than books that try to jazz up the rules and make them cool or fun. My goal with this part of the primer is really to make it as useful as possible for those few individuals interested in learning this dialect.

Also, in other news, I'm currently giving myself a crash course in html (it's all changed a lot since I made my last web page, sometime in high school), and so I will hopefully have a flashy new real web site put up at the end of the summer.

sichuanhua primer--四川话入门--sǐcuáhhuǎ rǔmen*--part 1: tones

2007-06-21T20:13:00.000-07:00

Sichuanhua Primer

四川话入门

sǐcuáhuǎ rǔmen*

from longleggedfly

by kmm

Part 1 Tones

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TONES IN SICHUANHUA AND PUTONGHUA

There are some general rules that can be followed in the conversion of tones from putonghua to sichuanhua, although they are not always consistent. After I publish the first few parts of the primer, I will try to write up a list of exceptions to these rules and add them as an appendix; however, I think the best strategy is just to learn them as best you can, and then make a mental note whenever you hear an exception in actual speech. If you’re not in an area where you’re listening to sichuanhua on a daily basis, then I am both surprised and impressed that you’re reading this, and I’m sorry I can’t provide you with a list of exceptions at present.

Here are the rules for converting Mandarin tones into sichuanhua.

Rule #1: First tone becomes second tone.

Rule #2: Second tone becomes the special Sichuan tone

Rule #3: Third tone becomes fourth tone.

Rule #4: Fourth tone becomes third tone.

Note: The fluctuation in pitch of the putongua third tone is, in sichuanhua, often not as extreme.

The first tone in Mandarin pops up sometimes in sichuanhua. In the appendix I note as many instances as I am aware of.

Again, these rules are not always applicable. My guess is that about 85% of tones can be converted this way.

THE SPECIAL, MAGICAL SICHUAN TONE

No doubt if you’ve already studied the tones in mandarin the idea of needing to pick up a new one is rather discouraging, and rightly so. Tones are a pain in the ass, and this one is not distinguished for its ease in replicating.

As noted in the introduction, this tone will be designated by an asterisk placed after the syllable.

What does the special Sichuan tone sound like? The tone that it is most closely resembles to is the fourth tone in Mandarin, as it is a falling tone; however the pitch begins at a much lower level than the Mandarin fourth tone.

Here is a short sound file of the pronunciation of 麻, Mandarin “má” and sichuanhua, “ma*”

AUDIO

Here is a sound file for the Sichuan tone on the word 同, Mandarin tóng, sichunahua tong*.

AUDIO

EXAMPLES OF SICHUANHUA TONES USING MA

Following is a table converting putongua pinyin into my own not-so-cleverly designed sichuanhua pinyin.

There is a sound file attached detailing the differences in tones in putonghua and sichuanhua. I highly recommended you download and listen to begin catching on to the differences.

Figure 1

*putonghua*	*sichuanhua*
mā	má
má	ma*
mǎ	mà
mà	mǎ

AUDIO (Mandarin and sichuanhua)

AUDIO (sichuanhua)

THIRD TONE PAIRS

As in Mandarin, when you have two syllable with falling/rising tones in a row, the first syllable of the combo will take on a rising tone.

For example, two fourth tone words in Mandarin will be pronounced as “rènshì;” but in sichuanhua, these fourth tone words become third tones, and so will be converted into third tones, like this: “rěnshǐ.”

However, in actual speech the first third tone in a third tone pair will change to a second tone, meaning that in sichuanhua the word should be pronounced as “rénshǐ.”

(Well, actually, to be more accurate, it should be pronounced as “zrénsǐ,” but I won’t get into consonant changes until the next installment of the primer).

This isn’t confusing at all, is it? Don’t worry, it only gets easier.

audio hosting

2007-06-21T20:03:00.000-07:00

I'm about to post the second part of the Sichuanhua Primer and I thought I'd make a few quick notes. The first is that I'm hosting files at this site, www.mediafire.com. because as far as I can tell blogger does not provide much in the way of file hosting.

Secondly, I'm recording these files on my cranky old laptop, with a cheap Chinese microphone. Please to not expect audio of the highest quality--as I become more experienced, and get some better equipment, most problems should hopefully be fixed.

Finally, at the beginning all the files will be .wav files, because most of them don't last much longer than three seconds and I don't see much point compressing a file that's already quite small. Once I post some bigger files I will begin converting them into mp3s.

note

2007-06-18T22:44:00.000-07:00

The intro to the Sichuanhua Primer is up and ready for dissection for those interested in helping with the project. I will post Part 1--Tones as soon as I find a good site for hosting audio files.

sichuanhua primer--四川话入门--sǐcuáhhuǎ rǔmen*

2007-06-18T22:40:00.000-07:00

SICHUANHUA PRIMER

四川话入门
sǐcuáhhuǎ rǔmen*

from longleggedfly

by kmm

v. 1.0

Introduction

Sichuanhua, also known as Sichuanese, comprises the major Mandarin dialect group of Southwestern China, spreading from Sichuan east to Chongqing, south-east to Guizhou, and south to Yunnan. Altogether, there are nearly 120 million people who speak sichuanhua or one of its variations as their primary language (so many, in fact, that if sichuanhua were classified as a language in its own right, it would rank ninth in the world in terms of the population of its primary speakers, coming just behind Japanese, with 125 million speakers, and just ahead of German, with 100 million speakers). Indeed, the province of Sichuan alone, with a land mass of 450,000 square kilometers and a populace of over 80 million, is roughly the same size—and has roughly the same population—as the entire country of Germany. Yet, despite its influence as the primary tool of communication for nearly all of South-Western China, there is not a single, easily accessible English language reference text that has been written for sichuanhua

Therefore, this guide is being written in an attempt to provide basic materials for individuals interested in learning sichuanhua. It is based entirely upon my own observations and work. Please be aware I am not a professional linguist. Descriptions and explanations of the dialect will contain no linguistic lingo and, indeed, may not even always be 100% accurate. If you are looking for an academic or professional analysis of sichuanhua you will need to search elsewhere.

Of course, because I am not a professional linguist, I also highly value thoughtful feedback, and would like to make this primer as much of a collaborative process as possible. If you would like to make suggestions or corrections, please feel free to do so. My email address is longleggedfly.blog@gmail.com.

THE SOUNDS OF SICHUANHUA

Sichuanhua, pervasive and thriving in this part of China, provides an exciting and almost vulgar contrast to the standard Mandarin pumped out of television sets and radio stations throughout the mainland. Native speakers here are fiercely proud of their dialect. Locals will tell you that, back in the day, when votes were cast to decide which variety of Chinese would be selected as the standard for the whole country, sichuanhua lost to its northern counterpart by only one vote. While many middle schools and high schools may use standard mandarin as the language of instruction, many do so incorrectly, infusing it with a thick sichuan accent and thus assuring that even locals brought up in the national education system speak their own variation of the language, and not the national standard.

Clearly, sichuanhua is no danger of extinction or even diminished influence. Its basics are a necessity for anyone seriously considering living in this part of the world, and certainly for anyone interested in traveling outside the major population centers.

But what does it sound like?

To someone familiar with putonghua, the most immediate and obvious differences in sichuanhua will probably be the tonal and pronunciation variations. There are three reasons for this:

Sichuanhua has a tone that does not exist in mandarin.
Certain standard tones are reversed in sichuanhua
Numerous consonants, vowels, and diphthongs are slightly different, or do not exist in Mandarin.

All these variations that exist between sichuanhua and Mandarin have given it a totally unique sound, pretty much incomparable to any other language (at least that I’ve ever heard). It’s not as harsh and sudden as putonghua; there’s something more consistent, something more of a constant music to it, rising and falling with a kind of wild, yet deliberate rhythm. There’s an explosive aspect to it as well, making it powerful, and filthy. Swear words fly out like the everyday necessities they are, with speakers holding onto the most important syllables in mid flight, waiting for the perfect moment to release and let the word come crashing down with its foul authority. In fact, it can be fairly said that when speakers of other Chinese dialects swear, it always sounds like a poor imitation of their true Sichuanese masters.

But, of course, Sichuanhua’s importance is more than as just a bunch of unique sounds—it’s also about how the local people identify with the language, and how this then affects their sense of place and significance in greater China. It has been a fundamental component of the culture and people of the Sichuan basin for thousands of years, and, as noted earlier, people here look upon it as a source of pride, a source of identity and uniqueness in a country where mass media is overwhelmingly broadcast in standard, northern Mandarin. So to understand sichuanhua is to begin to understand this amazing and little known part of the world.

And that bring us nicely to the next part:

WHY LEARN SICHUANHUA?

This is a very good question because, frankly, unless you have a passionate interest in learning Chinese, trying to learn sichuanhua would be a colossal waste of time. But, honestly, to study sichuanese—and eventually, of course, to understand it or even to speak it—is to open up a possibility of experiencing an entirely different kind of Chinese, and an entirely different kind of China.

Here are some other reasons why one might want to learn Sichuanhua:

Because you are living in Sichuan.

If that's not the case, here are some other reasons:

Most places outside of the northeast do not speak putonghua.
You ever intend to travel in southern China
Understanding one dialect helps you more quickly adapt to others.
As follows from #4, any serious student of Chinese should be familiar with at least one dialect, and that does not included northern dialects.
Beijinghua and erhua in general contain some of the ugliest sounds capable of being gurgled and spit out of the human larynx and it’s a tragedy many students only study these dialects.
Sichuanhua is a major dialect, spoken by 120 million people, which is more people than speak Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, or any number of other languages.
It is the key to unlocking all the han Chinese portions of southwestern China (also, minorities in these areas often speak mandarin with a thick sichuanhua accent)
You want to swear in Chinese but just don’t feel satisfied by the other dialects.
You want to be as much like a hard-drinking, tea guzzling, mahjong addicted native as possible.
Some Sichuan guy stole your bicycle, and you need to find him ASAP.

REPRESENTATION OF TONES IN THIS GUIDE

Because sichuanhua has a tone that does not exist in Mandarin, I cannot adequately represent the sounds of the language using traditional pinyin tone marks. Therefore, I have chosen to use the asterisk * mark after each syllable that uses the special Sichuan tone.

If you can think of a better way to do this, please do recommend something, as I think the asterisk is ugly as all hell.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR STUDY

How one chooses to go about studying sichuanhua is completely dependent on your individual needs, goals, and current level in putonghua. I should note, however, that this guide is written for people with at least some knowledge of Mandarin. It does not teach sichunhua from the ground up, but rather uses bits and pieces of Mandarin and to piece together a functional system for reading and writing a kind of sichuanhua pinyin. Therefore, students who, for example, are not familiar with standard mandarin tones, will find no explanations herein.

Also, I recommend that, if you are currently studying standard Mandarin, you first aim for listening comprehension in sichuanhua, as it is difficult to learn two different tonal sets at once (also, most people who speak sichuanhua will understand standard Mandarin).

If you do want to learn spoken sichuanhua, I imagine it eventually comes naturally, after enough time familiarizing yourself with dialect, and after a point at which your Mandarin is already quite good. But, of course, if you would like to go full steam ahead and study sichuanhua from the very beginning, at the expense of your mandarin, go right ahead. More power to you. And the locals will love you.

WARNING

As a warning, the first few installments of this primer will be incredibly boring.

FINAL NOTE

Once again, I am not an expert on sichuanhua but I have done my best to provide as much information on the dialect as I can. Treat this first installment of the primer like you would the beta version of a new program. It will be riddled with all manner of errors and, if you look at it wrong, might just make your computer explode. But, after enough time and feedback, it should hopefully become as accurate as possible.

blogging inconsistencies

2007-06-14T18:31:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd make a quick note to explain some things to the two or three people who visit this website frequently, excluding my family and that guy who keeps on sending me pictures of his big toes in various famous locales (note--please stop sending me pictures, guy).

The frequency with which I write will always be as it has been--that is, there will be periods where I write lots and post everyday, followed by even longer periods where I write nothing and, uh, do not post everyday. This will probably be the way I continue to blog forever, assuming that I do indeed continue blogging forever, because it reflects my spastic personality, and also my laziness. Moreover, because blogspot is blocked in China, my motivation to write is seriously diminished (which has led me to consider making a real, actual website)

So, to my two or three fans who continue coming to this website everyday because they think I will at last start writing about Prussia, please be patient with my inconsistency. It will change eventually. Or maybe not.

news from the wire--by barbara bush--"tofu lake! tofu lake!"

2007-06-03T02:08:00.000-07:00

GAP BETWEEN CHINA’S RICH AND POOR FOUND IN ANHUI PROVINCE

BY BARBARA BUSH

HEFEI, CHINA—For nearly thirty years the Gap between China’s rich and China’s poor has been growing at a terrifyingly fast rate, prompting worldwide condemnation from civil rights groups and doomsday scenarios from many of the worlds leading economists

Now, however, it appears that researchers working in China’s Anhui province have finally pinpointed the Gap’s location

Mr. Peng Dehua, leader of the Fourth Economic Gap Expeditionary Force (FEGEF), announced its finding yesterday at a news conference in the city of Hefei, capital of Anhui province.

“The Gap has been found,” Mr. Peng said, to great applause from the assembled media representatives. “It is slightly north of that one poor place and slightly south of that other one—I would say approximately it is in the middle-right of Anhui.”

Even though its discovery is hugely significant not just for China, but also for the rest of the world, Mr. Peng was quick to add a cautionary note. “Much of the Gap remains a mystery to us. How deep does it go? What color is it? Do any monsters live in it? Faeries? Like many people, I've had a thing for faerie folk my whole life. But the fact of the matter is, right now we just don’t know what's there, and it's best not to get too excited about the possibilities.”

FEGEF had been searching for the Gap for over five years, and had actually been criticized for its rather brazen decision to look in the countryside, rather than the cities.

“Most other researchers criticized our decision to search in the countryside,” said Mr. Peng. “They believed the source of the gap had to be in a major metropolitan area. But we believed all along that the real place to search for this problem, or any problem in China, was at the source, the very base of production and society—the countryside.”

FEGEF said it may take another four years before the gap is fully understood, but solutions on how to fill it are already being proposed in droves. Calls for democratization have already been issued from hundreds of civil and political rights groups, who believe that having greater control over their political futures will encourage China’s poor to fill the gap on their own.

But Mr. Peng is not interested in the opinions of foreign civil rights groups, whom, he says, are incapable of fully understanding the unique situation of China. In fact, he has already come up with his own, simpler solution: filling the entire Gap with a thick tofu solution. “Tofu is cheap and easy to produce. If we can mobilize the entire country to make as much tofu as possible in special backyard tofu barrels, we can fill the gap in a matter of just five or so years.”

Until that time comes, however, the Gap between China's rich and poor will remain--dangerous as ever, and utterly lacking in tofu.

sichuanhua primer

2007-06-01T20:20:00.000-07:00

I've already got about seventeen pages of the sichuanhua primer written and so far it's both lots of fun and incredibly useful. My listening comprehension is improving rapidly and hopefully it will be up to my putonghua level in another four or five months.

Why is it necessary to actually work on studying sichuanhua, and why do some people skilled in putonghua understand absolutely nothing at all (and that includes many native Mandarin speakers)? Well, let me give you a few examples from what I've learned over the past couple of weeks:

1. Sichuanhua has five tones--the four tones you find in putonghua and a fifth tone that is special to sichuanhua. The sichuanhua tone is like the first tone in putonghua, but at a much lower pitch.

2. The tones in sichuanhua and putonghua are often reversed--for instance, third tone becomes fourth tone, and fourth tone becomes third tone.

3. Sichuanhua has four distinct consonant, vowel, and diphthong sounds that do not exist in Mandarin, including a truly terrifying pseudo-consonant sound that I've chosen to represent as "ng."

4. There are a total of 12 consonant, vowel, and diphthong changes from putonghua to sichuanhua, including not only the frequently seen CH-->C, ZH-->Z, SH-->S, but also a number of other changes, such as the dropping of any "N" that follows an "A" vowel sound.

To deal with all of these changes I've come up with a makeshift sichuanhua pinyin that so far seems to work quite well. My only problem is that I don't know how to add a fifth tone to words, and thus have resorted to putting an asterisk after each syllable that uses the fifth tone (for example, Sichuanhua Primer--四川话入门 --in my pinyin system looks like this: sǐcuáhhuǎ rǔmen*.) Does anyone have any suggestions on how to add a fifth tonal mark to vowels?

Also, just generally speaking, if any reader anywhere is interested in this definitely let me know--once this is posted I'd love to work collaboratively with other people interested in learning sichuanhua.

I'll post the first part of the primer in about three or four weeks, including audio files--well, so long as I can find a good file-hosting service.

PS--On an unrelated note, I won't be able to reply to comments until blogspot is unblocked in China. Although I can log in without a problem and can view my page through a proxy, for some reason none of these proxies allow me to leave comments. Weird.

china blockage

2007-05-29T00:58:00.001-07:00

Looks like the monthly blocking of blogpsot.com by the Giant China Internet Hammer is in effect.

Why is this such a routine thing? I think the government does as follows:

1. block the whole site for three days to a week
2. sweep through every single blog, looking for bad things
3. block the individual bad blogs
4. unblock everything else

Thank you so much, China. I'm sure it's all for a good cause.

news from the wire--by a dog named osvaldo--"ow! i can breathe!"

2007-05-28T07:25:00.000-07:00

BREATHABLE AIR SHUTS DOWN SMALL CHINESE TOWN

BY A DOG NAMED OSVALDO

GUZHOU, SICHUAN—A state of emergency was declared here and thousands of people remained locked inside their homes Friday after a large pocket of breathable air was seen hovering over the city.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Lao Wang, a thirty year old factory worker. “There was a part of the sky that was just empty. No strange colored haze. No coal dust. It was just . . . empty. You could even see this strange blue color. I ran into my house and cried.”

Widespread panic among the populace created an almost riot, until local police and army moved in and took control of the situation, ordering residents into their homes and issuing a curfew.

A crack crew of scientists was brought in to attempt to solve the problem, while military and police personnel were required to where blue-spectrum sun glasses to shield them from the blinding color.

Meteorologists remained puzzled. However Dr. Jin Huaren of the Sichuan Wind that Blows Study Institute has postulated that the strange atmospheric conditions may have been due to wind.

“It would seem” said Dr. Jin, “that areas south of here, with some of the worst breathable air in the country, have suddenly been benefited with some of Guzhou’s smog. This follows the present wind patterns of north to south. So, yeah, I think its wind. Definitely wind. Yeah definitely definitely wind.”

As of last night all factories have been ordered for maximum output, and as many diesel trucks as could be found have been turned on and left running. The hope is that the “smog hole” will be closed by the morning, and the residents of this small town can get back to living their normal lives.

四川话--In English is it Sichuanhua or Sichuanese? Or Sichuanian?

2007-05-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

I usually just call it sichuanhua, but in sichuanhua it's pronounced more like "sicuahua," and, in case you don't know, it's just the coolest dialect in China. It's spoken by the 80 milllion people of Sichuan province (which is also quite probably the coolest province in China) and is also closely related to dialects spoken in Chongqing, Guizhou, and northern Yunnan.

Though at first sounding like the language of a musically-inclined, foul mouthed, and bitchy alien, it is quite similar to Mandarin. If your Mandarin is pretty good you can pick up the dialect just by listening to the people around you. It's still hard to learn it though, and it still has some special attributes that need to actually be studied if you aim to achieve some proficiency in the dialect.

There are also no good online study resources. If you search for sichuanhua in English on google, you find nothing. If you search for 四川话 you find things all in Chinese, which would be great, if I were fluent, but I'm not.

That being said, as soon as I get some recording equipment I'd like to begin posting some Sichuanhua primers on this website. If anyone has any recommendations on sound recording (software, hardware, etc) please let me know (I realize most of my readers are people searching for perverted animals on google but, you people can still give me suggestions).

I should also note that, going by chinesepod skill classifications, my Mandarin is at an upper-intermediate level, while my Sichuanhua is Elementary at best. If people are having simple, ordinary conversations, I can understand about 40-60% of what they say. Conversations on more complex topics are completely beyond me, and I can't actually speak Sichuanhua to save my life.

Therefore, the sichuanhua primer would be as much for me as for anyone else. My girlfriend would be the only person speaking sichuanhua in the recordings, because she's the only Sichuan person I know who I can swindle into doing this.

So let me know if you're interested, sichuanhua fans and random google porn searchers alike.

news from the wire--by louis the plumber--"this is just not very funny"

2007-05-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATION UNCOVERS STUNNING INFORMATION: REST OF WORLD ALSO VERY OLD

BY LOUIS THE PLUMBER

BEIJING, CHINA—A government sponsored research initiative has discovered information that could radically change China’s perception of its place the world.

The Project for the Initiative of Learning about Various Matter for the Glorious Betterification of Primary School Text Books, or PILVMGBPSTB, was instituted to fact-check information in Chinese text books.

Prof Liu Xiang, a renowned historian at Beijing University, was chosen to head the world history research department. He claims his discoveries shocked him.

“Everywhere else in the world is also really old” said Prof. Liu. “We always learn that China has 5000 years of cultural heritage, and that therefore we are very special. It appears that other places also have some of this heritage stuff. And are also old. Like, really old.”

CHINA

How do you date Chinese civilization? The Chinese written language dates back to the Shang kings, around 1500BC, while the oldest dynasty dates back to the semi-mythical Xia dynasty, around 2070BC.

But, notes Prof. Liu, the foundation of Chinese political and cultural thought has for centuries been Confucius, whose analects were transcribed sometime between 479 BC and 222BC.

Everyone in China and the rest of the world agrees that that is very old. But the surprising thing is, other places are just as old, if not more so.

THE WEST

Judeo-Christian culture has been dominant in the Western world since at least the 4^th century AD, but the investigation revealed that this heritage can be traced back to as far as 1800BC. The Old Testament itself dates to the fifth century BC or maybe even earlier.

Greek and Roman culture and philosophy are also quite ancient, and are arguably the foundation of current political and scientific thought not just in the West, but throughout the world.

Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey were probably transcribed sometime in the 8^th century BC, after having been handed down orally, generation after generation, for some five centuries.

Socrates, arguably the most influential philosopher in Greek and Western history, was born in 469 AD, just ten years after the death of Confucius—“not a very big difference,” observes Mr. Liu.

OTHER OLD PLACES

Other places in the world are also very old. Indian civilization stretches back to 3300BC. Mesopotamian, Persian, and Egyptian history also goe back thousands and thousands of years, and may very well outdate Chinese civilization by nearly a thousand years.

“Zoroaster died in 551 BC.” notes Liu. “Despite the prevalence of Islam in modern Iran, there are still a quite few Zoroastrians. Kind of like how, despite the prevalence of Marxism/unfettered-capitalism in China, there are still a quite few confucianists.”

But that’s not all.

“Australian aborigines have a rich cultural heritage that goes back 40,000 years.” Mr. Liu explains. “That’s like the oldest, ever. But I guess nobody cares about them, because there aren’t very many of them, and they’re poor. Oh, and they’re also black.”

WRITING

And what about writing? As everyone knows, the Chinese writing system is very old. Do other systems come close? According to Prof. Liu, the answer is an emphatic “yes.”

The Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew systems of writing are all based on the Phoenician Alphabet, created around the 15^th Century BC. Modern Chinese characters and the modern alphabets of many of the other world civilizations can therefore be traced back to roughly the same period in history.

“The only real differences” adds Prof. Liu, “are those of the geographic sort—that is, Western culture shifted its geographical focus throughout history But in these Western countries the heritage still remains quite similar and contiguous.

“In fact it could be said that highly religious areas of the United States, despite their geographic displacement from old Europe and Asia, remain closer to their cultural heritage than many places in mainland China, who for the past century have been following not Chinese, but Western political, economic, and ideological systems.”

As a response to the new information uncovered in the PILVMGBPSTB report, Beijing has already changed the text in standard high school textbooks from “China has five thousand years of cultural heritage” to “China has the longest history ever.”

news from the wire--by gilmore paddington--"i speak chinese"

2007-05-23T00:41:00.000-07:00

GILMORE PADDINGTON KNOWS SOME WORDS IN CHINESE

BY GILMORE PADDINGTON

CHENGDU, CHINA--After three years living in China, Gilmore Paddington finally knows some words in Chinese, and he’s more than happy to let everyone know. “Basically, my Chinese has made a major progression in the past three years. You should hear me whip it out at social events. Everybody laughs, and just thinks it’s great. I’ve got my sights on fluency by the end of the week.”

Indeed, recently Mr. Paddington has found that he can “get” what people are saying to him. “Now whenever people speak to me I can always pick out a few words, and get a pretty good idea what they’re talking about. For instance, the other day, this guy was talking to me for a few minutes, and then I heard the words che and xiangjiao. So I knew exactly what he was talking about—cars and bananas. Maybe even a car with bananas, or a car that smelled like bananas, or like, he was happily eating a banana in his car, but was so happy he wasn't paying attention and got in an accident, and all his bananas flew all over the road. So there were bananas everywhere . . . Actually maybe he said rubber instead of banana. I'm not sure. They sound kind of similar. But I got the gist of it."

Among the other skills Mr. Paddington has developed in his three years in China is the ability to order certain dishes from restaurants. “When I first got to China, I could only point at characters and groan. Now I can order things like Kung Pow Chicken or Eggs and Tomato or . . . some other things that I can’t remember right now. If I order as loudly as possible, everyone looks at me, and I can tell they’re all just thinking, ‘now there is a laowai with some real mandarin skills.' ”

Now that’s he’s reached a higher level, Mr. Paddington likes to put himself in the center of attention at parties, acting as the liaison between foreigners and Chinese, and translating things as loudly as possible so everyone can hear clearly. “I may not know everything, but, you know, I can get the basic idea across—like “good,” “bad” that sort of thing. I also know the words for “beer” and “bathroom”—pretty useful stuff.”

His naturally gregarious personality also sees him imparting advice on those newly arrived in China. “One thing I like to do when newcomers arrive is tell them how important learning the language is to your experience here. It’s amazing how much everything changes once you can really communicate with people.”

oh, and also--local cuisine!--raging!

2007-05-22T04:05:00.000-07:00

On a related note and of great interest to me recently--there’s a delicious snack you can buy in Chengdu called cold noodles (凉面，凉皮, or the green version, 片粉). They are unique in their slimy, spicy taste and also their ability to instantaneously give you raging diarrhea.

So, for those of you in Chengdu and looking for a quick fix, I strongly recommend having a try.

chinese overdose

2007-05-21T22:56:00.000-07:00

It had to happen eventually. My girlfriend only speaks in Chinese with me. We also watch lots of Chinese television shows together. When I sit down and watch my own English language TV shows I keep my laptop open with my flashcard program on, studying flash cards in five minute intervals. I listen to chinesepod about once or twice a day. I think a lot about Chinese, wondering how to express myself in certain ways, thinking about all the mistakes I make everyday, and so on and so forth.

And, the fact of the matter is, I'm still no where near fluency, so no communication or even passive studying is ever, ever easy. It's tiring. Exhausting. And I'm still at least a year away from being really, really comfortable with my level.

To put it simply, and scientifically, my brain has been packed with so much Chinese, it's starting to leak, and it's getting on everything. So I've decided to take a break, which will last until I get frustrated with myself again for not being good enough. That gives me about a week, I think.

I'm really looking forward to visiting the states this summer.

flying ninja soccer kicks--strange weapons!--one more life's goal completed

2007-05-19T02:45:00.000-07:00

Back when I was a wee lass writing in my private pink diary, I wrote an entry that went like this:

"Dear Diary, someday I hope I reach a point in my life where I have seen not one, but two brawls near the tail end of a soccer match that have involved the introduction of strange objects employed as weapons, and in which people try and then fail miserably at flying ninja-kicks."

Of course, I never thought this would actually happen, like it did today, suddenly and totally unexpectedly, like a gift from god fallen from heaven, or rather a gift from two groups of middle aged Chinese teachers inexplicably and illogically assembled to play each other in a game soccer. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you about the first time.

It was a special day, and a special moment that left my right foot with a tingling sensation. I was in high school and my JV team was playing Binghamton on their home field. Binghamton was known among everyone on my team--none of whom ever held biased opinions towards anything--as a team of talentless thugs, although still only second best in talentlessness and thuggery when compared to Susquehanna Valley.

One player on my team was named RK (I guess I best keep his full name private) who was one of those kids that just couldn't avoid trouble. I can't remember the specifics of the "trouble" who was involved in, other than that he got into some serious fights and shoplifted a bit and so on--he was just, you know, one of those kids. And I can't remember the specifics of the game, except that it occurred below a giant "JESUS SAVES" sign and my team was winning and at the end of the game something happened and in a sudden a flash there were flying feet and fists and RK was fighting two Vietnamese guys.

The benches cleared--but, I should point out, to stop the fight.

After everyone had calmed down RK walked off to the corner of the field, seething, and yanked out the flagpole.He sure did look scary, waving it around and screaming and yelling, but thankfully somebody somehow got it away from him. Not me. I remained a dispassionate observer throughout the whole affair.

Anyway, fast forward ten years to today, and my match with my new soccer team, the D-------- University Teacher's team. The game ended with a massive brawl instigated by a poor challenge and an even poorer elbow-to-the-head reaction. This time the benches also cleared, but it was more to take part in the fighting than to break it up. Flying kicks flew. They missed. Punches flew and did, in fact, hit. They looked painful, especially because they most were blows to the head. I didn't suffer any blows to the head, however. I stayed watching at a safe distance in the middle of the field, mesmerized and amazed.

After everyone calmed down and cleared off the field, the offending party from the other team suddenly came back with an oddly shaped iron rod (I think he got it from the bathroom) in his right hand, screaming and yelling. Thankfully his teammates intercepted him and dispossessed him of the rod. No one was bludgeoned.

I went home and contemplated the fact that these are professors or teachers at one of the best universities in Sichuan province, playing other professors and teachers. That fight on my JV team was the only one I ever really experienced, and it was generally fairly civilized. I've seen more fights on a soccer field in my last year in China--and they all tend to be pretty vicious--than I have in all the years before combined, and I've been playing soccer since the age of nine.

What's the deal, China?

Well, whatever the deal is, in the end it doesn't really matter. I've never gotten in a fight. And today my wish, written when I was a wide-eyed wee lass all those years ago, finally came true.

characters in history--educational service--"little ping"

2007-05-11T23:13:00.000-07:00

It’s a little known fact that Mao Zedong’s nickname was actually “Pudgy McFatcheeks.” Whenever somebody would call him this he would pretend to get really mad and give them that famous "you’re about to get re-educated face," but after a little while he would always just smile and smack the offending person on the back and say “just joshing you, comrade!”

Sometimes, though, he really would send people to get re-educated in the countryside, not because he was angry, but just because it was fun. This is the real reason why Deng Xiaoping was sent to work in a tractor factory. In fact, when the announcement was made they both laughed about it for a long time, and later Mao even wrote a poem about it, called "Haha, Little Ping Ping build tractor now!"

Deng Xiaoping’s nickname, by the way, was “Little Ping Ping.”

Oh, and these are all things you should know, if you want to know everything about China.

news from the wire--by eleanor roosevelt--"holes in the ground fucking suck"

2007-05-05T19:47:00.000-07:00

RESEARCHERS: HOLES IN THE GROUND SUCK

BY ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

BEIJING, CHINA—Researchers working as part of the Chinese Olympic Committee here have made a major research discovery on the value and long-term benefits of using Chinese hole-in-the-ground toilets versus Western sit-down toilets. The verdict? “Hole in the ground toilets suck,” says Prof. Liu Fei, head researcher, “it is our recommendation that all Beijing—and eventually, all of China—switch to the Western style toilets.”

The researches investigated thousands of bathrooms throughout China, comparing cleanliness and general sanitation standards. The results were shocking. “In bathrooms that used traditional holes there was, in fact, no sanitation whatsoever. Bathrooms using Western style toilets had sanitation levels varying from 40% to 90%.”

According to the study, holes in the ground generally do not function well as receptacles of any form of excretion. In regards to urination, it found that most male users are incapable of actually hitting the hole and instead spray their liquid waste material all over the surrounding foot rests and floor.

As for defecation, any toilet used during the day generally features a giant mound of feces that actually rises above the floor level and is left behind because either the toilet does not have an adequate flush mechanism or the user simply forgets to flush. Even worse, most holes in the ground can’t handle toilet paper, so there are generally baskets in the corners overflowing with defecation smeared paper.

The researchers did not pursue investigation of long-hole style bathrooms (bathrooms with one long, ditch style hole used communally by all bathroom users) because one researcher died after being exposed to the fumes for too long.

“As any visitor knows," adds Prof. Liu, "Chinese bathrooms generally look and smell like a septic pipe exploded—sorry, I mean like five or six septic pipes exploded. This is not an image we’d like the world to go away with after the Olympics.”

Western toilets, on the other hand, encourage users to do their business in the actual confines of the toilet, a feature of immense value considering the notorious sloppiness of the mainland Chinese.

There are of course already critics of the plan to introduce more Western style toilets into China. Most note that the need for skin contact when using them negates any significant sanitation benefits. Prof. Liu Fei, however, considers this a weak argument. “Yes, this is often an issue that is raised with Western style toilets but the fact of the matter is that butt-cheek infections are quite rare. Last year there was only one butt-cheek infection throughout the entire world, and this happened to Billy Buttersly of Owego, New York who, as everyone knows, always has butt-cheek infections.”

more in the series--because this is really important--yes

2007-04-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

This is Butterbee Jones.

Butterbee Jones thinks China is made of Tiddlywinks and Donuts. He's wrong.

This is something you should know, if you want to know everything about China.

(Note: Pic taken with permission from the internet.)

pinky flesh

2007-04-20T00:05:00.000-07:00

I chopped off a healthy chunk of pinky flesh the other day. This was not on purpose, and I'm not quite sure how it happened. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

Sadly, it doesn't look quite as sexy as this.

great news--extraordinarily important news--the free press sure is grand

2007-04-19T06:11:00.000-07:00

Today there was a five minute segment on the local Sichuan news station about a tree falling down. Nobody died. It did hit a car and scrape the windows of a few apartments, but it didn't cause any serious material damage. The intrepid reporters braved the local apartment complex to interview locals affected by the event and then, really showing off their investigative journalism skills, went outside and discovered that the tree fell because of termites living in it.

Again, this was a five minute segment on the main news channel in a province is roughly the size and population of Germany.

The real reason why China needs a free press is so that the news isn't boring.

bones

2007-04-18T04:35:00.000-07:00

The other night I ate at a restaurant called "A Bone." They serve bones in a big bowl of gamy smelling liquid. They also give you straws to suck out the marrow, which you can do before or after you're done nibbling the thin strips of meat off the bone.

Have you ever sucked out bone marrow through a plastic kids straw? It's gross--really, really, really gross.

This has been yet another of my recent adventures in meat that really hasn't impressed me much. Next step--snake.

(Yes, this really is the most interesting thing that has happened here recently)

dwayne--he's a guy--here's some information about him

2007-04-06T07:06:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of Dwayne:

I'm not sure what Dwayne's last name is, which is a real tragedy. But I am sure of one thing, and that is that Dwayne's never been to China.

This is something you should know, if you want to know everything about China.

sinosplicean dimensions--perverted animals--just for you, kids

2007-04-06T06:44:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while sinosplice links to my website, which is always a mixed blessing, because although it does increase my traffic to sinosplicean dimensions, it also means that I start to neglect my real fans, that is the ones coming to my site after searching for perverted animals on google, or for Freudian anal errors.

That being said, I just to make sure I keep my real fans happy, so just for you I'm go to refer yet again to perverted animals and also put up a picture of one:

Sadly, I have no pictures of Freudian anal errors.

i am a provider of a great and extraordinary service--educational, that is--i am very important

2007-04-04T08:13:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of a chicken:

There are many chickens in China. This is something you should know, if you're interested in knowing everything about China.

This chicken isn't from China, though. It's from the internet.

shit

2007-04-02T22:41:00.000-07:00

Shit, that last post wasn't in Chinese, I'm totally failing.

new job--wherein I disparage a poor innocent child--i lack moral values

2007-04-02T22:33:00.000-07:00

I have a new part time job that's basically babysitting a rich kid. I take him places, buy him things with his father's money, and try to teach him some English words here and there; mostly though, what I really do is practice all Chinese all day, because goddamnit this kid's English is awful, and he doesn't remember anything that I teach him (seriously--nothing at all, his brain is like a giant sieve).

All in all, it's an excellent set-up, and I plan on using all the sweet cash I make to buy important things to my daily life, like a 320 gigabyte hard drive full of music and hundreds more pirated movies.

Oh, and also hamburgers. I am going to buy hamburgers.

oh man--major awesome hardcore--studying

2007-03-30T23:35:00.000-07:00

April 11th 2007 will be the official one year anniversary of my second arrival in China. To celebrate this vainglorious achievement I will, beginning Monday, devote every waking hour of my day to studying Chinese and, since I dream in Chinese a lot, I will also try to devote every sleeping hour to this pursuit.

Why am I doing this? The main reason is because goddamnit my Chinese just isn't good enough. And, even though I study pretty regularly and am improving at a reasonable pace, I'm just not improving fast enough--sometimes I need binge-studying periods to rapidly increase my level, or at least my knowledge-base.

So how am I going to study?

1. Listen to lots of chinesepod podcasts over and over again (I won't do the exercises because I'm too poor/cheap to pay for the service).
2. Speak all in Chinese with my girlfriend, and not use any fun-but-ultimately-useless pidgin Chinese.
3. Read comic books and use the new vocab to create lots of vocab lists from the comics. Do the same with some books I bought intended for young teenagers.
4. Watch lots and lots of television and Chinese movies.
5. Find my long lost brother, Higaldo.

That's my plan, anyway. That's also how I tend to study--just throw myself at everything I can, pick up what I can, move on, and throw myself at something new. It's an ugly, messy system, but it seems to work.

I'll be doing this again around June 11th, which will mark roughly two years total that I've lived in China. At that point I'd best be damned well conversant on most every topic, excluding impossibly difficult ones such as Curling, or Bananarama.

If you would like to support me in my efforts to learn the Chinese language, you can send me money.

Thank you.

news from the wire--by bill clinton--"we have invented the invention"

2007-03-29T19:37:00.000-07:00

CHINA DISCOVERS DEMOCRACY ACTUALLY INVENTED IN CHINA

BY BILL CLINTON

BEIJING, CHINA—Long lost records found in the Chinese state archives here have given irrefutable evidence that Democracy was in fact invented in Northern China—more than two hundred years before the Athenians adopted it as their form of government. The document, dated 720BC, is from the Spring and Autumn period and describes five villagers near the Yellow River voting on an important matter of social status: "And Lao Wang, along with Lao Kang and their three friends, voted to decide who could eat the dog first."

The documents were discovered by Professor Wang Dong at the state archives in Beijing. Professor Wang was researching ancient pornography when he stumbled upon the papers, an early survey of peasants and peasant customs in the state of Chu.

As with their invention of the modern game of soccer, the probability that two different civilizations could separately invent such dauntingly complex things as voting or kicking a ball around is so small as to be almost impossible. "The only likely conclusion," says Professor Wang, "is that these things, like pretty much everything in the world, were invented in China, and spread to the West through trade routes or magic."

vomit--diarrhea--also, vomit

2007-03-27T00:34:00.000-07:00

From the American Heritage dictionary, a wonderful definition for a wonderful thing:

food poisoning
n.

An acute, often severe gastrointestinal disorder characterized by vomiting and diarrhea and caused by eating food contaminated with bacteria, especially bacteria of the genus Salmonella, or the toxins they produce.
Poisoning caused by ingesting substances, such as certain mushrooms, that contain natural toxins.

Of course, the definition fails to give a most necessary warning, that is: "if the meat's funky, don't eat the meat." If only I had read this simple warning before I ate some funky pork Sunday evening, I would have avoided approximately twelve hours of an acute, sever, gastrointestinal disorder characterized by vomiting and diarrhea.

I should also add that, although this definition sure is grand, it is unnecessarily vague in certain places. For instance, when it says "vomiting" it means muscle convulsions so intense they squeeze tears out of your eyes; when it says "characterized by" it means "your body will not stop doing either of the following for twelve hours."

The plus side of this adventure was that I got to cancel my classes on Monday. Rad. The other advantage is that I now know the distinctive odor and taste of funky pork, and knowing funky pork may help me identify funky versions of other meats, such as chicken, beef, or toffuti.

In other news, this website and all of blogspot.com are now blocked in China, so if you are in China and somehow reading this website, you are breaking the law, and should stop immediately.

news from the wire--by pablo--"man defeats china, sets sights on tiddlywinks"

2007-03-22T20:16:00.000-07:00

MAN WINS "BEST AT CHINA AWARD," USES AWARD MONEY TO BUY DIRTY TWO PIECE SUIT

BY PABLO

BEIJING, CHINA—Lewis Snodgrass last night bested two other competitors to win the annual “Best at China Award.” The award, first established in 2003 by China ex-patriot Lewis Snodgrass, was created in order to honor those who “live in the real China, speak Chinese, and just generally kick China’s ass, all the time, and with verve.” Past winners have included Lewis Snodgrass (three times) and Bill Cosby (once).

The goal of the award is to help distinguish the valuable Chinese ex-patriots from the valueless, “long term tourist types” who, Mr. Snodgrass explains, have been steadily polluting Chinese culture over the past 20-30 years.

“Basically, most people suck at China,” Mr. Snodgrass says. “First you have the tourists, who by their very nature are retarded and valueless. Then you have the temporary residents, who live a year or two and then leave. Their understanding of this country is about equal to a bug’s understanding of my gargantuan brain.

“The long term residents maybe have some value, but they’re usually too stupid to understand the complex aspects of Chinese society, such as massive industrial dumping, or pooing on the sidewalk”

This year’s winner, Mr. Snodgrass, has been living in China for eight years, speaks Chinese fluently, has a Chinese wife, and only eats Chinese food. He works in the administrative unit of a large Chinese electronics company, where he uses a set of five hundred stamps to stamp anything put in front of him—a position almost impossible for most other foreigners to get.

“We decided to award Mr. Snodgrass with the award this year because of his continuing efforts to know and experience everything about the real China” explained Mr. Snodgrass. “If you make the analogy that China is like a giant country of 1.3 billion people, then you could continue it and say that Mr. Snodgrass is totally the best at that country, which is actually China, if you remember. So you can say Mr. Snodgrass is the best at China, a country of 1.3 billion people, in East Asia, in which lives Mr. Snodgrass, formerly of Dryden, NY, and who is the best at it—China, that is.”

Mr. Snodgrass also established an organization, “The Best at China Awards Group,” which operates out of the bedroom of his fifth floor apartment. The group accepts anonymous nominations for the award but, Mr. Snodgrass warns, the competition is fierce. “Mr. Snodgrass wins every year because China bows before the might of his intellect. I recommend that you not apply next year, because he’s sure you suck at China, and he hates you, asshole.”

letters from peru--i put on pants!--gastronomical adventures

2007-03-20T16:42:00.000-07:00

Ever since I arrived in China I have been receiving email after email from family and friends inquiring feverishly into my progress on eating rabbit's head. Take this letter from my mom for example, sent just last week:

"Dear Bob,
Did you eat rabbit's head yet, or what?
Love,
Eleanor Roosevelt"

Or this letter from Guillermo, some guy in Peru who I've never met:

"Dear Jose,
The rabbit's head is not mine, and I don't know what to do with it.
Love,
Mom"

Naturally when you're under this kind of pressure from your mother and Peruvians, you've got to do something about it. So, needing to make my parents and really the whole world proud of me, I finally put on some pants, went outside, and searched for rabbit head. It being the middle of the day, the only place to go was the Chinese Wal-Mart, which sells many body parts as well as tooth-paste and children's books. Looking at the rabbit heads, with their skin burned to a nice brown crisp, and their teeth jutting out like rabbit teeth jutting out of a decapitated, crispy brown head, I decided that eating rabbit's head was really gross.

I bought two of them and also a roast chicken because it is delicious. Then I went home and ate them with my girlfriend. She showed me how to rip apart the head by pulling it apart violently at the jaw. It was fun. Then we ate it by sucking off the thin strips of meat along the head. It definitely tasted like meat. I let her go for the brains and the eyeball, cause it's just not my thing.

Overall, it was a disgusting, yet somehow primal, experience--I don't recommend it unless you haven't eaten eyeball or brains for a long time.

Also, please stop sending me emails about rabbit's heads, and just about heads in general.

Oh, and here is a picture of a rabbit. It is a small animal in the horse family, and is related to the Quark:

common mistakes--incumbency--potato touching

2007-03-16T23:06:00.000-07:00

Due to common misunderstandings and mistakes among the general populace, I have found it incumbent upon myself to use this website to clarify one of the major issues of my life--that is, how best to compliment me on any one of my numerous achievements or natural talents. This is something people or always asking me about and something that I'm getting pretty tired of explaining on a daily basis. So, here we go.

Generally speaking the best way to compliment me is by commenting on the reflecting qualities of my recently shampooed hair. I like my hair, and I especially like flourishing it after I have received a compliment. I am particular partial to the words "luminous," "shimmering," and "dimpled"-- although, if you do choose that last one, make sure you use it properly (remember: it's an adjective, not a comma).

Of course, there are other things you can say that will elicit a favorable response from me, and might even cause me to shake violently. Among these are: "you truly are covered in hair," "when I think about you, I touch a potato," "you have splendid taste in cheese," "habikonobidadidmaas" and, of course, "I like pants, too."

I hope this helps. Complimenting me really is a fun and rewarding experience and sometimes results in me patting you on the head or me licking myself.

spitting and communication--stages of learning mandarin--bill cosby

2007-03-10T19:55:00.000-08:00

Many people have recently asked me: what is Mandarin? Is it fun to learn? How many years do I need to devote to learning it?

Of course, the answer to all of these questions is "no." Why? Well, let me explain each one separately.

What is Mandarin?

Mandarin is a complex language in the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is composed of sounds, grunts, and spitting and mastery of all three takes persistence, patience, and intelligence (indeed, if you are stupid, or an idiot, I do not recommend trying to learn Mandarin). It is spoken or understood by roughly one quarter of the world's population and is not at all related to Slovenian.

Is it fun to learn?

As any well trained EFL professional will tell you, learning languages is fun. This is a great big lie. Learning languages is hard and it hurts both your brain and your spleen. If somebody honestly believes learning languages is fun then they're obviously not aiming for fluency and are instead learning all the swear words they can.

How many years does it take?

Many people have compared learning Mandarin Chinese to climbing a mountain. This is a very accurate comparison, as in both instances, if you are inexperienced or stupid, you will probably die before reaching your goal. That being said, my answer to this question is at least one, but probably ninety years.

The Boisen-Hegelbauminen Stages of Learning Mandarin Chinese

For those of you smart enough to be able to tackle Mandarin and dumb enough to actually try it, let me give you an introduction to something known as the "Boisen-Hegelbauminen Stages of Learning Mandarin Chinese." The six stages were thought up one hundred years ago by Boisen-Hegelbauminen, a German watch manufacturer fluent in German, Italian, and Dutch.

1. East-Asian Fetishist Stage: Everything about Asia is mystical and cool and gives you funny feelings in your toes that you can't understand. You determine that you have to learn an East Asian language. You choose Chinese because you are a total fucking nerd, but you don't like anime, and Korea has always bored you.

2. College Chinese: You learn a lot of things that are totally useless. Your Chinese sucks. Snobs like me hate it when you talk because it sounds so awful. We put you down whenever we can. Everyone would be happier if you just gave up.

3. Move to China: You either get accepted into a language program or pretend to be an English teacher, like me. Now you think your Chinese is good solely because you're living here, while, in fact, it has gotten worse. This is because you believe in the myth that "language immersion" without hardcore studying somehow results in rapid acquisition of a language and moreover, that you are actually immersed in Chinese in China. You are not. You are immersed in bad English and your own wretched vocabulary, which is good for pointing at things and then adding an adjective or two.

4. Nine: Suddenly you realize that actual mastery of the language is an exhausting, labor intensive process that will absorb many of the remaining years of your life. Either you give up or you go full steam ahead. If you don't give up and instead keep pushing yourself, you will suddenly start making actual progress, but will also realize that each step forward does not get you observably closer to your ultimate goal.

5. Yellow-Green: You can have conversations. People like talking to you and you like talking to them. Learning the language actually is fun now, because you can actually use it to talk about things. Fluency is just around the corner, by which I mean fluency is still two or three years of endless toil away.

6. Bill Cosby: You can finally speak Chinese fluently. Everyone applauds your perseverance, intelligence, and good looks. You turn on Chinese television and watch it for four hours straight, understanding everything. You realize you have just wasted 5-6 years of your life. Realizing this makes you hungry, so you go eat some twice cooked pork. You reflect on the meaning of the word "barnacle."

So, that's what you can expect while learning Mandarin Chinese. I hope it makes you despondent and contemplate giving up before you begin. Currently I am at stage 4.5. I am eagerly awaiting my ascendancy to stage five. If you would like to help me in my goal of reaching the yellow-green stage, please send me money. Thank you.

Addendum: I should also note that there is another outline of the stages to learning Mandarin here, but it's not as good as the Boisen-Hegelbauminen system, as it clearly lacks a Bill Cosby stage.

updates

2007-03-04T05:21:00.000-08:00

I haven't updated in a long time. This is partially because all I could think of writing down my incredibly cynical and negative observations of what tourism is like in the third world (observations that were quite obviously the source of my cynical and negative fake news article below).

Of course, beginning to write these observations, I was made immediately aware of my own hypocrisy in the situation, and decided to just continue grumbling and moaning about it in private. Therefore, I have written nothing recently. However, in the future, if you would like me to write more, please send me money.

In other news, I start teaching tomorrow. If you feel sorry for me, you are of course welcome to send me money, or beef jerky. Thank you.

news from the wire--by pablo--"poverty in america and the enlightenment of exploitation"

2007-02-15T22:51:00.000-08:00

MARTIN FISCHER—TRAILBLAZER IN THE WORLD OF ADVENTURE TOURISM

BY PABLO

BOSTON--On a sunny day last march dozens of photographers crowded around the window of a six floor housing complex in Lower Roxbury, a community in South Boston famous for its poverty and high incidences of drug-related crime. Visible inside the miniscule apartment, amidst a mess of dirty dishes and trash, was a small family busy preparing dinner.

“Look at that,” one of the photographers said quietly, snapping a pic. “It looks like they bought those cans of beans in bulk. Must have been fifty cents each. And the rice too. Cheapest meal I’ve ever seen. So clever.”

The other photographers nodded and grunted as their lenses could be heard zooming in on the cans of beans and the rice.

“Look at their clothes!” another photographer said giddily, “they’re so filthy! It looks like that they can’t even afford to do their laundry!”

Behind them a tall man in khakis and a wide brimmed hat puffed on his cigar, then said in a husky and commanding voice, “Gentleman, we’ve got about twenty minutes til the sun goes down and we lose the good light. Finish up.” The photographers nodded and started busily taking photographs or moving to better positions. The man, Martin Fischer, went back to smoking his cigar while looking over his clients with a grin both satisfied and imperious. For him, it was just another day in the exotic reaches of extreme, American-style poverty.

***

Martin Fischer is a trailblazer in the tough business of adventure tourism. After years of guiding people through some of the poorest and most remote regions of the world, he decided to start “Poverty in America” back in 2005 after getting back from a stint in south-western China. “There were a lot of poor people in the southwest, so of course it made good photographing. But when I got back I just couldn’t help but think—sure, the third world has lots of poverty, and it’s really entertaining in its own way, but America does too. Just think of Appalachia or all those areas in the big urban centers, you know, the ones with immigrants? There’s a whole swath of places in the developed world that haven’t even been tapped for adventure tourism.”

It is already Mr. Fischer’s second year working as the head guide for “Poverty in America,” and the success of his Boston branch is making him consider moving to other areas—especially the American south, where he believes there is particularly large, untapped market in guiding people through trailer parks and places of extreme rural poverty.

I first met Martin Fischer last February in a coffee house in downtown Boston, where he liked to go to take breaks from the dangerous parts of the city. He was looking over pictures that he had printed out on the table, and asked me to come over and lend him my opinion. We discussed the pictures, he told me about his work and, when I told him I was a reporter, he invited me to come along on one of his tours. The opportunity seemed too good to pass up.

We started the day from the lobby of a hotel in downtown Boston, where dozens of excited adventurers mulled about and talked giddily about the coming day. There was an even mix of demographics in the group—the rich or middle class white Americans were evenly distributed in both age and hair-color. I asked one of them, Lewis Pinkerton, an anthropology student from Harvard, about what exactly it was about this program that so appealed to him. “Poor people.” he said without hesitation, “Even though I read about them all the time I don’t get to see them very much at Harvard, except for the janitors. Even then it’s hardly like I’m seeing them in their home environment. I’m hoping that looking at these people in their daily lives will make me appreciate my own relative wealth.”

As we load up into the three car caravan that Mr. Fischer uses to bus his clients all around the city, I asked him about what Pinkteton had said, and if this was a common motivating factor among his clients. “Yes,” he said quickly. “You see, poor people are interesting. They are not like us. They are poor. There is a kind of tragic poetry to their lives that simply doesn’t exist among people like you and me. Naturally, if you can capture this sense of tragedy in pictures, you can make some sweet cash, but you can also show the pictures to your friends and impress them by telling them about the special, enlightening experience you’ve had.”

Fischer takes us through the poorest communities of southern Boston, usually stopping and letting the photographers out whenever they come to a scene of interest, such as the location of a shooting, or unemployed people sitting around on a street corner. “It’s best when they can’t afford proper clothing, because, unlike in other countries, people here don’t where quaint costumes. Also, if we can catch some people doing or dealing drugs, that’s a huge plus; but I usually like set up as far away as possible from the drug deals. Lost some people once in a shootout.”

Drifting through the neighborhoods, we are treated with sites and sounds that rarely infiltrate our more quiet corners of American life. In many places homes and apartment complexes seem to be falling apart where they stand, with little or no evidence of home repair. Roofs fall in on themselves and some walls even have visible bullet holes. People wander the street with expressions of loss and hopelessness unseen in more affluent places—while in homes, through the broken and filthy windows, we can catch quick glances of drug addicts or alcoholics or poor families living amongst filth and disrepair. The cars lining the street are old and beaten up, and it appears that many families cannot even afford a vehicle. Homeless people are visible too, pushing shopping carts filled to the brim—bundles of shopping bags representing their whole lives.

Meanwhile, we can see gangs of men and teenagers hanging out on street corners, smoking cigarettes and marijuana and drinking alcohol from bottles poorly hidden in paper bags. Fischer explains that these are the spots that are the most dangerous, as many of the men are involved in local, drug-related gangs, and have been known to brandish weapons at the vehicles passing by. “That’s what we mean by adventure tourism,” Fischer laughs and smiles. He further explains that, because of the risks involved, he has had all of his vehicles installed with bullet-proof glass, while he and his staff each carry Glock 22s on their person, just in case trouble arises.

Stopping at one housing complex famous for its graffiti and general dilapidation, Fischer, explains that one of the best parts of adventure tourism in the United States is that the people are simply not used to it. He notes how in some places in Southern China, where photographers are quite common, local people started to ask for money after being photographed—a trend he considers to be a disturbing sign of the moral degradation of many third world areas. America, he realized was a land of relative purity. “You go to a trailer park in America and start taking photos of people—no one knows what to do. They’re not used to it. You could be filming them all day and they might get angry, but they’d never ask for money. They’ve got some pride—some integrity.”

After hearing this, I wanted whether or not the people in his photos ever benefited from getting their picture taken. Did he or his organization compensate them? Was there any chance that American poor would start asking for money, too? Fischer assured me, adamantly, that they had never received financial compensation of any kind, nor would they ever. “Lifting people out of poverty would make the world a far less interesting place, and would certainly put me and a lot of other people out of jobs,” he said, than added thoughtfully: “listen, they do get to know that the beautiful, tragic art that is their lives is captured on film. We pass on the meaning of their lives to posterity. And that’s something that I’m sure they’re quite thankful for—although, to be honest, I’ve never asked. Actually, I’ve never asked them about very much at all.”

back

2007-02-13T18:57:00.000-08:00

Back from traveling. My decision to go to Yuanyang was a good one. The place, with its seemingly endless mountains of terraced rice fields, is honestly one of the most amazing things I have ever seen--it's also pretty much unknown to Western tourists except for the French, who for some reason swarm over the place. (Of course, I should add that it is very popular destination for photographers, especially Chinese photographers.) My recommendation is to go before Lonely Planet mentions it and ruins everything.

traveling

2007-01-27T21:19:00.000-08:00

On February first I will be flying to Kunming where I will meet up with a Chinese friend, spend some days marveling at a thing called sunlight, and then go to a place that, I imagine, very few other travelers will be going. I realize Yunnan is a very large place, and that I ought to go see all manner of very famous locales--but I am tired of traveling for the sake of collecting places that I have visited. It's stressful. If I go to the northwest I will be overwhelmed by all the things to do and see--the same if I go straight to the southernmost border, to Xishuangbanna. Maybe I'll save those for another time. But, at present, I just want an actual vacation.

So I think will go here where I will spend a good number of days relaxing and exploring the environs, and perhaps also work on writing, studying Chinese, and taking a good number of short naps. I just hope at least a few people speak mandarin there (the major ethnic group in the region are the Hani) so I can get some good speaking practice.

If I can get dependable internet access I will probably also update this blog--since China broke my camera, I have no other means to record what I see and do.

email loving--worlds of china fantasy--LOBO

2007-01-24T20:33:00.000-08:00

Many people, especially my friends and family, have written me emails with questions such as: "Why are you such a failure?" and "Why do you always fail at things?" and also "Why are you such a failure?"

The answer to these questions is very simple. The fact of the matter is that I really quite enjoy failing at things. Among the things I am good at failing at are: 1) keeping small promises to people, 2) doing anything I set out to do, 3) remembering things, 4) jazz-funk-robo-dance, and 5) befriending other foreigners.

Although number five could easily be included with number two (and four) , they are slightly different. Usually I fail at doing things that I set out to do because I forget them, or because I get overwhelmed with all the people and China that exist in China and go home and read a book or write meaningless drivel on a blog. However, I have difficulty befriending other foreigners--especially Westerners--because many who have recently arrived in China live in their own special world, which seems to be one in which no other foreigners are allowed. I can't blame them. I lived in the same world for a while. When I went out on the street I wanted every foreigner to know that I wanted nothing to do with them because they were messing with my experience of hardcore Chinese life. I figured that most other foreigners were probably just doe-eyed tourists busy thinking about how everything around them was just positively dripping with oriental magic--and, as everyone knows, oriental magic is actually just a solution of pollution residue and phlegm, and is not really very special at all.

Anyway, once you get into the rhythm of life in China, that feeling quickly goes away. You realize how obnoxious you were, and they are. After a while you just want to hang out with people and speak English--real English, the kind where you can make obscene jokes and offend everyone, or say something that is not politically correct and offend everyone.

There seems to be something unique about mainland China that turns people inward and makes them attempt to exclude other Westerners from their experience. When I was in Hong Kong it seemed that every Westerner wanted to talk to me, especially if they were racist Irishmen who spoke incomprehensible English. There was a kind of camaraderie among the Westerners in Hong Kong that I've never found on the mainland. Why is this? Why are so many Westerners here as obnoxious as I was when I first arrived?

I asked LOBO, who is an expert on botany, why this is. The conversation went as follows:

ME: Why are so many Westerners here as obnoxious as I was when I first arrived?
LOBO: Narcissistic tendencies.
ME: What?
LOBO: Suck it.

I think LOBO summed things up quite well. But if you have further questions about this phenomenon, which is also known as the China Experience Exclusionism Complex, please ask any Westerner you see on the street in China, or Jesus, or plant life.

Thank you.

a bike ride--the gloom of industry, and winter--old men and kites

2007-01-20T00:04:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I went a bike ride to try to search for green spaces in the city. I chose a northern route, along the sand river, which is one of my favorite features of this part of the city. When you pull out of the dense residential section in which I live you pass through a series of abandoned lots along the waterway. Often the plots of land, filled with refuse and the skeletons of old buildings, are surrounded by ugly residential housing complexes, whose dull grey color seems to have been absorbed by the winter sky. There are also a series of smaller parks, but these are not well maintained, and are often filled with refuse, or meld seamlessly with those abandoned lots on their edge.

My hope was to follow the sand river all the way to its eponymous park but, eventually, after passing through a bamboo thicket, I found myself facing a wall and, beyond the wall, a series of train tracks. Beyond the tracks I could see the river, but there it began to leave any vestiges of the city behind; along its shores was nothing but mud,the odd thicket, and old buildings perhaps still in use but appearing long abandoned nevertheless.

I wanted to find green spaces, but not if I had to ride through this first. There is something dim and terrifying about these industrial outer limits of this city, where squatters sit in stone constructs and burn fires of scrap wood in weak-walled aluminum bins, and curious children play carelessly amongst the scrap metal, the scruffs of grass, and the viscous pools of collected liquids--all against a backdrop of industrial haze and that dull winter sky.

So I decided to turn back. On my way, as I rode through a smaller park along the river, I looked over to my right hand side, where dozens of men were lined up along the outer limits of one of those lots. I went down to look at them and see what they were doing. None of them spared a glance for me, even though I was a foreigner in this isolated part of the city. They were too busy. They were all flying kites.

Some of their kites were just a few dozen feet off the ground but some of them were really soaring, hundreds and hundreds of feet above. You could see all of them, even the ones so far away--little specks of color, the only specks of color in the sky.

a month mostly gone--sausages in the trees--the carcasses of rabbits

2007-01-17T19:53:00.000-08:00

January is the month that pineapples come back in season, the month for making sausages and hanging them in the branches of trees; it is the month when the days get noticeably longer and the people get noticeably nicer; and it is the month when suddenly the rabbit sellers appear, pulling piles of half-skinned carcasses in wooden carts through the city and lifting the bloody bodies with bloody hands to hawk them at the endless passers-by.

news from the wire--by pablo--"bartholomew franks and other tales of awesomeness"

2007-01-07T20:43:00.000-08:00

BARTHOLOMEW FRANKS AND THE SPECIAL FEW—A STORY OF FAME AND CELEBRITY IN THE NEW CHINA

BY PABLO

CHENGDU, CHINA—Bartholomew Franks knew he was a Seriously Important Person the first time he was recognized on the street by a complete stranger.

“I was just walking around, thinking about velcro, when suddenly this complete stranger walked up to me, all smiling, and said ‘hallo.’ ” The man was a local seller of steamed buns who, Mr. Franks explains, recognized him by the fact that he wasn’t Chinese, and had a big nose. “‘Chang bizi’ that’s what he kept on saying to me, laughing. ‘Chang bizi.’ I thought it was pretty cool, so I gave him five kuai and a flourish of my hair, which is long, and flaxen”

Mr. Franks is a one of a few other unique individuals in the city of Chengdu—the provincial capital of Sichuan province—who have suddenly found themselves thrust into the limelight, experiencing a kind of celebrity that they never thought possible. The source of this fame? The little understood but much sought after phenomenon described by Mr. Franks as "being a foreigner."

For most of them this status came as soon as they landed in the country, with many people in the airport saying 'hallo' to them, and some even offering special, discounted taxi rides. Over time their fame only increased, especially for those who found work as foreign teachers. Mr. Franks, for instance, was the only foreign teacher at his school, immediately cementing his status as the Only Foreign Teacher and thus securing his popularity among the students.

Although some have argued that securing this status was easy, Mr. Franks is quick to defend himself, observing that if it were so easy, then clearly he wouldn’t be the only foreign teacher. He also refutes the notion that it’s easy becoming famous as a foreigner in China. “Some people think that fame is mostly about luck, but that’s just not the case, especially here. Not being Chinese took a lot of work, especially on the part of my parents. But it also took a lot of cultivation on my part. You think it’s easy becoming a foreigner in another country? Ha! I don’t think so."

According to Mr. Franks, the best part of fame is not the recognition he receives on the street, or the money, but rather the attention he receives from members of the opposite sex. “In America, before I was famous, a lot of girls wouldn’t even look at me, even when I threw things at them. Here, all the girls look at me, and one even had sex with me. I can’t help but feel that, when I’m walking down the street here, I exude this kind of primal, animal magnetism, like a dog in heat, or a potato.”

Indeed, like a lot of his famous, ex-pat peers, he likes to hang out in local bars and talk about all the women he’s had sex with, or could have had sex with. “There are so many girls who I could have sex with here. You really can’t even count them. Of course, it's important to let the other guys know about this. They need to know how totally awesome I am. When I'm done, then they tell me about their own conquests. Then we all just feel totally awesome. It’s a good time.”

Yet for these few, special individuals, fame is not easy, and maintaining it requires much hard work especially if they want to expand their influence and increase their fan base. Mr. Franks is currently trying to become a nation-wide phenomenon and has secured speaking gigs as well as television and print ads. He also travels throughout the country, hoping to have as many people as possible notice that he has white skin and flaxen hair. “I try to spread the word and I’ve even got a business card, which lets people know that I am a foreigner, and famous.”

In addition to all the hard work, fame also has some other drawbacks. Mr. Franks’ relationships with some of his friends and relatives back in America have deteriorated due in large part, he believes, to jealousy. “The little people can’t handle fame. They can’t handle serious talent, like what I’ve got. So they just project their feelings of inadequacy on me; which would bother me, if I were a pussy, like them. But I’m not. I'm a man. I have a penis.”

All in all, however, the payback has been well worth the sacrifices—although he does worry that, over time, the prevailing attitudes among the Chinese may change. “A lot more foreigners are arriving here, trying to hack away at my fame. The more who come, the harder it will be for me to stay as popular as I am now.” But Mr. Franks, of course, has plans, and won’t let his ambitions be defeated easily. “Look,” he says, “if things get bad here, I’ll just go somewhere else. I’ve been thinking about Africa. People have told me that I could be a foreigner there, too. I mean, there are always options for someone with talents like mine. There are always options”

dreams--freudian anal errors--morphology and lexicology

2007-01-05T19:14:00.000-08:00

I hate it when people tell me about their dreams. As soon as somebody lets out "I had this amazing dream last night . . ." I immediately shut off the listening part my brain and start thinking about interesting things, such as my bowel movements or the fact that I have never had a mole.

Why do people think their dreams are interesting? They are not. First of all, they are not real. They are just things your mind has imagined when it is in its retarded, oxygen-deprived sleep state. Telling people about the dreams you've had is kind of like telling them about things you fantasized about in math class, or like saying: "Hey, I was sitting on the couch the other day and had this amazing imagination." They also in no way reflect divine interference or psychic premonitions. They do reflect aspects of your character, but not necessarily to a deep, Freudian level. For instance, if you dream about having sex with someone it's probably because you want to have sex with them and you should use this amazing insight into your personality to go hit on them. However, I guarantee you that it has nothing at all to do with your father or Sigmund Freud's anus.

Second of all I don't want to here about your dreams because, no matter what, they will never be as interesting as mine. Why? Well, it is guaranteed that mine will have much better special effects, possibly including explosions and aliens. Plus, the characters in my dreams frequently morph from person to person, changing forms but maintaining each of the characters' personal characteristics. That is cool. I bet that doesn't happen in your dreams. In fact, other people's dreams are only interesting if they include me and especially me doing something interesting, like spinning around in circles and then not getting dizzy.

Anyway, the point of this whole article is to inform you that I had a dream last night and it is interesting, because it involves me, who is of great interest to me. The special part of my dream was that it was entirely in Chinese. Everything out of everyone's mouths was Chinese and, even though all of it suffered from my personal linguistic butchering, it seemed to be reasonably good Chinese. The only weird thing was that I still didn't understand all of it, even though I made it all up.

So that was my dream. If you didn't find it entertaining then that's probably because you have no imagination or are full of hate.

more information on my bathroom--scalding hot apocalypse--i like saunas, not naked men

2006-12-30T18:46:00.000-08:00

One important piece of information which I failed to include in my last update on Chinese bathrooms was the interesting phenomenon of the Drain Spawning Fly Bugs. These little critters (about 1/10th the size of a normal fly) somehow find their way into the shower drain. I don't know where they come from. The rest of my apartment is bug free. My cat makes sure of that (lacking mice, he likes to hunt and eat bugs). So these little guys must climb up into the drain from their secret Drain Spawning Fly Bug Megalopolis, which is perhaps in the sewers somewhere deep below the city of Chengdu.

Although at first they appear almost cute, eventually various aspects of their existence start to grate on you. For instance, you may be sitting on the toilet and then look down and see a bug and think: this is gross. Or, you may be taking a shower and then look down and see a bug and think: this is gross. Or, you may have guests over, and decide that you would rather not have them nauseated by the dozens of minuscule little creatures climbing out of your shower drain.

So, obviously, one cannot abide the existence of these creatures in one's apartment. But how does one deal with Drain Spawning Fly Bugs? They are so tiny, and difficult to catch. Plus, they hide in a place that is difficult to swat at; that is, the drain. Have you ever tried swatting the inside of a drain? You cannot. Essentially you can only pat the inside of it, which is gross, because you're touching the inside of a drain. I don't recommend it.

Of course, if you were a genius with an IQ of 170, you would think of some really clever and also humane way to get rid of the little bastards. However, if you are like me, with a recorded IQ of x^{Y*7.2} , you will not really think at all, and instead just decide to deliver a scalding hot apocalypse unto their innocent and relatively moist world.

How does one do this, you may be wondering? How exactly does one deliver a dose of fatally hot water onto these little creatures? Well, the answer is complicated, and involves a deep understanding of gas stoves. I won't go into it here. But when it's all done I have a tea kettle filled to the brim with boiling hot water, which I then dump down the drain.

This madness, this eerily silent slaughter of countless bugs and their poor, innocent offspring, ensues behind a swirling veil of steam, which rises up from the drain and makes me feel quite refreshed and even sleepy, as if I am in a sauna. I like saunas, but not when other naked men are in them. Thankfully, at these times, there are no naked men in my bathroom. Just dead bugs. It usually makes we want to take a nap.

draggers of coal

2006-12-26T01:53:00.000-08:00

Everyday in Chengdu you can see men dragging coal. They move expressionless through the city, quiet and resolute and seemingly unaware of the happenings around them. The coal is piled up high on wooden sleds that rest by two bamboo poles on the men's shoulders. Each sled visibly sags with the weight it bears, while the bamboo quivers and bends.

All these men, all these draggers of coal, look strikingly similar, as if born of their profession and nothing else. Powerfully built and yet usually no taller than five feet, they have dark skin that has been covered by the black dust of their load and the lighter dust tossed up from the road. Their clothes hang off in tatters from their shoulders, exposing the tired, taught muscles beneath.

I’m not sure if they are delivering the coal to individual buyers or just transporting it from one place to another and I’m not sure where it has come from. In fact, I’ve never seen them pick up the coal, or deliver it. I’ve only ever seen them plodding through the streets with that giant weight strapped onto their shoulders and their eyes fixed firmly on the beaten ground below.

today is christmas--infants look like leaky sacks of lard--i am out of milk

2006-12-24T20:35:00.000-08:00

On this Christmas day I am all alone, except for my cat, who is licking himself and not paying any attention to me. I don't mind being alone on Christmas. What bothers me is that my family misses me. They have communicated this through numerous threats of excommunication and emailed, photoshopped images of my head on a spike.

Actually, they have not done any of these things, but I am certain that's what's going through their heads.

I don't like it when anyone's upset by this separation (me/real-world), especially my family members.

Here is a creepy picture of baby Jesus, to remind you that not all things about Christmas are so great and that I, too, was once a fat, ugly baby. Nobody likes fat, ugly babies. You should have kicked me out of the house back then.

Anyway, I also miss you all very much, and my friends back in Boston/New York, too. Sorry I can't be there.

news from the wire--by pablo--"the glorious association for foreigner halloing"

2006-12-24T03:03:00.000-08:00

WANG JUNMU AND THE FUNNIEST THING ON EARTH

BY PABLO

CHENGDU, CHINA—Wang Junmu, a motorcycle repairman in this city of ten million, begins everyday with a tall glass of green tea and a quick survey of documents prepared by his friends the night before.

“These documents,” Mr. Wang begins, “are probably our organization's most valuable asset. Without these we’d be wandering around aimlessly, blind, like a chicken, a chicken that is also blind, and maybe doesn’t have a head.”

Leafing through the pages of photographs and writing, Mr. Wang discards more than he keeps. “Useless,” he says after looking at one meticulously prepared paper, “Xinjiang people just don’t count. I don’t care how white they are or how big their noses are. Xinjiang people are not foreigners.”

Finally, Wang pulls out a piece of paper and a photograph. “Perfect,” he says, “Grade-A foreigner. Look, you can tell by their appearance. See? They don’t look Chinese at all. Chinese people don’t have blond hair. Also, this person doesn’t have a funny hat on, so we know they’re not a Xinjiang person. This one will do.”

So begins another day for Mr. Wang and his now famous social organization, The Glorious Association for Foreigner Halloing--a group that was formed in 1999 by Mr. Wang and a few of his closest friends and has since spun off into hundreds of sister organizations throughout China.

As Mr. Wang describes it, the group was formed almost by accident. “Well, we were standing around on a street corner one day, watching some old heads play a game of chess, when we suddenly started thinking: this is not funny. What is funny? In fact, what is The Funniest Thing on Earth?”

At first his friend suggested watching cows chew, but that idea was quickly discarded. That was when Mr. Wang came up with the statement that would change their lives, and a lot of other people’s lives, forever. “The Funniest Thing on Earth,” he said, “is saying ‘ni hao’ to a foreigner, in their own language.” According to legend, a fit of laughter burst out from all the men on the street corner, with some falling down from the force of the laughter, and one even running into the street, flailing his arms, and screaming.

“That guy was hit by a car and he died. But that was when we knew we were on to something,” Mr. Wang continued, “that was when we thought of a way to improve our daily lives. A system. A stratagem for humor fulfillment that would be good for our livers, our kidneys, and our kleptoks.”

It took them just a short amount of time to find their first foreigner. “Sichuan University is packed with foreigners, so we just went down their and wandered around the gate a few times. When we saw our first foreigner, a tall guy with red hair, I let out a long, high pitched ‘hallo.’ It was a great time. We all laughed really hard. Plus, my kidney felt great afterwards.”

Since then much has changed in the association. What was once an unorganized and motley collection of friends looking for a laugh has turned into a highly organized, semi-professional band of serious humor seekers. Since most of them have full time jobs, they usually gather together just after dinner at the vestibule of Mr. Wang’s housing complex, then wander off to various parts of the city. “We rotate through parts of the city—let certain districts lie fallow, if you will. We don’t like hitting up the same foreigners twice.”

Since the beginning the group members have been organized into three types. Generally about four men are the "laughers," whose main job is to laugh as hard as possible (“Their job’s not difficult,” says Wang, “considering the humor of what they’re experiencing").

The other three men have more important functions. One is the "spotter," who points out the foreigner. Sometimes he also shouts “Laowai” as loud as possible, so that the entire group knows that one is coming and can prepare themselves mentally.

The next is the “starer,” who chooses the kind of stare group will use. “Foreigners are weird,” Mr. Wang explains, “so we need to stare at them as much as possible. The starer needs to choose the type of stare we’re going to use. There are a number of different kinds, for example: the bovine, the hateful, the stupidly happy, the constipated, and so on. My favorite is the bovine.” Once the men have spotted the foreigner and chosen the correct stare, it’s then up to the “yeller” to finish the job, and shout “hallo.”

Of course, just like with the stares, there are a lot of options for "hallos." The most common is the Roaring Dragon Style. But there’s also a sharper, higher pitched “hallo,” called the Angry Monkey Style, which sometimes startles the foreigner . “That one can be fun if you’re in the mood for a little excitement along with your humor,” Mr. Wang says. His own favorite style, however, is the Bothersome Flying Buzzing Thing Style. “Well, what you do is, you start with a soft, almost whispered ‘h’ sound and then, as the foreigner walks by, you progress with the rest of the word, until your right next to him, and then you finish with a long ‘ooooooooooooo’ sound. It’s difficult to perform properly, and takes a real pro to handle it.”

Overall, the organization has been well received among Chinese, and it has even produced leaflets and handouts intended to educate the greater population on how to say “hallo” to foreigners. There have been some detractors, however. Some argue that “hallo” is not even the correct form of greeting in English, and others argue that, in actuality, not all foreigners speak the same language. As Mr. Wang explains: “One time somebody said to me: ‘do you know that not all foreigners say ‘hello’ in their language?’ To which of course, I replied: ‘no, but then again, I’m not uneducated.’ These people think they know something about foreigners. But how many have they seen? How many have they said ‘hallo’ to?”

Criticisms aside, Mr. Wang feels deeply satisfied with the progress his organization has made in just seven years. “We’ve got a few new branches starting up in Xi’an and Guiyang and we’d even like to expand to America. I have some friends in Chinatown in New York, and we’d like to see if they’d be willing to shout ‘hallo’ at all the non-Chinese there.”

When he’s done choosing his targets for the day, Mr. Wang stands up and walks to his window, where he can look out onto the bustling street below. “So many people,” he says, taking a sip from his tea, “and so many new foreigners. I think we can look forward to many, many more years of foreigner halloing. At least, I hope so.”

We all hope so, too Mr. Wang. We all hope so, too.

perversion in domestic animals--LOBO--i don't know, go away

2006-12-21T08:35:00.000-08:00

Many of you have written me emails with questions such as: "Is your cat perverted?" or "Hey, what kind of perverted animal do you have in your apartment?" and also "What is your favorite shower position?"

The answer to all of these questions is deeply personal. Let me respond to them to the best of my ability.

As everyone knows, Chinese architects have difficulty distinguishing between "showers," "bathroom floors," and "toilets," meaning that in many bathrooms throughout China these three things are either combined together or not partitioned as definitively as they are in the rest of the world. So, in my bathroom, I stand on the floor right next to the toilet when I take a shower, and there is no separate shower door or curtain. It also just so happens that the designers of my apartment constructed a square hole in the wall of the bathroom, about seven feet off the ground, that provides a perfect vantage point for watching whatever is happening on the toilet or in the shower.

Now, whenever anyone enters the bathroom, my cat, who is actually a small, Chinese demon that I need to neuter as soon possible, charges into the room adjacent to my bathroom, leaps up onto my washing machine, and then leaps up four feet vertically into the hole. People visiting my apartment for the first time and expecting to have some innocent, private pee-time, invariably get startled when he lauches himself up above them, especially if they don't know I have a cat. Anyway, once there, the cat watches you with an absorbed and deeply fascinated expression as you pee, shit, take a shower, or do whatever else you like to do when in the bathroom. Sometimes he even licks himself while watching you. It's gross. I feel completley violated and I'm sure many of my guests do, too, but there is little I can do to stop him.

I asked LOBO, who is an expert on all things related to perverted cats, why my cat is so perverted. The conversation went as follows:

Me: Why is my cat so perverted?
LOBO: My name is LOBO
Me: Why is my cat so perverted?
LOBO: I like wearing pants. Pants.

LOBO, as always, was a great deal of help on this matter, however, I still am no closer to finding an answer. Does my cat just like seeing people naked and watching them pee? Or is there some deeper reason? I don't know and for Christ's sake, Chris, stop emailing me about perverted animals.

great chinese inventions--giants let fly students--bozons and kleptoks

2006-12-20T18:24:00.000-08:00

As everyone knows, the modern game of soccer was invented in China sometime during the Spring and Autumn period (770 BC - 476 BC), except the Chinese version of the game was called 蹴鞠 (cuju), and did not resemble modern soccer at all. It was created at around the same time the Chinese were busy inventing other things, such as: computers, trees, food, and the Irish.

Since soccer was invented in China, it follows that the Chinese have the most advanced soccer programs in the world, which is why their national team has won so many World Cups. I often like to go out and play with the Chinese at my university's field, so I can get a taste of this 2500 year old game in the very place of its origin. Now, after nearly two years of soccer playing experience in China, it still remains a unique experience, and something I willingly put myself through on a weekly or even daily basis.

So, Bob, you may be wondering, what's it like playing soccer in China? Do you ever eat rubber or hurt your face? Well, let me give a short introduction to the experience, followed by some short essay questions.

As we all know, China has too much of everything, so the field is always packed with people, pick-up games, and rubber pellets (which I'll get back to later). Sometimes the games even spill over onto the track, where they get in the way of old ladies who walk around the field and hit themselves on the back (they do this because old ladies in China hate their backs). At my university there are two types of games--the ones in which the university students play, and the ones in which non-students play. Keep in mind this is a technical school so, as you may imagine, there is quite a bit of difference in the skill levels between the two groups.

Some of the players who are not university students are honestly quite, quite good. One of them, whom my friend Brandon and I nicknamed "Gigantor," is literally about two-times larger than your average technical student. Playing with Gigantor is always a special treat. He's both incredibly talented and a great passer, so having him in a game immediately improves its quality and makes it that much more fun. Plus, although he appears to be quite gentle, when he gets angry he's been known grab one or two of the students, whip them around his head, and then send them flying into the old ladies. It's always really funny and we laugh a lot, but it's also useful, as it clears the field of a few more players and saves the old ladies some work in abusing their backs.

The field itself is unique. It is composed of a concrete base covered by a thin carpet of green threads that, over time, have been beaten down by all the players, exposing patches of concrete which are then covered by thick smattering of miniscule rubber pellets. These pellets are great fun, especially when they get stuck in your shoe and on your sweaty skin. Evidently putting a rubber pellet on skin is like putting something really, really, really sticky onto something else. Sometimes I actually have to scrape them off in the shower. Fun! Plus, sometimes when you fall down on the field, they fly into your mouth. If you love eating rubber, you'll love falling down on this field.

But the best part of this whole experience is that you cannot play soccer on this field without getting hurt. The ground is too hard. The ground is too slippery. The ground has too many divets and weird ditch like things that zigzag across it. Plus, the Chinese players are very grab-happy and kick-your-shins-happy. So essentially what the Chinese have done is invent something that yet again the world can imitate--an open-air factory that produces injuries. Playing here I have injured my groin, my wrist, my left ankle, my right ankle, a number of my toes, my shins, my face, as well as other parts of my body that I didn't even know existed until I got them injured, such as my bozon and my kleptok.

Anyway, all in all, playing soccer in the place of its birth has been a truly rewarding experience. I recommend that all of you try it at least once. But if you end up not liking it, don't blame me, blame yourself, because you're likely a pessimist and depressed.

ADDENDUM: I stole the Cuju pic from another website. But I'm living in China, where it's legal to steal. .

monoliths and change--an industrial cityscape--concrete and green

2006-12-17T22:13:00.000-08:00

I've always found something eerily beautiful about the concrete housing blocks that are clustered all over modern China. Together with the gray-yellow haze of pollution, the dark silhouettes of cranes against the horizon, and the muffled sounds of construction, they form this kind of solemn, industrial cityscape that is uniquely Chinese. I'm not sure if there was any particular system or method towards their construction or municipal layout, but I always imagine them being put up sometime just before the Cultural Revolution, at a time when the collective energy that carried the CCP to victory had yet to have been turned in on itself. They certainly look old enough to have been built in that era, but I think that that, in actuality, most of them were put up in the late seventies or early eighties, shortly after China's re-opening and its renewed push towards development.

Generally the buildings are set up in rectagular complexes with a courtyard in the middle, although different sets of complexes seem to have been constructed at different times, so they approach each other at sharp angles and create quiet, narrow alleyways that turn on jagged corners. They are typically five or six stories high, made of unadorned concrete, both inside and out, and are composed of one or two bedroom apartments that are perhaps intended for single families but are, more often than not, filled with half a dozen people or more. When they were freshly purchased essentially none of the apartments were decorated inside, including paint, floor boards, or furnishings. While many of them have since been adorned with these amenities, some of them are still as bare as the day they were created, and some only partly finished. When I was apartment searching in Shanghai about one in three of the apartments I looked at were had bare concrete walls, and many were neither carpeted nor tiled.

Nowadays they appear to be half-crumbling, and hardly suitable for habitiation. In addition to the general pockmarcks and discolarations, their sides are invariably coated with pollution residue, which is itself streaked with water lines from air conditioners. The rooftops are messes of upturned tiles and corrosion that look fit to collapse at any moment.

Yet, in all of their dilapidation and ugliness, these buildings are a fundamental part of the landscape of modern China, a part that is little written about or spoken about. They are, essentially, the architectural foundation of the modern Chinese city. As such, these endless stretches of concrete generally give the skyline of any city here city a gray tinge, like the color of river-worn slate.

In Chengdu, however, many of the buildings have rooftop or windowsill gardens with lush vegetation that tendrils out along the walls and gives the horizon a hint of green. Moreover, here the buildings burst from their complex communities not only along major roads but also along the sand river (沙河), a tree and flower-lined waterway which twists and bends through the north-eastern district of the city. This contrast between the natural greenery and the color of old concrete grey gives the buildings in this part of the city a kind of special quality, something that speaks uniquely of the city of Chengdu.

I like to go on bike rides along this waterway and, as I make my way under the trees, observe the old monoliths along its shore, these giant remnants of a dehumanizing, mass industrialization, a kind of historical, cultural, and psychological convergence that I think most of us are incapable of completely understanding or appreciating. I certainly don't understand it, confronted as I am by these things on a daily basis.

Along the ride, as they drift past with vegetation bursting out of them (and seemingly poised to devour them), the buildings take on the appearance of ruins, rather than the living places they truly are. It always makes me think of the crumbling cities I once saw in the jungles of Belize, of a dead civilization speaking out from the cover of vegetation, quiet and mournful.

new bike--thievery--mongolia is yet safe

2006-12-15T23:26:00.000-08:00

I bought a new bike today. It's dark gray and shiny, just like the city of Chengdu itself (note: Chengdu is not shiny). I had to buy a new bike because my last one was stolen. Here is a list of other things that have been stolen from me since I came back to China:

1) My bike
2) My bike lock (attached to the bike, of course)
3) My backpack
4) My keys
5) My best pair of blue jeans.

Please do not ask me about the circumstances surrounding that final item. It was a tragic incident and honestly left me quite upset--far more upset, in fact, than the theft of my bike, which happened on the same day.

I think, however, it also important to emphasize the positives of life in China, so here is a list of things that have not been stolen from me since I came back:

1) My kidneys
2) My new bike
3) Socks
4) My love of cheese
5) Mongolia

If you would like to steal something from me, please do not. Thank you.

toilets--issues in chinese modernity--dying flying birds

2006-12-14T19:32:00.000-08:00

I have observed an important issue in modern China: male university students are incapable of taking shits anywhere other than in public buildings and, specifically, my teaching building. I'm not sure why this is. I think it must be that aspect of Chinese culture that makes everyone want to do things in groups. Eight in the morning is the "group shit time" just like how eight o'clock at night is the "group walk around aimlessly time." Naturally I prefer the latter over the former and even, at times, take part in it. Except I like to walk around aimlessly and buy lamb sticks and then also eat them.

Whether or not this group shitting is a reflection of greater conflicts or changes in Chinese society I can't be certain. First of all, the holes in this particular bathroom are porcelain. Obviously porcelain shows us just how far China has moved along since the days of pure dirt holes and the even more recent concrete holes. Therefore, does the group shitting represent a kind of flocking towards westernization and modernity? Would these kids be doing this if there wasn't something shiny and modern beneath their rears? Moreover, do peasants ever shit in porcelain? If not, how does it make them feel knowing that rich kids do? These are all hard to questions to answer, so I won't bother trying.

So, Bob, you may be wondering (however, for future reference, keep in mind that my name is not Bob), what are the local atmospheric effects of this group activity? Well, I must say, not good. The first effect is to ensure that people with weak stomachs cannot walk within twenty meters of the bathrooms without collapsing in a vomiting heap upon the ground. The second is that any small animal (generally lighter than fifteen pounds) within a ten foot radius of the rooms is killed almost instantaneously. Birds flying by the open windows of the bathrooms have been known to die instantly in mid-flight and then plummet at dangerously high speeds down to the ground, sometimes taking out the dainty Chinese girls in their path.

Clearly, this is one of those issues in modern China that needs to be considered closely and may snowball into something truly significant in the future. It touches on a number of pressing issues in Chinese society, such as: the environment, overpopulation, the gap between rich and poor, dying flying birds, and, of course, the eternal question: dainty Chinese girls--why are they so cute?

Please send me money.

Thank you.

tree painting--LOBO--the origins of trees

2006-12-13T18:39:00.000-08:00

The bottom quarter of any tree along any public avenue in China is usually coated by a nice splattering of white paint, which is usually applied during the fall. This has the wonderful effect of ruining the few pieces of untouched natural greenery that still exist in China's towns and cities. Since I hate nature and pretty things, I love the fact that people slobber white shit all over these ungodly weeds.

I asked LOBO, who is an expert in all things Chinese, why these trees are painted. The interview went as follows:

Me: Why are these trees painted?
LOBO: My name is LOBO.
Me: Yes. But what about the paint? The paint?
LOBO: Last night I ate a banana.

Since LOBO was of such little help on this particular matter, I consulted my own brain, which is a size 32D and is known in some circles as a world-renowned expert on things related to trees being painted in China. Indeed, it was my own brain that at last provided the answer, as follows:

"When trees were invented 2000 years ago in China, the ancient Chinese sage, 萝卜(Luo Bo), decreed that all trees must be painted white, from the last quarter down, in order to ensure that the location of all trees was known at all times, that their status as trees would be known to all who gazed upon them, and that no one would confuse trees with their close cousins, the Irish (invented in China in 1203BC). This policy was resoundingly successful, cementing the status of the tree in ancient Chinese culture as ' that thing we put paint on.' Now, the location of all trees in public spaces is known immediately, and no one must fear their sudden, unexpected appearance."

Well, that certainly helped me understand the phenomenon. I hope it helped you understand it, too. If you would like more information on this matter, please do not ask me.

mysterious liquids--absorption of said liquids--i like tangerines

2006-12-10T04:25:00.000-08:00

At any construction site in Chengdu you can see these ubiquitous clusters of buildings that look like giant erector-set projects. They have thin white walls with blue frames and they are always set up just before proper construction begins. On their sides is written "活动房," which, I guess, you could quite literally translate as "activity house." These buildings are, in fact, temporary homes for the migrant workers who are the grunt force in China's extraordinary development. By "China's extraordinary development" I mean the construction of lots of concrete things. There are a number of these buildings that I pass by on my way to work. Through the windows you can see dormitories with bunk beds. Hanging outside all the windows are clotheslines filled with men's clothes and, specifically, their underwear. Evidently these guys like washing their underwear. I am sure their crotches are thankful.

Anyway, I was walking by these buildings tonight when all of a sudden some mysterious liquid splashed down in front of me. The liquid just missed me except for a little bit that splashed up on my pants. It was obvious that it had been tossed out one of the activity house's windows. Of course, once I overcame the shock of the situation, I looked up at all of the windows with my ready-to-fight face. That way whoever threw the liquid would know I was ready to fight for my foreigner honor (note: I do not, in fact, have any sort of foreigner honor. Actually, if I had made eye contact with the aggressive defenestrator I probably would have pissed my pants. That, at least, would not have been a very mysterious liquid in my pants, and I could catologue it with the known things that they have absorbed.)

All in all this is truly exciting. How many mystery liquids do you have absorbed in your pants? I'm up to at least five. Plus, I'm living in China, so the count should at least double in the coming months.

bikes--french leakage--a lesson in civic duty

2006-12-10T03:30:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of a bike:

I took this picture in Guiyang. There was a bike, and so I took a picture of it. Actually, there are many bikes in China. It seems to be a very useful tool for transportation and for getting stolen. If you are interested in getting your bike stolen in China, I recommend buying one. Any kind will do. If you attach rocket blasters on the rear wheel, like I did, that will also increase the chances of it getting stolen.

Sometimes when you're getting your bike out from a line of other bikes you will knock a bunch of them over, then smack yourself in the face and sheepishly say "je suis un imbecile!" (for some reason you always speak in French when dealing with bikes). When such an event occurs, it is of course incumbent upon you, as a visiting foreigner, to be just as polite as your Chinese compatriots, and leave the other bikes on the ground.

editing a magazine

2006-12-09T00:29:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago I agreed to edit a certain English-language magazine here. The result has been endless work from Thursday last week to Saturday this week. All in all there are twenty articles with writing like this:

"People have often settled and watched the relief. Some of them walk away soon, some stay forever. Then we’ll find the ones can’t move are statues. These statues dress the same as us. They play mobile phones while they are walking with bags. It seems like someone was executed the black magic and couldn’t move. Then they became ornaments of Chun Xi Road."

And this:

"The tone color of this film was source to the real image materials at that time. "

And this:

"These bodies or characters had been created by He Yi, some of them departed from us, some nodded silently with drifted souls, some paralyzed like a ash, some meant nothing in a corner, some turned into sign of erotic, some become abstract points and lines in state of prostration, were lack of main body or initiative. "

And finally:

"Some people call it ‘monster’ or ‘weird creature’. The specialist of this animal is it has no anus. That’s means only to put in but never take out."

If you think you need the context to understand these quotes you are wrong, as context does nothing to mollify how completely nonsensical parts of them are.

By the way, I agreed to do this job for free.

Next time I think I'll be asking for some compensation, as well as coverage for my headache medication.

bad writing

2006-12-08T04:57:00.000-08:00

Much of my writing when I first started this blog is quite bad. I apologize. And I freely invite everyone to read it over and mock me, as I deserve it.

Actually, wait, I don't deserve it. Let's be honest here. Pablo deserves it. He's the small Canadian guy I hired to write poorly. And, actually, he did a stellar job at that. So I guess you ought to be complimenting Pablo. Forget about mocking.

PS--Pablo is insecure about his mole, so if you are complimenting him please tell him it doesn't exist.

Thank you.

PPS--I don't have any moles, although I do have mysterious hard spots. If you would like to leave comments on their possible origin, please feel free to do so.

Thank you.

pics pics pics

2006-12-07T20:56:00.000-08:00

Here is a google map pic of where I live:

And here is a pic looking out into the courtyard between the two gray buildings to the east of my apartment:

You can probably notice that things are very gray. That's because Chengdu has an almost constant cloud cover and, even when the clouds do dissipate, pollution from nearby factories happily moves in and takes over the responsibility. So, indeed, things here are often gray, although sometimes also light-gray and dark-gray. Never black though. Well, except at night. At night, in fact, the whole sky turns black. Amazing.

Anyway, that being said, the endless cloudy days are mitigated by the rather mild climate and the fact that, although there aren't too many beautiful days here, there also aren't many wretched days. Well, except during the summer. The summer sucks. It's basically like having burning hot steam shot at you at all times of the day, except when you're in your nice apartment with the air conditioner turned on to "make things cold." So don't come here during the summer unless, of course, you want to go somewhere else. If you want to go somewhere else then you should definitely come here in the summer.

i think i'll start updating again

2006-12-07T02:53:00.000-08:00

Seven months after arriving in Chengdu it seems that I have at last reached the point where I am both bored enough and narcissistic enough to update this blog.

So, here is my update:

Today I did not eat twice cooked pork.

I mean, this is kind of a big deal. I like twice cooked pork. A lot.

Have you ever had twice cooked pork? Yes? Did you like it? Yes, yes I think you did.

and then!

2006-03-25T14:59:00.000-08:00

After a series of great tribulations and frequent usages of the word 'dipthong' I now have a plane ticket. I will be leaving Boston on the 11th and arriving in Chengdu on the 13th.

My goals once I arrive will be threefold:

1) find and eat BIG CHICKEN PLATE

2) whine a lot

3)

Actually I haven't really thought beyond stages one and two.

Dipthong.

exciting update! rah rah rah!

2006-03-23T09:48:00.000-08:00

I still don't have a plane ticket.

trip to get my visa -- half-sleeping nonsense -- a sky held up by towers -- back home

2006-03-08T11:14:00.000-08:00

All those who live in the Northeast, from Maine to Rhode Island and all the way to Ohio, and who desire to travel to China, must make the long or possibly-not-long trek to the Chinese Consulate at 520 12th Avenue on the shore of the Hudson, between 9am and 5pm Monday through Friday, allowing for an hour lunch break from 12pm-1pm. This is because you are not allowed to apply for a visa by mail. It is incredibly inconvenient.

Since I did not at all desire to spend the night in Manhattan, I decided to go to the consulate early and pay for expedited, one day verification; since I wanted this service and knew from previous experience how long the lines could become, I decided to arrive as early as possible, at 9am. The one problem with this method was that I live in Boston. I could take either a 2:30am Greyhound bus (the Chinatown bus being out of the question because of Chinatown’s distance from the consulate—the port authority bus terminal is just a few blocks away) that arrived at 9:03am (over six hours!) or a 12:30 bus that arrived at 4:50am. There is little in this world that is more awful than riding greyhound and so I decided to take the 12:30am bus despite the fact that it would drop me off in the middle of Manhattan with nothing to do for the four hours until the consulate opened.

Five hours. The bus arrive at 4:10 instead of 4:50. I can never sleep on buses and didn’t on this one. The bus terminal was surprisingly busy for this time of night, although I use “busy” only in the sense that there were many individuals in the station. Almost everyone was asleep—in chairs, against the walls, sprawled out on the floor, and so on. Every conceivable location in which a sleeping body could fit contained a sleeping body. I wanted to sleep but I didn’t want to on the floor and, anyway, there was no room. I left the station into bright quiet of 42nd street at night. A man asked me if I knew where 42nd street was and I said no, not realizing at first the obvious because I assumed that no matter what he asked I would not know the answer.

I started walking, past closed shops, homeless alone and asleep on the sidewalk, a Times Square still alight despite the hour, and all of the west side of Manhattan. On 8th Ave a shivering man approached me outside an adult video store and asked me if I wanted any entertainment, a sensual massage, and so on, I said no; then he asked if I wanted to see any shows, any sex shows, they had single girls, girl on girl, guy on girl, and anything else I wanted. I said no thanks and wondered why I inserted the thanks, then kept walking until I found a diner. I entered, nodded my head at the half-sleeping cashier, sat down, and then ordered coffee and three eggs over easy with hash browns and toast. Two men sitting to my left and behind me talked about their theater production and the awfulness of the Oscar nominated songs this year. A group of college students at the front discussed their top ten lists of women and men (they all had awful taste). I tried to study Chinese while I ate but couldn’t focus so I finished my meal quickly and left.

Again I wandered to the times square area, this time passing by all the morning television shows preparing their sets, and one woman who stood in front of a wall of television screens filled with nasdaq stock quotes. She shifted and fluttered her eyes. Then to the cavernous Avenue of the Americas with its modernist towers reaching artlessy upward, where I looked once again down 42nd street and for the first time noticed the New York sky (so different in this city from elsewhere) as it fell down from the meridian directly above and progressed in increasingly softer and lighter colors to the horizon, a swath of blue-light to black encased between the opposing, bleak, slate-colored faces of the tall-buildings at dawn.

I walked around aimlessly until 9am, when I dropped off my passport at the consulate. Afterwards I continued my wandering. My legs were tired. I was functioning on an hour of bustime half-sleep. I saw things. I ate. I drank coffee. In my half-consciousness I remarked vocally on the ugliness of that city, that part of the city. I searched continuosly for bathrooms because coffee passes through my system so quickly it's as if my digestive track were just a funnel.

At 2:20pm I picked up my passport and by 3:00 I was on a bus home.

I’m leaving for Chengdu next month.

note

2006-03-08T09:48:00.000-08:00

Most of what I'm writing now is just practice. Hopefully by the time I arrive in China I will have found a style that suits me, and the quality will have improved. If not I feel pity for all of my friends who are, of course, obliged to read this, no matter the quality.

experience of two years ago part 1: the stares! -- pointless loquaciousness -- stalinist propoganda

2006-03-05T11:52:00.000-08:00

[Note--I am officially disowning this post and those that follow. I am blaming their creation entirely on Pablo, who actually did a very good job]

The sensation of being an animal in a zoo was not brought about as much by the staring as it was by the feeling of disinterested curiosity that lay beneath; yes, you were a source of interest and yes, no matter where you went the majority of eyes would be focused firmly on your non-chinese features, but generally when your gaze met theirs you could never pick up on any level of intellectual intrigue nor any sign that either of you shared a kind of common humanity. As a foreigner out on the street were there, you were different, and that was the extent of your significance. And yet . . . it was this very capability of the stares to make you feel insignificant which belied a somehow deeper and more menacing attitude. The failure to achieve a sense of common humanity attested not just to the great cultural gap between you and them, but also to a kind of xenophobia and ethnocentrism that underlied (and underlies) much of the relationship between China and the West.

It was rare, however, for these attitudes to leave the sub-conscious behind and significantly affect daily interactions. To be sure there was always something different about how you were treated: most conversations reflected that odd dichotomy in the Chinese attitude towards the West, regressing into either outright fawning or hostile, grudging communication. But there was rarely anything that itself could punctuate the general humdrum of your daily existence in that society, nothing that would stand out and cause you to think: here I am and I am alone and there is hostility everywhere.

experience of two years ago part 2: issues with water -- use of the word "shit" -- denouement

2006-03-04T13:48:00.000-08:00

Of course, I am writing this because just such an event happened to me. It was towards the end of my stay in Shanghai, I believe sometime in April, and it happened on one of those half-cloudy days, where there never seems to be any actual day but just dusk from morning til night. I was busy at the time preparing a lecture for the university--not a lesson for my students, but a major lecture open to the entire university community--and was trying to do a load of laundry while I worked. Although my landlady had warned me when I first moved in that my laundry machine had leakage problems, I had never noticed and never bothered to pay much attention. Yet when I went back into the room to take out my clothes, I saw that a great soapy puddle, about two inches deep, had formed over the entirety of the floor. Thinking quickly and, therefore, idiotically, I rushed into the kitchen, grabbed a coffee mug, and tried scopping all the excess water into the sink. In the meantime, water slowly seaped through the floor to my neighbors' apartment, dripping onto their bed and staining their ceiling and walls so that it looked as if an aggressive, shit-colored mold was invading their apartment.

Within minutes my neighbors were pounding on my door so loudly and violently that I thought that they were, in fact the secret police, come to arrest me for offending my class' sense of patriotism the day before by telling them that the school bathrooms were far more revolting than those in Japan (I had never been to Japan). Upon hearing this commotion out my door it was my natural and manly inclination to want to hide under my bed and then afterwards place the blame squarely on the shoulders of my Chinese roommate who was, at the time, not even home. Yet, sadly, some awful force compelled me to open the door and deal with my irate neighbors face to face, like a complete wuss. As usual, being honest and acting responsibly seemed to be useful only for making people yell at me even more.

I walked through my living room as one might towards a flogging (assuming, of course, that one did not desire to be flogged). After opening the door I was confronted with a visage of rage, mascara, and middle age and behind that visage was another, this one only slightly more masculine, and completely lacking any signs of mascara. The wife was standing there with her finger poised and at attention, ready to shove it in my direction and accuse me of the awfulness of which I knew I was guilty. Her expression seemed to be saying "The issue with the water is making me quite displeased. If I had a rigid enough spoon I would gouge out your eyes. Do you eat rice? I've heard that Americans don't eat any rice?"

But what she actually said was: unintelligible. My Chinese was awful back then. I understood something about things being wet downstairs. When I offered to giver her money to go home and shut up and pretend nothing ever happened, she said that she was very uncomfortable with the idea. As she was yelling at me her husband asked for my landlady's number and I gave it to him. Still pointing at me the wife forced her way into my apartment and looked around, then made a b-line for the room with the washing machine where, upon entering, she let out a gasp that indicated that she could hardly believe there was still so much ready to moisten their apartment. She grabeed a bucket (what genius!) and began scooping up water while I grabbed my mug, as there was only one bucket in the apartment. For a while we worked together in comraderie paling away the water and I even thought, for a brief moment, that perhaps I could call this motherly old Chinese woman 'mother,' and she could call me Lewis. But eventually she started yelling again.

At this point, when the yelling was renewed and I was ready to toss my neighbor out the window, my landlady arrived with her husband. Now, my landlady had expressed great trepidation at ever allowing a foreigner into one of her apartments. She made it very clear when I first moved in that she did not trust me, saying to my translator: "I do not trust him." The look on her face as she walked in was not as murderous as my nieghbor's, but it was much more disturbing and certainly showed that she was now certain of her initial estimation of me. All the contempt that she could hold within her seemed to be focused in her eyes and, when she glared at me, it seemed as if she was attempting to strip strip me down and flog me.

Yet she was not satisfied by simply shaming me with her eyes. She, too, began yelling at me and without stopping moved around my apartment and investigated it thoroughly (she had not yet even seen the flooded room), noting all aspects of my habitation that screamed of my personal filth and need to have a woman living me with me. She even yelled at me about my privacy curtain (note: you will never understand, and I can never adequately explain). Finally she made her way into the washing room, displaying a brave and determined countenance, as if she were a rescue worker about to investigate the scene of a great natural calamity.

It was obvious that she was mad. I was terrified. I heard someone mention the police. It was obvious that I needed someone who spoke far better Chinese than I, so I called my chinese friend, Wu, who showed up fifteen minutes later with his girlfriend. Now there were many couples in the room. Everyone was with someone except me. How sad and lonely I felt and for a while I thought about my first crush, Emily Perry, and then I thought about dinner because it was getting late. I quickly recovered and then asked my friend to please just allow me to give them money pay for the damages and make them go away and stop yelling. What followed was about an hour and a half more of debate and wrangling despite the fact that, I think, they were ready to accept my payment the minute I suggested it; however, to them no doubt the drama of the situation had not been adequately played out, I was trying to make a two act play out of one that really needed three, and they were determined to see it through to its deserved and necessary length. Finally, finally, finally, they accepted my donation and left, but not without first threatening that I might have to pay them the cost of a new air conditioner. It was an effective threat, because at this point all I wanted was this awful experience to be over. Eventually my landlady decided to leave too, but gave me a contemptuous look as she walked out the door, implying, I believe, that she was planning to soon return to tell me about how I needed a woman in my apartment because my dirty socks were scattered all about the floor.

I was thoroughly exhausted at this point. I thanked my friend and his girlfiriend and then after they left I lay down on my bed. It was now evening and the mosquitos that had snuck in during the day hovered all around me, their buzzing muffled by the whir of my air conditioner and the yelling of children just outside, a set of noises that, as I began to fall asleep, flowed together and became indistinguishable, a relentless, alien murmur following me and my thoughts into unconsciousness.

experience of two years ago part 3: and so -- blah blah blah

2006-03-03T14:41:00.000-08:00

None of this was all-together very dramatic. I was yelled at a great deal and lost a lot of money mostly mostly because of my own foolishness, and I was certainly never in any danger. But the issue was not the seriousness of the events, it was what they put into relief. Back home an event like this would have never progressed to such a hysterical stat. There was a combined effort on the part of all involved (except my friend) to target me, blame me, and get something out of me. Indeed, what influenced every single one of the actions, words, and feelings of my neighbors and landlady had very little to do with the actual problem. Granted, the flooding provided the initiative, but what drove their emotions and thoughts more than anything else was the fact that I was a foreigner. As a white American, this was a humbling, eye-opening and, I would argue, absolutely necessary experience.

it's now official -- curricula -- mental atrophy no more

2006-02-28T11:56:00.000-08:00

Things are coming together very quickly.

U----- in Chengdu has officially offered me a position as an English instructor and I have, of course, accepted. I will begin teaching there in the summer as part of a special program, then teach regular courses for the fall and spring semesters. However, as I mentioned before, I'm going to try to leave as early as April. A friend of mine--Brandon--lives in Chengdu and I can stay with him until June, finding part-time tutoring work to make sure I have some source of income, and just generally getting acclimated to the culture and city. After that I will probably visit other countries in Asia -- possibly either Mongolia or Kazakhstan (where I can visit another friend of mine in August) -- then I will return to teach the summer program at U----.

Once I start my regular teaching in the fall I will teach postgraduate courses called "Composition and Conversation." The curriculum will apparently be open-ended, meanign that I'll be able to focus more heavily on reading and writing--my preferred subjects for teaching.

It's been a long time since anything has happened to me that implied forward progress of any sort. I've been in a dull waiting period for about two years and this job offer has made me excited about my future in a way that I haven't been in years. When you're sucked into a job like mine at the library you forced to focus so much on making it bearable that you do not concentrate on getting yourself out of it. Not that the job itself--the activities and the people--was necessarily bad; rather, it was the situation, the complete stangnation, the absence of any feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction. In certain ways it seems unreal that my daily life will finally stopped being defined by this shitty neighborhood and this mind-numbing job--and I must say, it's really a testament to the quality of my friends that it will be at all difficult to leave this place behind.

anxious -- eager

2006-02-26T11:30:00.000-08:00

Awaiting the job offer.

If things go as planned, the scenario will be as follows: down to New York for the visa, back to Boston, brain-rot at the library, purchase plane ticket, think about bad things, good things, and my long dead dog Eli, consume great amounts of cheese, spend 30 hours in the air, stay with Brandon until he leaves, jump about the continent for a few months, return (to Chengdu), teach.

preparation -- mollification? -- other pondering

2006-02-25T12:37:00.000-08:00

There's nothing to do to prepare; or, rather, there is much to do to prepare, yet none of it will be of any use. Isolation, reading, recollection of the past experience and so on are all methods of adaptation that only work in the middle of it all--what I'm doing now is like swathing my skin with rubbing alcohol before the wound has appeard.