Xiamen Has Wonders For Us Yet

For my final final, I had to talk about my favorite holiday for 3 minutes.  Congratulations, you’ve now finished . . . kindergarten.  Grades are in, and as proof that I do better when I’m challenged, they are the worst semester grades I can remember.  I got 93 in Oral and 90 in Grammar, but 86 in Listening and HSK and an 82 in Newspaper Reading. 

Aleid and I celebrated by going to massage.  I asked for a man for the first time, and could really tell the difference.  Everything was much harder – mostly in that “hurts so good” way but sometimes beyond that.  At the end, he sat me up and did my shoulders one last time; it hurt so much that I nearly couldn’t breathe!  It felt like getting beaten up, honestly.  But at least it was only a 38 kuai beating!  (And I did feel good afterwards.)

We had lunch at a Thai restaurant (curry!!!) and then walked around exploring a nearby park that she’d always meant to explore.  The park was surprisingly big and completely Chinese, populated with men sleeping on every available horizontal surface and a crew shooting a TV show. 

We also hit up a store we’d never been to, in which I discovered a game that looks like Chinese monopoly!  Xiamen has wonders for us yet.

Aleid took me to a place on campus to get passport photos taken, so that I could have a nice one to be pasted on my graduation certificate.  I got a bunch printed, although they’re completely unnecessary in the US.  The only time you need passport photos is for, well, passports, and as a specialty product they come at a premium.  I remember getting some done last-minute for a Chinese visa application and paying the standard rate of $10/two photos.  The lady here even photoshopped me up so I look nice, but I only paid $5 for a sheet of passport photos and a sheet of 1” photos. 

I returned the favor by taking her to XiaDa’s souvenir shop, similar to our campus bookstores where you can buy university gear.  We were both looking for t-shirts but left empty-handed.  The thing is, universities in China don’t have things like mascots or school colors, so there was nothing especially ‘XiaDa’ about them except the seal.  Sillhouettes of trees, random blue ball wearing a mortarboard, lots of hearts – none of that would remind me of XiaDa. 

Shopping done, I met up with a friend to get pictures.  BinBin is the leader of the youth group at church and my go-to guy for official pictures of Bishop Cai’s ordination in May.  I used to think that BinBin didn’t like me, but now I think he was just busy.  He was surprised to learn that I was also an ME student (which, he said, explained why I was able to edit his thesis on helical grooves in cutting tools so well), and between that and the church, we talked for maybe two hours while the files transferred. 

I learned that he comes from a Buddhist family in the north of Fujian (my province), and joined the church after the example of some Catholic friends at university in Nanjing.  He said he would like to go to seminary but his family won’t allow it. 

He spoke several times about the lack of freedom in China – both generally, as opposed to America, and specifically in religion.  Apparently there are government officials who attend each Mass (at least on the weekends) and they call the bishop if they hear something they don’t like.  He says there are a lot of things they aren’t allowed to do – all stuff that never penetrates the language barrier to come to my attention.  I also, for the first time, heard a Chinese Catholic talk about underground believers.  He was introducing me to a friend who was headed to America soon, and said that he was also Catholic but “doesn’t come to church”.  I thought he meant a fallen-away Catholic, but then he clarified his meaning.  A lot of the underground Christians try to get to Europe and America, he said, but unlike other Chinese who go to make money and come back, they stay there because the situation is not good back home. 

I cut our conversation short because I had still more errands to run.  Eunice and I went to the shoe repair man, where I got two bags fixed and she got the sole of her shoes nailed closed.  We argued with the guy a lot – he didn’t want to do it the way I wanted him to do it, and he wanted too much money from Eunice – so finally she went off on him in Minnanhua.  It was totally unexpected, as I didn’t even know she spoke Minnanhua (the local dialect)!  All of a sudden she was just ranting, and although I couldn’t understand what she was saying I could tell that she was saying it fluently.  So.  Jealous. 

When I finally got around to taking a shower after running around all day, it was well into evening.  It’s good this way, as Xiamen becomes bearable after the sun goes down and the shower has a shot at “staying”.  We grabbed dinner to go – Peking roast duck from the supermarket and a bag of lychee from next door – and took a bus to Bailuzhou Park to catch the fountain and light show.  It was really impressive, actually, especially for something that happens every day!  I’m glad we made it out there before leaving Xiamen.  It was the perfect night to be outside, enjoying the show and engaging in a discussion of politics with a new Dutch girl. 

In one week I will be in the Hong Kong airport; only 7 days left to enjoy what Xiamen has to offer. 

Diederik’s Last Night in Town

I didn’t sleep after watching the World Cup final.  The s’mores gave me energy, I guess, and it was early evening in the US – a perfect time to talk to people back home, and one I’m rarely awake for.  By the time I did feel sleepy, it was 8:15 and I still had to take a shower before my finals started at 9 a.m.

My first final was Listening, a makeup from the test I missed last week.  It was just me and the teacher, which probably made my nodding off slightly more obvious.  I think I still did okay, though.

I had a half hour before my second final, so I went to our usual classroom and settled down for a nap, figuring my classmates would arrive soon and wake me up.  But (you probably saw this coming) that didn’t happen, and I woke up at 10:10 to an empty classroom.  I had missed class last week, and apparently they had changed classrooms without letting me know.  Good thing I have an awesome internal alarm clock – while I can be embarrassingly late to things, my body won’t let me sleep past the point of serious damage.  So I was 15 minutes late to my final, but I still finished second.

I went to lunch with my classmates (Aleid, Eunice, and Jelle) at the malatang soup place.  That stuff is amazingly delicious, even when the air outside is as blazing hot as the soup!  Then I was due for a nap – rather, long overdue!

I only ended my nap because Aleid and I decided to meet at the beach and I hoped to continue it there.  But there was too much stuff going on at the beach to sleep.  We demolished a kilo or so of lychee, I made a clog out of sand, we watched the couples taking wedding pictures as always, and we tried to figure out what people were digging for in the low tide area.  (Pirate treasure?  Worms?  Who knows?)

After a shower, we grabbed takeout for dinner and took it up to Diederik’s place for his last night in town.  It was like going back to the beginning, as my earliest memory of Diederik (and one of my first memories of Xiamen at all) was having drinks on his roof the night before our medical examination.  We had beautiful weather and a beautiful view, and all in all it was great to have a farewell conversation instead of goodbye party.  Some topics were off limits of course (the World Cup, Yerkin’s birthday feast, and finals), but that just meant we talked about other things.  Like weddings – and how Yerkin’s going to invite us to that feast.

As Yerkin said, you know it’s ending when you start talking about how it all began . . .

We progressed from the roof to malatang place for barbecue – of course.  While we ate, Eunice and I started a tradition of making people pose with my fan.

Best prop EVER!

There was another farewell party at Paradise, this one for Katrin and Chris.  We went for a little while, but when we only knew the two of them it got depressingly obvious how many of our friends had already left.  It’s getting down to the final few, where I wave goodbye and maybe there’s no one to wave back?

下课! (Class is Over!)

I went to my last class at XiaDa this morning!  It might be my last Chinese class ever, but I may audit Advanced Chinese at TU next year, so we’ll see.  It was really anticlimactic; we did a bunch of exercises and then it was done.

I got online when I got back to my room and found out that a friend of mine is pregnant!  It kind of sucks to learn news like that online; punctuation just isn’t enough. 

I also read the news – more updates on the oil spill.  A few of the companies involved are only familiar to me from my time at TU – Halliburton, Anadarko, etc. – and I wonder what reaction, if any, there has been back there.

I had lunch with YongZhi, which was probably not that fun for him.  We walked to West Gate in the midday heat and I was so hot that I didn’t even have energy to complain about it.  We ate mostly in silence.  I am a horrible friend – especially when it’s hot.

Ticket to Ride

I have a ticket home!  I will be leaving Xiamen GaoQi airport at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, July 20th, just under three weeks from now.  After a 26-hour journey passing through Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and Chicago, including nearly 20 hours in the air, I should arrive back home (well, at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport) around 9 a.m. Central US time. 

I’m reasonably pumped about this.

Now I have the next three weeks to enjoy my life here in Xiamen.  And, of course, to pack.  I can check two 50-lb bags on the way back, which seems pretty good.  For some reason the Americas have different baggage rules than the rest of the world – the rest of the world getting majorly screwed.  I can carry 100 lbs; they can carry 44.  I pay 25 USD to check another bag; they pay approximately that per kilo over their baggage allowance.  Does anyone know why this is?  At any rate, it’s another reason I’m glad to be an American. 

Class was unusually fun today.  This was probably because we spent most of Oral class watching a TV show, and most of Listening class watching a movie.  It may sound like a waste of time, but I think its great.  It’s way more interesting than the textbook and actually applicable in conversations.  I’m done with those two classes now, except for the finals, and have only two more Grammer lessons before that’s done with, too!  I guess this is what happens when you go on vacation the last week of the semester . . .

As of 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, it’s the freaking weekend and I’m about to have me some fun!

Supply and Demand

We’ve put up with our share of crap from the weather in Xiamen this year.  For about five months, if you asked a Xiamenite when the rainy season is, they would respond, without fail, “n月和n+1月” (essentially, this month and next month).  And, from about February to mid-June, it was true.

But the blazing sun and brilliant blue sky have been out these past few days, and it has been glorious.  It’s been hot (35C or 100F) but not as deathly humid as before.  It reminds me of Texas, or (if the wind is blowing) Oklahoma.  Except there are beaches here.

I had my first final today, in newspaper reading.  I was really excited about the class at first but somewhere along the line (between the second and the third teacher) it became newspaper analysis and started to suck.  Glad to be done with it.

I rewarded myself by spending the afternoon at the beach with a book.  A book I’ve already read, granted, but that’s the reality of life in China for me.  I didn’t go in the water, just sat by the large concrete mice (computer, not animal) that are there for some reason.  I had the beach basically to myself, which would have made more sense if it had been during a downpour or a snowstorm or a tsunami instead of an insanely gorgeous day.  But this is one of the perks of Asians’ cultural dislike for dark skin – sometimes understandably mistaken as a downright fear of the sun.

I should admit – one of my purposes in sitting out there was to get a tan.  I feel slightly conflicted about this, because I dislike the importance attached to skin color in societies all over the world.  I guess I think I look better with slightly darker skin (hopefully to cover up those mosquito bite scars) but what I think is more interesting is the connotation that different skin colors carry.

Because of course, skin color is just a convenient proxy for the connotations associated with it.  This is why Americans love bronzed bodies and Asians treasure their porcelain skin.  (See?  Even the words differ; Americans would more commonly say ‘pasty’.)  In societies where many labor under the sun, skin untouched by its rays is a sign of wealth or prestige keeping it from a darker fate.  In societies where many spend their lives indoors, only those with the money and time to exercise, relax, or travel enjoy prolonged exposure to the sun. 

But over time, the connection between skin color and what it signifies becomes so close that the two are seemingly one.  And instead of that skin arising naturally from those circumstances, obtaining that skin color through alternate methods is a way to create the facade of that lifestyle.  So this is why my classmates at Coon Rapids High School were bright orange in the dead of winter, a physical impossibility using natural sunlight.  And this is why my friends who work construction in Jilin wear layers of clothing all summer, to preserve their white skin in spite of the reality of their jobs.

It all seems kind of silly to me; I’m not trying to fool anyone here with my skin color.  I want it to speak the truth – and the truth is that I live 3 minutes walk from a beach.  I want to have enjoyed this luxury by the time I leave, and my tan is just a convenient meter for measuring my progress. 

 

This evening, Carlos invited me to go out with his work friends to play Catan.  We had dinner and [two bowls of] shaved ice and fruit, and then went to their house to play.  Carlos won both games last time we played 6-player, so I warned them not to let him win.  They really believed me, so Carlos got crushed and I won.  I won the second one fair and square, though.  And things are back to how they should be :) 

Catan is such an amazing game, really.  I am continually amazed at how simple it is, how perfectly balanced the rules are, how many times it can be played without ever getting boring.  I want to do research on Catan – what kind of degree program would that be?  Supply and demand, game theory, statistics?  Sounds like economics to me.  Hmmmm. 

We played until 1 a.m. but it didn’t even feel late.  I guess several nights of 2:30 a.m. football matches will do that to you, eh?  There is no football tonight, day one of a two-day break before the quarter finals . . . and its weird.  I haven’t watched every night, but I have generally known who was playing and looked for the results as the games ended.  I haven’t even been a football fan for three weeks, but when Carlos put his head in his hands, groaning “What will I do when it’s over?”, I kind of knew how he was feeling.  True story. 

 

I got home to a few messages on QQ.  Joyce, a.k.a. Worst Friend Ever, is trying to rekindle our friendship; I think she needs to improve her oral English for something.  Allen, a guy I met once at English Corner, is trying to take me to dinner before I leave.  Earlier in the year I would have tried to fit them in, but tonight I was honest and said I was going to be pretty busy until I leave China.  It’s not like I’m dying or anything, but the truth is that I only have a certain number of days left here and, after this long, I have a pretty good idea of how I want to spend them.  I’ve done the fake friend thing here; it has its merits.  But by the law of supply and demand, time with the people I care about has gotten infinitely valuable, and it’s hard to compete with that. 

It’s A Mystery

Another success this morning!  I’m trying to plan a big celebration for the Fourth of July on Sunday, hopefully involving a boat and obscene amounts of food.  Last semester, Jimmy arranged all such excursions, but this time it’s all me. 

I set out this morning to the general ferry area, knowing how much we paid last time and basically nothing else.  But you know what?  It was enough.  I found the right place rather easily, as it was – conveniently for those of us who read Chinese – marked “place to rent boats”.  There were three shirtless men inside, so for once I was almost as aware that I was a woman as I was that I was a foreigner.  But I told them that we wanted a boat, when, where, and how much we wanted to pay, and they said okay.  So we have us a boat!

It took way less time than I expected.  This is probably because, when scheduling things in China, I start with the amount of time a given task should take to complete, multiply it by 5, and add on two hours just in case.  I remember at TU scheduling meetings back to back with dinners, dinners back to back with events, and running errands in between everything else.  Not so in China.  The most I will plan for any given day here is three things – morning, afternoon, and evening – plus meals.  Run to the post office to mail a letter?  That’s going to take all morning.  Mass?  Just block out all of Saturday evening.  Grabbing a few groceries?  An entire afternoon, gone – and if you go too late, evening as well. 

Class today was good.  I found the perfect balance of participating in discussion and playing Mahjong on my cell phone so as to optimize learning and minimize boredom.  Chinese has been easy lately.  I think I’m just coasting.

Today was a big day for goodbyes.  Deni, Benjamin, Lester, and Vikki all left, but luckily I ran into three of them as they were literally on their way out!  I also went through my cell phone and deleted some numbers so I don’t keep trying to invite Kristina to stuff.  It was pretty sad.

This evening, I took Shawn to Mass with me.  It was his first time going to Catholic church, although I think he’d been to one of the international Christian fellowships (the kind that don’t talk about God, though).  It was interesting, helping this Chinese guy follow along with the Mass – in Chinese.  I really wonder, because Christianity is not a part of their culture as it is in the US, how much of it he understood?  All references to today’s saints, Peter and Paul, certainly went over his head, and there must be more things like that.  Even beyond the concepts, does he even have the vocabulary?  If I say 主教 (bishop) or 告解 (confession), does he have any concept of what those mean? 

But I guess my Catholic Chinese vocabulary isn’t all that great either.  I don’t know what to call the hosts, other than “Jesus’ body”, and we kind of had an argument over whether or not it was bread.  I guess I don’t really know exactly what 面包 means, but I don’t know what else to call it! 

I will also say, this year has given me a great appreciation for missionaries to foreign lands.  It’s hard explaining what we believe in another language!  My familiarity with the Mass has helped, of course, but I’m still mostly grasping at straws.  Shawn was really curious about the Trinity, so I tried to explain it . . . I know the names of the Three Persons thanks to the Sign of the Cross; Trinity Sunday was a few weeks ago so I know “three persons in one God” is 三位一体; and the Mystery of Faith is 信德的奥迹.  I just kind of put those pieces together and prayed.

I talked to Bishop Cai after Mass – we’re getting a new deacon!  Looks like there is one more opportunity for me to participate in a special event with my parish here before going home.  The ordination is on the 17th of July, and I plan to be flying out on the 20th.  For the record, three weeks from right now I will be sitting in the Hong Kong airport – adventuring towards home.

Okay, That Was An Exciting Game

We had a test at 8 this morning.  I didn’t get home until after 3, and didn’t sleep til 4, and while it seems that I should feel like this was a bad idea, I don’t.  The test was fake – although really, when I think about it, what parts of our classes here aren’t?

But after the test our teacher taught us some soccer terminology which, in terms of conversations with actual Chinese people, is seriously the most useful lesson we’ve ever learned in that class.  Coach, referee, goalkeeper, [a bunch of position names I don’t know in English], favorite, upset.  I also learned that yellow cards accumulate between games, but that was in English.

Carmen and Dorothy, two women from English Mass, invited me to Marco Polo (Xiamen’s nicest hotel) for lunch at noon.  After a mild panic attack over having nothing to wear to a place like that, I met up with them for a very nice lunch.  We had dimsum (Cantonese) and a waitstaff who smiled, responded quickly, and changed our plates between dishes.  Crazy! 

The main event of the day, though, was the US-Slovenia game.  Kristina and I had been trash-talking for a week already – as well as we can when neither of us is very knowledgeable or usually very passionate about soccer.  We went to dinner first, enjoying the time while we were still friends.  [For dessert, we had no-bake brownies that I had made in an effort to 1) use up my can of sweetened condensed milk and 2) attract (bribe?) fans to the American side.]

Maybe it was just my nation’s pride at stake, but I thought this game was exciting from the very start.  Unfortunately, it was mostly the bad kind of exciting throughout the first half – Slovenia scoring twice, our goalkeeper miles away both times.  Most people were cheering for Slovenia, the underdog, but a lot of the time it was just me and Kristina yelling at our players.  She’s about 3 games behind me in soccer knowledge, which is pretty funny – I got to watch her learn what offsides is! 

During halftime, I remembered why I don’t watch sports (well, one of the reasons).  I can only care about a game if I really care about one of the teams, and I can only care about a team if I have a deep personal connection.  I’m too much of an Army brat without roots to get excited about one part of America competing with another, but I can get behind my university or my country.  So, especially with Kristina (Slovenian) sitting right next to me, I had my heart in the game and my pride on the line.  But I don’t like it when my emotions are dependent on the actions of others . . . I don’t know how you Chiefs and Lions fans handle it!

I sought the solace of Carlos, my Spanish friend who recently experienced the agony of a loss, and he reminded me that we still had a chance.  Sure enough, we scored right after play resumed and, later, we scored again!  It was glorious. 

We scored again in the last five minutes, which should have won us the game.  But when I say “we scored”, I mean “the ball went into the Slovenian net” and nothing else.  The ref called it offsides and that was that.  I’m far too ignorant – and know it – to make my own judgments on officials’ calls, but from what all of my expert friends said it should have counted.  But the game was quite dirty – at times even resembling American football – and apparently the same official missed what should have been a red card earlier, so it seems more like bad calls than biased ones. 

Oh well.  At least this way Kristina and I are still friends.

After the game, we went to check out a beach party and then to Paradise for another going-away party.  Sietze leaves tomorrow! 

Again, I only caught the first half of the 2:30 game (England vs. Algeria) but saw later that it ended in a 0-0 tie.  I really love the NYT sports writer:

If Robert Green has been the most ridiculed man in England, he may soon have company — the rest of the nation’s soccer team.

We still have a chance!  Oh goodness, I can’t handle this stress . . .

The Quick Way To Learn A Language

After a weekend that wasn’t and three weekdays that weren’t, we finally had kind of a ‘normal’ day (quite hard to come by in China).  Today actually resembled a Thursday, with afternoon class and everything. 

But of course, a ‘normal’ day in China is still crazy.  Our Listening teacher told us that our final will be on the 8th of July, which is both an entire week before the finals week as indicated on the schedule we got at the beginning of the year, and right in the middle of my trip to Hangzhou.  She moved it up because a bunch of students are leaving early.  Um, so??  You’re free to leave school early in America, too – but you have to accept the consequences, including missing the final and not receiving a score.  But if there’s one thing our teachers here excel at, it’s pandering to the foreigners. 

I think this is so ridiculous – and totally ineffective, too, as students have been leaving in increasing amounts for several weeks already.  It’s part of the reason why our scholarships, which might have been an intelligent investment on the part of the Chinese government, are actually just a way for them to throw away money.  We’re completely free to miss weeks of class at a time, including finals, with absolutely no repercussions.  Part of this is because many of us aren’t degree-seeking students, but considering we draw a $250 monthly stipend, I could think of some financial carrots and sticks that they could be employing.

But it’s really not a big deal.  I should have no problem taking the finals when I want either. 

 

Today also wasn’t quite normal because, as of today, I have been studying Chinese for one year.  That’s kind of crazy, right?  A year ago, I knew about 100 characters that I learned from a “Your First 250 Chinese Characters” book.  My grammar was nonexistent and my vocabulary was one-third basic essentials, one-third construction or farm-related, and one-third plain wrong.  I knew the four tones theoretically but couldn’t produce them consistently or even recognizably.  I thought I could read pinyin but still didn’t understand why ‘qu’ and ‘chu’ don’t rhyme, and why ‘yi’, ‘si’, ‘chi’ & ‘hui’ all sound completely different.  I could “get by” with extremely patient Chinese but only if they used my very specific set of vocabulary (specific and very randomly selective; for instance I had trouble believing that 也 was an actual word that people use). 

Yes, it was one year ago that I began studying Chinese.  I took an intensive summer course at the University of Minnesota, in which my 20 classmates and I covered a year’s worth of material in 10 weeks.  I had a weekend of ‘summer’ once school ended, and then came to Xiamen where the learning process hasn’t been confined to four hours per day.  It kind of seems like a year isn’t that long, but with a year as intense as this one has been, it feels about right.

But if you’re daunted by such a year, don’t worry.  Apparently there was a much easier way to go about this language-learning thing, which a friend of mine was kind enough to point out to me:

Michelle: Hey congratulations on your scholarship. That’s fantastic.
me: hey! thanks
Michelle: You should know though . . . I got a Google Targeted ad from your email that their is a program where you can learn foreign languages in just one week, so you are wasting your time.  $19.95 plus shipping – I can give you a scholarship for that.
me: oh man, I feel silly now
Michelle: yeah
me: where were you a few months ago . . .
Michelle: You should do a little research next time.
me: well, I’ve learned my lesson now
Michelle: good

 

While our language courses will continue for nearly a month (if we feel like hanging around for them), the other programs have already been finished a few weeks.  This means the frequency of going-away parties is really picking up; tonight it was time to say goodbye to Jeremie and Justine, two of Aleid’s French roommates.  There was a party at their apartment, so we headed over after dinner.  Another French guy, Benjamin, was the DJ, playing a mix of 90’s hits and music from all over the world.  I must say, that was my first time singing Dragostea Din Tei with Romanians!  There were also requests for some classic dance songs, and we somehow found the floor space to do a rousing Cotton-Eyed Joe and Macarena.  It was amazing.

I’m usually one of the first to leave parties but tonight I wasn’t tired so I stayed around.  We danced, we talked, we sang, and apparently we got a little loud because they turned the electricity off.  This, of course, called for French drinking songs bellowed in the lighter-illuminated room, but somehow they successfully begged the guard to turn the electricity back on.  It wasn’t until they turned it off again that we left.

The French were playing Mexico in an hour or so, so we decided to go to Paradise to watch the game.  We hung out on the side of the road, about 30 foreigners waiting for taxis to take us, four-at-a-time, to the bar.  The number slowly decreased until there were about two or three taxis worth of people still waiting, when we discovered an alternative better to taxis!

A bus – Xiamen public transit sort of bus – drove by, slowed down to stare at us, and someone asked if it would take us to Minzu Road.  The guy thought about it for a second, but once we offered him 20 kuai ($3), he agreed.  We have no idea what a bus was doing driving along that road at 2 a.m., but I’m glad it was!  We rode in style, with tons of room, for the same amount of money we would have paid for one taxi.  I’m kind of jealous that Jeremie and Justine got to do that on their last night in country . . .

I didn’t stay too long at Paradise, but I did watch half of the French/Mexican game.  It was even more boring than the previous boring first halves I’ve watched, so maybe I’ll start watching only second halves?

Fake Tuesday

I tried to turn off my lights twice last night before going to bed, but it turned out the light streaming in was coming from the rising sun.  Oops.  How irresponsible of me – that sort of stuff may fly on any other Saturday night, but it was fake-Monday and I had class today, fake-Tuesday. 

I nearly canceled lunch plans with XuLei but managed to get out of bed by 11 so we could get delicious malatang soup.  Then I had listening class – and oral class, but I skipped because I can’t be a real good student on fake Tuesday.  Listening class was worth going to, though, because we watched a cartoon about the origins of the Dragon Boat Festival, the holiday that is messing up our weekend. 

In a nutshell: There was a lazy/corrupt king and a wise man who advised him to join with another kingdom in order to avoid being conquered.  After the king sent him into exile, the wise man saw how difficult things were for the common people and, overwhelmed by his inability to do anything about it, jumped off a cliff into the ocean.  The common people were moved by his suicide, rowed boats out to the site where he went under and threw food into the water to feed him and to keep the fish from eating his body.  Later, he appeared to a man in a dream.  The man noticed that he was very thin, and asked if they weren’t throwing in enough food.  The wise man told him that the fish were eating the food before he could get to it, so they decided to wrap it up in bamboo leaves before throwing it into the ocean.  Thus the holiday began, with 粽子 and boat races as it’s distinctive marks, began.

Interesting no?  I don’t think such a holiday, based as it is on a suicide, would fly in America.  We have all sorts of honors reserved for those who are killed in pursuit of the greater good (from war to self defense to assassinations), but the line pretty much stops before suicide.  I can’t see his death as anything but a meaningless cop-out, both an admission of defeat to the trials of everyday life and an ineffective protest to failed to effect change and didn’t even really attempt to do so.  Also, it just seems to add insult to injury that his death, brought about by his sadness over the conditions of the working people, probably made their lives worse when they started throwing food into the ocean.  Way to go, dude. 

 

Instead of going to oral class, I went to the movies with Aleid and a visiting friend of hers.  We watched Prince of Persia and followed that up with Arabic food from the Uighur men.  There are a bunch of movies out or coming out that I want to see, which is good because I have basically no plans for the fake three-day weekend that starts tomorrow. 

The movie was good, but I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t had a killer headache.  I’ve had a headache continually for the last several days, probably because of the weather.  It’s not hot, but it’s been rainy off and on and the humidity hasn’t dropped below 90% in days.  This makes it hard to tell if I’m sweating, getting rained on, or if water vapor is spontaneously condensing on my skin.  I waver between hot and cold every four minutes; it’s uncomfortable to the point that I’ve had trouble sleeping! 

 

I didn’t watch a soccer game tonight, although I did do a bit of trash-talking with Kristina ahead of the US-Slovenia game on Friday.  I also heard that there are actual concerns about the health of our goalkeeper, Tim Howard – as in, there’s talk of broken ribs.  I feel kind of bad now, because I was telling my dad last night how silly footballers are when they’re dramatic about injuries.  It’s just that most of them cry wolf, and it causes me to doubt them all.  I wonder if this is one reason why soccer isn’t popular in America – an athlete with the ability to feel pain is about as well-loved as someone who kills himself.

Big Game Today, Eh?

It’s opposite day or something.  Nothing is the way it should be, and nothing makes sense.  I mean, what kind of Saturday morning begins with getting ready for a 10 a.m. class?  I’m not sure how much control Beijing has over the sun and the moon, but they apparently have the power to turn Saturday in Monday and Sunday into Tuesday.  In America we have “Columbus Day Observed” for when it doesn’t already fall on a Monday; in China they have “weekend observed” for when holidays don’t line up properly. 

Class was weird, too.  When discussing possible uses for the word 原谅 (to forgive or pardon), the teacher said that it couldn’t be used for enemies or big sins.  Granted, we use a different word in church when we talk about forgiveness and pardon, but is it possible that this is also a symptom of a cultural difference that has possibly sprung from religious influences?  The feeling I got from the teacher was that she thought these things were unforgivable; the most she would allow is that “Maybe you can just not hate your enemies anymore”. 

Yesterday, I asked a friend, “Where are you going to watch the game?” which displays such an uncharacteristic awareness of sporting current events that it momentarily renders me speechless.  But today was even weirder.  It was midafternoon and there I was, wearing an official (well, probably not) US team jersey and making phone calls to my soccer-obsessed friends trying to find someone else willing to pull an all-nighter to watch the US-England game starting at 2:30 a.m. Beijing time.  Wha??  This is crazy talk, I know, but an article previewing the match mentioned the first time the US faced England in the World Cup in 1950 – when “an amateur American team featuring a dishwasher and a hearse driver beat a squad of English professionals in Brazil”, and that sort of underdog story is just what I go for. 

Further evidence that I’ve been possessed by a body-snatching pod person: I bet on the World Cup.  An international association here organized a pool and I threw in my 20 kaui ($3) because it seemed to be part of the experience.  It turns out they’re emailing the results out periodically, which is kind of unfortunate, but I was heartened to see that, after the first nights’ games, Carlos and I are sucking equally bad.   

If you’re wondering, “Who is this and what have they done with Maria?” – don’t worry.  As a staunchly American friend of mine correctly noted on facebook:

30 days till the World Cup is over. 54 days until the start of the NFL. My mantra: "This too shall pass."

 

I went to Mass this evening and was beckoned up to the choir loft.  For some reason they’ve been doing the Latin Misa de Angelis Mass parts again recently, which I’m actually not enthusiastic about.  While I am a proponent of general proficiency in Latin, I don’t think that it should replace the vernacular for most occasions, and should never be used if the congregation doesn’t have the resources to participate. 

After Mass, Sister gave me a 粽子 (sticky rice treat wrapped in bamboo leaves, the traditional food of the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival) and Little Brother walked with me to the bus stop.  We talked about Nickelback (always) and the World Cup (he likes Spain).  He asked me to loan him 100 kuai, which I did in return for him agreeing to help me find two others to sing my absolute favorite church song in 4-part harmony.  As I got on the bus to go back to campus, he said “Bye-bye . . . sister?”  It took me an inordinately long time to learn his Chinese name, and I’m really fond of him in the way I imagine I would be fond of a little brother, so I usually call him 弟弟 or 小弟 (Little Brother) instead of 嘉晟 – but this was the first time he’d ever called me sister.  I think he’ll pay me back, but I kind of feel like he already did.

 

I made dinner, studied a bit, and then went to sleep around midnight.  I slept fitfully, though, because I was constantly being interrupted by phone calls.  The football-crazy Dutch guys all wimped out on the prospect of a 2:30 game, and my American friends (okay, let’s be honest here – American friend) kept changing plans.  It wasn’t looking good for the home team until I got a call around 1 a.m. from a Russian friend and her Chinese boyfriend looking for someone to watch the game with.  Score!  (I mean, gooooooooooooooal!)

Londoners was both a) too far and b) obviously English, so we decided to stay close to West Gate.  We went to 星期8, a little coffeeshop/bar, where we joined three Chinese fans and the staff for the game.  It was a good game, and I was glad I stayed up for it.  There were minutes (minute 4, for instance) when I was glad we hadn’t gone to Londoners, and there were times when I wish we had gone so I could have gloated. 

 

I’ve now watched three complete soccer games, which by American standards I think makes me an expert.  No, but seriously, watching soccer makes me realize how much football knowledge I’ve assimilated just by living in America, going to a Division I college, and having male friends.  I probably already understand the rules of soccer better than I’ll ever grasp the principles of football, but I have a much better sense of what’s normal in American football.  I know what kinds of scores are ordinary, what kinds are ridiculous, and what kinds are impossible.  I know that interceptions suck but happen all the time, sacking sucks more and happens less often, and I’ve never seen accidentally score on themselves. 

I have no such standards with which to compare when watching soccer.  Based on the game last night, I was starting tou think that half of the time the ball goes into the net, it will be disallowed on account of offsides.  But in tonight’s game there were no such calls, so now I don’t know what to think!  Also, I thought England’s goalie looked stupid grasping at straws while the ball rolled casually into the goal he was trying to protect, but thought maybe that kind of embarrassment happened every now and then.  According to this article, though, “Green’s blunder will be remembered as long as Bill Buckner’s immortal misplay of a grounder is remembered in Boston” which, I’m assuming, means something to people who know something about baseball. 

Also, for all my newfound soccer expertise, it has yet to translate into Chinese.  My Russian friend and I only speak Chinese together, which meant a lot of our comments sounded like games of Taboo where all actual soccer words were off-limits. 

Me: “Did they just . . . you know, where they get a point?  The thing where the ball goes in?  What’s that called?”

Hannah: “I think that your . . . you know, that guy.  The one in the orange?  He’s not bad.”

The good news is, speaking Chinese after 3 in the morning is like a quadruple bonus.  I even learned a word – “draw” (as in, “the game was a draw”) is 平. 

 

You know something funny?  Of all the things I’ve done since coming to China, the time I felt the closest to Americans back home was while I was watching this soccer game, of all things.  All the holidays and anniversaries of personal significance happened here 13 or 14 hours before they did back home, to the point that they often felt like two separate events.  The daily, weekly, and yearly cycles of life here and back home are also quite different, so everything from mealtimes and weekends to finals and vacations were also out of sync.  The time difference proved too much for the Winter Olympics, so I ended up just reading about the results online the next day instead of watching the events live with my compatriots.  But I made the effort to watch this game live, which meant that – for however brief a moment – I was doing the exact same thing as some people back home.  I knew my parents were watching, so during both the disappointing early score for England and our exciting goal later, I marveled at the way that this was unfolding before our eyes – a world apart yet, in some way, almost together.