The Brain Dump

Christina and I use a travel alarm clock to wake us up in the morning, and the alarm on said alarm clock dings and then tells us the ungodly hour at which we are waking along with the temperature. That's all well and good. . . .

But lately it's been acting a little . . . funny. It started when the clock told us that it was "47 degrees" when it was really 74. It corrected itself about a minute later--by itself, I might add. 47-74, that's an easy mistake, you might say.

But!

Then it said that it was "103 degrees" when it was no where near that. And then I realized--

Gasp!

The clock is using hyperbole!

The robots are learning!

What next? Pleonasm? Aposiopesis? . . . Sarcasm?!

Soon the robots will make art, or no--become art critics! Their biting critiques of our movies, our music, our literature will shame us into oblivion. They'll flood the market with their own mathematically perfect creations. Grid paintings! Mathematical metaphors!! Binary solos!!!

The first signs are here, people. We must arm ourselves. The revolution is coming!

Scrounging for in-class activities, I've started playing songs for my students in order for them to practice pronunciation and generally expand their vocabularies. So far, we've listened to: "Suddenly I See," by the indomitable KT Tunstall; "Do You Realize," by the Flaming Lips; "Take Me Out," by Franz Ferdinand; and, finally, "Big, Big World," by none other than Emilia. That last one was a concession made to one of my more demanding classes, as they did not care for "Suddenly I See."

Teaching a song does make you think a little harder about what its saying. It also makes you stretch as much as possible for some kind of meaning. For instance, here's what I came up with for "Take Me Out" (which I picked only because it was a fun rock song):

It was a common belief in Europe up through the Elizabethan Era that when a person orgasmed, they lost a little bit of their "life energy." Subsequently, another way of saying "to orgasm" was "to die." Now. Looking at the lyrics ("So if you're lonely/You know I'm here waiting for you/I'm just a crosshair/I'm just a shot away from you/And if you leave here/You leave me broken, shattered, I lied/I'm just a crosshair/I'm just a shot, then we can die/I know I won't be leaving here with you"), I picture a guy standing at a bar in a disco, getting a drink and scoping out the ladies. He spots one and he beckons to her, telling her that he's here if she's lonely. He tells her he's a crosshair, a shot away from her, meaning (as I see it) that if she would just look at him she would see how close he is. He jokes a little about Romantic notions of love (being "broken" or "shattered" when you're love leaves) to this complete stranger. Then he says "I'm just a shot, then we can die." So here's where the Elizabethan "death" comes in (heh . . . comes in (hey-ohhhhhhhhh!)). He's saying point your guns at me, baby, and we can "die." Ohhhhhhh yeah . . .

Now, not wanting to explain what an "orgasm" is to my students, who are possibly the most sexually naive people on the planet (they know nothing about sex, they aren't allowed to date in high school, they rarely date in college . . . when I even mention Christina in class, they all go "OooooOOOooh"--not unlike a studio audience watching Kelly Kapowski peck Zack Morris on the cheek), I told them instead that it was believed in Europe that you died a little bit when you fell in love. For my later classes I made up some BS about how your souls came together and it was your lonely soul that died and was reborn together with the soul of your love. Whatever. So "Take Me Out" became not a song about some dude trying to get laid, but a man searching for love . . . at a dance club. He's not confident ("I know I won't be leaving her with you") but he's persistent (why the lyrics repeat so much in the second part of the song). Thus, the "take me out" of the song becomes both: "Take me out on a date" and take me out--as in, kill me--so we can fall in love (or . . . have orgasms, whichever you want to believe).

So all of this was fine until I wrote out the lyrics to "Big, Big World," which, by the by, is, like, one of the vaguest songs about love ever. I hit a bit of a snag on the chorus. "But I do, do feel that I do, do will miss you much." I do will miss you much? Nevermind the "do will" part. Is "miss you much" right? I guess you can miss a person very much . . . "I miss you very much" . . . That's grammatical, right? But to just miss someone much? . . . They all knew the song, which didn't help. How do you tell a group of students that they're learning a song that doesn't use standard grammar and break their spoony little hearts? Well, I could not.

So now I'm lying to my students about European beliefs and teaching them non-standard grammar. I am clearly the greatest teacher alive!

Well, my photo album problem on this blog has failed to fix itself by itself and I am at a loss as to what to to do. I emailed blogspirit about it and we'll see if anything comes of that. In the meantime, I got an account on Snapfish, which I think I can make work.

Try clicking on this to see my first round of photos. . . .

The url is: http://cdw1103chinapictures.snapfish.com/snapfish

You'll need a Snapfish account, but is that so much to ask? If it asks you for a password, try: zhongguophoto (SEE COMMENTS! SEE COMMENTS!)

I hope that works. If not, leave me a comment and I'll try to find another solution.

Mood: Broody

Music: This Place Is a Prison, The Postal Service

China has not made it easy to keep up with my usual Pic o' the Week's (last week we had no power, the week before we had no internet), but I have one this time, so I got that going for me. It's a picture of the new bars that were installed on the outside of our windows. Now I know what you're thinking--Chris, we told you not to make fun of Mao and call them Orientals--no, no. The bars were put there with our consent. We had them installed because last week someone broke into our apartment during the wee hours of the night.

He (She? It? They?) opened the kitchen window, which is loud and woke Christina up. I (he who sleeps through earthquakes) did not stir. Christina told me that she came out into the living room to see what the noise was but couldn't see anything wrong. It wasn't till the next morning when I went to put the kettle on the stove that I saw our kitchen window--a window we never open because there is no screen--was wide fucking open. I asked Christina if she happened to open it. That's when she told me about the noise that woke her up.

So we guess Christina's coming out to the living room scared whoever it was off. I gotta hand it to whoever it was--we live on the second floor and there are some thick wires that would make it hard to get to our window. Robert, the New Zealander, thinks whoever it was thought the apartment was empty. But I ask why, then, would (s)he want to get in?

We made the school officials install better locks on the windows and they offered the bars. We reluctantly assented, and so here they are:

I'm developing an on again, off again relationship with China, it seems. As in, some days (today, for instance), our power is on. Other days (the first half of this week, for instance), the power is completely cut off. From Sunday morning to Wednesday around midnight. Snip--no power. In all fairness, though, we were warned it would happen. Monday afternoon, I believe it was, a day and a half in, we received a phone call--yes, the phone still worked--from Robert, one of the other foreign teachers, informing us that he had just been informed by the Vice Dean of the Foreign Language Department that we would be out of power till Wednesday.

Room-temperature refrigerator, the coldest showers I can remember, no reading after 7pm, not till we got some candles--candles from Robert, coincidentally, the nearest stores being out--it was a joyous start to the week.

What really astounded me, though--is astounded the right word? yes, well . . . I'll use it--what really astounded me was the reaction from the people. The Chinese, that is, who also lost power. Calm as Hindu cows. Did it bother them at all? I don't know. But there weren't the riots I was expect. Imagine, if you will, the power being cut--with no warning--to an entire city block for three days in America. Pick whichever city you would like.

Christina said to me, "China had to've been the birthplace of Zen philosophy," as we walked down the dark sidewalk to our apartment building's gate, Chinese people gathering with chairs from their apartments to huddle underneath the few random building lights that still, miraculously had power. Children laughed, shining flashlights in each others' faces. None of the frustration and annoyance that we felt evident at all in them.

Robert tells us, "This is just how things get done in China." The people don't get mad, they can't get mad, because this is just how things are done. Cultural indignation wells inside of me, and I have to fight it down, unclench my fists, find a way to distract myself from the stress.

Should they be pissed? Should I learn to just go with the flow? This is perhaps the biggest cultural difference between America and China that I have noticed--improvisational business. The Chinese, it seems, are unable to make plans. Like a puppy at a garbage heap, they sift through the waste of the day until they spot something shiny and go chasing after it, dragging you and anyone else they need along with them. And I get mad at the Chinese for not getting mad about it. A Chinese rule of thumb: Anyone with any kind of power sets the agenda and everyone else has to fall in line.

Americans have a reputation for being self-centered, egotistical, etc. The Chinese, on the other hand, supposedly stress a communal agenda. This has not been my experience. Here we just get a different flavor of self-centeredness. Whether it's random strangers walking up to me and asking for anything from a photo to private English lessons or university leaders who call twenty minutes before a meeting that I knew nothing about twenty seconds before, there is a common thread, and it is not efficiency or the communal good--it's convenience. Convenience to them.

I met the other day a foreign teacher, named Ian, at another university. He's from New Zealand and has been teaching in Asia for five years (two in Thailand, two somewhere else I can't remember). "You hear the stories about the Chinese," he said, "and you think you know what you're in for, but that hasn't been my experience at all. I have a totally different opinion of them from when I first arrived."

Funny thing, Ian. Me too.

I invite you to imagine diarrhea on a squat toilet.

Yes . . . yes . . . really soak that image in. Here you are: pants around your ankles, trying to stay upright, to your right sits a small wastepaper basket full of used toilet paper, in front of you--where in America there would be a locked door--lies a doorless doorway, inviting any and all spectators to marvel at the yoga-like pose you have struck, preparing yourself for a fecal Cirque du Soleil, knowing that if you stand upright the midget stall that you are squatting in will expose you from the waist up . . . wondering--praying--that perhaps there is a god and that it will make this end quickly, knowing that not your time at Catholic school, not the doomsday prophecies, not the threat of hellfire and brimstone nor even the promise of sweet bliss in the afterlife has brought you this close to prayer for the benevolence of an all-powerful being, a prayer that you know is ignored when the episode begins, your stomach seizing, a fire in your loins to make Humbert Humbert swear celibacy as your intestines uncoil and down comes the sludge of yesterday's meals, meals you so enjoyed the first time around, great slapping sounds against the porcelain hole seven inches below your cheeks, and it stops but this is no reprieve because you know from the continued stabbing pain in you stomach that makes you clutch your slightly pudgy midsection as though it were a lost and hungry baby--sh, sh, please don't cry, everything will be OK, we just need to get through this, we're almost through this . . . lying, lying to yourself because it is your only comfort--this is the last time, this has to be the last time--checking your balance as you begin to tip backwards, and here comes the second wave and is it better than the first?--there has never been a more ridiculous question because there was no first, no first you dare recall, the current escapade having brought you to the Buddha's eternal now--there is only now--there is only now--there is only now . . . and for the moment, the pain subsides, and you dare to hope that it is over, dabbing at the sweat across your brow, wondering if the knife will once more slide into your gut, standing and glancing down, all parts of your brain screaming for you not to--don't look, you don't want to see, you don't want to know--but your body is in the grip of some primal reaction, your spinal cord bending your head to the porcelain hole below you--the same reflex that pulls your eyes to a five-car-pile-up, hoping--are you hoping?--for blood, a severed limb, any grisly detail to make the image worthy of retelling, and there below you is your prize--a ripe mound of human shit, piled probably on top of some other mound of human shit, the previous tenant having not flushed the toilet, and you don't blame him, because you know one push of the germ-infested button behind you will send a high-powered jet of water shooting from the spout, hitting your prize mound like a liquid sledgehammer and sending microscopic fecal particles hurtling through the damp and dirty Dome of Defecation that is your urgent pleasure to grace with you business . . . with no toilet paper, never any toilet paper but that doesn't stop you from looking, but experience has taught you and you have brought a traveler's packet of toilet paper with you, bringing it out now and hoping that the four-to-six small pieces of toilet tissue in the resealable traveler's pouch--for your convenience--will be enough to cleanse this experience from your tired and aching carcass . . .

I have been in China for one month. This has been my experience for the last three weeks. I just finished the last dose of my traveler's diarrhea medicine. We'll see where that gets me.

The honeymoon, China, is long since over.

Hello, folks. It's been a while since I posted. For that, I apologize. I've been busy scouring Anyang for a bootleg copy of Beverly Hills Chihuahua. The search continues . . .

Things have been alright in China. Ups and downs, strikes and gutters. I'll post a real post in the near future (Friday, at least, is a free day for me), but now I'm tired. But I wanted to check in.

I hope all is well with you.

Alright, I'm gonna make it quick. I'm tired. Christina and I had to get up at 5:15 today so we could make it to a hospital in Zhengzhou (pronounced "jung-joe"), the provincial capital, so we could get examined for our residence permits before the crowd hit the hospital. So here are the doodles I learned for week two:

Monday

[mian2] - (roof), doesn't appear by itself
匕 - bi3 (ladle)
它 - ta1 (it), the top part of this is the above [mian2]
了 - le (marks verbs or sentences as "completed action" or "changed status")
子 - zi3 (child)
好 - hao3 (be good, well/consider good, like, love)
厶 - si1 (be selfish, private)

Tuesday

幺 - yao1 (coil/be immature, be tender, be little)
[si1] - (silk), the bottom half of the character below this one is si1 for silk
累 - lei4 (be tired)
彳 - chi4 (to step)
艮 - gen4 (be tough/be stubborn/be leathery/be blunt)
很 - hen3 (very)
口 - kou3 (mouth/a measure for humans)

Wednesday

灬 - huo3 (fire)
马 - ma3 (horse/a family name)
吗 - ma (marks sentences as questions and marks off subjects in sentences)
言 - yan2 (word, words/a family name)
讠 - yan2 (word, words)
隹 - zhui1 (dove)
谁 - shei2 or shui2 (Who?/Whom?)

Thursday

大 - da4 (be big)
夫 - fu1 (husband/"big man")
天 - tian1 (heaven/God/day/natural)
气 - qi4 (breath/vapors/exhalation/animus/energy/soul)
笑 - xiao4 (to laugh, smile/to ridicule)
儿 - er4 (child, son)
尢 - wang1 (be lame), or you2 (still) . . . Here's how I remember this one: I knew a kid growing up named Bobby Wang, so this is what I tell myself: "Bobby Wang is pretty lame, but you are still OK." Chinese mnemonics, sigh . . .

Friday

辛 - xin1 (be bitter/be toilsome/a family name)
幸 - xing4 (lucky)
[zhu3] - (dot), the top dot of the next character is zhu3
主 - zhu3 (lord, host/principal/to indicate)
住 - zhu4 (to live/to stay/to stop)
[shui3] - (water), the left part of the next character is [shui3]
注 - zhu4 (to comment on, annotate/to concentrate on/note, commentary/to pour into/bet, stake/a measure for business transactions or for sums of money) <---this one's loads of fun to remember.

That's it--two weeks worth of doodles. And I still can't read any signs . . .

I added two photo albums to the blog--one for Pics o' the Week and another as my first batch of pictures from China. Unfortunately, there seem to be some technical errors with them. With the China one, for instance, when you go inside it, you can see the thumbnails for all the pictures but when you click on one to magnify it you only get a blank box. You can see most of them in the slideshow, but for whatever reason you can't see the last seven. It's all very frustrating. I'll try to get it fixed but until then . . . here are some nice thumbnails for you to look at!

The Pic o' the Week will continue now that I'm relatively settled and blogging on a regular basis.

OK, time for bed. G'night!

You never quite realize how much you take something for granted until it's taken away. Let's say, for instance . . . literacy. Signs, books, directions--no problem! Yeah, well . . . move to China. Suddenly you're confronted with not letters, but doodles! Doodles everywhere! And you have no idea what anything means.

Enter: Reading & Writing Chinese: Simplified Character Edition

This tasty little book gives the definition, pronunciation, and stroke order diagram for each of the 3,000+ "frequently used" characters in China. That's right--3,000+. It recommends learning seven a day, as that's the rate of the average college student, I think is what it said. I dunno, works for me. So I've started doing that.

The Chinese writing system is based not on letters, but special characters called radicals. Sometimes these radicals are words in and of themselves, like 已 (yi3, "to twist"). Others are only used in combination with other radicals. "How many radicals are there?" you ask. Well lucky for you the Chinese simplified their characters in 1959, making it easier to learn. That means there are only 226 distinct radicals (and then a few "leftovers") to memorize. Yippee!

What's more, the logic behind the writing system is based on six different kinds of "meaning determinates." Depending on the character, you may be looking at a:

1) Picture - These characters are a pictorial representation of what they mean--though, due to the simplification process from 1959, many of the characters no longer look anything like what they are supposed to. It's like Pictionary but without the reference card!

2) Symbols - These happy characters are stand-ins for concepts.

3) Sound Loans - Sometimes characters look and sound exactly the same but have completely and totally different meanings. I guess the Chinese were running low on noises and pictures to make.

4) Sound-meaning Compounds - These two-part characters use one part for meaning and the other for sound. Similar to sound loans but more complicated!

5) Meaning-meaning Compounds - These characters combine two previously separate characters into one really complicated character and derive its meaning from what this doodle book insists is a kind of "logic." For instance, when you take 女 (nü3), which means "woman," and 子 (zi3), which means "child," and cram them together for 好, you logically get the character for (hao3) "to be well, good; to consider good, to like, to love." It's just so damned logical!

6) Reclarified Compounds - Sometimes Chinese gets a little carried away with loaning characters sounds or meanings or this or that from other characters and people start to get confused. That's when a nice and totally random scribe would step in and add things to characters to help distinguish them and control their meanings. In this way, you can get sound-meaning-meaning compounds--like cloning a clone. What could go wrong!

You'll be relieved to know that any character you see could derive its logical meaning from any of the six methods above--we wouldn't want things too get to easy now, would we? But enough praising the Chinese for their logical and easy-to-learn writing system. Let's get to the characters! I thought I'd share the ones I'm learning with you, so you could come along for the journey if you wanted to. I've already been at this for a while, so I'll only include the first weeks characters. Tomorrow I'll post the rest. Here we go:

一 - yi1 ("one")
丿 - pie3 ("left")
女 - nü3 ("woman/female")
人 - ren2 ("person/human being")
二 - er4 ("two")
三 - san3 ("three")
十 - shi2 ("ten")

jiong1 - ("borders") I couldn't type the character for this one because it never appears as an independent character, it's only a radical that modifies other characters. Doesn't mean you don't have to learn it though!
囗 - wei3 ("to surround")
力 - li4 ("strength")
男 - nan2 ("man/male")
丨 - shu4 ("downstroke")
ren2 - ("person") I couldn't make the character here either, because this is a side-radical--only used with others
已 - yi3 ("to twist")

[grass radical] - This one doesn't even have a pronunciation.
艺 - yi4 ("skill/art")
亿 - yi4 ("one hundred million")
xin1 - (side-heart radical)
忆 - yi4 ("to remember")
[back-turned stroke] - See [grass radical]
也 - ye3 ("also")

她 - ta1 ("she/her")
他 - ta1 ("he/him")
门 - men2 ("gate")
们 - men2 ([pluralizing suffix]) You tack this onto nouns to make them plural
手 - shou3 ("hand")
shou3 - (side-hand radical)
弋 - yi4 ("dart")

戈 - ge1 ("lance")
我 - wo3 ("I/me")
找 - zhao3 ("to visit/to look for/to make change")
亠 - tou2 ("lid")
mi4 - (crown radical, doesn't appear by itself)
小 - xiao3 ("small")
你 - ni3 ("you")

That's all thirty-five for the first week. And remember: That's more characters than English has letters--and you still won't be able to read any signs or any books after you learn them all.

Isn't Chinese fun?