art of asking questions

Sometimes, whether you are in another culture, or if you just are in the dark, it pays to finally blurt out the questions that have been bubbling up inside your heart.

Think of it as the "asking" reflux, if you will, of curiosity. If you don't ask, you won't know what's going on--and ignorance is not bliss, my friends. Not always.

At least that's how Heidi and I felt in China.

We had been wondering why all the babies have crazy split pants on--pants with no seam between the legs-open from front to back. And the babies don't wear diapers.

We were a little horrified to observe the many tiny bums everywhere, on the bus, in their parents' arms, in shopping carts, on slides,...in our arms as parents take our pictures holding their little cargo.

I was slightly embarrassed for the children. (Even though, for some reason, our culture seems to think that children have no dignity. Maybe that's what pure innocence is: no need whatsoever to be dignified...)

Anyway, I was also worried about the sanitation. And then I saw a mother holding her child in the middle of the sidewalk so the child could pee, and I felt justified.

Well, I finally just asked. I tried not to be too judgemental, as a guest in another country that doesn't understand the underlying cultural bases, but I couldn't come up with any reliable explanation: so an ExPat fluent in Chinese gave us the scoop--the children are potty trained. By whistle.

When a newborn starts to pee, the mother whistles. Soon, the child is trained to pee on command. And since the Chinese use squatter toilets, the parents want the slit pants to...I don't know actually. Train them to squat?? That in itself isn't bad, but the split pants thing doesn't seem to help with people peeing in the streets, or babies in the grocery aisle, or perhaps on the subway. It happens.

Now that we knew, we felt, well, more informed. Maybe ignorance is a little bit bliss. But now, "whistling a happy tune" on the streets had just become funnier..

art of good citizenship...

...on the stairs to Mordor.

I've determined that the Chinese are very protective over us.

At least, I'm assuming they have mainly innocent intentions, like protection; I don't know if it's a Western thing, but I tend to be suspicious of strangers we meet in random places, that seem to "adopt" us and want to see us safely home. And trust me, it's happened.

On Monday, Heidi and I finally went to the famous park in our host city, the one with all the trees and the lake and the crappy carny rides that weren't in use, but on which I secretly wanted to ride. We walked over the stone bridge, over the cement, zigzag walkway (without a railing) to the island in the center of the lake, laughed over the signs that said "No Fishing, this Water is Toxic Sludge" in Chinese, and then laughed even harder at the men fishing next to them. We walked around the lake in little secluded paths to the stone walls and around to see, on the hill in the distance, the temple-like thing at the top.

I noticed suddenly to my right that we had disturbed a man siting peacefully on a little secluded hill. At least, I assume we disturbed him, when we passed he immediately got up and walked on. His path was higher than ours, and I didn't pay much attention, till our paths combined and I saw that he was waiting off to the side.

I also noticed when he started again, about 20 yards behind us. We took one path, then another; he still followed us.

"Let's pretend to sit down," I said softly to Heidi as we come to an area with more audience.

"Why do you want to pretend to sit down?" she asked. "Should we just actually sit down?"

Well put, Heidi.

I looked back to see if I've started to make it a bigger deal than it was. My mystery person quickly jumped to a higher path and disappeared. I explained what I saw, but since he wasn't there anymore, we just kept moving, and I started to wonder if he spoke English and overheard us. As we were rounding the corner of a building we had just inspected, there he was again, waiting in the shade under the trees.

"Hey, do you speak English?" asked Heidi, a little too boldly, I thought. I was standing to one side of him, she to the other.

"Uhhhh, Yes!" he said, clearly lying.

"Are you following us?"

I started coughing (or laughing) at her interrogation, wondering how much he could understand.

"Uhhh. Yes."

"Did you know in America, that's rude??" she stated. We started walking, I have no idea why, he walked with us, my hand was on my purse the whole time...

I couldn't see how to get rid of him, so I asked (I have no idea why), "Are you a student?" to keep up the interrogation. Really I wanted to know if he would be so kind as to go away and leave us alone.

No, not a student.

Do you work?

No

"Are you a conman?" Heidi asked outright.

"Uhhh. Yes?" said our man. We had moved away from areas with audiences, and I was starting to get nervous.

Who did we remind me of? I wondered, as Heidi kept talking to him. We were moving up strange, secluded paths, no one else around, with a potential enemy as our guide, and I still had no idea why.

"I'm Samwise Gamgee!!" I exclaimed suddenly. Which made sense, since I was so suspicious, and since Heidi was clearly not the bad guy, that could only mean one thing.....

"What's your name, Smeagol--I mean, Sir?" I asked him.

"John."

"Very nice to meet you, John. Now if you don't mind, we are going onto paths that have more of a population. So..." I tried my best "significant look" at Heidi, but since she was obviously Frodo in this senario, I'm not sure she got it.

I led the party down to the other side of the lake, in view of several, several people. Coincidentally, that side of the lake happened to be the Modor side. It was very rocky incline, past a tunnel of jutting cliff. And lookey here, rickety, rockity stairs!

"Is that even a path?" I said nervously. It was vaguely steep. And there was a channel of toxic agua below, smiling a welcoming smile.

"Uhh. Yes!" said John. And he gestured for me to go ahead and climb up.

No Friggin' Way will I climb up there with Smeagol behind me, I thought to myself. But I looked up and Frodo had already started climbing.

"You go," I said VERY DECISIVELY to John. "I'll watch." And keep an eye on you, you creeper.

So in the constant guise of me being nervous to climb, when actually I was nervous to trust the crazy man following us, Heidi and I (and John) climbed up the stone cliff stairway, literally stepped from the cliff across the channel 50 feet below, to other rocks and crags of Mordor Island and then climbed our way to the temple with John as our guide. I Have No Idea Why.

And as soon as I had my back turned, John was being invited on more and more of our journey.

"Do you know of where we can get Chinese medicine balls?" Heidi asked. Two blocks south?

Smeagol showed us the way.

How about English books? Across the street?

Smeagol showed us the way.

Oh, great, I thought. He'll probably want to show us how to get to our house, too...

"AJ," said Heidi. "He wants us to go to his house, so he can show us his medicine balls.'

No. Friggin'. Way. I said in my head, in my heart, softly out loud to Heidi.

And it took some maneuvering. He was very insistent. Gentleman? Maybe. Kind? Maybe. Generous? Maybe. Suspicious? Very much so.

When he followed us to the bus stop, I boldly told him he could not come home with us. (He did ask.) I also told him I didn't know where my house was on the map. (I lied.) Heidi gave him her number, though. She'll have to deal with the consequences of that.

"Bye, Smeagol," I said in relief as he walked away. I watched him leave for a while.

"Oh, man! I wanted to be Sam," Heidi said to me, later, as we laughed at our story.

"No," I said. "I'm Sam...I am Sam."

art of being up close and personal in Beijing

I guess China really is the most populated country in the world.

I anticipated that before, but honestly, I was unprepared for the masses. For example, Heidi and I decided be foreigners, so we touristed Beijing (Tianamen, Forbidden City). To get the full effect, you must imagine yourself in a crowded platform, everyone pushing and pulling to be first in line to the subway. Not that it matters, because the subway is so full of people, you can't imagine how anyone else could get on.

And then the doors open, immediately the warning bells sound, and you feel a panic about not getting on in time, because Heidi is already on (If you don't have a Heidi, you can substitute a name), and just yesterday you watched the subway doors close with her on one side and you on the other waving good-bye sadly.

Suddenly, you are riding a wave of people that almost lift and propel you inside. You didn't even feel your feet touch the ground. If you are a little shocked and disoriented, and wondering how in the world everyone just fit in, you are in the same subway car as I was. Heidi told me later that a security guard pushed from the back and stuffed the twenty people behind me onto the car. I have never been touched by so many people in my life. Ever.

You think Disneyland in summer is bad? LA on the freeway? Midnight showing for Twilight? Boston on the Fourth of July? I've been stuck in all of those places (minus Twilight), and I am still astounded.

And it really didn't help that our trip was during Moon Festival. In Beijing, there are so many people, that you couldn't possible imagine anyone coming "out of the woodwork," so to speak, but mix in a festival and the crowds grow by fives. Duh, there is going to be traffic.

Actually there was so much traffic, even on the subway, that we missed our train home. Ticket exchange is masses of lines, and since we don't read Chinese characters, we spent hours in the wrong places. Now the only thing I can say in Chinese is "bang bang wo" (Help me) with a pitiful look. They speak exasperated Chinese in return, but the pitiful look gets things done.

I'll give you one sentence of our misfortune: We took the wrong subway exit, We were 9 minutes late to our first train, we stood in the wrong lines, we lost our new ticket, we walked up to policemen and motioned them to talk to our Chinese friends on the phone so we could find a bus, and we were refused rides and help by taxi drivers and security guards because, apparently, we have the leprous disease of too much english, not enough chinese. And we were astonishingly late to work, which is hard to do, since it starts at 6 o'clock at night.

Can you say that in one breath?

And on top of that (please remember that this is about being up close and personal), something is rotten in Beijing, and I couldn't eat anything without severe abdominal pain.   And even though the Olympic subway is new, they only have squatter toilets, much to my horror. So if you are still imagining yourself in the subway, please stop, because you CAN'T imagine the panic I felt when we got lost coming out of the subway and couldn't find the apartment where I knew had a western bathroom.

art of the crazy american

Remember, these stories have been stored up because China hates Google, and I didn't have access:

Since we were anticipating seven hundred students, Heidi brought ten dollars worth of pennies to give away to special people that we met, students and nice people who told us ancient Chinese wisdom and the like. Unfortunately for her, and me, we only have twenty students, and one thousand pennies to unload.

Which brings us to the train. It pulls into the station, I manuever my way through the mass of people down the aisle, when I notice everyone in front of me is looking at me or past me to Heidi, craning their necks, and some stretching out their hands. "Oh, do you want a penny?" She asks, in English, smiling. "It's from America."

"Oh, my gosh, Heidi, it's a penny." I say, facing forward, a little embarrassed.

"Yeah, and I have a thousand of them," she says, still giving everyone a penny. As we pass, more and more people are looking to see what the commotion is about with those crazy Americans. I look back again and see a woman refuse the penny. Heidi places one in her hand anyway.

The crazy American thing is something I really should be getting used to. It's an everyday occurence, largely resulting in not being able to explain normalish things that either Heidi or I do--like drink ice water. The Chinese think that's bad for your health. When I was sick last week, the Chinese receptionist, Carrie, told me that I need to drink more hot water. I can't think of anything more disgusting to drink. Especially when it tastes like dirt.

Something else that I'm sure has confused them, is when I try to be friendly and carry on certain conversations that should have been left alone. Like when they ask me if I've eaten dinner. Up until YESTERDAY, I've taken that literally. The conversations have all gone like this:

Crazy American:  Ni Hao (hello)
Chinese Man:  Have you eaten dinner?
Crazy American gets confused look on her face:  Yes. I had a potato....with some green beans.

Pause

Crazy American, very politely:  What did you have for dinner?
Chinese Man has really confused look on his face. Then he turns away.


I believe this conversation has happened around ten times since coming to China. Here are my thoughts each time:

Have I eaten dinner? That's a weird question. What time is it? It's eight thirty at night. I know these people are protective, but you'd think that I would know what time to eat dinner. Just because I can't speak the language doesn't mean I'm 10 years old.  Maybe he hasn't eaten dinner. Oh, maybe he's asking to see if he can take the American teachers out to some new Chinese food.  Oh...nope. That's not it.

End quote.

I learned yesterday that "Have you eaten dinner?" with all it's forms actually means, "What's up" or "How was your day?" and the correct response is not to ask them what food they ate that night, but say the equivalent of "Hey, how are you" back.

Oh.

Technically, I can blame everything I do that's weird on being a crazy American. So when we break all our eggs in the shopping basket by accidentaly dumping waterbottles in on top of them, we can say that we do that kind of thing in America all the time. Or when we blow the breaker in our apartment by having too many appliances on. Or when I want to wear black pants with a brown shirt and light blue shoes--I can do all that (and more) because I. am. crazy.

the art of chinese speaking

Here's an adventure about when I was a teacher in China; It would have gone on this blog earlier, but Google and China are not friends:

At KFC, they know to bring out the picture menu. Once, I tried a new phrase: "how much" that sounds like "dua shaou," and I was excited when they understand me enough to respond in chinese about how much things cost, but then I remembered that I didn't understand anything else and panicked. I just handed them the money that I think covered my bill.

The progress on learning Chinese is slow. I imagine that since I'm fluent in Human, I can understand what they should be asking me-where are you from, why are you here. I can't answer back at all, which is frustrating. Heidi just decided to answer back in English the questions she thinks they say; she did that on the train with four ladies who thought that if they just repeated everything slower we would understand. So they were speaking in Chinese and she responded in English, and I was torn  between embarrassment and laughing hysterically. I'm sure they thought we were crazy, but they still loved us, which was the amazing part.

I was surprised when they opened my hand and slapped a flour tortilla in it. I was also kind of excited, because I was imagining tacos, and then they slapped a fried fish in it and I got a little nervous. My survival mode kicked in, just like I was on a mission and eating something less than desirable. All the fish was missing was it's head. I tried to tell them in Chinese that I didn't want it (bu Yao), but they got conveniently deaf to some of the only Chinese I know. Then they gave us some more unidentifiable green stuff, and then part of chicken. I ate it like a foreigner, picking out everything I couldn't handle, but eating most of it. Heidi actually received applause (APPLAUSE!) when she just rolled it up together to eat it, just like them, but she told me after that she almost threw up twice. I was a lot better. You know, the fish wasn't all that bad...I think I handled it pretty well. And maybe I deserve applause.

They were so nice though; they kept snapping pictures with us. I really should put some make-up on because my face is all over China now. They gave us their phone number. (I guess they didn't pick up on the fact that I don't speak Chinese.) We also gave them Idaho pins. Idaho is rapidly becoming the most well known state in China.

And then, as we were leaving, Heidi noticed one of them had a cute knit drawstring purse. She told the lady she liked it, and to our horror, the woman emptied it out and gave it to her!! We tried and tried to give it back, but of course we left the train in embarrassed possession of the bag. I am a little grateful for the example. I shouldn't have the mindset that all my possessions are to be held on to for dear life, I guess. As we were exiting the train station, Heidi commented on how cute the girl's pants were in front of us.

"Well, don't tell her!" I replied.

We took ourselves to a Chinese place for real chinese food called Mr. Lee. The waitress saw we were American and came to help us read the menu. She and Heidi acted out the pictures; Heidi made a snorting sound for pig because the waitress forgot the word in English. She told us she wanted to be our friend and got our cell phone numbers. We were very popular.

Later another university student came by to help us read the menu as well; she was studying English. Students here like to practice on us. I try not to feel too cynical about being used.

 One of the receptionists at my school asked me if I had had some Chinese food, and I was really proud of Mr. Lee. She wrinkled her nose and said that was fake Chinese food "almost real," which burst my bubble. It also disconerned me, because I had a bit of a hard time enjoying what I ordered.

Speaking of Chinese, it looks like my Spanish is kicking in. If at any time I have a hard time  communicaing (frequently) or my charades act doesn't work out, my brain starts switching over to the only other programmed language in there--Espanol. So sometimes there are accidents. Like when I said "Adios" to the bewildered shopkeeper and waved goodbye. Now they just think I'm making things up.

the art of eRATication

I'm a modern gal, born and bred for these modern times. And I've been on my own, little town girl in the great big city and all. I've proven to the universe and anyone watching that I will do what needs to be done, when I need to.

But that doesn't stop me from playing the gender role trump when there is a rat in the house.

In my opinion, if there is a man available, including and not limited to the guy next door who once helped push my car out of a snow drift, that man should seriously consider the possiblility that rat eradication is his God-given role. (Now, in my neighbor's defense, how is he to know that the bloodcurdling, three octave screetches coming from next door were his cue to come rescue me from the rodents in our house? I probably wasn't screaming loud enough.)

So I shut rat in the kitchen drawer and raced to get into position holding the broom high in the air, and thought, what am I doing? Am I actually going to hit it? I would probably miss, or worse, strike it down and guts would get all over. Plus, part of me thought it was kind of cute....and disgusting....but what if I missed, and it decided to come after me and I kept swinging and accidentally knocked noodles off shelves, while the rat clutched on to my pant leg and started climbing--

I could feel myself weakening. Was I supposed to wait until my father and brother came home from work? What do you do, call a specialist? What would they do? Is there a procedure for this kind of thing? I wish someone would just come home and deal with this!!

I had (legitimately) other errands, so when I returned my brother and dad were already on rat patrol, bless them. I have been grateful for males before, but I believe this instance was in my top ten.

"Get out of the doorway," my brother hissed. "We are trying to chase it out!"

So we moved the table and all the chairs and pulled up the area rugs to makeshift a wall, the rat rustling behind the shelves, running up the curtains, and behind another set of cabinets.

In the end, it was a group victory. Of course, my dad and brother get all the bravery points, but in this case, I was content to be a coward. We looked like a band of villagers holding pitchforks and shovels, brooms, and Tupperware lids. We chased the (poor) thing out into the open and blocked his way until he found the open door and ran out into the wide, wide world.

"What was that?" we asked each other. We had seen its tail, and its tail was furry.  Was that a squirrel?? I can't believe we would terrorize a cute little squirrel.

"It's not a squirrel," my sister announced from the computer. "It is a bushy-tailed wood rat. And I hope it didn't have any babies, because it will try to get back in."

To which my brother ran after it, yelling and holding the shovel above his head. Take that, rat.

the art of juggling

“It’s easy!” B says, miming a juggler, “you just throw the ball up and when it comes and hits its apaje, you throw another!”

Its what? I raise my eyebrows. “Apaje!” He eyes follow the balls that he has mentally created (and apparently hallucinated) into thin air, “It’s a French word.”

Why didn’t you just say ‘apex’? As I wonder if his French is influenced by being raised in Canada, he continues, “Get me three identical objects.” I contemplated handing him three DVD cases, but someone else handed him the miniature oranges, the kind that come in the huge cardboard box.

“Don’t look at your hands, just the balls in the air.” He tosses an orange slowly in one hand, over and over. “Use muscle memory for the timing. At the apex, do something else with your other hand.” He then snaps his fingers when the orange reaches the top. Toss, snap, toss, snap, again and again.

I am kind of sad that he replaced his invisible balls with tangible tangerines. Because though juggling is an accepted metaphor for life—“dropping the ball” and all that— I think about how his hallucinated juggle session was a much better reflection on me and my experiences. In the end, all my stresses and pressures have been made up by me. And, since my worries are usually self-imposed, I should not care so much when, inevitably, I drop a ball.

For this metaphor to work, I quote Mr. Finnigan, the one with The Joy of Juggling: “A drop is a sign of progress, and everyone learns to juggle, drop by drop.”

Heck, I could even turn by life/juggling into a comedy routine. When something doesn’t quite go my way I can make up excuses for my juggling errors.

Me: Welcome to my juggling act. See my amazing dexterity as I…ooph. Well, we’ll just chalk that up to a sudden burst of gravity. I get three tries for the hard ones. Ok, here we go again…