The Chinese love their word games. No wonder, having a language with so many homophones. Many superstitions actually have to do with language, for example 4 is an unlucky number, because 四 "si" sounds to much like 死 "si" (to die; dead), although the tones are different. On the other hand, many places are selling New Year's decoration now and the most common one is the character 福 "fu" (good fortune) - but upside down. Why? Because 福倒了 "fu dao le" ("fu" is upside down) sounds like 福到了(good fortune is coming) - can you spot the difference? :) the middle character is slightly different. Nifty, eh? Another example is "song zhong," which can mean to give a clock (as a gift, 送钟) but also to attend a funeral（送终). That's why it's taboo to give clocks as presents in China - wrist watches (biao) are ok, though. I recently started to read this book by a German who followed her husband to Shanghai and, of course, had to write about her adventures - who doesn't? And she told the story of committing the ultimate faux pas and presenting their host with a clock - a cuckoo clock of all things (as if that shouldn't be a punishable crime in itself). I don't believe the story, because in every little "China for dummies" book you find this listed among the top 10 DON'Ts, so I believe she just put it in to get some laughs. Actually, most of her stories were so over the top dumb (as if she had not even opened one wikipedia page about China or picked up one little guide book) that I got quite annoyed with the book and didn't finish it (sorry, dad :)).
Speaking of faux pas - I was assured that it was not my fault that my hosts in Ganzhou made me sit down but remained standing themselves. My friend said "maybe they were too excited" :) I've been spending more time with this student of mine, Xu Feng, who is really an invaluable source of information. He even promised to find a recipe for me for cooking pork with 梅干菜 "mei gan cai" - that's dried mustard greens, a Jiangsu specialty and I really like it. It's quite salty and has a very distinctive flavour. I've had it in stuffed in buns with ground pork or stir-fried with pork, and since I found some in the supermarket, I want to try my own cooking skills.
Sadly, I must report that I will spend New Year all by myself - everyone I know is leaving. Most people are going home to their families and the two friends who would maybe have invited me to spend the holiday with them and their families are traveling. So, yeah, that's a bit of a letdown. I had thought after half a year here I would have made/cooked my way into the hearts of my students/colleagues, but my students still consider me their "boss" rather than their peer, I think. And since I have successfully resisted making friends with the people from my language class, I will be all alone :( Ok, it's not quite true. I made friends with a bunch of South-Americans, who were really thrilled when I cooked pasta for them. I even found cream and speck - incredibly expensive of course, but really not bad. There is one grocery store which specializes in Western food. Apart from parmigiano, muesli, European wines and other delicacies, they also carry bleach, shaving cream and such necessities. But the South-Americans are also traveling. Even my boss will be gone for three weeks. I didn't think everything here would shut down quite so literally. I thought, as in the west, the time without classes is when profs do most of their actual work...
And a last word of advice - if you have a Chinese girlfriend/boyfriend, never share a pear with her/him. Because "fen li" can mean to share a pear (分梨), but also to separate/break up (分离) :)
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Saving face
So, I've been asked to write something about "face." In case you're not familiar with this concept - in China (and other Asian countries, I've been told), "face" is something like the Klingon honour system, just with much less sword fighting and blood oaths, and probably better personal hygiene and breath. Basically, if you show respect toward someone or do them a favour, you gain face, if you have to rely on others, you lose face. You can make someone lose face by humiliating them, and that's really bad news. In general, I guess I'm lucky I'm not in Japan but in China, as all the very strict rites and rules of conduct have been wiped out by the cultural revolution. Chinese are in most cases pretty easy-going. But hospitality is still a big issue. Never would Chinese go out and split the bill. It is customary that always one person pays for everybody with the understanding that things will balance out eventually. One friend told me that when he was a student in Beijing, there was one guy who would always invite the others and never let them pay, so they stopped going out to eat with him. So, there you have your explanation why my students never want to be invited for dinner.
I don't think I have committed any big faux-pas yet, but then I might be too ignorant to notice :) Well, there was this photographer at the wedding who handed me his business card and I just said "thank you" and pocketed it. He was quiet for a minute (we were riding in the same car) and then said "well, you know, in China it is customary to return a name card" Oopsie. Well, I don't actually feel bad about it because for starters, I don't have business cards (A... - crazy scientist impostor, fabulous baker) and second, this guy was just coming on to me and I was really not interested, not even in polite chit-chat. He was just too fond of himself, I think that would have been a rather one-sided conversation.
I already mentioned that I have to be careful to find excuses why I "owe" my students to take them out to dinner and I know I should repay my neighbors' dinner invitation (I just don't feel like cooking much at the moment, it's so frigging cold in my apartment). I should probably also have asked my hosts in Ganzhou to sit down with me, whenever I was dragged to someone's home and made sit down and eat fruit etc. They were all standing around me, and when I wanted to stand, too, they would insist I sit. It just didn't occur to me that I should ask them to sit down - in their own home. One thing that puzzles me a bit is the standing of money. Usually, nobody is shy to ask how much did I pay for this and that, in many places people haggle for prices, but at the wedding, the handing over of money envelopes happened almost hidden. It was as if the groom's parents were embarrassed to take them and the guests were embarrassed to give them. I did not see an explicit "thank you," also when I once gave Master Wang (the guy who fixes things around my house) a red envelope. So, this strikes me a bit as a discrepancy.
About the value of face... I have really no idea if I have more or less "face" as a foreigner. I don't think the trying to rip tourists off has anything to do with that. It's sort of the rule of the game and everybody is expected to play their part in it, I think. But I do definitely notice people's attitude changing when I speak Chinese to them. And almost everywhere I can rely on the goodwill of strangers. It's pretty amazing. It seems as soon as you have one foot in the door that is 关系 "guanxi - connections" in China, everything becomes much easier.
Just this week I had to attend the yearly physics theory group meeting (about 10 professors and 20 postdocs) and report about what I have been doing. The interesting part was that I was only informed 10 minutes before the meeting that I should go - by my boss who herself neglected to show up. But it wasn't so bad. It was mostly the postdocs introducing themselves and only saying for a minute what they're doing. One of the old professors even suggested they should all speak English for my sake, but I guess it was good they didn't, it would just have taken longer than an hour. When it was my turn and I introduced myself in Chinese everyone was all smiles and admiration :) After the formal part, the professors started smoking (inside the conference room with no ashtrays) and everybody was munching snacks - they are constantly eating oranges, bananas and nuts here. And after about half an hour of small talk everyone left, but not without a box (must be 3 or 4 kg) of tangerines. I'm starting to notice a theme here... I am still working on that huge cookie-box. I'm taking them to my Chinese study group. Since our regular class ended and the new semester only starts in March, a few of us are getting together to study on our own, so we don't forget everything and maybe even manage to skip one level... well, 6 hours a week compared to 20 before is not really very efficient and with half the group being south-American, we never start on time anyways (not that I believe in stereotypes).
Some days I do feel guilty for not being as useful for my boss as I could be. I may contribute a little to one of her projects, but otherwise my research output is close to nil. I just don't enjoy it anymore. But then I remind myself that I am teaching a class, I just won a grant I let her use to pay her students (she has lots of grant money herself, but due to its allocation she doesn't have enough to pay her students - she can buy them macbooks instead, but cash is hard to come by) and I am helping two of her students to apply for Grad School. One of them didn't need all that much help - he's really good and I am writing a recommendation letter for him (no idea how much weight that has since I'm not exactly famous, but it might help to have a letter from someone non-Chinese). With the other one I worked pretty hard on his personal statement - he came across sounding as if he was only going to Grad school for his parents and some of his statements sounded a bit arrogant and as if we was casting blame for is failures on the system (which might be correct) but never on himself. The funniest part though was practising for an interview. The graduate school recruiter from Minnesota actually travelled all the way to China to visit 4 big universities and interview all applicants personally! Quite impressive. They say they usually rely on recommendation letters but for various (unspecified) reasons they do not find this system useful for Chinese applicants. So, we practised handshake and "nice to meet you" while keeping eye contact, sitting down without sitting on your hands (the Chinese all tell me the reason I feel cold is that I don't wear enough clothes and they are not cold at all, but then they sit on their hands to warm them - ha! gotcha!) and standard questions like "why do you want to come to Minnesota?" "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" until midnight. So, no, I don't think I have to feel all too guilty. Maybe I'm not doing exactly what I was hired for, but I am certainly useful... The thought of opening a coaching agency for all sorts of interviews and applications crossed my mind...
I almost wish people would stop telling me they like my blog - I feel so much under pressure to write now :) And I just don't have much to blog about. I am getting comfortably settled in a winter depression, where I don't even leave my apartment - after all there is nothing at the office I can't do from home and I barely ever meet any other people there, and it's too cold to go to Kung Fu, my ear is constantly infected and I'm bored by the food. I think, after 5 months (wow, can you believe it, it's already been so long) I have my first Western food craving. Thankfully I brought a piece of parmigiano from Montreal. So, French toast for breakfast and pasta (which I can get without problems, just cheese is impossible to find) for dinner it is.
I don't think I have committed any big faux-pas yet, but then I might be too ignorant to notice :) Well, there was this photographer at the wedding who handed me his business card and I just said "thank you" and pocketed it. He was quiet for a minute (we were riding in the same car) and then said "well, you know, in China it is customary to return a name card" Oopsie. Well, I don't actually feel bad about it because for starters, I don't have business cards (A... - crazy scientist impostor, fabulous baker) and second, this guy was just coming on to me and I was really not interested, not even in polite chit-chat. He was just too fond of himself, I think that would have been a rather one-sided conversation.
I already mentioned that I have to be careful to find excuses why I "owe" my students to take them out to dinner and I know I should repay my neighbors' dinner invitation (I just don't feel like cooking much at the moment, it's so frigging cold in my apartment). I should probably also have asked my hosts in Ganzhou to sit down with me, whenever I was dragged to someone's home and made sit down and eat fruit etc. They were all standing around me, and when I wanted to stand, too, they would insist I sit. It just didn't occur to me that I should ask them to sit down - in their own home. One thing that puzzles me a bit is the standing of money. Usually, nobody is shy to ask how much did I pay for this and that, in many places people haggle for prices, but at the wedding, the handing over of money envelopes happened almost hidden. It was as if the groom's parents were embarrassed to take them and the guests were embarrassed to give them. I did not see an explicit "thank you," also when I once gave Master Wang (the guy who fixes things around my house) a red envelope. So, this strikes me a bit as a discrepancy.
About the value of face... I have really no idea if I have more or less "face" as a foreigner. I don't think the trying to rip tourists off has anything to do with that. It's sort of the rule of the game and everybody is expected to play their part in it, I think. But I do definitely notice people's attitude changing when I speak Chinese to them. And almost everywhere I can rely on the goodwill of strangers. It's pretty amazing. It seems as soon as you have one foot in the door that is 关系 "guanxi - connections" in China, everything becomes much easier.
Just this week I had to attend the yearly physics theory group meeting (about 10 professors and 20 postdocs) and report about what I have been doing. The interesting part was that I was only informed 10 minutes before the meeting that I should go - by my boss who herself neglected to show up. But it wasn't so bad. It was mostly the postdocs introducing themselves and only saying for a minute what they're doing. One of the old professors even suggested they should all speak English for my sake, but I guess it was good they didn't, it would just have taken longer than an hour. When it was my turn and I introduced myself in Chinese everyone was all smiles and admiration :) After the formal part, the professors started smoking (inside the conference room with no ashtrays) and everybody was munching snacks - they are constantly eating oranges, bananas and nuts here. And after about half an hour of small talk everyone left, but not without a box (must be 3 or 4 kg) of tangerines. I'm starting to notice a theme here... I am still working on that huge cookie-box. I'm taking them to my Chinese study group. Since our regular class ended and the new semester only starts in March, a few of us are getting together to study on our own, so we don't forget everything and maybe even manage to skip one level... well, 6 hours a week compared to 20 before is not really very efficient and with half the group being south-American, we never start on time anyways (not that I believe in stereotypes).
Some days I do feel guilty for not being as useful for my boss as I could be. I may contribute a little to one of her projects, but otherwise my research output is close to nil. I just don't enjoy it anymore. But then I remind myself that I am teaching a class, I just won a grant I let her use to pay her students (she has lots of grant money herself, but due to its allocation she doesn't have enough to pay her students - she can buy them macbooks instead, but cash is hard to come by) and I am helping two of her students to apply for Grad School. One of them didn't need all that much help - he's really good and I am writing a recommendation letter for him (no idea how much weight that has since I'm not exactly famous, but it might help to have a letter from someone non-Chinese). With the other one I worked pretty hard on his personal statement - he came across sounding as if he was only going to Grad school for his parents and some of his statements sounded a bit arrogant and as if we was casting blame for is failures on the system (which might be correct) but never on himself. The funniest part though was practising for an interview. The graduate school recruiter from Minnesota actually travelled all the way to China to visit 4 big universities and interview all applicants personally! Quite impressive. They say they usually rely on recommendation letters but for various (unspecified) reasons they do not find this system useful for Chinese applicants. So, we practised handshake and "nice to meet you" while keeping eye contact, sitting down without sitting on your hands (the Chinese all tell me the reason I feel cold is that I don't wear enough clothes and they are not cold at all, but then they sit on their hands to warm them - ha! gotcha!) and standard questions like "why do you want to come to Minnesota?" "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" until midnight. So, no, I don't think I have to feel all too guilty. Maybe I'm not doing exactly what I was hired for, but I am certainly useful... The thought of opening a coaching agency for all sorts of interviews and applications crossed my mind...
I almost wish people would stop telling me they like my blog - I feel so much under pressure to write now :) And I just don't have much to blog about. I am getting comfortably settled in a winter depression, where I don't even leave my apartment - after all there is nothing at the office I can't do from home and I barely ever meet any other people there, and it's too cold to go to Kung Fu, my ear is constantly infected and I'm bored by the food. I think, after 5 months (wow, can you believe it, it's already been so long) I have my first Western food craving. Thankfully I brought a piece of parmigiano from Montreal. So, French toast for breakfast and pasta (which I can get without problems, just cheese is impossible to find) for dinner it is.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Ganzhou - Part II
The rest of Saturday afternoon I spent with the groom's best men, they took me around Ganzhou. It was really funny - their English as bad as my Chinese we were always struggling to communicate. The hilarious couple goes by the name of Liu Jiang and Liu Zhuang, but they're not related.
First we had coffee (I can't go more than two days without catering to my addiction) in a super-fancy cafe by the river. I wonder who can afford this! I seemed to be the only foreigner in town - all weekend people were staring at me wherever I went. But there were actually a few Chinese in the cafe. Well, also my two guides seem to make a decent living - one works for a software firm in Shenzhen, the other one is in real estate in Guangzhou. Then they drove me around town on their mopeds - we also stopped by both their parents houses. That was certainly an interesting lesson. Liu Zhuang's grandfather was in the army, so he got to own a house! Everyone else I met so far lives in an apartment. Their house is a nice 2-story building right in the middle of the city, they have their own cozy courtyard with a garden, and it's surrounded by tall apartment buildings. Kind of surreal. I only caught a little glimpse of their sitting room, it seems to be furnished with redwood, antique (looking?) furniture. The other Liu is the son of a police officer - his parents live in an apartment that, I guess, is part of his employment. It's a brand new apartment tower right behind the police station. It's very common in China, also for professors for example, to get an apartment as part of their benefit package. That's often more useful than a higher salary. The police man's apartment was huge! And totally brandnew. But it looked like the parents were a bit lost in their, as if someone had taken them from a country side place (they were dressed in very simple clothes, no, not Mao suits, and wore their synthetic down coats inside the apartment - as they all do - and the mother's face looked lined from years of hard work. There is something about Chinese of that generation that makes them look very alike (at least to me, the ignorant foreigner), no matter what their background or profession is - I guess it's because they grew up during the cultural revolution) and dumped them in this huge apartment furnished with a mega-size leather couch and two fridges in the the living-dining room. When we arrived, they were actually in a small bedroom, huddled around a heating lamp. They made me sit down, served me tea and peanuts and oranges and the mother asked all kinds of questions. She seemed very excited by my presence. When she asked my age, her son quickly covered her mouth with his hand and gently explained to her that one cannot ask a western woman such a question :) She apologized profoundly and I tried to explain that it's no problem that I get asked this question all the time and I'm used to it. I was very amused. Actually, it annoys me much more that people usually throw "are you married? what about kids?" at me. Somehow I find that more personal than my age, but maybe that's just me. So, compare these living conditions with my friends' parents, who are both doctors, but live in a simple apartment from the 50s or 60s - very similar to the first two apartments I looked at when I was looking for a place in Nanjing. It's all clean and functional, but very simple. Their couch and furniture is old, but they have a new fridge, TV, microwave. Still, the doors were rough wood and there were numbers above the doors. I don't quite know how to describe it, but it had a bit the feel of communal living quarters to it.
In the evening we met the other friends of bride and groom and had dinner together - that was much more enjoyable than the lunch. They are all really nice people and made me feel so welcome. After dinner we went for Karaoke :) It was not my first time in a Chinese Karaoke bar, but the first time with Chinese. In contrast to foreigners, it's not just a petty excuse to get drunk and stoned. No, they take the singing seriously! By God. Even the guys were singing their heart out to kitschy Chinese love songs. They might have been a bit disturbed by my performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody," but I have to say I didn't remember the lyrics were quite that bad :) We only had four beers among 7 people (I made them try the Tsingtao stout, which none of them had had before, and it was received with a lot of enthusiasm) but the atmosphere was really hilarious nevertheless. I wish my students in Nanjing were a bit more lively. It's hard enough to get them to come out for dinner with me (I have to invent reasons why I owe them for something, so they can let me pay for their dinner without having to feel like they need to repay me - so I was told by my friend when I complained that they students never want to let me take them out - one example of the Chinese concept of "face," I would make them lose face if I always pay for them, I have to let them return the favour to balance the scale. Well, in my view they have helped me so much dealing with Chinese bureaucracy and shopping thta I could not repay them even if I tried), I don't see them do karaoke. But maybe they're still a bit afraid of me :)
So, and now it's time to say goodbye to our vegetarian (and other faint hearted) readers - hush, hush, off you go - and turn to some food stories. I hope those who are interested held out all the way till here. The dinner with friends was really fun. We went to a place with Ganzhou specialties, and one of them was - dog! If I ate it? Of course I ate it. You have to try everything once, right? Well, maybe except those things that one can really only try once and stay alive... anyways, how it was? Well, to be completely honest... it was delicious! It came in a spicy stew (because dog is very "yang" (hot) as opposed to "yin" (cold)) and tasted like... eh... chicken! :) just kidding. Maybe a bit like rabbit, but the farmed one, not the wild one. It did not have any gamy taste at all in fact and was rather fat. It came chopped in little pieces (for once without head), so I can't judge its size. But I was told by the Chinese that it's usually small dogs used for food, and that they're farm-raised. I truly hope so. But considering how fat the little bugger(s) was(were), I'd say they can't have lived on the street. The first bite was especially good, because it was still really hot and the skin (think lamb leg rather than chicken skin) sort of crispy. Yum. So, whoever is not freaked out, please raise your arm? Ah, I see. Maybe I'll save the cat story for another time :P To be honest, I haven't seen cat on any menu yet. It's supposedly not so good, because it's meat is a bit acidic. I'd like to try snake, but that is only served in the south, I think. And I don't know enough about turtles to know which are ethical to eat and which are endangered. Maybe I'll make that my next project to find out. If it's any comfort if you slightly creeped out - almost half the Chinese there didn't eat the dog either, some even acknowledged it is because they like the little puppies. Oh well. I guess another culinary tradition that is going to die out with this new generation of Chinese.
Other delicious dishes included duck (unfortunately in a stew - that's all I seem to get these days, typical winter food, I suppose; I could kill for a freshly roasted duck, I'm getting really tired of stewed meats in brown sauce), steamed fish, fish balls (fish grind into a paste, add starch, form balls and fry them, then they are served in a soup with mushrooms where they soak up the mushroom flavour), fish noodles (the noodles are actually made from fish - I got some to take home from my friend's mom, but haven't tried them yet, you just use them like rice noodles in a soup, just that it's gonna taste fishy), steamed pork sausage (homemade!) with peanuts - that was very tasty - and lots of chicken in all sorts of varieties. I also went to a
next to my hotel, lucky me, of course there had to be one there that weekend, and had a very yummy banana pancake. You have probably heard the rumor that Italians stole the noodles from China? Well, it appears also the method of making pizza dough was copied from Chinese :)
You guys are lucky that I didn't mind behaving like a completely idiotic tourist in Ganzhou - I probably won't go back. I'd never display the same unrestrained photo taking here in Nanjing :)
 |
| ganzhou |
First we had coffee (I can't go more than two days without catering to my addiction) in a super-fancy cafe by the river. I wonder who can afford this! I seemed to be the only foreigner in town - all weekend people were staring at me wherever I went. But there were actually a few Chinese in the cafe. Well, also my two guides seem to make a decent living - one works for a software firm in Shenzhen, the other one is in real estate in Guangzhou. Then they drove me around town on their mopeds - we also stopped by both their parents houses. That was certainly an interesting lesson. Liu Zhuang's grandfather was in the army, so he got to own a house! Everyone else I met so far lives in an apartment. Their house is a nice 2-story building right in the middle of the city, they have their own cozy courtyard with a garden, and it's surrounded by tall apartment buildings. Kind of surreal. I only caught a little glimpse of their sitting room, it seems to be furnished with redwood, antique (looking?) furniture. The other Liu is the son of a police officer - his parents live in an apartment that, I guess, is part of his employment. It's a brand new apartment tower right behind the police station. It's very common in China, also for professors for example, to get an apartment as part of their benefit package. That's often more useful than a higher salary. The police man's apartment was huge! And totally brandnew. But it looked like the parents were a bit lost in their, as if someone had taken them from a country side place (they were dressed in very simple clothes, no, not Mao suits, and wore their synthetic down coats inside the apartment - as they all do - and the mother's face looked lined from years of hard work. There is something about Chinese of that generation that makes them look very alike (at least to me, the ignorant foreigner), no matter what their background or profession is - I guess it's because they grew up during the cultural revolution) and dumped them in this huge apartment furnished with a mega-size leather couch and two fridges in the the living-dining room. When we arrived, they were actually in a small bedroom, huddled around a heating lamp. They made me sit down, served me tea and peanuts and oranges and the mother asked all kinds of questions. She seemed very excited by my presence. When she asked my age, her son quickly covered her mouth with his hand and gently explained to her that one cannot ask a western woman such a question :) She apologized profoundly and I tried to explain that it's no problem that I get asked this question all the time and I'm used to it. I was very amused. Actually, it annoys me much more that people usually throw "are you married? what about kids?" at me. Somehow I find that more personal than my age, but maybe that's just me. So, compare these living conditions with my friends' parents, who are both doctors, but live in a simple apartment from the 50s or 60s - very similar to the first two apartments I looked at when I was looking for a place in Nanjing. It's all clean and functional, but very simple. Their couch and furniture is old, but they have a new fridge, TV, microwave. Still, the doors were rough wood and there were numbers above the doors. I don't quite know how to describe it, but it had a bit the feel of communal living quarters to it.
In the evening we met the other friends of bride and groom and had dinner together - that was much more enjoyable than the lunch. They are all really nice people and made me feel so welcome. After dinner we went for Karaoke :) It was not my first time in a Chinese Karaoke bar, but the first time with Chinese. In contrast to foreigners, it's not just a petty excuse to get drunk and stoned. No, they take the singing seriously! By God. Even the guys were singing their heart out to kitschy Chinese love songs. They might have been a bit disturbed by my performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody," but I have to say I didn't remember the lyrics were quite that bad :) We only had four beers among 7 people (I made them try the Tsingtao stout, which none of them had had before, and it was received with a lot of enthusiasm) but the atmosphere was really hilarious nevertheless. I wish my students in Nanjing were a bit more lively. It's hard enough to get them to come out for dinner with me (I have to invent reasons why I owe them for something, so they can let me pay for their dinner without having to feel like they need to repay me - so I was told by my friend when I complained that they students never want to let me take them out - one example of the Chinese concept of "face," I would make them lose face if I always pay for them, I have to let them return the favour to balance the scale. Well, in my view they have helped me so much dealing with Chinese bureaucracy and shopping thta I could not repay them even if I tried), I don't see them do karaoke. But maybe they're still a bit afraid of me :)
So, and now it's time to say goodbye to our vegetarian (and other faint hearted) readers - hush, hush, off you go - and turn to some food stories. I hope those who are interested held out all the way till here. The dinner with friends was really fun. We went to a place with Ganzhou specialties, and one of them was - dog! If I ate it? Of course I ate it. You have to try everything once, right? Well, maybe except those things that one can really only try once and stay alive... anyways, how it was? Well, to be completely honest... it was delicious! It came in a spicy stew (because dog is very "yang" (hot) as opposed to "yin" (cold)) and tasted like... eh... chicken! :) just kidding. Maybe a bit like rabbit, but the farmed one, not the wild one. It did not have any gamy taste at all in fact and was rather fat. It came chopped in little pieces (for once without head), so I can't judge its size. But I was told by the Chinese that it's usually small dogs used for food, and that they're farm-raised. I truly hope so. But considering how fat the little bugger(s) was(were), I'd say they can't have lived on the street. The first bite was especially good, because it was still really hot and the skin (think lamb leg rather than chicken skin) sort of crispy. Yum. So, whoever is not freaked out, please raise your arm? Ah, I see. Maybe I'll save the cat story for another time :P To be honest, I haven't seen cat on any menu yet. It's supposedly not so good, because it's meat is a bit acidic. I'd like to try snake, but that is only served in the south, I think. And I don't know enough about turtles to know which are ethical to eat and which are endangered. Maybe I'll make that my next project to find out. If it's any comfort if you slightly creeped out - almost half the Chinese there didn't eat the dog either, some even acknowledged it is because they like the little puppies. Oh well. I guess another culinary tradition that is going to die out with this new generation of Chinese.
Other delicious dishes included duck (unfortunately in a stew - that's all I seem to get these days, typical winter food, I suppose; I could kill for a freshly roasted duck, I'm getting really tired of stewed meats in brown sauce), steamed fish, fish balls (fish grind into a paste, add starch, form balls and fry them, then they are served in a soup with mushrooms where they soak up the mushroom flavour), fish noodles (the noodles are actually made from fish - I got some to take home from my friend's mom, but haven't tried them yet, you just use them like rice noodles in a soup, just that it's gonna taste fishy), steamed pork sausage (homemade!) with peanuts - that was very tasty - and lots of chicken in all sorts of varieties. I also went to a
 |
| food_fair |
next to my hotel, lucky me, of course there had to be one there that weekend, and had a very yummy banana pancake. You have probably heard the rumor that Italians stole the noodles from China? Well, it appears also the method of making pizza dough was copied from Chinese :)
 |
| pizza |
You guys are lucky that I didn't mind behaving like a completely idiotic tourist in Ganzhou - I probably won't go back. I'd never display the same unrestrained photo taking here in Nanjing :)
Party!
This might easily have been the creepiest experience of my life... no, not the wedding. We'll get to that later. But on Friday I attended the annual female faculty party of Nanjing university. I get the tombola (I walked away with a supersize package of cookies), I also get the speeches (well, not in the understanding everything they say kind of way), but then - karaoke? No only did one woman sing 我爱你中国 "wo ai ni zhong guo - I love you China" with an over-the-top opera voice, she also had the matching background dancers who - I swear - were doing a swan lake parody (pretending to be toe dancing in their heavy winter boots) and background singers who were about half a tone off with her. It was so much worse than anything of that caliber I had ever seen! If they would have been completely drunk and this actually was a joke, it would have been fine, but no - everyone thought it was great. There was more dancing and singing. Now I finally know who those women are I regularly see practising dancing on the parking lot in front of my kung fu school. I mean, I'm sure it's a good way for those 60-70 year olds to get some exercise without over-exerting themselves, but putting it on stage? Now, really...
The wedding was great. Mostly because I got to practise Chinese all weekend and learned more about Chinese culture in two days than normally in two months. I just wish I wasn't so lazy - the thing is, I took notes over the weekend so I wouldn't forget anything, but now I really don't feel like typing these notes up for the blog. But due to personal requests (thank you guys for liking my blog) I'll do what my fans expect of me :) ah, stardom is hard...
I got to Ganzhou Friday morning after a rather pleasant train ride. I was sharing the compartment with two guys who were also going from Nanjing to attend a wedding in Ganzhou - but not the same, it turned out.
They were already asleep when I returned from the dining car at 20:30, so I also went to sleep pretty early. Thankfully the berth was comfy and it was even rather warm in the compartment. Around 22:30 we were rudely awaken by the 4th person, who kept going in and out and leaving the door open. He seemed quite surprised to wake up "next to" a long-nose woman the next morning - I don't know which of the two was more shocking to him :) My friend picked me up at the station and we went for breakfast at a street stall. Had some tasty fried dough and "medicine soup" - it was a clear stock made from some bitter dried fungus or fruit, supposedly gives you energy after a long journey. He also showed me the main sights - a pontoon bridge made of small fishing boats, fish market, Buddhist temple...
Then I met his parents and wife (they were already legally married in Beijing, because that's where they are registered, but their parents insisted on them having a "proper" wedding) and had lunch with the family. I was told to stop saying "thank you," being impolite is part of being accepted as a family member :) I helped the bride to decorate "her new home," which means my friend's bedroom in his parents' place - not that their actually going to live their, since she studies in Beijing and he in Montreal, but tradition is tradition. The groom even had to buy new furniture for his room! So we glued "lucky characters," i.e. Chinese characters expressing good fortune made of red papercuts, on windows and mirrors. We had dinner also with the bride's parents. It was really nice, and my friend's mom a pretty good cook.
The next morning started with the ritual haggling for the bride :) Since the bride's parents are from Henan province, they stayed in a hotel in Ganzhou and the bride also spend the night before the wedding in the hotel. They had rented a suite and pretended it was her home. Three of her friends had also come and I was added to the bride's party so I could participate in all the fun. The fun being that the groom has to make a complete fool of himself and the bride is treated like a princess - that's basically the core principle of a Chinese wedding :) So the groom came and knocked on the door, asking for his bride. Her girlfriends put up a fight and did not want to let him in. He was forced to declare his love, promise to always obey his wife, even when she's wrong, and even sing! Only after he had pushed enough money envelopes under the door did they finally let him in (btw, the "bride's maids" got to keep the money from the red envelopes, so I even made ten yuan). He came with flowers and a traditional Chinese jacket, the bride was sitting on the bed amidst all her skirts.
They exchanged their rings and then the bride's parents served them food (they had borrowed a rice steamer so they could steam some eggs in the hotel room). Then there was the ritual bowing to the parents and handing over of red envelopes. Now all the groom had to do was find the bride's shows that we had hidden and we could go...
Not without taking a hundred pictures first. Everything was documented by a professional photographer and a guy with a digital camera. That's the main reason I lost my drive of taking pictures, so all the humiliations of the groom are only sparsely documented :) Sorry there are so few pictures of the wedding - if I get hold of more, I'll post them. From then on, all the way to his parents' home, the bride did not have to/was not allowed to walk on her own feet. The groom had to carry her everywhere (yes, with that huge dress). And we didn't take the direct route, our convoy of four cars stopped at a supermarket along the way, where the groom had to carry his wife into the store and buy water. It was quite a hilarious group storming through the store. Then we stopped at a square with a big statue of a bull, where one can rent a palanquin only for the purpose of having the groom (and his best man) carry the bride around. To add to the poor guy's misery, he also had to wear a ridiculous hat and a bow around his neck - the bride got a riding crop to speed him up. You just gotta love this imagery! The bride declined to touch the bull testicles though - I suppose that would have guaranteed a bunch of strong sons :)
Finally we arrived at the groom's house (again, there were fireworks when we arrived, as there had been at the hotel when we left), the bride was carried up the stairs into "her" new bedroom and from then on she was allowed to walk on her own feet. First, more pictures were taken with all groups of people sitting next to bride and groom on their wedding bed with a huge photograph of the two hanging above. Then they served the groom's parents tea, followed by more ritual bowing and exchanges of red envelopes. Phew. So much for the traditional part. Btw, they had friends who held printouts of the protocols in their hands - apparently, not every Chinese has internalized what the proper phrases for all these little rituals are.
Now it was time for the banquet. When we got to the restaurant, there were three(!) other couples who had their wedding lunches there. They were all standing downstairs greeting guest. In order for people to not go to the wrong wedding, each couple was standing next to a sign with their names (and usually picture). Guest started trickling in and, in most cases, greeted the groom's parents and handed them their red envelope. Then they headed upstairs to the dining room - just ignoring the newly weds! I was pretty stunned by that. It was explained to me that they are friends of the parents and in many cases the groom had never seen them before. But still - don't you congratulate the happy couple? No, you don't. You congratulate the parents and hand over your "entrance fee" to the banquet. That's what it looked like. There were of course some exceptions, friends and former teachers of the groom. Many group pictures were taken and all the men who came to congratulate were offered a cigarette - either by the groom's father or his best man, who was clearly new to this - he was a bit stiff in his role, but always had a nicely propped cigarette ready, whereas the father's cigarette pack was already all crumbled up :)
About 40 minutes later we also got into the dining room - a dream in pink! With ribbons and laces and the whole nine yards! They had apparently chosen the "modern theme," because there were also blue blinking lights and kind of up-beat electronic music, and an English sign "wedding" in front. The guests had already devoured most of the snacks (wedding candy, that's just normal candy with wedding motive wrappers, oranges (they had really tasty oranges everywhere in Ganzhou, they're in season right now, very sweet and juicy - wherever I went I was told to sit down and eat oranges)and peanuts). As soon as the couple entered the room (to the sounds of the wedding march and some confetti canon), the waiters started serving food and most of the guests focused their attention on the food instead of what was going on in front - which was a "host" with a microphone making the groom declare his love again and have the couple answer questions about each other. I didn't catch what was going on in front very well, it was too noisy. Especially one table - they seemed to have their own little celebration going on. They kept cheering and applauding to themselves at inopportune moments. Then the couple walked out of the room, the host had finished her job and the couple returned with the bride changed into a traditional short jacket (that the groom had delivered that morning) and pants. They went from table to table (I think there were 16 of them, just short of 200 people probably) to drink with the guests. Best man and bride's maid were carrying bottles for them and depending on what the respective table was drinking (Chinese red wine or 白酒 bai jiu - strong clear liquor) they had to rink the same stuff at least once. On several tables there were more toasts by single persons to the groom or both. The bride cheated - the bai jiu bottle her friend was carrying was filled with water. But the groom toughed it out and by the time he got to our table he looked already a bit under the weather :) Poor guy, he had a really tough time. When they finally got to sit down and have some - by then cold - food, the first guests already started leaving. It was suddenly all over very quickly. apparently that's typical for wedding lunches, it can drag on longer if it's a dinner. I think I now understand why they made it a lunch :) The hole thing was more or less for their parents - but then, isn't that true for most weddings? Maye here it was a bit extreme in the sense that most people only greeted the parents and the only time they spoke to the couple was when they were drinking a toast to them. And the saddest thing of all - I don't have much to say about the food. Anyways, I am glad I was there to witness the whole thing, I had a lot of fun.
Stay tuned for Ganzhou Part II!
The wedding was great. Mostly because I got to practise Chinese all weekend and learned more about Chinese culture in two days than normally in two months. I just wish I wasn't so lazy - the thing is, I took notes over the weekend so I wouldn't forget anything, but now I really don't feel like typing these notes up for the blog. But due to personal requests (thank you guys for liking my blog) I'll do what my fans expect of me :) ah, stardom is hard...
I got to Ganzhou Friday morning after a rather pleasant train ride. I was sharing the compartment with two guys who were also going from Nanjing to attend a wedding in Ganzhou - but not the same, it turned out.
 |
| train_ride |
 |
| ganzhou_1 |
Then I met his parents and wife (they were already legally married in Beijing, because that's where they are registered, but their parents insisted on them having a "proper" wedding) and had lunch with the family. I was told to stop saying "thank you," being impolite is part of being accepted as a family member :) I helped the bride to decorate "her new home," which means my friend's bedroom in his parents' place - not that their actually going to live their, since she studies in Beijing and he in Montreal, but tradition is tradition. The groom even had to buy new furniture for his room! So we glued "lucky characters," i.e. Chinese characters expressing good fortune made of red papercuts, on windows and mirrors. We had dinner also with the bride's parents. It was really nice, and my friend's mom a pretty good cook.
The next morning started with the ritual haggling for the bride :) Since the bride's parents are from Henan province, they stayed in a hotel in Ganzhou and the bride also spend the night before the wedding in the hotel. They had rented a suite and pretended it was her home. Three of her friends had also come and I was added to the bride's party so I could participate in all the fun. The fun being that the groom has to make a complete fool of himself and the bride is treated like a princess - that's basically the core principle of a Chinese wedding :) So the groom came and knocked on the door, asking for his bride. Her girlfriends put up a fight and did not want to let him in. He was forced to declare his love, promise to always obey his wife, even when she's wrong, and even sing! Only after he had pushed enough money envelopes under the door did they finally let him in (btw, the "bride's maids" got to keep the money from the red envelopes, so I even made ten yuan). He came with flowers and a traditional Chinese jacket, the bride was sitting on the bed amidst all her skirts.
 |
| wedding |
They exchanged their rings and then the bride's parents served them food (they had borrowed a rice steamer so they could steam some eggs in the hotel room). Then there was the ritual bowing to the parents and handing over of red envelopes. Now all the groom had to do was find the bride's shows that we had hidden and we could go...
Not without taking a hundred pictures first. Everything was documented by a professional photographer and a guy with a digital camera. That's the main reason I lost my drive of taking pictures, so all the humiliations of the groom are only sparsely documented :) Sorry there are so few pictures of the wedding - if I get hold of more, I'll post them. From then on, all the way to his parents' home, the bride did not have to/was not allowed to walk on her own feet. The groom had to carry her everywhere (yes, with that huge dress). And we didn't take the direct route, our convoy of four cars stopped at a supermarket along the way, where the groom had to carry his wife into the store and buy water. It was quite a hilarious group storming through the store. Then we stopped at a square with a big statue of a bull, where one can rent a palanquin only for the purpose of having the groom (and his best man) carry the bride around. To add to the poor guy's misery, he also had to wear a ridiculous hat and a bow around his neck - the bride got a riding crop to speed him up. You just gotta love this imagery! The bride declined to touch the bull testicles though - I suppose that would have guaranteed a bunch of strong sons :)
Finally we arrived at the groom's house (again, there were fireworks when we arrived, as there had been at the hotel when we left), the bride was carried up the stairs into "her" new bedroom and from then on she was allowed to walk on her own feet. First, more pictures were taken with all groups of people sitting next to bride and groom on their wedding bed with a huge photograph of the two hanging above. Then they served the groom's parents tea, followed by more ritual bowing and exchanges of red envelopes. Phew. So much for the traditional part. Btw, they had friends who held printouts of the protocols in their hands - apparently, not every Chinese has internalized what the proper phrases for all these little rituals are.
Now it was time for the banquet. When we got to the restaurant, there were three(!) other couples who had their wedding lunches there. They were all standing downstairs greeting guest. In order for people to not go to the wrong wedding, each couple was standing next to a sign with their names (and usually picture). Guest started trickling in and, in most cases, greeted the groom's parents and handed them their red envelope. Then they headed upstairs to the dining room - just ignoring the newly weds! I was pretty stunned by that. It was explained to me that they are friends of the parents and in many cases the groom had never seen them before. But still - don't you congratulate the happy couple? No, you don't. You congratulate the parents and hand over your "entrance fee" to the banquet. That's what it looked like. There were of course some exceptions, friends and former teachers of the groom. Many group pictures were taken and all the men who came to congratulate were offered a cigarette - either by the groom's father or his best man, who was clearly new to this - he was a bit stiff in his role, but always had a nicely propped cigarette ready, whereas the father's cigarette pack was already all crumbled up :)
About 40 minutes later we also got into the dining room - a dream in pink! With ribbons and laces and the whole nine yards! They had apparently chosen the "modern theme," because there were also blue blinking lights and kind of up-beat electronic music, and an English sign "wedding" in front. The guests had already devoured most of the snacks (wedding candy, that's just normal candy with wedding motive wrappers, oranges (they had really tasty oranges everywhere in Ganzhou, they're in season right now, very sweet and juicy - wherever I went I was told to sit down and eat oranges)and peanuts). As soon as the couple entered the room (to the sounds of the wedding march and some confetti canon), the waiters started serving food and most of the guests focused their attention on the food instead of what was going on in front - which was a "host" with a microphone making the groom declare his love again and have the couple answer questions about each other. I didn't catch what was going on in front very well, it was too noisy. Especially one table - they seemed to have their own little celebration going on. They kept cheering and applauding to themselves at inopportune moments. Then the couple walked out of the room, the host had finished her job and the couple returned with the bride changed into a traditional short jacket (that the groom had delivered that morning) and pants. They went from table to table (I think there were 16 of them, just short of 200 people probably) to drink with the guests. Best man and bride's maid were carrying bottles for them and depending on what the respective table was drinking (Chinese red wine or 白酒 bai jiu - strong clear liquor) they had to rink the same stuff at least once. On several tables there were more toasts by single persons to the groom or both. The bride cheated - the bai jiu bottle her friend was carrying was filled with water. But the groom toughed it out and by the time he got to our table he looked already a bit under the weather :) Poor guy, he had a really tough time. When they finally got to sit down and have some - by then cold - food, the first guests already started leaving. It was suddenly all over very quickly. apparently that's typical for wedding lunches, it can drag on longer if it's a dinner. I think I now understand why they made it a lunch :) The hole thing was more or less for their parents - but then, isn't that true for most weddings? Maye here it was a bit extreme in the sense that most people only greeted the parents and the only time they spoke to the couple was when they were drinking a toast to them. And the saddest thing of all - I don't have much to say about the food. Anyways, I am glad I was there to witness the whole thing, I had a lot of fun.
Stay tuned for Ganzhou Part II!
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
No train home
Back I am in freezing Nanjing. I can't believe that after a couple of weeks at -15C I'm complaining about the weather here, but imagine, we haven't had any plus degrees here in a few days. Which means my apartment is so hard to heat (since none of my neighbors heat, the floors and walls are frigging cold) that I have concentrated all efforts on the living room and are sleeping on the couch. It gets cozy there with my two heaters, but taking a shower in the morning requires strength, not just because my bathroom feels like a fridge, but also because it's hard to get the shampoo out of the bottle. It's not quite frozen but very viscous. I did, however, import some of Montreal's fantastic winter technology - shrink wrap for my bedroom window to create a second layer (where the frigging second window pane is missing!) and foam tape to fix that gaping hole between my door and door frame. I believe that's the main source of dust in my apartment, at least there was always a really strong air flow coming in - pretty much all outside air as my neighbors believe also the hallway should be ventilated well and always open the windows even at minus frigging 6 degrees! Actually I'm starting to wonder why my shampoo isn't frozen yet...
Anyways, I have been assured that this madness will end with the spring festival. The lunar calendar is supposedly pretty accurate for this region (it was true for the beginning of winter). So, only 6 more weeks to go. Sigh. At least I am escaping this weekend, I'm taking a train to Ganzhou, about 800km south of here, to attend a wedding. Yay! A real Chinese wedding! I'm so excited. (I have to watch what I'm saying because the groom might be reading this blog :) I bet he's way to busy at the moment with wedding preparations though) So, in order to not commit any cultural faux-pas, I asked around among my Chinese friends about the DOs and DON'Ts. Our Chinese teacher had already told to not wear red (that's the color of the bride), black or white (the latter both being funeral colors - the closest family members wear white, other people black) and in general no dark colors. Well, brilliant. That eliminates my entire wardrobe. And I couldn't bring myself to invest in a pink dress with bows and ribbons that, I'm sure, I would have had no trouble finding. So I used my trip to Montreal to dig out a green skirt (which used to belong to my mother and I have never worn so far) and got a purple shirt. Mh. We'll see how it goes. The problem is, all my sweaters are black anyways, so I'll either freeze or violate the dress code. But I already have the suspicion that I'm taking this way too seriously. So far I have witnessed pretty much all DON'Ts committed by at least one Chinese person (even the terrible "don't stick your chopsticks upside down in your rice bowl, it symbolizes a grave"). It seems, money is the universal language of wedding gifts everywhere and I think I will not venture into the trap of buying flowers. It would not be a good idea to take them on my 18 hour train ride anyway.
Yes, that's right - 18 hours! For 800km! This is the special slow train. It's incredible. China really has a well-functioning train system, especially between Nanjing-Shanghai or Shanghai-Beijing. But there are several kind of trains with wildly varying speeds. The K-train seems to be the slowest and the idea is that you can sleep in the train and wake up at your destination. Well, nice in principle, but 18hours?! How did I get myself into this adventure? By asking my Chinese friends what's the best way to get to Ganzhou and they all said "by train of course." Only later did I find out that there is actually a flight with one stopover that only takes 3 hours. And since I am a coward, I am taking the soft-sleeper car, which is not that much cheaper that a plane ticket. But ok, it's gonna be an adventure, I am kinda looking forward to it, but the greatest challenge was getting the tickets. Because buying train tickets in China is a science, no, more like alchemy. First, tickets go on sale 10 days before the departure date. Either you go to a ticket booth or travel agency somewhere and pay a little fee or you try to buy your ticket at the train station where there are huge lines and absolute chaos (if you want to get an idea of what I mean, watch "Last train home" that's running at Cinema du Parc right now - but I don't really recommend the movie. It's by the same director as "Up the Yangtze" and made exactly in the same "fake documentary" style, the characters are completely one-dimensional and all you get to see are a factory and a train that the migrant workers take home for the spring festival, I was very bored). Since I was in Montreal on the "ticket release day", I asked one of my students to buy the ticket to Ganzhou for me. That was no problem. Buying a return ticket, however, turned out to be more tricky. Because if you want to buy a ticket for a train that leaves from a different city (being Ganzhou in my case), you have to go to the train station. There is no other way (unless you travel in the same province). And there is a much smaller contingent of tickets. So to cut a long story short, my friend was not able to get me a return ticket. They were already sold out when he made it to the ticket window. They were also sold out in Ganzhou. So here I am with a ticket to Ganzhou but no return - no train home!
And I did what the cowardly Westerner does - I bought a plane ticket, instead of just going to Ganzhou and hoping to get hold of a returned ticket or taking the hard seat train and sharing with all sorts of... ehm... smells. The fast connection was sold out, so I am doing the silly thing of flying via Shanghai (again) - I'm getting to know that airport pretty well. I have to be back on Tuesday to teach, I would feel pretty irresponsible if I just hung out in Ganzhou and waited for the next available train back. And also... 6 hours flight instead of 18 hours train sounds like a good idea. But maybe I'll enjoy the overnight train so much I won't want to travel any other way :)
It's good to be back though, despite the cold. Man, I missed Chinese food! :) Montreal was nice as well, but I also realized that I am not ready to go home.
Anyways, I have been assured that this madness will end with the spring festival. The lunar calendar is supposedly pretty accurate for this region (it was true for the beginning of winter). So, only 6 more weeks to go. Sigh. At least I am escaping this weekend, I'm taking a train to Ganzhou, about 800km south of here, to attend a wedding. Yay! A real Chinese wedding! I'm so excited. (I have to watch what I'm saying because the groom might be reading this blog :) I bet he's way to busy at the moment with wedding preparations though) So, in order to not commit any cultural faux-pas, I asked around among my Chinese friends about the DOs and DON'Ts. Our Chinese teacher had already told to not wear red (that's the color of the bride), black or white (the latter both being funeral colors - the closest family members wear white, other people black) and in general no dark colors. Well, brilliant. That eliminates my entire wardrobe. And I couldn't bring myself to invest in a pink dress with bows and ribbons that, I'm sure, I would have had no trouble finding. So I used my trip to Montreal to dig out a green skirt (which used to belong to my mother and I have never worn so far) and got a purple shirt. Mh. We'll see how it goes. The problem is, all my sweaters are black anyways, so I'll either freeze or violate the dress code. But I already have the suspicion that I'm taking this way too seriously. So far I have witnessed pretty much all DON'Ts committed by at least one Chinese person (even the terrible "don't stick your chopsticks upside down in your rice bowl, it symbolizes a grave"). It seems, money is the universal language of wedding gifts everywhere and I think I will not venture into the trap of buying flowers. It would not be a good idea to take them on my 18 hour train ride anyway.
Yes, that's right - 18 hours! For 800km! This is the special slow train. It's incredible. China really has a well-functioning train system, especially between Nanjing-Shanghai or Shanghai-Beijing. But there are several kind of trains with wildly varying speeds. The K-train seems to be the slowest and the idea is that you can sleep in the train and wake up at your destination. Well, nice in principle, but 18hours?! How did I get myself into this adventure? By asking my Chinese friends what's the best way to get to Ganzhou and they all said "by train of course." Only later did I find out that there is actually a flight with one stopover that only takes 3 hours. And since I am a coward, I am taking the soft-sleeper car, which is not that much cheaper that a plane ticket. But ok, it's gonna be an adventure, I am kinda looking forward to it, but the greatest challenge was getting the tickets. Because buying train tickets in China is a science, no, more like alchemy. First, tickets go on sale 10 days before the departure date. Either you go to a ticket booth or travel agency somewhere and pay a little fee or you try to buy your ticket at the train station where there are huge lines and absolute chaos (if you want to get an idea of what I mean, watch "Last train home" that's running at Cinema du Parc right now - but I don't really recommend the movie. It's by the same director as "Up the Yangtze" and made exactly in the same "fake documentary" style, the characters are completely one-dimensional and all you get to see are a factory and a train that the migrant workers take home for the spring festival, I was very bored). Since I was in Montreal on the "ticket release day", I asked one of my students to buy the ticket to Ganzhou for me. That was no problem. Buying a return ticket, however, turned out to be more tricky. Because if you want to buy a ticket for a train that leaves from a different city (being Ganzhou in my case), you have to go to the train station. There is no other way (unless you travel in the same province). And there is a much smaller contingent of tickets. So to cut a long story short, my friend was not able to get me a return ticket. They were already sold out when he made it to the ticket window. They were also sold out in Ganzhou. So here I am with a ticket to Ganzhou but no return - no train home!
And I did what the cowardly Westerner does - I bought a plane ticket, instead of just going to Ganzhou and hoping to get hold of a returned ticket or taking the hard seat train and sharing with all sorts of... ehm... smells. The fast connection was sold out, so I am doing the silly thing of flying via Shanghai (again) - I'm getting to know that airport pretty well. I have to be back on Tuesday to teach, I would feel pretty irresponsible if I just hung out in Ganzhou and waited for the next available train back. And also... 6 hours flight instead of 18 hours train sounds like a good idea. But maybe I'll enjoy the overnight train so much I won't want to travel any other way :)
It's good to be back though, despite the cold. Man, I missed Chinese food! :) Montreal was nice as well, but I also realized that I am not ready to go home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)