Culture Shock

I knew what to expect, but it was a shock nevertheless. Dadonghai beach (according to Lonely Planet the est beach in Sanya... I'm starting to wonder who they wrote that giude book for; it only describes spots that are truly non-Chinese. I very much not recommend it if you plan to travel to China) reminds me quite a bit of Mallorca, only that the second language here is not German but Russian. Some signs are only in Chinese and cyrillic, not even in English. The beach is not the cleanest and crowded with overpriced bars, but at least some of them have decent drinks - not so hard with freshly squeezed juice available everywhere.

dadonghai_beach

The hostel I moved to is reasonably clean, just very messy. There's laundry everywhere that looks like it was forgotten by last year's guests and the hallways are cluttered with mattresses, bed frames and stuff. Actually, I have to revise that statement about reasonably clean since I saw the kitchen... this place was renovated just a couple of years ago and you can still see the effort, but 20-something backpackers are apparently not the crowd to keep a place in good shape. They also hiked up their prices quite a bit, if it wasn't for New Year's I might as well be staying in a real hotel. So, stay away from the Blue Sky International Youth hostel.

sanya_hostel

The crowd here is a funny mixture... of course there's the typical backpacker crowd (I feel really old here, my, but then there are also the odd 60 year olds, no idea what they're doing in a hostel) and pretty much every country is represented... Germany (of course), Switzerland, Belgium, Lithuania, Sweden, Czech Republic, Russia, US, Canada... and those are just the people I talked to. I also heard Spanish, Italian and French. I always have a hard time answering the question "where are you from?" I like to say "Canada" for one, because it shuts people up (all they know about Canada is that it's cold. If I say Germany they tell me all about beer, BMW and Autobahn - no thanks) but also because that's where I feel my home is. But when I then admit that I have a German passport, people want to know what that means and when I say I lived there for more than 20 years, they tell me "So, you're really German, not Canadian" Am I? The only exception - Canadians! The real Canadians, I mean, not like me :) One once "defended" me saying "we really are a nation of immigrants" And now ask me again why I'd rather say I'm from Canada than from Germany. (btw, I never say I "am" Canadian, but it is true that I am "from" Canada... so, shortcoming of the English language if everybody uses the phrase "where are you from" instead of distinguishing like the Chinese. They also often ask 你是哪国人？ "ni shi na guo ren?" - you are which country's person? :)) Pretty much 90% of the people here are in China to study Chinese or teach their own language. That's pleasant in the sense that they are not ignorant about China but also annoying, because they have been here long enough to crave western food and bars. (or maybe they never cared for the "real Chinese experience," maybe I'm a bit crazy, maybe I'm chasing something that doesn't exist)

So, I overcame my snobbish solitary attitude and went out with a bunch - first to a bar, then to a club, but I didn't stay there for long. Somehow, having overpriced, lousy drinks in a dark, smoke-filled room and not being able to have a conversation because of the noise never held much appeal for me. But now I can say I have also seen this side of China. New Year's eve I stayed in the hostel. they organized a BBQ, which was pretty neat, there was lots of fresh seafood (oysters are actually pretty good grilled) and homemade ice cream for dessert. They have an inverse griddle, which is a cooking plate that is freezing cold (my guess is, it sits on a block of dry ice). Then you pour blended fruit on it and stir until it turns into sorbet. Looks like making scrambled eggs :) Around midnight we went to the beach and watched the fireworks. I was very much reminded of German New Year. Chinese also love their home-made fireworks. They had already been going at it the whole day, but at midnight it was really amazing.

fireworks

Sorry I'm not taking very representative pictures of this place (or China in general). I never really manage to capture the little street scenes and by now I am so used to them, I don't see them through a tourist's eyes anymore. Little makeshift stove on a bicycle selling roast skewers? Seen that a million times. Life fish in tanks outside a restaurant? Everywhere. So, I tried...

sanya

I have been asked what Chinese are like at the beach... Mh, I'm not sure why they would be different from any other people. So, I've been pondering the question what kind of Chinese goes on vacation to Sanya. I noticed a few types... there are the typical 3-head families, relatively young parents with a small child. More than once have I seen those dressed in the same Hawaii-print "pyjamas" and the children all carry the same orange plastic bucket with beach toys. They look a bit like it's the first vacation in their life and they're not sure what to do. So, they wear the flamboyant shirts and shorts, put on (whitening!) sunscreen and walk around with a somewhat insecure look. Then there are the families with old people. The old men seem to have a lot of fun splashing in the water, but they all wear these ill-fitting swimsuits (better than the Russians, who are typically 1,80m and 150kg and wear tiny, tiny speedos). The old women are a bit more afraid of the sea and often sit fully dressed in their beach chairs - including socks! They get together for noisy, fun-filled dinners on the beach promenade or just sit there in the shade playing cards and mahjong. Then there are of course the wanna-be fashionable young girls with their boyfriends or without, recognizable from afar by their parasols. What's missing compared to Florida or Mallorca is the binge-drinking spring break crowd and sexual excesses, but the foreigners try to make up for that. One other thing I noticed - the Chinese in my hotel pool would typically wear swimcap and goggles :) And I had the feeling a lot of them can't actually swim.

News update: Back in Nanjing at frigging -1C and snow!!! WTF?! Why didn't I stay in Sanya for two weeks? I really don't know. I guess I was afraid of being lonely there. But the truth is, I am much lonelier here. Everything is closed, apart from my favourite cafe and the supermarket. But all the little restaurants and shops - barricaded, deserted.

Bike trip

On my last day in my fancy hotel I rented a bike and ventured out into the countryside. I didn't make it all the way to Nanshan temple, but considering that I was riding a squeaky mono-gear bike I was rather proud of myself that I made it about 2/3 of the way, i.e. 10km over hills. Once I stopped to drink some water and some soldiers chatted me up, asking where I was going. They offered to take my bike on their car and drive me to Nanshan and I was hard-pressed explaining to them that the road was the goal :) Anyways, I'm glad I did it, but it was slightly disappointing.

sanya_biketrip

Hainan is much more densely populated than google-maps makes you believe. I had to go for about 7km before there were no more people at the road side shouting their "hello, hello" to me. And I have to tell you - Chinese country side is not exactly romantic. I mean, ok, I saw my first rice paddies close up and there were chicken, cows, goats and dogs running around, but when you see that the rice paddies are between two pretty heavily frequented (mostly by stinky motorbikes and busses) roads and the roadside is full of garbage, it kills the idyll a bit. And when the garbage starts to pile up too high, someone starts a little fire. I also passed this place with loud disco music and 可爱女孩 "ke ai nu hai" (lovely girls) written on the wall. Mh, don't think that was a chicken farm. But well, I did catch some nice glimpses of Hainan mountains...

That rural China is extremely poor is a well-publicized fact, but at least in Hainan it's only half true. I saw a mixture of houses from basically sheds (looking like a garage with one side open), over simple one-storey homes (add another room to the garage with some windows) to almost fancy 2-storey homes. In many cases it looked like people had started out with the simple sheds and had just recently finished building their new homes (it's also possible that the construction workers lived in the sheds, but that was not the impression I got). I don't know where this newfound wealth is coming from (probably tourism), it seemed to be a pretty recent development and the houses all had the same design. I got back just in time for sunset (this is the beach out at my hotel)

sanya_beach

And as promised - some pictures of my nice hotel that I have already left for the hostel closer to downtown... quite a downgrade, but at least it won't be so hard now to leave this tropical island for cold and wet Nanjing.

sanya_myhotel

Today was luxury day

I accompanied my boss to her new resort at the other end of the bay (because the Kempinski where they had been staying was apparently booked out for the next days). The Place is called Mandarin Oriental Sanya, if you want to bother and google their website. It's impressive - not only the website - but the actual place. We were greeted with flower garlands aloha-style and then had to take an elevator down to the lobby. The hole thing is built into a hill side. While they were checking in, we were served fresh juice and the kid got a balloon to play with. In their room was a personally addressed welcome card from the Manager (named Gerd Knaust :P), a welcome tea set and fruit. The room itself of course luxury but with a slight notch of understatement. Very functional but cozy with lots of wood, not overloaded with kitschy decoration. As usual in Chinese upper-class hotels: open bathroom. Not even a glass window. There is a blind you can lower, but really the bathtub is just free standing in the room. Oh, the Kempinski has one cool thing - bathtubs on your balcony :) Ok, the Kempinski has more than that one cool thing, also the food there is pretty good, the freshly squeezed juice unbeatable and they have nice pools and a private beach. I have to cross a little street to get to my beach, but there are people selling fresh coconut on the street, in which they drill a hole and put a straw in it for you to drink the juice.

Coming back to this really fancy place - the most amazing service ever I got when I was having a little drink (Pina Colada to complete the cliche with the beach and palm trees) at one of their countless seaside bars (you just sit down in a beach chair, which are all stocked with towels, and a waiter will come take your drink order). With sunset the mosquitoes came out and I apparently started scratching myself and fending them off, because a second later the water brought me a little mosquito repellent spray - compliments of the house. He also started carrying out candles for me when it got too dark to read. And that place is so huge, we constantly got lost, but there is always someone who does not only point you in your direction, but rather accompanies you all the way. And they all speak flawless English. And of course you can always call a buggy to drive you were you want to go.

sanya_mandarin

I have to say though, I am quite happy in my hotel, which is about a third the price of theirs and I'd still say it's not cheap, but I have an awesome big room with sea view. And I find my hotel cozier than the Kempinski and Mandarin Oriental which are very geometrical and have the same orange-stone-wood color scheme. Mine is white and round (the lobby is round and open up to the roof 4 floors above and the rooms are laid out in three wings, sort of star-shaped. From the lobby you get into a bar/cafe half a floor down and another half floor down is a little pool connecting the two outdoor pools, it feels like the water is flowing through the lobby. But the best thing - I think - is that it's full of Chinese and not Russians (the biggest foreign community here) or other westerners. Why? Because the Chinese are not beach and pool people, so I have these places almost all to myself :) And of course I get to practise my Chinese! Frankly, I don't know where all the people that I see at breakfast vanish to later in the day. When I went for a swim I had the pool all to myself and there were only three kids in the other pool. The food seems rather mediocre, but Kempinski is just down the road and I can always go there to eat - apart from a Chinese restaurant they also have a "Paulaner Brauhaus" and a restaurant called "Kranzler's". Thank Goodness they resisted the urge to decorate the whole hotel in Bavarian blue-white and the waiters are wearing Chinese style clothes, not Dirndl and Lederhosen. Phew, close call!

sanya_kempisnki

We tried to get out of our resorts a little today and wanted to go to the "Nanshan Buddhist Cultural Tourist Zone," but after we had already gotten in a cab we learned that it costs 150RMB to get in there, so we turned around. I still find it weird that one has to pay just to look at their 181m tall Buddha Statue (which is out at sea) and I will make another attempt to get there when I rent a bike tomorrow. It's quite a hilly track over 15km though, I'm not sure I will make it all the way.

One of the most stunning moments - apart from roast Wenchang chicken, which is raised on a diet of rice and peanuts and is really succulent - was to see stars. I don't know how long it's been. There is never a clear sky in Nanjing. That alone could be a reason to stay here. The pleasant 27 degrees everyday don't hurt either. Next time pictures of my hotel. And btw, I did not photoshop the people out of the picture at the very top. It is really that empty at the beach. And not always so cloudy. Don't let anyone tell you there is no blue sky in China! I have proof to the contrary!

I'm outta here

Surely you are all sick of my whining about the cold and being alone for New Year's. So am I. And really, what am I doing here? I mean, it's not like anything really important is keeping me here. When I signed up for this I expected sub-tropical weather, not this misery we've had the last couple of months. So, sorry if I'm being a wuss, but I've decided to pack my things and go... someplace really tropical! :) I'm going to Hainan Island (the "Hawaii of the Orient," China's southernmost province, an island in the South China Sea), and just to be absolutely sure I have picked the southernmost point - Sanya. A small town with tons of beaches. Actually, I'll be staying in a beach resort (hopefully) far away from the main tourist crowds for 4 nights and then move to a hostel closer to downtown and the more popular beach for the last three nights. Hotel prices just go up too much (more than a factor of 2) the closer we get to New Year's - which is on Valentine's day this year. So, I'll be spending Chinese New Year in a hostel with a bunch of drunk backpackers... I guess that's the best case scenario :) Well, it should be fun, certainly not lonely.

The funniest part of the story is how I got to make this decision. My boss asked me on Sunday if I wouldn't want to join them for a weeks vacation in Sanya. Being all cold and sad at the prospect of being completely deserted, it didn't need much convincing. Add to that that the university just decided to basically double the salary for foreign postdocs and I can even afford it! So, later that night I book my flight. The next day she tells me they changed their plans and are not going, and she was afraid I'd be upset. But frankly, I'm grateful for the kick in the butt (actually, more a gentle nudge) to go somewhere. And on top of that I won't have to babysit (with my latest experience being their 3-year old peeing on my carpet I've really had my share of kids for a while). Well, in the end it seems like half their family is going eventually, but I won't be staying in the same place. Instead, I hope to rent a bike and explore the island (there is a Buddhist reserve only 15km away) and of course spend long hours at the beach or pool bar, reading a good book (which I still have to find, I'm really longing for a good read - anyone who wants to send English or German books to me is more than welcome!) and tanning in my brand new bikini... ehm, yes... if you ever go to China and there's the slightest chance you might go swimming, pack your own stuff! Thankfully I fit into a Chinese L (=American S), but the colors! What horror! I had the choice between a zillion shades of pink. No, I'm not telling what color I went for eventually, it's only slightly less offensive...

So, stay posted for pictures of beach and coconut trees and keep your fingers crossed I don't get into a mad New Year's travel rush (I'm leaving on the 7th, back on the 14th), although that's typically only bad for trains (I've been told). And indeed, I noticed the lines at the train ticket office just outside campus getting longer and longer by the day.

Upside down

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) :)

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.

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.

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 :)