Lots to say

Last Wednesday I had my first KTV experience. KTV is what the karaoke clubs are called here, and they are everywhere. I was with the English First boys and their Chinese female teaching assistants in a private room. During the two and a half hours of my life I spent listening to off-key performances of cover versions of American songs, Chinese pop, and my least favorite, the melodramatic Chinese ballad, sung into a microphone with a horrible reverb issue I learned two truths: 1. Chinese pop culture promotes women being cute, not sexy. 2. Karaoke is only fun for me when I am singing. Which I did a lot of even though all of those people had known each other for at least a year and I had met them two days before. The club also provided us with a tambourine that I didn’t let go of all night. It added even MORE pizzazz to Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5.”

On Friday I went to Shanghai. Over the course of the night, we ran into some interesting characters, but the true standout was this guy Fitzgerald. He randomly broke out in song. And this song just happened to be Prince. Specifically, “Raspberry Beret”. And he bought everyone I was with overpriced hamburgers that they sold at the bar. He was hilarious and works as an engineer for the Chinese government developing some nuclear something or other. I have this thing left over from the Day School when Rabbi Friedman told us all that in every generation there are a certain number of people, I can’t remember exactly how many, but I think it was around 75, that, if all conditions are right, could be the Messiah. They are Levites and direct descendants of King David and whatever else the requirements are, and there are some walking this earth at this very moment, but they probably won’t be the actual Messiah because the time is not right. I have a running list of people I call “Messiah candidates.” Fitzgerald is one. Remember that name.

The trip back from Shanghai was crazy. Sunday night was Mid-Autumn Festival, a Chinese Thanksgiving-type holiday, and no one invited me to their dinner even though I dropped many hints. I’m sort of sad about that, but I didn’t hear of anyone else here teaching who was actually invited to someone’s dinner so at least it’s not just me. The scene at the bus station was ludicrous. Travel on Thanksgiving weekend in America times a thousand. Then, while I was on the bus, the driver started honking. Drivers are crazy here compared to what we are used to as Americans. The parameters that differentiate normal, everyday driving etiquette from the completely absurd expand to include driving in the wrong lane while going around a blind curve to pass a truck carrying combustibles while on a scooter with no helmet and pulling 600,00 flattened cardboard boxes in a small cart behind you etc etc. So I didn’t make much of the honking until I glanced out of the window and saw a giant bus, a bus strikingly similar to the one that I was seated on, not ten feet from my face, ENGULFED IN FLAMES. I felt the heat through my window and my jaw stayed dropped for so long that I had to hold it up with my fingers. What was that?? There were two policemen casually leaning against a car parked about thirty feet from the flaming bus. I saw no hoses.

Moving on…on Saturday I came back to Zhangjiagang for a teacher’s dinner held in honor of teacher’s day, which was Thursday. The top floor of the dining hall was filled with all of the teachers sitting at big round tables. Awards were presented and KTV was sung loudly while I tried to holler questions at the Chinese English teachers who were sitting across the table. There was so much food and some of it was scary. The chicken and duck dishes at the dinner were each adorned with heads propped up on the side of the plate, resting against an orchid, with a good view of the chopped up and charred remains of their respective carcasses. I hallucinated that the chicken face winked at me. Freaky. There was also a turtle dish with the sad shell broken over the mutilated body of the turtle. Though I must admit, I always wanted to see what the part of the turtle hidden under the shell looked like and now I know. My favorite little creature was the hairy crab, a crab that is identical to a regular crab except for being covered in long bushy hair that, at the dinner, was wet and clumpy from being recently boiled. While dishes were brought out, different teachers made rounds. Whenever someone came to our table we all had to stand and have a drink. At first I thought some of the teachers were drinking water from the tiny wine glasses that are standard in China (about the size of a shot and a half). However, it was actually baijui, a throat scorching Chinese liquor. The party started at 4:45 and ended at 6:30. During this span of time, a good number of teachers got really sloshed. After the watermelon was served (fruit generally ends a meal) there was a mass exodus. No lingering.
The brown stuff is hair. That's Mary Beth's hand. Note the tiny wine glass.

Because we had Monday off for Mid-Autumn festival, on Sunday I went with Mary Beth and Candice, the two other English teachers at my school, to a neighboring town called Changzhou for a party. Mary Beth worked in Changzhou last time she was in China and she knew one of party's hosts. While buying DVDs, I bumped into a fellow CIEE-er (the program that I went through to get here) and I went to his place to check out the FOUR STAR HOTEL in which he is housed. The hotel looks like a pad of paper (a regular square building) next to a fountain pen. A different CIEE kid lives in the tip of the fountain pen and his bedroom is a semicircle with its circumference lined with floor to ceiling windows. Before the party started, we played Chinese monopoly. Guess what? Monopoly is boring in every country. I schooled everyone though, and I did it while reading Teen People, UK version. The party was pretty fun. I met some cool people and talked to some professionals working in China NOT teaching 600 kids a week (what I might like to do after my contract is up in January…that is, get a job and stay).

A while ago, at a bar, this guy said that he wished that he could just download every language into his head. I thought that sounded so great, especially considering my personal difficulty with language learning. I told this to Stephanie who said that she wouldn’t like that because there would never be the experience of being foreign. At the time, I argued with her. I said that culture, food, and lifestyle differences would still be foreign and just because you speak the same language doesn’t mean that communication will be problem free. Recently, I’ve come to change my opinion. Being foreign without knowing Chinese has done more for me than just ensure that I will totally rock at charades when I get home; it has made me more receptive and able to express myself in ways outside of language. That includes gestures, noises, and pointing, but it also kind of feels like I’m developing a sixth sense, like how parents can tell from indistinguishable wails that this one means bottle and the other, a diaper change. It feels good to go from huffing and puffing and being frustrated and misunderstood to being able to get my point across without the benefit of language. But don’t get me wrong, I still really want to learn Chinese, and I hope that if I take away nothing else from my time here, I can leave with that skill. That’s why I want to stay for more than five months. I want to stay as long as I need to to come out of here knowing Mandarin. Now I just have to get started.

-Rachel