I'm feeling tea

I've been feeling particularly sad this week. A family friend died at the weekend. Someone too young to have gone so soon. I feel sad, I miss my family, I miss my friends and being able to use my own language to explain how I feel. It can be very hard to say what's on your mind or in your heart in another language. Especially when (if said incorrectly) the word for 'bad' can mean 'tea', and, like me, you regularly confuse the words for 'it's a shame' with 'it's laughable'! However, it's reassuring to me that my linguistic blunders are available in times of sadness to provide mild entertainment.

 

Today, one of my teachers spent a lesson talking very openly about her experience during the long march, her re-education period and the cultural revolution. This lively vibrant woman, who I see as a cross between a Beijing opera singer and Mrs Miggins, was made to walk around the university in a dunce's cap for teaching foreigners, with a placard to criticise her own bourgeois behaviour. Teacher Qin is a kind of cuddly grandmotherly figure - all round and splodgy. I've never actually given her a cuddle - which I know will surprise many of you given my fondness for cuddles with people I know, people I don't know, small animals etc. She spent a summer working in sweltering temperatures in a  smelting works, and then went to the countryside for several years - and required to do the lowest jobs in a small village.  She also had to take part in a 'short' long march, walking around 50miles a day for 45 days. What a shocking way to spent your 'prime'!

 

I have read so many books about this period of time, and even though the history around it is familiar to me - having a much loved teacher describe all of this was a bit much. A bit like finding out that your grandmother had some horrible experience that should never have happened.

 

Another student (quite bravely, I thought) asked what she thought of her experience.

 

She threw back her head and laughed her tinkling sing-songy laugh and said "What do I think? I think Teacher Qin is no longer afraid of anything".

 

So, tonight I am going to raise a cup of tea (or a 'cup of bad') to not being afraid of anything, and to Lola, who it seems was also not afraid of anything.

A fishy tale

Recently I was in vegetarian restaurant having a very delicious lunch
when a Dutch man and his mother came in and sat in the courtyard
outside. Through the window it seemed that they were having some
trouble ordering their lunch, the waitress came in and asked me to go
out and translate for them - instant ego boost, much fluffing of
feathers and out I trot to dazzle everyone with my linguistic
skills....

....me being me, that's not exactly what happened.

The man wanted to order a fish dish - it's typical in China for all
veggie food to be made to look and taste like meat (bit of a bugger if
you're one of those veggies who is veggie because you don't like the
taste and texture of meat!) so you can order
'chicken','beef','duck','snails' etc and it all appears to be the real
thing. The man, who I have to add was extremely grumpy, wanted to know
if the fish dish was very large because he was very hungry and thought
it might not be big enough to satisfy him. He was very sure he only
wanted this type of fish, and no rice, no other vegetables and no soup
- which is a pretty odd way to eat in China so the waitress was
already doubting my translation skills. I kept asking her 'how big is
the fish?' and her reply was 'it's not really a fish'. I was getting
more and more frustrated and she was acting as though I was barking
mad. This went on for several minutes before I realised I was asking
her repeatedly 'how old is your fish?'.

Eventually, the dishes were ordered and I was allowed to go back to my
table very red-faced. The man and his mother ended up with fish, side
dishes of veg and rice - I overheard the waitress telling a colleague
that the foreign girl's Chinese wasn't so good after all and so they'd
better give them everything! The Dutch man was even grumpier at having
been given all the things he said he didn't want!

More practise needed!

A China Man

It seems that Chinese masculinity is defined in very different ways to the Western idea of 'what makes a man'.

 

I am still tickled whenever I see a man carrying a pink glittery handbag with Hello Kitty on it - at first I thought the Chinese man bag was just a bit different from our UK-style - but soon learnt that the bag belongs to a lady, and he's just carrying it for her. It's seen as polite to carry your girlfriend's bag for her, the equivalent of carrying someone's books home from school. However, I'm pretty sure that if my book bag had been lilac, sequined and had butterflies all over it, it would have been up to me to carry it! I 

hope that when Sam arrives this week (I am aiming, of course, to avoid telling the taxi driver about my beloved's masturbation habits), he will adopt this practice so that I can laugh at him carrying my ladybag!

 

Another quirk of Chinese fellas is that they don't seem to mind wearing matching T-shirts with their girlfriends/wives.It's common place among younger people to see couples strolling around in matching pink tops with kittens/monkeys/bunnies/anything else cute and fluffy emblazoned on the front. There are special his'n'hers glittery matching t-shirt shops all over Shanghai. I asked a friend (who was wearing a pink t-shirt with a bear on it to match his wife's) if there was anything special about this habit - I didn't want to say that at home I couldn't think of anyone who would wear a pink bear t-shirt to match his beloved's and that us foreigners think it's pretty funny that Chinese men do. His answer "Oh, this t-shirt's cute, I like cute things and so does my wife!". I'm not sure what answer I expected, but it wasn't that.

 

Shanghainese men are seen as special in China - they cook, they clean, they run households. In general, Chinese men from other places see Shanghainese men as the inferior Chinese man. However, Shanghainese men pertain that they are the manliest men because they can take care of everyone in the family and have a job etc etc.

 

It's a whole new world of macho.

Break in Transmission

A longer-than-intended break. I am being censored by the Chinese
firewalls - so I can't see my blog from China, or publish photos from
China or do as much as I would like from China!

However, as the Chinese would say "wo you ban fa" - "I have a way".

I'm back!