My first linguistic disaster

Before my blushes fade, I thought I should share this story with you. The week before last my beloved Sam came to Shanghai to visit me (for those out of the loop, we're back together). I took a taxi to the airport to meet him and could hardly sit still because I was so excited. The drive out to the airport was almost an hour and despite my best efforts, I could not manage to string a sentence together in Chinese or English.

 

After 40 minutes or so we started to reach airport territory - I could see that the road forked in two up ahead. The driver asked me whether he should take the left or the right road. I figured this had something to do with going to arrivals or departures. "OK" I thought, "I need to say 'arrivals'", I racked my brains but the word wouldn't come. We were getting closer and closer to the fork in the road and the driver was starting to look worried. I decided that forming a sentence would help the right word appear in my mind - so I set about saying "my boyfriend arrives at 3:30". The word for arrives is "dadao" but I am never too sure about the tones, sitting in the taxi I couldn't remember the "dao" part but I knew it was "da-something". So, I confidently told the driver "wo de nan peng you da fei ji san dian ban", which translates as....

 

 

....wait for it....

 

 

"my boyfriend masturbates at 3:30"

 

Yes, a true clanger. As soon as the words had some out of my mouth I understood what I'd said and spent the next 15 minutes blushing furiously and apologising over and over again. Thankfully, the driver didn't take offence (although he also did not seem amused) and I got arrivals on time. I don't think I'll ever forget the word for "arrive" ever again!

Food-an' University - Part II

As requested, here's the latest update of my epicurean adventures.

 

I have now discovered something else to add to my short list of food stuffs that I really REALLY don't like. There's a really popular drink here called "Bubble Tea" or "Pearl Tea" and for any self-respecting tea drinker it's just the wrongest of the wrong! Bubble tea is sweet, very weak, very milky tea that comes in a plastic cup with one of those plastic covers that you pop with a straw over the top. You can drink it cold, or the shop/stall with microwave it for you to heat it up - I can hear my Mum's disgust at the thought of microwaved tea - drinkers are then armed with a very wide straw - about the thickness of a marker pen - with which to burst the plastic lid with. Now, why would you need such a wide straw to drink a cup of cha? Because the bottom of the cup is filled with marrow fat pea sized globs of tapioca. Yes, that's what I said - TAPIOCA. These jelly like balls slip up the wide straw and pop into the unsuspecting drinkers' mouth as a "surprise". I must thank my friend Mrs Spink for providing me with by far the most suitable word to describe this beverage - GOPPING!

 

Writing about tea has made me shudder. I need to think about things that are more delicious so let's move on to pineapple. I am becoming an addict. It's pineapple season here so for around 25 pence I can buy a fantastically sweet and fresh, cleaned and ready to eat pineapple. Soo Ah (my roomie) has developed this addiction with me - the small shop attached to our dorm sells a brand of pineapple juice that we're both hooked on. It doesn't seem to be available anywhere else so we're going to have to find a new dealer, I mean supplier, sometime soon.

 

Lots of people are asking me what I am missing - and top of my list is hummous. I am even dreaming about Middle Eastern food - someone told me that there's a supermarket on the other side of the city that sells chick peas so I may have to go on a special mission to find them. The other obvious things are bread (most Chinese bread is sweet and tastes faintly of coconut), cheese, and red wine. Thankfully Mrs Spink also armed me with a jar of Marmite so I'm not missing that - just missing the toast to put it on!

Trips to Venice

It never takes long for a toilet story to emerge when you are overseas....

 

I have to share the loos in my classroom with you. There are two tiled troughs that run along either side of the room, partitions divide the troughs into individual cubicles but becuase the troughs are deep the partition stops around a foot before the ground. This means that you can see (and other fellow pee-ers) can see you go about your business. Some of the girls in my class have taken to calling the toilets the canal, so my Swedish friend and I have taken it one step further "I'm off to Venice".

 

Two weeks ago I was happily straddling the grand canal when I heard someone shout my Chinese name - I looked down to find my teacher excitedly waving at me in the reflection of our combined pee. An odd experience. Wang Laoshi (teacher Wang) told me that she had been looking for me....I didn't expect her to look for me that hard! She wanted me to take part in a competition - I could understand this much - but couldn't understand the sport she was describing. It turned out to be tug-of-war! Yes, if I were putting together a team of tuggers, I'd be my first choice too with my superb balance, exra strong muscles, and sporting reputation!

 

I could not refuse Wang Laoshi...so I dutifully donned my sports kit and went to lead the ladies' foreign students' tug team. We were told to meet at one of the uni's sports grounds, and arrived to quite large crowds of people - each team was allowed 4 women (and around 16 men) and thankfully our team had 16 REALLY big men in it so we won! Photographs of my first Chinese sporting achievement will be posted shortly - I couldn't take any as I was too busy pulling on a rope!

My Sexy Box

I have a new good habit - daily aerobics classes. I was delighted to learn that the University offers classes every evening - and even more delighted to learn these were free. I also thought this would be a good way to meet other Chinese students at Fudan in a more relaxed atmosphere. I got a group of foreign students together and we overcame our nerves about taking an exercise class in a language we don't understand. 

 

For me all feelings of nervousness are heightened because I don't "look" Chinese. A lot of Korean students are mistaken for Chinese, and  many of the other students have Chinese heritage - but for me there's no escaping the staring that goes along with white skin and brown hair. 100+ students went to our class on Monday - and I was the only white person. It can be funny when someone trips up in an aerobics class, or turns the wrong way etc - but when the "foreigner" does it - it's evidently a talking point. Those of you who are familiar with my malcoordination will appreciate my additional nerves. I certainly know that one person will be reading this wondering how on earth I managed to do the grapevine in China as I regularly ended up on the floor at the Arnold leisure centre (or worse - tripping someone else up). However, I am pleased to report to you Miss Stretton, that I practised a great deal before going to the class so that I would draw any more attention to myself.  I survived without too many mishaps and after the first 15mins of pointing and starting, it passed and we all just got on with the class.

 

Our teacher is a young Chinese woman - a talented dancer - who must have had some classical dance training . All her aerobics moves are done with poise and slightly over the top hand flourishes. There are evidently a large number of students who take their aerobics moves very seriously - and there's a fair amount of posing and serious dancer-like facial expressions. The first half of the class is very typical aerobic routines - for the initiated - grapevines, V-step, shuffle etc. She shouts the body parts and directions in Chinese - but the names of the aerobic moves are all in English. I am going to resist writing "blah blah blah" as "shenme shenme shenme" is more Chinese....so she's yelling "shenme shenme shenma V-step. Shenme shenme shenme Jumping Jacks. Shenme shenme shenme Mambo".

 

The second half of the class is done in a salsa style and reduced us to fits of giggles. The teacher has devised a series of "sexy" moves that involve a lot of Latino-style hip wiggling. This evidently is not something that Chinese women are familiar with as the rows of students in  front of us looked more like they were doing tinman impressions to the strains of Gloria Estefan. I have to admit that our efforts weren't much better - but things really peaked when the teacher started encouraging us all to be sexier. then all of a sudden she starts with a move called "the box" - I could barely stand when she started shouting "shenme shenme shenme Sexy Box. Sexy Box" and then for my benefit as the only obviously non-Chinese person "Move your Sexy Box".  

 

The exercise and the laughs are worth it - and I think it will be a regular part of my Fudan experience. It had certainly improved my energy levels - I'm off to play football ("soccer") with some American students later this afternoon.

 

 

A Whiter Shade of Pale

Just a little story from last week. I was a little unwell - fortunately this coincided with a lesson all about how to say that different body parts hurt or weren't "shufu" (comfortable) so I could at least explain why I wasn't my usual bouncy self. For the worriers among you, I wasn't really sick - just ate something bad - slept for a day and then felt much better...anyway, I arrived at school and my Korean classmates all told me that I looked extremely pretty and that my skin was so nice and white (this also coincided with another lesson about how to describe someone!). Simultaneously, my Western classmates told me that I looked like a ghost and should be in bed. It made me feel slightly better to learn that when I am sick, I am beautiful in Korea - but now I am worried what they think of me when I am my usual rosy cheeked self!

Getting to know my classmates

I now have some very nice new friends - SooAh, my afore mentioned lovely room-mate

 

Pip, an Australian girl from Canberra who somehow has managed to get a bunch of her friends to all come to live in Shanghai this year while she is on an exchange programme from her University.

 

Marc, a softly spoken Frenchman - who qualifies as a giant in my book as he's about 10ft tall who likes to play games. We've already had a good go at Scrabble and chess and he's teaching me to play poker.

 

Pictures of these three will follow - but the good news is they are all bears!

 

Now, on to the real reason for this posting - a little tale about how I've managed to "make new friends" so far...

 

I was at school yesterday - and waiting for the bell to ring at the end of class so that I could use the loo. I'd had a pretty dreadful lesson - misunderstanding pretty much all the instructions from my teacher and struggling to read anything. I rather absent-mindedly walked in to the toilet - only to find that I'd gone in to the men's bathroom. I let out a loud squeal when I realised that I was in the wrong place - ensuring that all my classmates using the urinals turned around to see what the noise was..let's just say I now know a few of my classmates a little bit better!! Nothing like profuse apologies and all-round embarrassment to bring people together!

 

Food-an' University

I decided that my epicurean adventures to date deserved a posting all of their own.

 

I have a favourite place to eat - and surprisingly it's the University canteen! It's a massive dining hall - with around 20 different stands serving different types of food. My favourite stand is a "create your own" noodle soup place - a nice lady fills an individual pan with your choice of veggies, noodles, 7 types of tofu, seaweed etc and then cooks is for you. You then get your bowl of soup back and can flavour is with your own choice of seasonings. I love it - the perfect place to practise the words for different vegetables - and I can make sure I get enough protein (every vegetarian's dream). I also get very excited that I can have half a dozen quail eggs in there - because they aren't seen as anything special here. This veggie-noodle-dream dinner costs around 60p - so falls well within my budget.

 

Jiaozi (small ravioli-like dumplings) are really popular - and they are delicious - though finding veggie ones can be difficult. I ate a lot of street food when I was staying at the hostel - lots of tofu on sticks and savoury pancakes filled with chillies and spring onions. It seems the way to make money here is to serve a food stuff on a stick - snacking is a national passtime and if you can snack and walk at the same time, then that's even better.

 

There seems to be a snobbery about Western things - Pizza Hut is a fairly high class establishment here, and a cup of coffee at a Haagen Daaz cafe costs around the same as it would in Britain - except people don't earn British wages. I'm considering opening my own street vending operation selling "genuine Western food" - something like a jacket spud van, or mushy peas and cockles like at the seaside....perhaps I should stick with the studying for now....