Near the end of the two-and-a-half-hour lunchtime every day, the students here always hijack the school PA system to blast pop music throughout the rafters and courtyards. The teachers don’t seem to mind, though after my lesson on music I’m always a little paranoid about which songs they play might have come from me. This was the case a few weeks ago when from the PAs emerged Lady Gaga instead of the regular Korean songs or Taiwanese mandopop.
Today as I walked to the bank to deposit my monthly wages (even though it’s only $700 US per month, I feel like a rich man!) and exited the school gates a blast of Flo Rida’s “Right Round” trailed my departure. I actually turned my head around to look up towards the upper floors of the school and said aloud “I KNOW I didn’t give them that.” Chinese students returning from lunch turned their head and waved at the foreign English teacher talking to himself.
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Something else I learned during an impromptu Department photo session (like picture day!): while we say “Cheese!” when we get our mugs shot, the Chinese say “qie zi!” which means eggplant.
great to know about the qie zi thing for photos. Just another reason to love qie zi. FYI, a lot of mexicans like to say “Whiskeeyyyy!!”
Hi Andrew! Sounds like you’re having a great experience in China. I’m really enjoying reading your day to day experiences… like the “Meat Pie” one, and this music one where you were talking to yourself in the hallway, and the fact that people say “eggplant” before smiling in pictures. It makes sense. Anything that ends in the “eee” sound would work, I suppose haha
hm. you can make a perfectly good closed front vowel sound without smiling. and neither of those things are pleasant to think about when smiling. why not “old books” ? that would make me smile.
…back to studying