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(Hopefully, I’ll have pictures inserted throughout this long-ish post soon.) The first stage of cultural exchange is commonly called the “honeymoon” period, the time when baby expats get moonstruck by being in a brand spankin’ new place. But when I first got to China, I didn’t feel particularly excited. It could have been a [...] Our genealogy is a little more convoluted than it needs to be, and our last name probably can claim partial credit for that. “What, your last name is Dutch?” people repeat after I tell them. “Are you Dutch, then?” I say no and watch them flail in further confusion. It can [...] Five weeks ago, my co-workers started asking me where I would go for the Lunar New Year vacation. “Will you go back to America to celebrate with your family?” they asked. “Uh, no, I’m going to Fuzhou to see my grandmother,” I replied. “Ah,” they all nodded appreciatively. Wait, I wanted to clarify, [...] There’s a lot of stuff to talk about: the Chinese New Year, my trip to Fuzhou, my trip to Malaysia, and a few things that I encountered upon returning to Shenzhen that I’d like to elaborate on. This week I’ll do my best to work on each piece and post them as soon as [...] Returned from Fuzhou yesterday. Am going to Malaysia tomorrow. Both were/will be with family. It’s travel, so I haven’t been able to update this like I wanted to, but I promise that soon I’ll provide at least some kind of relative background on these two places and their significance. It’s almost the (lunar) [...] The English office doesn’t have a printer. I’m not really sure how an entire school functions without ever printing anything out, but I’ve gotten used to it. I keep all my lesson plans and notes in digital files, or I scribble them out into a notebook. Saves trees and ink, I guess. But [...] I always liked the word “interstitial.” It used to pop up occasionally in my critical theory books in reference to abstract in-betweens that post-structuralist theorists liked to expand on so very much (evidently the world’s demand for abstract concepts is beginning to outstrip supply). I always thought it had surgical-Tim-Burton-esque connotations too. [...] So the phrase “你吃饭了吗” I know means literally “have you eaten,” but I also know that it is often used like a passing hello. An acceptably ordinary response would be “吃了,” or “I have.” Like saying “not much” in response to “what’s up?” But here is my question: Having two weeks off before I begin traveling around China to see family is nice in that without morning classes to worry about I can get out of my corner of Shenzhen and make sure I’ve actually become familiar with this place and how it works. They say Shenzhen doesn’t have “culture,” but surely [...] After my last class of the morning I decided to go exploring. Heck, it’s a nice sunny day and I need to get out. An easy option was to look around the Sea World area, a few miles south of my neighborhood. As all Shenzhen expats know by now, our Sea World does not [...] |
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