Time to buy a rice cooker :\

I know it’s been a while since a good quality post. I’ll get back to it after I take care of some correspondence business.

Amidst the beating of basketballs against pavement, cries in Chinese and crackling of my dumplings, then, I was a little surprised to realize I also heard violins and flutes.

I leaned towards the window a little to hear better. Maybe it was the PA system playing some patriotic tunes again. A little odd for basketball background noise, but not uncommon. But if it was a recording piped through the outdoor speakers, why was there that vibrating feeling every time I heard a kettle drum? And a recording’s pitch wouldn’t be off-kilter like this, would it?

I never knew my school had an orchestra!

I asked Tiantian about it, whom I found coaching a student through some weekend exercises in the office. “Maybe you can play with them!” she laughed.

It’s already a little strange to think that I actually like to hear pitches clash if only for nostalgic reasons, but even stranger is the thought that there are people who never knew that I actually identify with music so strongly. Many people. Makes me feel a little older realizing that now there are “phases” in my life that divide the people I know.

The dumplings were decent, I reflected as I munched on them, but if I ever cook for other people I should probably work on getting them to be a little less slimy.

It’s also a little inconvenient since that heater I thought my room had turned out not to work. Though of course I guess I shouldn’t have assumed that a sun symbol on my AC’s remote control meant that it could also act as a heater. I’ve resorted to turning on my toaster oven and leaving it running to warm up the room a bit!

I used to stick the turtles up against that toaster oven too, in place of a heat lamp, but they died two days ago when the cold front came in and I left them on the porch (which until then had been a warmer place than inside).

Also dead with the cold: the remaining battery life of my laptop. Looks like I’ll be spending more evenings in the office with the computer here.

But, I got bored of sitting around and decided to go out. It also helped that I was hungry again.

First stop:
兰州拉面。A hole-in-the-wall noodle joint south of my school, which has a couple of tables and a gigantic menu covering one of its two visible walls. The proprietress, after shooing away the lackey who could not communicate intelligibly with me (an incident which, I felt for the first time, was not my fault) brought over a plate of super tasty noodles. When she brought them over I set aside my notebook that I had been lesson planning in, which she immediately scooped up and began reading out loud from. “Lesson…Three…Movies. Ha, I can still read some English!” she crowed to the kitchen staff.

Second stop:
Beside 兰州拉面 there is a small grocery store that I had spied a while ago, but never ventured into. I did. Then decided to walk over to the better grocery store a block north.

Third stop:
华乐坊。 A music shop on Gongye Ba Lu (Industrial #8 Road) that I had scoped out many times before. On the way to the better grocery store, I poked my head in and asked the proprietors about taking erhu lessons. The pair, a young man and a young girl, perked up and told me that the erhu teacher would be free to speak with me in half an hour.

Fourth stop:
满家福. The “better” grocery store, closer to me than Walmart but better-stocked and cleaner than the one next to my school. Purchased: a jar of sunflower oil, a moon cake to taste, and a pack of frozen dumplings with a smiling Jackie Chan in chef’s hat and apron emblazoned on the wrapper. (Similarly, Jet Li can be found on subway endorsements sipping from a carton for the Chinese “I Love Milk!” ad campaign.)

Fifth stop:
逸林建身室. One evening while I was returning home I heard techno raving from somewhere above my head. Confused, I looked up and saw on the second story of the corner store a large sign in which I somehow recognized characters for “gym.” The entrance happened to be next door to the music shop, so I walked up the stairs and immediately got lost in a sea of pink tutus: ballet class was in session on the dance floor next to the stairwell. After finding the information desk and explaining again that I was not a retarded adult but a foreigner, I was treated to a tour of the facilities and settled down to hash out in my broken Chinese a yearly charge. The final price: 1380 kuai for a year. While I could run for free on my school’s track, there are no weights to lift here, and 1380 seems a pittance to pay for that for an entire year.

Sixth stop:
The music store again. After waiting for a little while, the erhu teacher emerged from a room after a young girl dashed out ahead of him. After speaking to her grandmother, apparently about some instrument repair issue, he turned to me and spent fifteen minutes on a bench outside introducing me to the rudiments of proper erhu positioning and bowing, which was difficult because of the language barrier but not impossible. A small crowd gathered around us to watch, including the friendly shopkeeper I had spoken to earlier. One man laughingly said to him “You said that he was going to teach a foreigner, but he does not look foreign!” The shopkeeper laughed and explained to the others: “He is, ah, I am going to say something bad…” he faltered in Chinese, then looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. “FUCK,” he happily proclaimed in English. I started. Without skipping a beat, he resumed in Chinese: “This kind of word, 香蕉。” I recognized the word for banana. He chuckled and looked sheepish. “Is this offensive to you? I am sorry. Some do not like it,” he asked. I smiled and said I didn’t mind. The derogatory expression for being “yellow on the outside and white on the inside” had always amused more than bothered me. The free erhu lesson on the Chinese sidewalk continued for another ten minutes, after which I asked the shopkeeper how much an erhu would cost to purchase. Answer: there are 680 kuai, 1180 kuai, and 2280 kuai models. Thanks, I’ll come back in two weeks after I get my paycheck. Bye!

Seventh stop:
TEA 元素。 As I approached the bubble tea cafe I saw one of the attendants I had met the other day eating outside with another attendant. When he saw me he got up and motioned me inside, smiling, and I asked him to please, don’t worry about me, thank you, enjoy your dinner, haha. I got some rose tea and thanked the friendly tea guys, but I have things to do at home, I’ll stop to sit and chat another day, bye.

Turning the corner to walk back to 育才三中 (school-slash-home), I came face to face with a young lady who started upon seeing me – Samantha, one of the Year 2 English teachers who also lives in my dormitory. “Hi, what are you doing?” she asked in her perfunctorily-correct-but-always-vaguely-confrontational English (part of language exchange in this case is getting used to friendly people who unintentionally sound hostile). I explained. “Ah, OK. I am going to the bank. Will you be in your room later? I have some questions to ask you,” she commanded with a smile. Okay. See you later. I wondered what she might think about my Ikea lamps, but fortunately I never had to worry about their sanctity being broached as she later phoned in her questions – about the proper way to address an English letter – instead of stopping by.

Proud of myself, I returned home from my circular jaunt around the neighborhood, whose people I am starting to get to know. Yesterday I had noted that while I had a lot of time here in China, and many goals to accomplish with it, I hadn’t really started yet on any of them. Resolved as of yesterday and partially done today: make a list of goals and tick them off, one by one.

- Exercise, both cardiovascular and weight training. Now in progress.
- Learn erhu. Now in progress!
- Write. Partially in progress; this blog is going very successfully, although the other writing project isn’t.
- Write letters to friends back home. Must first find out my home address, something I keep forgetting.
- Learn to cook. Not yet done, although I’ve almost finished assembling my kitchen.
- Learn Chinese. While my conversational Chinese is getting better by speaking to people, I haven’t really opened my books yet.
- Explore your neighborhood. Done! : )

Still, I’ll wait until it becomes a good dinner time. Half an hour should be good. But I’m hungry now, though.

I racked my brain for what food I could possibly have here in this apartment. Oh, those plums in the fridge. I plucked one out.

Hard as a rock, as if the fridge is circulating liquid nitrogen through its contents. I tried sticking it in the microwave – I was able to do that with an apple last week and it worked okay. Hit defrost.

Boom.

Blast. Guess I’ll wait another half hour.

With that, some cutlery and a bed desk that I’ve adapted towards a different purpose, I have a pretty functional small kitchen in my windowsill now.

I also have a bed that I can actually nestle into now. The sheets that were previously on it had looked suspicious to me, so I threw the bamboo tile covering onto it and slept on that without the blanket, just turning the AC off at night to keep warm (the room temperature would get to about 90F that way). But after getting the new bedsheets, I can actually sleep like a normal person (well, a Western person) now. It took me all week to get this done because I kept getting confused about the bed sizes and the characters on the bedding products, until finally one fuwuyuan came up to me today and helped me out with things. As she did so she remarked that she had seen me around the place before. She spoke very slowly and with a few English words (bedsheet, twin, etc.) that helped me out, and encouraged my Chinese (like almost everybody else has been doing). We actually exchanged phone numbers later so I may hear from her again.

As for that phone number exchange, it really seems like everybody here is fast to network. I had been forewarned about how the Chinese easily ask a lot from acquaintances, due to how Chinese social networks perceive people as “nearer” or “farther” as opposed to Western social networks regarding others as either “in” or “out.” The other day an old lady who asked me to help her read a small label in Walmart (and to whom I replied that I could see it but not understand it at all – oh hilarity) ended up talking at me for a long time to the bemusement of surrounding shop clerks (the senile lady talking to the uncomprehending idiot, I guess). She asked for my number too, but I hedged and just gave her an email address because I really didn’t understand anything that she was saying, and I figured that future meetings with her would be largely unhelpful for me. Today’s shop clerk spoke very slowly and simply for me, though, and I can see a good language partner in her. At the same time, I should be wary of what she might actually want, lest my parents’ cardinal worry be proven right. No gain without risk, though, and I have an even head on my shoulders (and some baggage in my chest anyway, so it’s a moot point for sure).

Anyway. The point of this post was that I now have a real bed, a pseudo-kitchen, and pseudo-pseudo-Walmart-friends.

Thursday edit: Nope, the Shenzhen one is pretty subdued.

Earlier in the day, Kami and I had gone on a car ride around Shenzhen with my substitute-contact teacher Wan Laoshi and her daughter Stephanie, a senior girl fluent in English bound for college in Australia and who helps to translate my conversations with her mother when I need the help. My official contact teacher either isn’t back yet from his/her summer holiday or he/she hasn’t been picked at all, so for now, the school secretary Ms. Wan and her daughter have been helping to get me on my feet. I’ve been trying to divide my time between speaking to Stephanie in English (for her sake) and speaking to Ms. Wan in Chinese (for both my practice and her benefit), but more often than not everything defaults back to Stephanie. Everyone has been very nice to me about my Chinese speaking, but I am fairly certain that they are just trying to save me face. I do feel like I’ve made significant progress though – more on that in the next post, about cab drivers.

After showing us around Shenzhen as far northeast as Luohu District, Ms. Wan returned us to Nanshan District and dropped us off at the Walmart and Garden City complex where Kami and I later had lunch. That area is just a few blocks north of the Yucai School Group, and Hunter lives very close to it so we use it as a gathering spot and a place to gradually grab domestic items to make our abodes more livable. Our days have mostly been constituted by these events – outings and orientations with our friendly and helpful contact teachers, attempts to map where we are and figure out the bus routes to see each other, and multiple trips to Walmart. The multiple trips are necessary because we can’t carry everything on our walks back to our homes (especially me, as I live just a tad bit further away from the nearest retailer than Hunter, Kami, Murray, Emily, or even Alistair do), and while even progressive Seattle can’t figure out a 20 cent plastic bag tax, here in China, it is illegal to offer a shopping bag of any sort to a customer unless specially requested. I’ve learned to travel with a small backpack stuffed with two rolled-up reusable bags, in case I make purchases. As for today’s purchases, I got some home slippers, extra clothes hangers, a desk lamp and computer speakers, and hopped a cab back instead of bothering with the bus.

That flippancy was a result of my stubbornness yesterday after leaving Hunter’s apartment late at night. I was carrying with me a bag full of cleaning supplies and had a 4-foot long rolled up tatami mat, intended for the floor of my apartment, slung around my shoulder. I was also carrying a small clothes hanger pole (there are no driers in China, so everyone dries their clothes on their porches upon horizontal bars that are far beyond anyone’s reach). With all of this crap loading me down, I wandered out into Airong Lu (Rong Love Road – the rong is the tree of Shenzhen) intending to find a cab somewhere. Airong is a small street, though, and by the time I realized that no cab would come, I had already traveled all the way down and was halfway to my place. So I pressed on, looking to hang a left on Gongyeqi Dadao (Industrial Avenue 7).

Except I missed it, and wandered further south. I will note here that roads in Shenzhen, unless they are large boulevards, are unusually dark, and the distinctive rong trees that line them don’t help because they just cast more shadows. Also, the further south I went, the less metropolitan and Western the settings became, with more small stalls, roadside vendors, and less-polished looking locals popping up. None of them seemed too curious about me, even with half my apartment on my back. In fact, despite the lack of lighting through the area, I felt more or less safe; Nanshan District seems to be one of the wealthier and less congested districts in Shenzhen, and even its more Chinese-feeling areas like the one I stumbled into still don’t seem very threatening.

I eventually ended up at home though, and proceeded to scrub to my heart’s content and roll out my mat just so. I kind of wonder if I’m becoming more neurotic with my obsessive cleaning and ordering compulsions – I catch myself arranging things on desks and surfaces when guests are over. I guess it’ll at least make for conscientious surgeries, if I decide to do that.