Something Foot Something

So I have learned that one of the most maddening things about learning Chinese characters is the subsequent forgetting of Chinese characters. 

For class everyday I am memorizing (or trying to) 20 or so new characters. If you do the math, so far that comes out to lots. Which of course is a relative term – lots compared to what I came with, but nothing compared to the number of characters required to, say, read a newspaper.

But no matter the method of study, I have learned the inevitable is this:  everyday I am confronted with a sign, an advertisement, a magazine, anything really - that has at least one (usually more) character that I recognize, that I know I’ve learned, but also then realize, I know that I have forgotten. It’s one thing not to know the characters in the first place, but to learn the things and then forget?  It's enough to drive a person bonkers.

On the brighter side, when I can remember, the world is starting to (slowly) reveal itself to me.  Here's a picture of a little shop right next to our building:

Let me translate the top row of characters of the sign for you - "something, ren, lin, zhong, something something something zu something".  Another step, again, character by character - "something, people, forest, middle(i think), something something something foot something".  I have no idea what it all means, even though it is helpfully translated into Korean at the bottom.  And yes, I can read the English on the door.  But somehow I think there's more to the sign than the English gets across here, don't you think?    

 

Signs of Spring

Every morning at 7:30 a.m. sharp, the tennis guy is out practicing his swing:

Large organized groups of young'uns practicing parkour moves (for hours on end):

Blossoms:

A couple of notes -

A brief hiatus, but am back.  A quick evening round-up, more to come:

1.  My brackets are suffering.  For something like 10 years now, dad and I fill out the NCAA brackets and compare.  Winner gets a steak dinner.  Easy, simple, and let's be honest - I generally win.  But the first round Purdue win and the recent Duke loss - well - let's just say that Dad will have to come to China to get his steak.  And by steak in China, I probably mean something more like pork dumplings.      

2.  Andrew and I had a double date tonight with our local foot massage place and foot masseuses.  And by "local" I mean approximately a 45 second walk from our apartment, depending on how long the elevator takes.  And by foot masseuses, I mean two young guys in their mid-20's that found places on my feet I didn't know I had.   60 minutes includes shoulder and feet.  Just over $10 total.  For both of us.   

3.  It's a good thing we're living in China because I'm now craving Chinese food for every meal.  As in spicy Chinese food, which quite the change from the meat and potatoes of my youth.  I haven't done the research (yet), but Sichuan peppercorns have to be some sort of illegal-ish drug.  After learning in class last weekend, I made some mad hot Mapo Doufu at home this week and can't stop thinking about it...

Field Trip

I spent most of last week out of town in a small city (pop. 120,000) southeast of Beijing. I was with a team of urban planners working on a new detailed plan for the city government, and we spent a couple days walking all around the city checking out existing land uses. Among the interesting things I saw was a government compound with these characters painted on the wall on either side of the entrance. The compound houses the offices of the city's Salt Administration. The salt administration must have been one of the many government offices that was quite active once upon a time in the era of the planned economy. Nowadays, I don't think all that much happens inside these walls -- and yet, it still exists and it still employs a staff. For my class on reform-era China last year I read a book about how some of these old government bureaus are transforming themselves into private sector businesses -- housing departments becoming real estate developers, etc. I'm not sure if any of the salt admin. people are now getting into the salt-for-profit business.

Oh, I almost forgot. The characters say, "Strengthen Salt Administration Supervision. Provide Up-to-Standard Iodine Salt."  I suppose I could think of a more elegant translation, but I think these government slogans are more powerful in the original Chinese.

Notes on some basics.

(First a quick note that's now way out of date but in case you were wondering, we successfully picked up the package from what is apparently the one post office in our district that receives international packages -- that's a lot better than having just one such post office in all of Beijing, but this district is still pretty big.)

Last time I checked, energy consumption per capita in China was about one sixth that of the U.S. In spite of all the new, highly-visible consumption in cities like Beijing and Shanghai, Chinese people are still used to living without certain comforts that I think westerners take for granted. Although Michelle and I pay for electricity and heat in our little apartment, all of the common spaces in the building are cold, dark, and pretty much undecorated -- I think that until you get used to that as the norm for city apartment buildings, the general indoor atmosphere can make you feel a bit depressed.

I think Chinese urban residents are more much accustomed than we are to the lack of heat in indoor spaces. Many university classroom buildings are unheated, and students just keep their coats on. The office building where I work has a cafeteria in the basement that is unheated, so in the winter the staff just bundle up when it's time for lunch. Same thing with the restaurant down the street where we go as an alternative to the cafeteria.

Gas and electricity in our apartment is on a pre-pay system. Our apartment came with two cards--an electricity card and a gas card. When we first arrived, we took the electricity card to the nearest State Electricity Grid office and handed card and cash to an employee sitting behind a glass screen as in a bank. She credited a certain number of kilowatt hours to our card according to the amount we paid, and we transfered those kwh's by inserting the card into the meter on our hallway. The gas card works in a similar way. We took it to a nearby bank, inserted it into an ATM-like machine along with cash, and our card gets credited for a certain number of cubic meters of gas. Does the pre-pay system make us conserve more energy?

(Btw, we are once again thankful to my friend Peng who helped us find the State Electricity Grid office and the bank for purchasing gas -- without his help it would have surely taken us much longer to figure out where to go.)

Last week we had a knock on the door and a lady calling, "Cha shui biao! - Water meter inspection!" The friendly meter inspector explained that our water meter is checked once very two months, water is currently 3.7 yuan (about 54 cents) per ton. We don't know how much water we used yet because we ended up picking up a bit of the tab for whoever lived here in January before we arrived. In any case, I handed cash to the lady who gave me change out of her purse and then made out a hand-written receipt. The whole system seemed a bit informal and unofficial, but but at least she finished the hand-written receipt with the official red seal of the Beijing Tap Water Co., Ltd. In China, you always need the official seal.

Lì

My grandma search continues.  There are lots around.  Generally pretty small, and a little hunched over, they almost always walk in groups of two or three and are either carrying a bag of veggies or have their hands clasped behind their backs.  In the picture, there are two in the foreground, and a whole other group walking in the distance.      

Andrew says to be patient.  So in the meantime - I have found a vegetable friend.  It’s the lady in the basement.

In one example of the mixed use that you can have in China but not in the U.S., or perhaps just a successful example of a live/work unit, is the existence of a tiny vegetable market in the basement of our building. It’s right next to the extensive bike storage area, and what could be better than rolling into the vegetable market in your pajamas for a little morning ginger run?  

The lady who runs the market doesn’t know it yet, but we are becoming friends. She’s teaching me about money, for example. As in, I hand her my cabbage and celery, and she says “er dian si” and I stare at her blankly for a couple of seconds while I count on my fingers until I recognize the numbers she just said to me. And then generally I just hand her a few kuai (a few bucks if you will) because it’s taking me too long to figure out what she said, and then she gives me the change. It’s magic really.  Friendship blossoming.  

In news of my language blossoming though - well, this week I think I actually understood my first sentence.  Wait. Let me clarify. I think I understood my first sentence that was a) not spoken by my language teacher and b) not taught to me by Andrew or Peng (our good friend and date for Valentine’s Day). It was nothing dramatic. Yi ge mi fan. From the waitress (fuwuyuan) at the campus eatery. Do you want rice? Dui, I said. Yes. 

!!!!!

Now – that may not seem like much. And it’s not. And I’ve probably actually heard it approximately 1.3 trillion times since getting here. But this time I know what I heard!  And I responded as if I could actually speak Chinese.  Of course Andrew reminded me, as I was recounting my breakthrough to him later, that if I was really good, I would have ordered rice with my meal and she wouldn't have had to ask.    

Nonetheless - this week I had my first exam - so now I can read, write, and almost say exactly 50 characters (which doesn't, by the way, count my own name.  But I still don't really recognize that and I can't write it either).  My tones are rough at best and a whole sentence such as "I like to drink tea" is slo-o-o-w going.  But I have learned such important words as 力 and 立 which are, respectively, "lì" (lee, strength) and "lì" (lee, stand).  Same tone (4th - down). See how easy that is?  Two different characters, exact same word and sound, two completely different meanings.  Great.  I looked in my dictionary, and there are no less than 42 more.  As in same pronunciation, same tone, different characters.  My brain hurts just thinking about it.

But to end on a happy note - I am taken with the poetic logic of characters and their meaning.  My favorite today is 日(sun) and 月(moon), when combined 明 mean "bright".  Of course.   

Package this.

It's been twelve years since I first came to Beijing, and, yes yes, this place has changed a lot, but certain aspects of the city retain their sense of mystery. For example, the mail.

China Post lost a big envelope of documents I sent express from California late last year, but the good news is that we received our first package at our new Beijing apartment and it's nice to know all postal systems are up and running smoothly.

If only.

On Saturday, a guy knocked on our door to tell we had a package arrive for us from the U.S. I thought, "Great." He then proceeded to have me sign a slip of paper and write down my passport number. Now, I'm generally used to signing for something, but the guy at the door had only the paperwork. He told me we had to go pick up the package at the post office. Well, that's no problem, seeing as how there's a post office right in our little housing complex. But, actually, the guy said, we had to go to the bigger post office farther down the street.

When we arrived at the bigger post office farther down the street, a uniformed staff at the information counter took us to the "Get Bag" counter. But the staff behind the "Get Bag" counter said they don't handle international packages and we had to go to a different post office on North Third Ring Road and didn't I see the Chinese characters in stamped red ink on the back of the slip that said I had to go to the Beitaipingzhuang office? I hadn't even thought to look at those characters because the guy who came to our door said we had to go the post office down the street and I thought that was good enough. By this point it was becoming less clear whether that guy worked for the post office, the building management company, or neither, because he wasn't in any kind of uniform, but either way, he apparently had me sign a slip of paper that says I have received a package that is currently being held at some post office 15 minutes away by taxi, depending on the traffic. At this point, we were quite satisfied with package-retrieval work for the day, and so we decided to postpone our trip to Beitaipingzhuang for later in the week.

Thanks, Avril for the Whoppers, Red Vines, etc. Maybe we'll see them soon. In the meantime, think about this: in a megalopolis of 14 million people, is there really just one post office that distributes all international packages? Mystery indeed.