More to come!
5/19/08 Beijing enroute to Qingdao, 11:43pm
The past few days have been too much to document comprehensively. I've been waking up very early without much choice, as soon as the sun shines in my face at 4:30am, and going to bed very late on my own volition. I don't want to miss a moment, and there are many moments not to miss.
I'm sorry I didn't take notes throughout the day. I wish I could tell you a story, but the best I can do at this point is a pile of vignettes and observations. I'll try to be m ore diligent in the future.
I complained out loud on Sunday morning that the massive crowds of people I'd been promised to witness in China had not come through. I was unimpressed with Pinggu, not as a city but as an example of high population density. Although I'd already seen the huge complexes of residential buildings throughout Beijing, or one of its districts, I'd yet to see the people that filled them. The group of guys from LA I hung out with, whose names I could never get straight, observed with me that the restaurants, hotels, and retail shops were staffed by a disproportionate number of people for the number of patrons. The employees would outnumber customers 5 to 1 sometimes such that as you entered a shop or restaurant they would all scatter and clamor to serve you. (At some restaurants, 7 or 8 women would flank the entry way and do nothing more than bow and lightly greet you. Can you imagine 8 hostess at Chili's?)
I've spent all night on the train on the "soft sleeper." Only 50 dollars for 500 miles travel on a train, and unlike Amtrak it looks like we're going to be on time. The Chinese countryside is hard at work growing food for the aforementioned masses. Its not clear to be what crops are being grown, but it looks like most of what I'm seeing may be wheat.
Last night I went out with Guo Xiao, who I knew from when she did an internship with Deloitte in Atlanta earlier this year. Not only did I meet her, but 6 of her friends. They wanted to work on their English a little, which I didn't expect, and I struggled some to figure out a way to speak one- on- one with each of them, and encourage them to ask questions not only to practice their English but to teach them some about the United States. Dinner fluctuated between awkward silence (for me, an uncommon scene at a table full of college-aged women… they giggled when I commented on never having seen a table full of girls so quiet) and bright-eyed conversation about American Idol and whether Americans really think all Chinese look alike. I had this conversation earlier in the week with the guys from L.A., and we decided that many Chinese do look alike, but that we also encounter many white people that are difficult to distinguish in passing. Although, it is more common for white Americans to consider Chinese people to look alike, so I discussed both ends of the spectrum with them.
We dined on Beijing roast duck, in which you take a piece of sliced duck meat, dip it in a sweet soy sauce (which was actually salty) and place it on something like a crepe or small tortilla with celery and onions. You then roll it up and eat, with chopsticks.
Chopsticks were a neat little challenge for me. I've used them numerous times, of course, but being in China, I thought, would be a good opportunity to learn to use them correctly. I'd taught myself, imitating others, but decided it wasn't good enough, that I was going to use them the Chinese way. But Xiao assured me that any way that worked for me was okay, and that there was no proper way to do it. When I was a small child, my mother taught me what was the proper way to hold and use a fork, knife, and spoon, and it wasn't unnecessary. I'm glad I don't scoop up my food like a 5 year old, because I might otherwise. So it was hard for me to believe that there was no particular way to hold and use chopsticks, but there was no reason for me not to believe her, and no one else objected.
All of the girls had American names they had chosen in their English classes. It was very helpful for me because there was no way I would be able to remember even one of their birth names, but for Xiao whom I already knew. One girl named Jane sat next to me and seemed particularly interested in learning about whatever I had to teach her. Her English was pretty good, she was almost as proficient as Xiao (who had the best English of the lot, and who occasionally interpreted for me) but I often had to ask her to repeat herself because she spoke so softly. That is something I've found that many Chinese do, and I think its partly because they don't have a lot of confidence in their English, and partly because they speak softly even in Mandarin. I am not blaming them, though. The few Mandarin phrases I know I have been reluctant to use because then everyone starts speaking to me in full Mandarin sentence. Wo bu nu bai ni shuo shenme!
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