today, 11:05 a.m. (CST): depart from Dalian
1:20 p.m. (KST): arrive in Seoul
4:40 p.m.: depart from Seoul
today, 10:00 a.m. (PST): arrive in San Francisco
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
Eve
The semester, my fifth, is over. It was a long one. The apartment's clean—at least to my standards, standards not difficult to meet—and I've exchanged money into USD. I'm still not packed yet, but it won't take long.
Is this me, or is this just me here?
Another New Year's—why not? This afternoon the fireworks started. I was hoping to be out of the country before they began. Actually, Spring Festival is a fun time to be in China, but I'm glad I'll be gone this year. To Yosemite National Park for some quiet.
Is this me, or is this just me here?
Another New Year's—why not? This afternoon the fireworks started. I was hoping to be out of the country before they began. Actually, Spring Festival is a fun time to be in China, but I'm glad I'll be gone this year. To Yosemite National Park for some quiet.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Blog
I say now that I'll stop posting here every day. I mean, look at how many posts I had to write this month just to make up for the rest of the year. I feel a little ridiculous and exposed. More than that, I want to do something else with my time. I say that now, of course, knowing full well I made a similar statement last year. Now that I'm doing more writing elsewhere, however, I expect to be more fully engaged.
Friday, December 30, 2011
This Needs a New Title
Gotta change the title of this blog. Never start a sentence with "In China." You're not going to tell people who live here anything new about their home.
The expats here use the abbreviation TIC, "this is China," to signal to each other, in front of Chinese people, a kind of verbal eye roll. I advise against this. You ain't that clever.
The expats here use the abbreviation TIC, "this is China," to signal to each other, in front of Chinese people, a kind of verbal eye roll. I advise against this. You ain't that clever.
New Mistakes to Enjoy
After today's morning class, I got cornered by an usual request: a high school student had come off the street and wanted help with her writing. Um, OK. She was right there, and I couldn't bloody well say no—could I?—when she was standing right there. It was a short story, a great break from the usual monotony of five identical sentences ("I like cheese. I like pizza. I like blah, blah, blah.") Even with all the mistakes, they weren't the usual mistakes. This girl, in twelfth grade, was from Maple Leaf, and she could understand everything, more or less. On her paper, her teacher had crossed out her mistakes and written the corrections. I went through the story with her. It was one of a grandmother recounting the time she'd gone to help earthquake victims, including a scene in which she jumped in a river after a girl. Not bad. The student's teacher gave her a low score. Maybe I've been over here a long time. If one of my students had written that story, my head would've exploded. By no means a brilliant piece, it was at least interesting. On the last page was written, "Show don't tell." The teacher's suggestions were valid if a little curt: her characters were flat, the story needed big-time work, etc.
"What specifically do you want me to help you with?" I asked.
"I want you to rewrite it for me," she said, looking right into my eyes through the lensless frames resting on her face.
I said I wouldn't do that. Instead, I walked her through ways she could make the changes, giving her questions to ask so she could do this kind of work on her own. You know, the things teachers do. It felt great to be talking with a student about writing. Of course, at the end of our meeting, she admitted she hated writing. Well.
"What specifically do you want me to help you with?" I asked.
"I want you to rewrite it for me," she said, looking right into my eyes through the lensless frames resting on her face.
I said I wouldn't do that. Instead, I walked her through ways she could make the changes, giving her questions to ask so she could do this kind of work on her own. You know, the things teachers do. It felt great to be talking with a student about writing. Of course, at the end of our meeting, she admitted she hated writing. Well.
Tickets
An American company wanted to charge 10,000 yuan for the round-trip tickets to San Francisco. A Chinese company said the cheapest they would be was 27,000. Through the school's relationships, the principal got them for me for 8,900.
Student's Projected Biography
Physics had been an extension of his English learning. All those letters used to stand for unknowns. The teacher used only English, all those unknowns until finally he understood.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
This Conversation Has Happened about Three Times in the Last Few Months
"Happy birthday!"
"Thanks, but it's not my real birthday. That's just the birthday on my ID card."
"Then when…? Uh…"
"Thanks, but it's not my real birthday. That's just the birthday on my ID card."
"Then when…? Uh…"
High Context
Most of the time, if you're talking to me, I assume you know all the answers to the questions you're asking me, and so often I feel you're asking me not because you want to know but because you want to see how I feel, to watch my face as I say these things, to get an idea of whether I agree with you, to get an idea of whether other people are right about what they say about me.
Feedback
| Then at least Press your lips To this Page— The only way I have left Of touching You from Here. | drück deine Lippen wenigstens an diese Seite, was der einzige Weg ist, den ich übrig habe, dich von hier zu ergreifen. |
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
A Present
tense turns out to be correct. The simple
stands for a whole life
while you're living: I am.
stands for a whole life
while you're living: I am.
Confounded First Person
Letting myself forget the schedule this morning, I wandered Kaifaqu. A lot of people complain that there's nothing to do in this part of the city, but that's exactly why I like it: low expectations. You're not far from home. What's the appropriate level of going out? People say you need to be sociable, but what if you really just want to stay home? Then you go out out of obligation. What are you doing? Out of your mind, you worry. Oh, here I am.
Kinz
Kinzie, who's leaving China for good, and I are flying out at the same time on January 17, to Seoul. One last meal together before we part ways and she goes back to Arizona. I haven't written much about her. She was perhaps the first Western teacher in Kaifaqu I felt comfortable being friends with, and she didn't get here till a year and some after I did. The staff now's really good, actually, but I've never met somebody who was just so relaxed and ready to let you do your own thing. Just fly your goddamn freak flag if you're gonna fly it—that's cool.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Writing
Since September 9, I've been writing two things a week: one poem and one nonpoem. Writing out here is really tough for me for some reason. Well, poetry is, anyway. Ideas for stories and essays come at me all the time. So I've divided the work: mornings for poetry, when I'm at my best but when writing's the hardest, and afternoons for not poetry, when I'm my most tired but when the writing's not so tough. I don't expect writing to be fun all the time, but it seems like it was a lot more fun when I didn't think about it so much. Then again, I chase everybody else's words around all day for a living.
1Q84
Note: No spoilers here. I wouldn't do that to you.
On something like chapter 7 of 1Q84. My friend's on chapter 3. Allison Hiroto, Marc Vietor, and Mark Boyett read the audio version quite impressively (at least the first two do; I haven't heard Boyett yet). I especially like Hiroto's middle ts, which sound like /t/ instead of the usual /d/ you say and hear (say "little" aloud, as you normally would). Her words have a slight separation between them, not the usual carrying over of a final consonant into the initial sound of the next, vowel-sound-staring word. Her speech sounds like the tapping of fingernails on glass, one of my favorite sounds, it turns out, as long as it varies in its regularity. The end of Marc Vietor's sentences feel like warm sand, getting into your crevices, in a good way. Listening to this story while walking around Kaifaqu is a great way to spend an afternoon.
On something like chapter 7 of 1Q84. My friend's on chapter 3. Allison Hiroto, Marc Vietor, and Mark Boyett read the audio version quite impressively (at least the first two do; I haven't heard Boyett yet). I especially like Hiroto's middle ts, which sound like /t/ instead of the usual /d/ you say and hear (say "little" aloud, as you normally would). Her words have a slight separation between them, not the usual carrying over of a final consonant into the initial sound of the next, vowel-sound-staring word. Her speech sounds like the tapping of fingernails on glass, one of my favorite sounds, it turns out, as long as it varies in its regularity. The end of Marc Vietor's sentences feel like warm sand, getting into your crevices, in a good way. Listening to this story while walking around Kaifaqu is a great way to spend an afternoon.
二百五
The last couple weeks my Chinese teacher has been having me read "哪个数字最吉利" ("Which Number Is the Luckiest"). The story starts off with a man shopping for a phone. For an extra fifty yuan, he can pick the last digit of his phone number. The man says he has to run it by his wife first. He returns home and suggests each number, 0 through 9, one by one, but the wife dismisses each because each number sounds like a bad word: 8, 伤疤, "scar"; 6, 流氓, "hoodlum"; 9, 九泉, "the nether world"; 5, 污染, "pollution"; 7, 凄惨, "wretched"; 3 散, "break up"; 2, 二流子, "loafer"; 1, 一团糟, "a complete mess"; and 0, 灵堂, "mourning hall." Of course 4 is right out: it sounds too much like the word for "death," 死. In the end, the couple resolve to pull the number out of a hat.
I enjoyed the story, thinking it a gentle ribbing of the reoccurring sounds in Mandarin as well as a lampoon of superstition. But my teacher had meant it as a culture lesson. I realized this when she said, "All Chinese people think this way." To make this overgeneralization worse, she added, "For you, symbols don't matter, but for us, everything is symbols."
I enjoyed the story, thinking it a gentle ribbing of the reoccurring sounds in Mandarin as well as a lampoon of superstition. But my teacher had meant it as a culture lesson. I realized this when she said, "All Chinese people think this way." To make this overgeneralization worse, she added, "For you, symbols don't matter, but for us, everything is symbols."
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