Home is Where Your Pig Lives

Who says Chinese characters don't make sense? Consider the 'jia' which means 'home.' The character is written like this:

The upper part represents the roof of a house. The lower part represents a PIG, because no home ought to be without one. Traditionally, the pig was very important to China's agrarian economy, as cows are to ours. Even today, the pig is cherished as a symbol of happiness and good luck here, and pork is China's favorite meat. Last year was the "Year of the Pig," and people born in that year were considered exceptionally lucky.

The Chinese are baffled when they learn that in our culture, pigs symbolize greed and filth.

It's a Wide and Wonderful Blogosphere.

Recently, Sir Barry Jowett got a call from someone in Tamania inquiring about his pink hat. Sir Barry is the CEO of Nanjing's Oxford English Academy and Kongzi Academy. I have seen him with a hat only once-- two years ago, and the hat was mine. I snapped Barry's picture in connection with a humorous office incident. The image has been up on the web ever since.


It's a good picture, I think, and the accompanying text describes Barry as the polite, decent and conscientious man that he is. But from time to time, Barry has good-naturedly threatened to start a blog of his own, so he can post pictures of me when I haven't combed my hair. It would be easy enough to do. Private idiosyncrasies become public on blogs.

Blog entries pop up when a name is entered into Google. I often point out to students that sites such as Blogspot, Myspace, and Facebook are not limited and local; the web is truly world wide. Sometimes, we treat blogs as round robin letters for a select group of our friends, imagining that no one will want to read about us. Potentially at least, blogs have a global audience, and people read what we write for all sorts of reasons.

Nanjing Nasties

For the most part, I have been blissfully free of "Traveler's Tummy." My constitution is strong, my friends look after me well, and I have reasonably good instincts about where one ought to eat. Occasionally, I have had a mild upset stomach, but not often. I am prone to be very self-righteous about sampling all Chinese food offered, consuming it with chopsticks, and asserting it is delicious, whatever my private feelings.

This all changed when I awoke Sunday night very ill, after a meal in a clean and popular restaurant. By Monday, I felt dreadful, and waskeeping up with my duties at the Oxford Academy with difficulty. I wondered how the US handles quarantine. What if I had contracted cholera, eboli, or Avian flu? I am expected back at ETSU by August15th.

My friend Carl found me some medicine, but I still needed Tylenol for aches and pains. Try finding a medicine here when you don't know what it's called in Chinese. Luckily, the mother of one of the kids who is tutored at Oxford had written down its Chinese name--Saridon. It's made by Bayer.

When your belly is aching, the world looks entirely different. I usually love Chinese supermarkets. Now, the unfamiliar items lookedmenacing. I no longer smiled when I saw packets of oatmeal and coffee marketed under the brand name 'Intelligence.' To my horror, there were no Saltine crackers, I wondered why a nation that did not make soda crackers was hosting the Olympics.

Web MD recommended going back on regular diet as soon as possible. Seemed counter-intuitive. Anyway, what's a normal diet when you're surrounded by Chinese food? But I had dinner in KFC. The chicken was much too spicy, and I thought it would make things worse. Wouldn't you know, I'm better. Maybe the Nanjing Nasties just ran their course.














The medicine was quite effective. Fortunately, Carl understood the instructions.
















Supermarket shelves in Nanjing. A 5,000 year old civilization ought to have developed the saltine cracker.

拉橙子？ Hot orange juice?

That's right, folks. If you visit the Colonel here, you get HOT orange juice.

Other than the Starbuck's downtown, KFC is the only place around here where you can get a good cup of coffee. But in China things work 80% of the time at most, and the coffee machine was down. A drink came with my meal, so they gave me orange juice, which they proudly served piping hot. The Chinese believe cold drinks are bad for our health.
Normally, they drink water hot. Coke can be purchased in many restaurants, but most people look askance at it.

As I gazed at the steaming hot cup of orange juice, I had a very ethnocentric reaction-- the kind I warn students against. I started laughing. The waitress apologized, and I assured her it was OK in my minimal Chinese.

But as I sat down, I reflected on this country, which is trying so hard to become a world power. I saw children outside the window. I felt sorry for people brought up to believe in hot orange juice. Deep in my soul, I must believe that boiling orange juice is inherently bad for a nation, like one party rule. My morning juice has been cooling for several hours now. Maybe I'll actually drink it.














orange juice prepared by the Chinese Colonel

Becoming literate

We learn to read, not only because we decipher the alphabetic code, but because we see print all around us. Chinese characters are not alphabetic, but a certain logic connects the symbols. This writing system is even more daunting to Westerners than the spoken language.
But when you're here, you begin to know what things say. It's all about context. My own children recognized the Burger King and MacDonald's logos before they turned two; the same process is happening with me.

Trying to pound this stuff into my head is totally counterproductive.
What helps is to leave my room with all its English materials and relate to what is around me. I take along the Lonely Planet Guide to Mandarin Chinese and a notebook.















My room is on the Fourth Floor, as the characters indicate.

It Takes a Village-- Maybe a City

If you total up the time I spent in Nanjing two years ago, add the semester in Weihai, the two week trip I made here in March of '07, and the two weeks since my arrival, I've spent a total of eight months in China. I'm just now beginning to acquire Chinese-- but consider: how much English did any of us know at eight months of age.

I am starting to talk, much as babies do. I say isolated words such as "soup," "cold water," "dragon boats," and "blanket." I have not acquired this language's syntax. I make brilliant statements such "I go taxi," "see noodles," and "take picture." When I was here in '06, the natives had not a clue what I was saying, for I had no feel for the tonal system. Now, people are starting to understand. Relatively few Westerners attempt Chinese, and the locals are extremely gracious to those who do. I find if I approach people properly, they help me learn Chinese. You remember those inane little sentences we learned in our French and Spanish classes: "Where are the batteries?" "Here is a taxi,""Show me the light switch, please," -- this is the level at which I am functioning.

The process takes time, but when I think about it, things are not going badly. When I was eight months old in America, I doubt I had enough English to tell a taxi driver where I wanted to go.















Think of all that can be said about a bowl of soup:

This is a bowl of soup.
The vegetables are in the soup.
This soup has eggs and mushrooms.
The noodles are in the soup.
The soup is hot.
Here is a soup spoon.
I, you, he, she, we, they, eat the soup.