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.

Dragon Boat Races

The Sheraton Hotel sponsored the Dragon Boat Races. There was a rumor going around that they wouldn't be held this year out of respect for the earthquake victims in Sichuan Province. Then, a couple of days ago, notice of the boat races on Muchu Lake appeared in the Nanjing papers.

The races commemorate the life of Qu Yuan, a poet and patriot who lived lived 340-278 BC. He is supposed to have become despondent when his ideas were not accepted, and, according to legend, drowned himself. Dragon boat races were instituted to distract evil spirits from harming his body, and the custom begun of throwing zongzi, leaf wrapped rice balls into lakes so that fish would be discouraged from eating his remains.

International crews participated in the rowing competition on the galley style dragon boats. It was hard to get a good picture on this overcast day, so I supply one I found on the web. I also include a picture of zongzi. My friend Ruo Yi found a restaurant where we could enjoy this delicious seasonal treat.





























a Canadian competitor

Somehow it Works

The Chinese do not organize things precisesly as Westerners do, a this can make for a certain tension. This morning, the local radio station arranged for us to visit a foreign language school on the outskirts of Nanjing. The plan was for us to interact with some students and then to speak to a group of English teachers. Barry, Bonnie, Emil and I participated

The bus came nearly an hour late, because the first one broke down.
Then, we were delayed in Nanjing traffic. There are more and more cars here, and the roads become crowded easily. Sir Barry was worried we would arrive too late to be of much use to the school-- after all, he reasoned, schools run on schedules. He went into frustration mode and began to roar like a lion, as he often does at these times.

But the Chinese deal well with contingencies. They divided one of their classes in three, and I soon found myself in a classroom with twenty or so Chinese 6th graders, whom I was invited to teach. No one told me how long the lesson should be, but they gave me a full fifty minutes. I improvised. We talked about things that are shaped like a circle, sang songs, and imitated animals. It went over well. So much for lesson plans. Afterwards, we met with the teachers.

Our appreciative hosts gave us gifts and insisted we join them for a "simple lunch," i.e. a banquet complete with shrimp, pig's head, and three kinds of soup. I wonder what a complicated lunch would look like.














Part of our very appreciative audience.
















At the "simple lunch."

The Challenge of Posting

Posting to a blog poses some challenges over here. Without my good friend Dennis Cope, I could not do it, though I now have some special software which allows me to see my blog once it's posted-- at least for now. Infrastructure is one problem. I send the material to Dennis via gmail, and he posts it. The connections are not always that well established. But a second issue is what they call "information control." Internet postings can be seen by authorities and are not always considered suitable.

This is not only a Chinese issue-- the US government monitors overseas emails, though this is controversial. In an age of terrorism, it is not a simple issue, though as an American and Civil Libertarian, I am something of a privacy freak.

A note for Gan Mei

I'd forgotten. When the Chinese receive a present, they feel they must reciprocate. So after I regifted the duck eggs, I found a note in my room thanking "Gan Mei;" With it was a plate of peaches and lychee nuts.

Acquired Tastes

Thought I was buying a frozen iced coffee-- that's what it looked liked in the picture. Turned out I had a Dokdo; that's milk tea, a drink which is all the rage on Lion's Bridge Road. Definitely an acquired taste. Imagine sweet tea, only with milk, which you sip through a very wide straw.
The day was hot, and I was very thirsty, so I actually drank it. By the time I finished, I decided it wasn't bad.

Gift box

The Chinese love to give gifts. At Dylan's farewell dinner, one of his friends gave us all heavy weight things that looked like huge hat boxes. I opened the thing, but I could not identify its contents.
There were shiny packages, items wrapped up in green straw and things resembling colored rocks.

Bonnie solemnly informed me that the mysterious items inside could all be eaten. The things in the little pink packages are weird little cakes; the things in the straw are composites of rice and red beans; and the rock like objects were duck's eggs. I sampled one of these oval shaped treats and decided to forgo the pleasure a second time. Ditto for the little brown cakes. I decided to regift this lovely package to the downstairs staff. The attendant nodded briefly when I gave it to them.

When I came back after supper, the desk clerk tried to give the box back to me. These folks can only say "Hello" and "Thank you" in English, and my Chinese is also quite limited, so it took me awhile to persuade these nice ladies that they were being treated to duck eggs.
Once they figured it out, they were delighted. Bu Xie. (Literally-- no need to thank)