Life’s Realities in My Face

There, now I proved it to myself: a week that starts off on the wrong foot usually will end up on the other wrong foot! (Is that already a saying, or did I just coin a new one?!)

This morning, looking out my kitchen window, I immediately noticed something was wrong down there: no red spot! Translate: My bicycle was missing! Stolen! I should have listened to my inner voice, which, by the way, is always right! But no, I had to see it for myself: they do steel bikes here! My little inner voice spoke to me yesterday, as I attached the heavy duty chain around the bike down in the public bike shed: “Look closely at this, Moneva! One hundred thousand and one dirty, black and ugly bikes, and here! - with an invisible sign attached to it: ‘hey, I’m over here! Come and get me!’ - one spanking red bike!” But no, I had to try it and get the evidence for myself! So, that’s behind me now. I am not really surprised, nor shocked, strange! I guess I wanted to really see reality of the bike thieving taking place. Late last night, when I came home, it was still standing there, at around 22:30. So, the thieves were at work between then and the early morning hours. I figure they can’t live all too far, as strangers to our place would not venture around in our courtyard at night. Oh well…
Materially speaking, it is not such a big deal, so I guess, I could just get another one and this time, stick with my “carry it up to my place” policy. Voila, that’s all there is to it!

Did I sum it all up, how this week turned out? My legs are totally sore from the Great Wall climb, my knee hurts from the fall, my eye is black and bruised from hitting that brick pillar, in class, on Friday, I really had enough of it and felt like just walking out early, to get some air. We have been in classes 4 weeks now, and we are in lesson number 10! There are about 20 to 30 new words we learn each day. The hardest part is that our teachers don’t speak much English, even when it comes to explaining the grammar… what explaining? They do not explain anything, we are supposed to figure things out on our own. Believe me when I say, it isn’t always easy!

I returned to our campus bookstore, to see what other products they carry in terms of CD based teaching materials. The answer is simple: They carry ZERO of those. Everything is still on cassettes! As I tried to explain to the store keeper that they might want to consider switching to CD support type teaching materials, as there are no cassette slots on laptops, I only got big head shaking as a response. “Meyo!” There won’t be any of that soon. The bookstore is government owned, and the old, communist mentality still reigns inside. Why should we care about selling our teaching materials, books and cassettes? We will just keep them sitting on the shelves! Take the cassettes or leave it!

Did I mention that we also will have mid-term exams, sometime in mid-April, I guess. So, I need to do a lot of writing of Chinese characters each day, to repeat the old lessons on top of the new ones. Hence, less frequent reports to you, my dears, as there are only so many hours in a day! I will try and keep everything in balance, but if push comes to shove, the Chinese must win!

This Friday, I had agreed to meet Evelyne, my new friend from the airplane to Dongguan. She called me in the morning and we agreed to meet at the subway station of Dongzhimen, and not at her offices, as we had originally intended. I just could not make myself take the subway and walk all those stairs and tunnels on my stiff, hurting legs, so I decided in favor of a taxi ride. Well prepared and armed with my dictionary, I hailed a cab and got on board. “Dongzhimen Ditie, McDonald’s” I announced to the fairly young driver. He looked at me inquisitively, so I repeated, more slowly: “Mac-Do-nald, ok? Mac-Do-nald!” He nodded, Ok, Ok, and off we went.
35 minutes later, we sighted the subway station, and right next to it, on the other side of the big plaza, though, the big Mc Do’s, with its sign dominating almost the entire neighborhood. As we sped past on the opposite, separate lanes, I pointed to it and declared “ Mac-Do-Nald! There!” Again, some nodding and some gesturing in big u-turn style movements. I interpreted that we needed to turn around somewhere so he could let me out on the other side of the street and would not have to cross the four lanes to get there. Fine with me, I thought. We turned and retraced our steps on the now correct side of the street… here comes the McDo’s. “Stop”, I say. He does not stop! “Hey, stop here! Stop!” No, he drives right past it! Swooosh!!!! I see it vanish as we now drive back where we came from. “Hey, the Mc Donald’s is over there!” I gesture backwards and try to get my message to the driver, gesturing for him to find the next exit out of these express lanes and get back to where I want to go. He gets the idea, and we do round number two. Here comes the turn around to get us back into the “good” direction…. Here comes the McDo…. Whoosh! Gone! Dammit! “Will you stop, let me out of here! There is the Mc Donalds, don’t you get it!?!” Well, by now, it dawns on him, why I am so excited by now each time we pass that particular spot by the road. And he declares, pointing back: “Mak-Done-Lao, Mak-Done-Lao”, with a strong accent which I believe he intends to be American! I am sure he repeats it so often, because he feels the need to educate me as how to properly pronounce the name of this establishment! The next time we finish the big tour, he actually stops by the curve and lets me get out of that “taxi infernal”. Communication, communication! As another valuable by-product, I realize that the supposedly international word "stop" has zero impact on a chinese cab driver. So if any of you ever want to get yours to stop, yell "ting" at him, with an uprise on the end of that mono-syllable. That will do the trick!

Once escaped from my infernal taxi, I walk over to the main entrance to the Mak-Done-Lao and look around: no Evelyne yet, I am a little early, maybe 10 minutes. The jingles from the big loudspeakers wash over the plaza: I’m loving it! The rest is Chinese… and it repeats endlessly. After about 20 more tours of “I’m loving it”, here comes Evelyne, finally and a little late. We recognize each other right away, which is not always evident, after meeting people in an airplane and then seeing them again only after several days. We cross the plaza which I now know by heart, and stir towards the subway station of line number 13, the very one that runs by my place. Evelyne lives in a condo at a subway station halfway between my station and the terminal, Dongzhimen. So, standing in front of the subway map, I point that out to her, and suggest that instead of driving all the way downtown, I could just have cut that trip in half and waited for her directly at her subway station. She laughs and says she was afraid I would get lost out there. Next time, we’ll do it my way.

We get off at her subway station, about 20 minutes later, in a suburban setting, 100 % Chinese, I believe. Little motorized rickshaws await us, on three wheels, with a little closed cabin mounted on the two back wheels. There must be at least 50 of them, a little armada of 3 wheeled boxes! The inside consists of a wooden bench with a colored fabric covering it.
We climb into one and get whisked away to a restaurant, where we will meet Evelyne’s friends for dinner. They are already waiting outside the place, and we do the introductions, all in Chinese! I am so proud of my small but nifty, new language skills. They are a not so young couple, maybe early 30s, fiancés, to be married in October. Another young girl joins us, she is maybe 20 and a student at the international Language Faculty, like me, but she studies Korean. She brought all her books, and while we chat around the table, she never lets up at looking over one more exercise and one more lesson revision. I will never be THAT studious! Her boyfriend is Korean, and she gets good practice of the language that way. I am sure that helps a lot, especially since he does not speak much Chinese, as she laughingly explains to us! The couple comes from Inner Mongolia for the woman, and Sichuan for the man. They both met in Beijing, while he was still a student. It is more and more customary in China to not get married right away, but to stay engaged longer and prepare a solid base for building a family. Now, the one child policy has been extended to a two child per family policy, but many couples still only plan on one child, as they prefer to put all their income into the education of a single child. This rule is not applied in the autonomous regions of China, where families can have as many children as they traditionally want.
We all spent a very animated and enjoyable evening together, with lots of dictionary wielding, electronic and manual ones, and lots of vocabulary trading, English-Chinese, back and forth. Evelyne tried to insist on my sleeping over at her place, but in light of her poor health condition, as she had caught a nasty cold two days earlier and was still suffering from it, I persuaded her that she needed to rest and not have to take care of a house guest this weekend. Reluctantly, and only with force persuasion on my end, she gave finally in and let me take a taxi back to my place. And that is when I saw my bike the last time, as I got home and walked past it in the yard. I promise, by tomorrow, Monday, I’ll be over my bike-mourning and not mention that pretty little thing again. Who knows, I might just get myself another one! We shall see…

That's half the bunch of us in class... 

My first Report from Beijing

All is well so far, I am making progress at installing myself in the land of the “Mandarines”. Let's see: in 2 days, I have managed to meet 3 guys who promise to help me: one on the plane over. His name is Pengsheng, or Paul by his American name. He is a professor of economic studies, at the University of Oklahoma, where he is doing 5 years, then back to China, to a city about 2 hours by train from Beijing, called Zibo.
He told me all his buddies from his old Beijing University now have important political positions in the Beijing government. If I need any help, I can call or write him, and he will do his best to help me out. Paul and I spent most of our time on the flight over discussing political and cultural issues. The one that got most heated, at least on Paul’s part, was the topic of the relationship between Taiwan and China. This is a very touchy subject for the Chinese, and they take anybody’s position about it very personal. They feel that Taiwan should and will be reintegrated into the People’s Republic, whether the Taiwanese like it or not. I beg to differ, at least as far as the methods of accomplishing this go.
Then, this morning in the internet cafe, I met Fey Yu, AKA Jeffery, a young student of Chinese, just graduating in his bachelor's degree, and he is assistant professor in the Language Institute, the very same one I will be a student in, too. He will help me find an apartment; he has also mobilized his buddies to that task. I'll meet him tomorrow morning, to set up a master plan for organizing the search. While staying at the MengXi Hotel, I corrected some erroneous English documents for them, unsolicited of course, brochures and such, which I found in the room’s informational folder. I took them to the assistant hotel manager, a young guy whose name is Water (don't ask me why, I have no clue, either). He was very happy about the good work I did for him, so he lowered my room rate considerably, to about 25 $ US/night, and he also promised to help me with finding an apartment.
Last night, as I could not manage to get online in my room, the technical manager came around and helped me with that. He brought his assistant along, and it took them til midnight to get me online. We had a good time chatting of this and that while they worked out the connection bugs. I must have been busy these 2 days, considering all I already accomplished or initiated here! And of course, my sweet friend Olivia, whom I have known over the internet, maybe short of 2 years ago, will help me this weekend, too, to go and look at available places she will have identified before then. And apart from all of the above, I have already managed to buy myself a cell phone, I know where the post office is, and I have done extensive shopping, all by myself, in the local supermarket. As you can see, I am not sitting around waiting for somebody to come and tell me what to do! More tomorrow! Be well y’all!