Ben's China Adventure

AN ASSESSMENT OF MY CHINESE ABILITIES

The other day, a little kid told me that I speak Chinese like "yin du ren," Indian people. This got me worrying. Is my Chinese like the Indians with British accents or is it more like Apu in the Simpsons? Today I asked my teacher to assess me. Here is what she said.

1. I have an American accent (which is ok with me)
2. My writing is equivalent to a Chinese 4th grader (10yrs old)
3. My speaking is equivalent to a 4 or 5 year old.
4. My reading is like that of an 7 year old.

I had thought that my speaking would be best, but the teacher pointed out that by age 6 or so, every kid here can speak Chinese fluently. They don't get proficient in reading and writing until later. I hadn't much thought about it, but I guess it's like that everywhere. When I was in first grade, I could speak much more English than I could read and write. After my time here, I'm not fluent as I had hoped to be, and I now see that it will take me a good 3 years of study here to be fluent.

SHAOSHAN & THE NONSENSE THAT COMES WITH LIVING HERE

The next morning we took a train to Shaoshan, Chairman Mao's hometown. Shaoshan is very tiny, but at one point 3 million peple per year were coming to pay homage at Mao's birthplace so the government built a train. Shaoshan was a cool place. We saw the Mao Museum, a mixture of propaganda, historical photos and personal effects of Mao. Some things were really interesting, like the first modern Chinese flag or Mao's own Little Red Book, but some of the things were a bit too esoteric for me (such as Mao's toothbrush.) We also visited Mao's house. It was bigger than I had expected but had as many soldiers guarding it as I would have thought.

After The museums we went into town to purchase souvineers. I bought a handful of Red Books from the Cultural Revolution and some more Mao hats. I have both blue and green. Blue is for the peasants, green for the government and the military. I've been wearing my green one for a few months now, and every now and then someone will approach me and seriously ask if I am in the PLA (People's Liberation Army.) After the shopping we had lunch - the best tong su li ji (sweet and sour pork) I've had since I've been here.

Then I went back to Kunming. Every person who I told that I had been to Changsha told me how much they had hated it. A few even offered up reasons as to why "all people from Changsha are assholes." My favorites came from a friend who is a psychologist and another who is a historian. The psychological reason is that, "Hunan food is the spiciest in China, and people have hot tempers if they eat a lot of spicy food." Interesting theory. The other theory I liked is that, "Changsha people have been bred for centuries to be assholes. They were the Qing Dynasty's special forces. During the Taiping rebellion, Changsha was the only town in Hunnan that held off the rebels." Naybe it's the food, maybe it's the bred hostility, but if you're ever in China, I suggest you skip Changsha.

Today my phone was stolen. The irony is that I had bought the cheapest phone so it wouldn't get stolen and it worked for 6 months. Since I save everythingm I was able to dig through months of junk and find the original SIM card info. China Mobile, which is usually incompetant on a good day helped me and made it very easy for me to keep my same phone number on a new phone. Alltold, it was an unplanned $50 expense, but I have friends who have been through a half dozen phones in a year. If your bike gets stolen in Kunming, you can go to the stolen bike market and buy it back (or a better one.) Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there is no stolen phone market here.

CRAMMING, GALLBLADDERS & HELL ON EARTH

3/18
My friends were freaking out about their exam. At their request we spent about 6 hours practicing reading, spoken English and talking about topics they thought the exam would cover. They had me read Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech and MLK's "I have a dream" speech and then quiz them on specifics of the speech. They had me ask them complicated questions in English about things like China's "One Child" policy or the Chinese education system. They then went and took the test. Every single person I spoke to thought the test was too easy. They had the students read 3 sentences then asked them what they thought a good library should have. I have been left wondering, if the test was really that easy, how could they decide who should get into the school?

Yesterday evening we wandered around Changsha. We came upon a market and decided to check it out. I really like Chinese markets. There's always something interesting to see. Sometimes it's new fruits or vegetables I've never seen before, sometimes it's skinned dogs with their heads attached and sometimes it's neatly arranged tables of animal parts I didn't even know existed. Yesterday, there was the usual hundred chickens and ducks (probably all with bird flu) crammed into a tiny cage and bowls of frogs and turtles. The only unusual (a really relative term, but I've been here 6 months) thing I saw was a 30 gallon bucket filled to the brim with snakes. They were very skinny snakes, at most a foot long, but the bucket was writhing. Next to the bucket was a chopping tray where the lady would prepare your snakes if you so desired. There was also a large plate of gallbladders. I know people drink fresh-squeezed gallbladder juice as a type of Chinese medicine, but I'm not sure the effect. It's not on my list of things to taste either.

3/19 addendum
I have found hell. Many people think hell is somewhere down below, it's not. Hell resides in Changsha, Hunan Province, China. It is the most unnerving, revolting, incompetant, obnoxious waste of space I have ever seen. In 2 days it has jumped to #1 on the list of places I hate most in the universe. If China is looking for a way to cull their population, I suggest they start with Changsha. "Wow," you say. Why am I so angry? I can't hit every reason so I'll give you the big ones.

This afternoon we planned on buying a plane ticket to Kunming then travelling to Shaoshan, Chairman Mao's hometown. The travel agent said "no problem, it will just be a 30 minute wait." 3 hours later the ticket arrives and though misspelled (which I don't think is really a problem) we depart. We arrived at the bus station to find out that we had just missed the last bus to Shaoshan. We got in a taxi and asked him to take us to the train station (there are morning trains to Shaoshan) and he takes the long way, charging us 20RMB too much. We bought a ticket then got a taxi back to the hotel we had just checked out of. The taxi driver started driving then said, "I'm new here, where do I go." Though I've only been here 2 days, I gave him the best directions I could. We finally arrived after paying twice what we should have and then we got a call from the travel agent. She asked us to come back so she could fix the spelling on my ticket. I arrived and she wanted 50RMB more for the correct ticket. I went off on her, screaming and swearing in English, Mandarin and a few other langauges that came to mind.

You may be saying to yourself, "what's the problem, that's just China." I've put up with a lot in my time here, but today pushed me over the edge.

Other things that happened today:

• We went to McDonalds because my friend Ada wanted food there. In line, a middle age woman decided it was appropriate to spit in the restaurant and by chance hit my shoe (it was an accident because she appologized.)
• I stopped a little girl from stealing my wallet
• I was almost hit by 4 different cars (Chinese are terrible drivers and I've issued many a DWA, but Changsha drivers are worse.)
• I made a phone call to the US. The lady said it was 2.4RMB/min then after I hung up the phone charged me 8RMB/min and wouldn't let me leave until I'd paid.
• The Changsha version of Chinese is so convoluted that even my Chinese friends can't understand them, and when I speak proper Mandarin they can't understand me (I haven't had this problem anywhere else in China)

This is the town where Chairman Mao learned all his Marxist values. I've been here 2 days and I want to kill all 6 million people who live here. Mao lived here for almost a decade. Is it any surprise then that he killed 60+ million people?

The one bright side to being here has been that I found a really cool Randall Cunningham 1990 Probowl throwback jersey. It has all the proper Mitchell & Ness tags and looks real. The only thing wrong is that the date sewn on the bottom says 1994 where it should say 1990. This leads me to believe that it is a real jersey and just happens to be a factory screwup. Either way, It was a good deal for $6.

I am still going to Mao's hometown, Shaoshan, just tomorrow morning instead of today. If anyone wants a little red book, mao hat or t-shirt send me an email.

CHANGSHA & BEN RECOVERS FROM BEING SICK

After being sick for a week and not having anything interesting occur, I'm now back into the blogging.

I am currently in Changsha, capital of Hunan province with my Chinese friends (and English students) Ada and Harry. They are taking their college entrance exam here and invited me here with them. They are trying to get in to the Beijing Foreign Language University. This afternoon, we went to the school so they could register. There were 200 Chinese people and I was the only foreigner. People kept asking me if I was the teacher giving the exam. I got tired of the question and started saying 'maybe.' Thoroughly amusing how much people tried to suck up.

I was talking to a few of them and they asked me to help them prepare for the interview they have to have in English. They get asked why they want to go to BFLU and why they want to study the language they have chosen. I found out that almost all of them didn't want the language they had been assigned. One boy had been assigned Finnish. He didn't know anything about Finland, except that "they're rich" so he looked it up online. I asked one "why do you want to study Japanese?" The answer? "I don't." That seemed to be the consensus. I helped a little bit, but most of the help will be going to my friends tonight. We're having a big study session.

Changsha is a 2 hour bus ride away from Shaoshan, Chairman Mao's hometown. I'm going on Sunday. I'm very excited. Apparently the town has become a shrine to Mao. I'd like to see the Communist Party Museum there and buy a bunch of Mao hats and little red books.

After that I will be here about 1 more month before I go home. In that time, I will be doing a lot of travelling. Ideally I'll make it to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Guilin and Thailand. We'll see how far I get, but I will be writing a lot of blogs soon.