Video - Guzheng Performance

A performance from my guzheng teacher:



And a performance from another student/teacher at the school, on an instrument called the xinzheng (新筝) which has the same range as the piano:

Scandalous T-shirts

In China, English is not only a mandatory study subject, it's fashionable. It doesn't always matter how correct the English is or what it even means. I've seen wedding photo albums covered in sickeningly sweet, grammatically incorrect English phrases, and even in Zhangye many stores opt for an English sign. Clothing fashion is no exception, and students in particular like shirts covered in (often meaningless or totally confusing) English phrases. It is always news to my students if I point out that the English on their shirt is wrong ("Wild Bider" on a Harley-esque design, or a picture of Nirvana's late singer labeled "Kurt Codain," who the student had never heard of in the first place). Ramones t-shirts are surprisingly popular, though no one has any idea who they are, and likewise with shirts that say in big letters "Spy Who Loved Me." At least one of my t-shirt purchases was inspired by the Chinese English on the front (seen in picture).

Most of the odd English-adorned shirts can be chalked up to the generally abysmal level of English in the Chinese manufacturing world. However, there are those that turn my head and make me wonder if a mischievous laowai (foreigner) wasn't behind it. For example, today I saw a shirt that said in large letters "Peace is Good." That seemed harmless and superficial enough, but then I noticed the smaller letters "Sex is Better" in the bottom corner. Yesterday I saw a female student on campus with the large letters "Wanted: A Meaningful One-Night Relationship" on her shirt. And I remember my friend David from my training course in Thailand mentioning a similar phenomenon where he taught in South Korea, his example being a shirt that said "last night a world class surfer got off in me." One of the most popular t-shirt series amongst girls here is a brand that advertises "Relax: Choose Juicy," whatever that means. And lately one of my students has taken to wearing her new t-shirt which says "Baby Drink Beer." But one of the most noticeable was a shirt I saw on the street that said in unmissable block letters on the back "FUCKING CANADIAN." Apparently a freshman girl in the English department also has this shirt.

This reminds me of an article I read in 21st century, a newspaper for English students in China, about Westerners with tattoos of Chinese characters. Apparently many of them are incorrect or completely ridiculous. The only example I can remember was an unfortunate Western guy who had a tattoo that said "crazy diarrhea" in Chinese. So fair warning to anyone who gets a Chinese tattoo: beware the smirk on the tattoo artist's face.

Chinese Words and Phrases 1: 减肥班 jiǎnféi bān

I'm going to try something new, which may or may not immediately succumb to apathy on my part (after all I am around a month behind on this blog). I don't expect there is a very high number of Chinese learners who read this blog, but I'd like to make a few comments every so often about a word I have come across and for some reason find interesting. It doesn't matter if you have any interest in learning the word or not; I'll try to choose words which are as "Chinese" culturally as they are linguistically. The first word I'm going to look at is:

减肥班 jiǎnféi bān
(note to the uninitiated): to the right of the characters is what is called pinyin, the official system in China for spelling Chinese words with the Roman alphabet. The marks above the letters represent the tone of the character: there are four tones in Chinese, meaning that each syllable must not only be pronounced accurately, but with the proper pitch in your voice. If this is confusing and you want to understand it, listen to this. I suspect that musicians and particularly singers make better Chinese speakers. So, a Chinese person just uses characters because they have them memorized, but those learning Chinese for the first time (foreigner teachers or very young children, who might not be as different as you would expect) need to see the pinyin of a new word to know how it is actually pronounced. There have been different systems for spelling Chinese words in the past, which is why Beijing was once spelled Peking and Daoism is usually spelled Taoism even though it is pronounced with a "d" sound.

Jianfei means "lose weight," and ban means "class," as in a class at school. So jianfei ban means "lose weight class," or if you prefer, "fat class." At our university, and presumably others throughout China, if you fail PE class you must attend the fat class. I came across this word because a student I know but don't teach has to take part. Ironically, she is as skinny as they come, weighing no more than 110 pounds. It came up when she spotted her classmate in the fat class in the park and mentioned it. Why is she in the fat class? Because her PE teacher told her that if she didn't give him a "gift," he was going to fail her. She didn't, and he kept his promise. In America you could maybe count to three before that teacher was fired, but in China bribery is common.

My students often talk of their desire to lose weight, though many would be considered normal or skinny in America. Chinese people are also fond of referring to the general fatness of Americans, and have asked me why I'm not fat. Actually, my impression is that in Chinese calling someone "fat" is not nearly as rude as it is in English. My students use the word in English a little too freely, and as a general rule are not very politically correct (recently a student instructed to plan the China village in Epcot Center said he would make the walls yellow to "represent our yellow skin"). Anyway, the jianfei ban also reminded me of the time in high school when the bottom third of the gym class in swimming speed got held back for extra swimming lessons, and I just barely did not make the cut. But at least they still called it gym class.

Qinghai Travels, Part II: You Should Have Come in July

The impression of Yushu I had from my scant information proved to be accurate enough - a small, remote, and pleasant town with Tibetan characteristics. From the architecture to the hilltop temples and the huge (and I mean HUGE - take note of the bulldozer in the picture) statue of a legendary Tibetan warrior king, it had a refreshingly un-Chinese character. Like my travels through Xinjiang, there a slight feeling of not being in Kansas anymore.

As would be expected, Tibetans look, dress, and act quite distinctly different from the Chinese. Red-robed monks were everywhere, and it was generally agreed that Tibetans, with their cowboy hats and unpolished features, were much cooler looking than the Chinese. Many of the women were very attractive. Not necessarily more so than Chinese girls, but they were striking at the time for their differences. As expected we attracted attention on the streets from passersby, but there was a genuine friendliness from the majority of residents, and many come up to make friendly conversation. There seemed to be fewer obnoxious "hellooo!"s shouted at us than usual. Yushu is 85-90% Tibetan, although surprisingly most of the restaurants served the same Chinese cuisine we have come to know. And to our surprise food was twice the cost of food in Zhangye, because much of it must be brought in from long distances away. A theme emerged in the conversations we had with locals: there is a big horse festival in July. Most of the tourists come in July. The grass is greener in July. Why didn't we come in July?

One of my favorite aspects of the town was seeing monks going about their everyday business. From the typical images of monks we see in movies and the media it's easy to form a stereotype of them sitting in a temple all day chanting, but there was more life to these monks. Monks on cell phones. Monks on motorcycles. Monks shopping. Monks on escalators. Monks falling off motorcycles. Monks joking around, talking to us, having their dinner, taking a bus. All the while in their brilliant red robes.

The town was old-fashioned, even in comparison to Zhangye. The streets (and there were only about three of them) were lines with stalls with every manner of handicraft, and people would be pounding metal or carving wood on the sidewalk. And of course, it is quite a remote place. I mentioned that the bus from Xining is at best a 17 hour trip - Xining is the closest big city in any direction. Despite the holiday we were not anticipating running into many tourists.

There was also an unusually high number of beggars. During our first dinner in Yushu, after a few minutes a woman came into the restaurant to beg, obviously focusing on us. She stood for an awkwardly long time with hand outstretched before giving up in the end. When she left, another beggar came in and did the same. And then another. And then two monks chanting. They were tag-teaming us, with a replacement for each disappointed beggar who left. We decided to keep count, and during the meal we faced down 19 different beggars. Presumably word was going around the begging community that foreigners were in town. During the next meal there were 8 beggars, and this quickly dwindled down to almost nothing. Word must have gotten around that these were stingy foreigners. Qinghai is one of the poorest provinces in China, and it's possible that the widespread belief in Buddhism is a factor in the higher numbers of beggars compared to the more secular Chinese of our own Gansu.

During that first meal, we asked for a couple of safe dishes plus a request for a local specialty. After a long wait we were represented with two enormous plates of what we determined was yak meat, which was delicious but exhausting to chew. There was a group of teenage monks in the opposite corner, and we had a lengthy disagreement over their sex. Stephen was adamant they were girls, whereas Andrew was convinced they were boys and I was simply confused. After they left Andrew finally asked the staff and found out to his disappointment that they were girls, which Stephen was happy to bring up during the rest of the trip.

One of the attractions in Yushu we were aware of was the largest collection of prayer stones in all of Tibet. Prayer stones are stones which have Tibetan Buddhist prayers carved into them and are in large piles which grow slowly as worshippers add more stones. There are apparently more than 2 billion prayer stones at this site, which are arranged in walls around a temple. Me and Stephen took a walk around the complex while Andrew found a shady spot and some people to talk to in Chinese. Andrew had little interest in Buddhist temples throughout the trip, and could frequently be spotted in a shady spot talking to people in Chinese. Not every Tibetan could speak Chinese well, but there were more Chinese speakers than I had expected. There were several friendly and curious Tibetans hanging around that chatted with us, and asked to have their picture taken. They also informed us that we should have come in July.

After visiting the inside of the temple and continuing our walk, me and Stephen were surprised to see a foreign woman just older than us walking with a young Tibetan girl. She turned out to be a volunteer teacher in Yushu originally from South Africa, and the girl was her student. After a brief conversation we exchanged phone numbers with the woman, whose name was Natalie, and she offered to give us further help with our stay.

We felt it was time to go at this point and wanted to fetch Andrew. We knew he was just around the corner, but when we turned to get him a quiet Tibetan man who had been sticking with us awkwardly communicated that it was impossible to go that way. In Tibetan belief, you should always circle a temple clockwise. We were aware of this and had been abiding by it, but we didn't realize it was strict to the point where we couldn't turn around and walk back 50 feet. I tried to explain we were just getting our friend, but he firmly suggested we go around. So we walked all the way around the temple complex again to get Andrew. I envisioned him getting up to look for us and circling each other blindly for 30 minutes, but he was still in the shade where we had last seen him and we went back into the center of town.

That night we took a look around the area of our hotel, and settled on the Prosperous Restaurant/Bar as a promising place to get a drink. The owner was a large, opinionated Tibetan man who was happy to have conversation with us. From him we learned that the Tibetans and Muslims (the town had some Hui, a Chinese Muslim minority group) don't get along too well. Actually, he didn't call them Muslims, but rather "white hats" for the distinctive head ware of Chinese Muslims. The hats might be white, but according to the owner they have "black hearts" and can't be trusted. His bar also featured a prominent picture of the Dalai Llama, which we would see frequently throughout Qinghai. In the actual Tibetan Autonomous Region his picture is forbidden and restrictions on Tibetans are more severe, but Qinghai seems a little more relaxed. The Prosperous owner said this is because in the TAR most of the government is made up of Han Chinese, but in Qinghai much of the government consists of Tibetans.

Like some others we would meet, and some of the Uyghur I met in Xinjiang, he spoke of a general dislike of the Chinese. The Chinese government handily crushes any separatist sentiment in the vast and strategic regions of Xinjiang and Tibet, and encourages an influx of Han Chinese to the areas, who are the main benefactors of the development in these regions. My students, who have only heard the official Party line, have a naive but sincere belief that China has a mission to help out these poor backward people and improve their lives for them. Some of my students talk fondly of their desire to find work in Tibet or Xinjiang and help out using their superior education level. The Dalai Llama has been painted as a troublemaker and criminal who wants to take from China what is rightfully hers. Western travelers carrying the Lonely Planet Tibet guide have had the preface ripped out while being screamed at by customs officials, as it was written by the Dalai Llama.

But among his other opinions, the bar owner didn't forget to suggest that we should have come in July.

Qinghai Travels, Part I: Eating Bitter

"There was no good reason to go to Yulin and it took 10 hours to get there."

Since reading it I've always liked this line, which opens one of the chapters of Peter Hessler's River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. I believe the foreigners who get the most out of living in China are those who secretly get a kick out of the hassles, frustrations, and absurdities of living on the other side of the world. With this attitude in mind, I opted for a less comfortable but less predictable travel experience during this past May holiday. The first week in May is a national labor holiday in China, and through careful diplomacy me and travel companions Stephen and Andrew turned that into a 9-day trip through Qinghai (pronounced "ching-hi"), a neighboring province. I had never had any intention of visiting Qinghai, which is known for being a hostile home for Chinese prisoners sentenced to manual labor, when it is known at all. It is one of the poorest provinces in the country and perhaps 75% of its population lives in Xining, the capital and only large city.

What drew me to Qinghai the most was a small town of about 40,000 called Yushu. Yushu (玉树, "jade tree") is the Chinese name, but it is culturally and historically a Tibetan town with the name Jyekundo. It took 17 hours to get there (actually 29 if I include the initial trip to Xining), but we had a moderately good reason to go there. It is not in the guide books, but I stumbled upon a thread at Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree travel message boards which describes Qinghai as underrated, and a great place to see mountainous scenery and Tibetan culture. It's separation from the Tibetan Autonomous Region is somewhat arbitrary, and outside of Xining the area was and continues to be part of the Tibetan cultural sphere.

The first stage of the journey was getting to Xining, which due to my teaching schedule involved taking an overnight bus. Overnight buses are normally sleeper buses, but unfortunately only buses with seats were available to Xining, so we spent the first 12 hours of the trip sitting upright until 6am, enjoying the increasingly snowy scenery and the only genuinely humorous Chinese movie I have seen so far.

The next bus to Yushu wasn't until 4pm, so we bought tickets and took a walk around Xining. During a tense moment they were initially reluctant to sell us tickets at all because we were foreigners; we knew the area was closed to foreigners in the past, but has been open for some years now. There was some issue about coming into contact with dirt and bugs that we didn't quite understand at the time, but after a couple of phone calls and long glances they were satisfied that we didn't spend our days digging trenches with roll-up sleeves.

Xining is cleaner and more pleasant than our provincial capital, Lanzhou, but other than it's ethnic mix of Han Chinese, Tibetans, and Hui, isn't particularly noteworthy. We also used our time to visit Ta'er Si, an important Tibetan Buddhist temple complex outside of the city that we had hoped to see.

Ta'er Si was worth the visit, but was heavily touristed and didn't have as good an atmosphere as other temples we would see. We were alarmed to see a monk carrying an automatic weapon in one small temple, until we realized it was a toy to keep birds away. As we climbed one of the encircling hills to get a view over the area, we struck up conversation with an old Tibetan man. By "we" I mean Andrew, whose Chinese is considerably better than mine or Stephen's and is a good conversationalist. The many interesting conversations we got into during the trip would have had less depth or been non-existent without him.

The old man was performing the self-prostrations which are part of the Tibetan Buddhist faith. This involves kneeling on the ground and spreading forward until you're flat on your stomach, and then spreading your arms in an arc which marks the spot for your next prostration. It's a slow process which seems to cover fairly long distances and lengths of time. According to Stephen, who was the only one who knew much of anything about Tibetan Buddhism, it is to atone for one's sins. He had a thick cake of dirt on his forehead as he talked to us. He seemed to like Americans, remarking that Americans look after the Tibetan people. This was a fresh change from the usual bland "America is very developed" that I get.

Back at the bus station in Xining, boarding the bus was to be a heart-wrenching experience - despite our assumption, the bus was not a sleeper. That meant for the 17+ hours to Yushu we sat upright and awake, on a road that would sadden a civil engineer's heart to see. We were in the very front as well, but along with the extra leg room we were treated to a front-row view of the death-defying turns along the precipitous mountain roads. It was stressful at times. And thus we spent two nights in a row sitting on bus seats, and Chinese bus seats at that. It would be 60 straight hours before I slept, a record-breaking streak for me. For better or worse I took pride in "eating bitter" (吃苦 chīkǔ), a Chinese phrase for enduring hardship.

We did make it all the way to Yushu on that bus, which can't be said for the majority of the passengers. Around 20 of our fellow riders were migrant workers that had been organized by an untrustworthy-looking man in a cap and glasses who spoke in heavy dialect. In the early dawn hours of the next morning, perhaps 14 hours into the journey, we came to a small settlement that acted as a police checkpoint. After waiting a couple of hours (I believe the policemen were asleep) our bus was inspected and everyone (besides us and an obviously Tibetan family) was asked to get off. Things took a turn for the worst for the migrant workers, and after some meek protesting and a policeman declaring several times "I don't care," they were not allowed back on the bus, and we left without them.

This place was very much in the middle of nowhere, with nothing for miles upon miles upon miles. It reminded me of a Hollywood set for a Old Western ghost town. The buildings were empty and a good proportion of the inhabitants were large, vicious dogs on chains, one of which nearly frightened me to death when it lunged at me in my half-asleep stupor before I had noticed the chain. I had to wonder what on earth the motley crew of workers was going to do now. The bus was now mostly empty, carrying just the three of us, four Tibetans, and the boss of the workers, who was not about to hang around to see what happened to them. From what Andrew understood the reason the workers were not allowed to go to Yushu had to do with the same insect issue that nearly prevented us from buying tickets, and at the bus station had told us outsiders were not allowed in without proper documentation, which they obviously lacked.

As we made the final approach to Yushu, my lack of sleep was overpowered by increasing excitement, as the empty stretches of land and undulating mountains slowly became populated by Tibetans on motorcycles, Tibetans herding yaks, Tibetan prayer flags, Tibetans in colorful outfits, and yet more yaks. Nearly as satisfying was the lack of tour buses or huge groups of Chinese in matching red hats being led by a megaphone-touting tour guide. After a long trip, we had arrived.

Foreigner in a Chinese Barber Shop

A Chinese-speaking foreigner named Ben in the city of Fuzhou has taken on an interesting experiment - step out of the coddled foreign-teacher role and work as an apprentice in a Chinese barber shop for a month. He has asked to be treated like one of the Chinese workers, and like the others works 11-hour days, 7 days a week, with 3 days off during the month. His current blog posts are fascinating reading and give a small window into the life of working class Chinese. I will actually provide the link to the Sinosplice post about it (where I first came across Ben's blog) as John of Sinosplice has provided clearly organized links to the posts written up till now.

http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2007/05/21/barber-shop-antics

Guzheng with Western Characteristics

Andrew pointed out to me a video featuring the guzheng (古筝), the ancient Chinese instrument I was making an attempt at learning. Although there is now a guzheng sitting in my apartment (music department friend Sarah, seen in the picture, bought one and practices in my home) I seem to have given up on it. I don't think I have the patience for learning a new instrument at this point. Also, I found out that the guzheng is an instrument for girls.

The video is about a Chinese woman residing in America who was classically trained in Beijing on the guzheng, but has been influenced by experimental musicians in America and has applied this knowledge to the guzheng. Almost as interesting as the video itself are the comments I am seeing left by the Chinese who have watched it, which I will attempt to translate:

She can't even play one section well! Don't slander classical music!

Rotten. How is it she is considered a musician.

Very disorderly; guzheng should not be used for experiments. Sounds awful (the Chinese phrase, 难听死了, would translate literally as something like "difficult to listen to to the point of death").

This is simply disorganized playing.

What irritates me the most is the English amongst the Chinese.

It looks like this is causing some controversy.

Before I give a false impression of my Chinese ability, I did have to look up words like "slander." And there are a few comments which I don't quite grasp, despite understanding the words. The video can be found here. More traditional guzheng performances can be found by searching for "guzheng" on YouTube.