Matt Schiavenza

It’s been awhile since I’ve written a personal update, so here goes:

- For the past two months I’ve been enrolled in two Chinese classes at my language school, one an “comprehensive” (综合) course at the intermediate level and another a class specifically designed to prepare me for the HSK exam, which I take this Sunday. The exam, needless to say, will not be easy. Although I’ve lived in China for more than three years, this is only my third semester of formal study and there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge. In order to get the results I want, I have to get at least 55% of the answers correct on each of the four exam sections, a rather daunting task.

The preparation has been equal parts frustrating and encouraging. I do feel frustrated when I botch a reading comprehension practice exam, or fail to comprehend the gist of a three-minute monologue spoken in rapid Chinese. But recently I picked up a newspaper and discovered that I can understand quite a lot, something I couldn’t say for myself as recently as this February. I’m also confident that, barring failure this time around, I’ll pass with flying colors should I have to re-take the exam in November.

- In late March, the cold, wet winter stopped and spring finally arrived: Kunming’s best season. For the past three weeks, we’ve enjoyed nearly non-stop sunshine and temperatures approaching 30 degrees (high 80s) without undue humidity. As a result, I’ve been enjoying the great outdoors more than before. I’ve taken two separate trips to beautiful Fuxian Lake, located about 140 kilometers south of Kunming. I also accompanied my friends on a decent bike journey (26 kilometers round-trip) to a reservoir located near the city’s western hills. For a native Californian, being able to go swimming again has been blissful. I can only hope the good weather will continue up until the inevitable arrival of the rainy season sometime in early June.

-Two friends of mine received a pregnant cat, and as happens, a litter resulted. I offered to adopt one of the kittens, a springy little dude I’ve dubbed Chairman Meow (yes, unoriginal, but I couldn’t resist. I mostly call him Chairman). I haven’t had cats around since I was a small child and on both occasions the little buggers ran away. I’m hoping to make amends this time around, though I fear for the upholstery on my sofa.

- Been watching a lot of movies lately. The best I’ve seen has been Juno, a comedy about a teen pregnancy that’s fresh and funny. I also really enjoyed Persepolis, an adaptation of the graphic novels of Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian who grew up during the revolution and later emigrated to France. Fantastic graphics, and a touching story.

I’ve also seen two films that managed to combine vulgarity with sweetness, with varying results. The first was Clerks II, the sequel to the mid-90s vintage Clerks, a film I found hysterical when I was a teenager. The second version is largely the same, but the jokes are mostly raunchy for the sake of raunchiness and I found the romantic bit contrived and sappy. I usually don’t criticize unrealistic pairings of mediocre men with gorgeous women (movies are a fantasy, remember), but the pairing of the lame, unattractive, and miserable Dante with the stunningly sexy Rosario Dawson just…wasn’t…convincing…enough.

Superbad was much better. I love high school teen comedies, and this is one of the best I’ve seen. Like in Clerks II, the dialogue is risque but for some reason it seemed more natural, perhaps because I was in high school less than a decade ago and can definitely relate. Also, the story had a sweetness that didn’t feel forced, and I liked were the film’s female protagonists: they weren’t twenty-seven year old supermodels but normal looking teenagers, and I liked how they were just as irreverent and sassy as the boys who were chasing them. Highly recommended.