Things I Like About Kunming
In response to Jeremiah's new post at the Peking Duck, I thought I'd pitch in a few reasons to love my adopted home, Kunming.
1. The weather. No, it isn't perfect, but when Kunming is nice- and it often is nice as much as we say it isn't- it is really, really nice. White puffy clouds, perfect temperature, bright blue skies, and a light breeze are not infrequent conditions here, which does wonders for your mood. Plus, while pollution has gotten noticeably worse as the city expands, it still cannot hold a candle to the bad air in Beijing, Shanghai, etc.
2. The intimacy. While being a major city and a provincial capital, Kunming still feels very small. I have never paid more than 30 RMB for any intra-city taxi journey, including airport runs. It's very easy to explore the whole city by bicycle, and visits to places on the outskirts don't require a lot of time or money. I love how running into friends just happens and doesn't require intricate planning.
3. The low cost of living. Rent is cheap. Restaurants are even cheaper. A beer in a bar doesn't stretch your wallet. One can live very comfortably in Kunming on 3,000 RMB per month, and that includes rent. For people on limited budgets who want to live in China, Kunming can afford that.
4. The arts/bohemian/international scene. Despite its distance from the coastal cities and Beijing, Kunming has a thriving arts scene and several good galleries located in the city. It also has held events such as the Kunming International Film Festival and an outdoor music festival. There are lots of foreign restaurants (both foreign and Chinese owned) and excellent cafes where on nice days people sit outside and chat.
5. The surrounding countryside. Within easy biking distance there are reservoirs, mountain passes, forests, lakes, and plenty of open space to explore. Yunnan's physical beauty is well-known in China (and elsewhere), but one doesn't have to venture far outside the capital to enjoy it. While there are a million suburban towns here, the sprawl doesn't seem as suffocating as it does in the coastal provinces.
Kunming isn't perfect, and people often move on to bigger and better things. For non-native English speakers, it can be difficult finding work of any kind. The intimacy also can cut both ways, and sometimes it seems that everyone knows each other's secrets.
But for a lot of us here, we wouldn't dream of living anywhere else in this great land of China.
Memorial Day
I just want to wish my American readers a Happy Memorial Day. I hope you're out there enjoying barbequed hot dogs by the swimming pool.
A Joke (or Two)
Here's a joke my Chinese friend taught me:
A stutterer (结巴) walks into a shop to buy a bottle of beer. When he asks the merchant how much one costs, he is told "20 yuan"
Shocked at the high price, the stutterer says "开开开开开开开。。。"
Hearing this word, the merchant does as he's told and opens the bottle.
Then, the stutterer finishes his sentence: "开玩笑"
Explanation:
In Chinese, 开 means "open". The verb to open is usually rendered 打开, but 开 gets the job done. "开玩笑" means, in this case, "you're joking". A bottle of beer in a shop should cost around 3 or 4 yuan, so 20 is a ridiculous price. So, translated into English, the stutterer meant to say "you're joking" but instead said "open", forcing him to pay for the beer.
Here's another one:
Deng Xiaoping plans to travel to the United States on a state visit. Embarrassed by his non-existent English, Deng asks an aide to help him prepare for a press conference. The aide says, "OK. The first question they're going to ask you is "What's your last name?". The second question will be 'What's your first name?'. The third question will be, "Where do you want to go in America?". Deng nods and prepares his answers.
Upon arriving at the press conference, a reporter asks Deng: "Where will you be staying in the United States?". Deng, not understanding, remembers that the first question would ask him for his last name. So he says: "我姓邓" (Wo sheeng dung). "Ah, Washington!" someone cries, and the reporters dutifully record his answer in their notebooks.
Then, a reporter asks Deng: "What would you like to do during your stay in America?" Deng again doesn't understand, but remembers that the second question would ask him for his first name. He says, "å°å¹³" (Sheeow Ping). "Ah, shopping!" someone says, and the reporters write his response down.
The third journalist asks Deng: "In your opinion, what will be the most pressing internal matter for China during the first years of the 21st century?" Deng is startled by the length of the question, and forgets his aide's words that the third question would ask him where he'd like to go in the US. So, in his native Sichuan dialect, Deng says "什么？(sar zuh?). "Ah, SARS!" someone cries, and so Deng managed to impress the reporters without ever understanding a word they said.
There's actually a fourth part to this joke involving a president of Taiwan, but I've forgotten it.
And finally, here's an aphorism a Chinese guy told me months ago:
"å–酒对è‚å处， 抽烟对肺å处，ä¸å–é…’ä¸æŠ½çƒŸå¯¹å¿ƒå处"
(Drinking is bad for your liver, smoking is bad for your lungs, but not drinking and not smoking is bad for your heart)
Safe in China
Given the recent surge of anti-Western sentiment in China, I've been asked by a few people elsewhere whether I've noticed any changes in my daily life here. The answer to that remains no.
Being a foreigner in China is, and has long been, a pretty sweet deal. By virtue of being a college-educated native English speaker, I'm very employable and comparatively well-paid. I can dress however I want, go wherever I want, and feel little restraint when interacting with Chinese people. Friendships and relationships between Chinese and foreigners occur naturally and fluidly. Travel restrictions, with the exception of Tibet, are very mild. Until recently, obtaining a lengthy Visa stay was not difficult. Entering and leaving the country is far less of a hassle than it is, say, in the United States (even for American citizens).
I was able to rent an apartment with no strings attached. There are Internet restrictions, but they're annoying rather than prohibiting. I don't feel like I have to censor myself when talking to locals, even about political issues. Physically, I'm safe. I don't worry about walking in the city alone at night. Pickpocketing and petty theft exist, but are not rampant (in my experience).
I do, of course, have my issues with China. The air pollution can be stifling. The noise and traffic give me headaches. There are a lot of people, places, and things I miss from back home. And while I've improved dramatically, language barriers can sometimes make simple tasks somewhat challenging. I also find Chinese nationalism troubling, as well as the general lack of creativity and independent thought. But nationalism exists everywhere, and China is far from the only society to preach conformity as a supreme virtue.
So for anyone worrying that I'm living in a Stalinist hellhole, under siege by a thuggish government, feel at ease. Things are fine.
HSK Post-Mortem
Well, that was fun. My first (and hopefully last) go at the HSK exam is over, and in a couple of weeks I'll find out how I did. Overall, I'd say I didn't do any better or worse than I had on the most recent practice exams, which would mean I've still got quite a bit of progress to make before I get my desired result. Oh well- there's time!
On the HSK (or any standardized test) there are three types of questions: ones to which you know the answer, ones that you don't know but can make a reasonably educated guess, and ones that you have no idea how to answer. My goal over the past two months has been to reduce the third category to nil while raising the proportion of the first to the second (got that?). I still haven't gotten there. Yesterday, there were still quite a few questions in each section that totally befuddled me. Gotta learn more characters.
Some other observations:
- There were fifty-odd students in my test room, and all but three (counting me) were Asian. Before the exam I took an unscientific survey of which Asian countries these students came from (mostly from listening to their chatter) and discovered that the vast majority were Thai or Vietnamese. There were a few Koreans thrown in too. The other two non-Asians were both Italian.
-Two Vietnamese boys sitting directly in front of me chatted throughout the test and took turns looking at each other's answers. Finally, the proctor came over and told them to knock it off, but by that point the exam was nearly over.
- The HSK takes about two and a half hours, and there are no breaks in between sections. By the end, my brain was fried and I could think of nothing else but the burrito I was planning to eat for lunch.
-The test itself? For people who haven't taken HSK before, there are four sections: listening (å¬åŠ›), grammar (è¯æ³•), reading comprehension (阅读) and comprehensive (综åˆ). These sections are further divided into sub-sections: three for listening, and two for the rest. For me, the easiest parts on the practice exams have always been the first two parts of listening, all of grammar, and the second part of reading comprehension. The harder parts were the third part of listening (long passages followed by a few comprehension questions), the first part of reading comprehension (heavy on idioms or æˆè¯), and all of comprehensive, of which the second part (fill in the blanks) I've found next to impossible.
On the test, I found the third part of listening remarkably easy and the fill-in-the-blanks surprisingly doable. The second part of reading comprehension, though, was really, really hard: the passages chosen were dense and full of vocabulary I haven't learned, and the questions seemed trickier than usual.
Now that it's over, I feel relieved. Even if my results aren't as good as I hope, I've learned quite a lot just by intensely studying the language, and I'm pretty confident that with the same amount of persistence I'll find the exam far easier if (when) I take it again later in the year.
Chris I'm sure kicked my ass, by the way.
What Have I Been Doing Lately?
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åˆ) 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.
A Coffee Battle
Salvadors, my favorite cafe in Kunming, employs me to teach three waitresses English each week in exchange for free food and non-alcoholic beverages. The cafe serves only non-Chinese fare: burritos and nachos, falafel, homemade ice cream, coffees, and teas. The clientele mostly consists of homesick Westerners and curious Chinese, and the business does quite well: even on days when the rest of the neighborhood is quiet, Salvadors always seems packed.
The waitresses mostly come from the minor Yunnanese city of Lincang, and all are young. Their English is mostly limited to the most basic service-industry phrases and menu items, and as a result communication problems regularly occur.
Today, while having a (free) cappuccino and plate of roasted potatoes, I overheard a European man arguing in broken English with Ping Di, the littlest and feistiest of all the waitresses. When he started raising his voice, she glanced at me and asked me to mediate. I walked over and asked him if he needed any help. Through his heavily-accented complaints and Ping Di barking behind me in Chinese, it took me awhile to get the story straight.
At Salvadors, bottomless cups of American-style drip coffee is served until 2 pm, at which point customers have to switch to an Americano if they want a regular cup'o'joe. The drip coffee (called 普通咖啡 or "common coffee") costs 12 yuan (about $1.75) a cup, while a single Americano is 14. A double Americano goes for 18, "expensive" for China but certainly not in comparison to what a similar item costs elsewhere in the country.
The man had ordered a "tall black coffee" at 11 am in the morning and got a cup of Salvadors' drip. He came back at 3 and ordered another, but due to the 2pm policy Ping Di couldn't serve him the same. So hearing the word "tall", she made him a double Americano. He finished it and got the bill, expecting to pay 12. When she asked for 18, he was apoplectic.
We weren't getting anywhere in English, but fortunately I correctly placed his accent and began speaking to him in Italian, my second language. I explained how after 2 regular coffees aren't available and that this was mentioned in large print, in English, on the menu. He accused Ping Di (who is all of 21 and while feisty always works hard and tries to be fair) of trying to cheat him by charging 18 for a coffee. "I could eat a full meal for that much in Kunming," he said.
Sensing his inexperience, I asked him if he had ever been anywhere else in China. He said no, that he had come from Vietnam and Kunming was his first-ever stop in the country. "Well," I reasoned, "if you go to Shanghai or Beijing and get a decent Americano, you'll be paying at least 40 or 50 yuan. If you go anywhere else you simply won't find one. 18 yuan is less than 2 euro. You expected to pay 12. Why argue over 6 yuan?"
He paid up, but loudly said in English that he wasn't ever coming back. After he left, Ping Di and a couple of the other waitresses looked annoyed but unshaken. They asked me what he had said. I said that he thought she was trying to cheat him, and how quite a few Western travelers get a phobia about being swindled in Asia. She replied that she has never tried to cheat anyone and why couldn't he look at the menu? Also, she added, six yuan couldn't be much for a rich European. What was his problem?" The other girls and I shared a laugh, but it struck me as fairly representative of how those from wealthy countries often behave when traveling in a cheaper, developing nation.
In Southeast Asia and southwestern China, travelers are attracted not only by the culture and scenery but also by how far their money goes. Somehow, they expect Kunming to have the creature comforts of Paris but at a fraction of the cost. They'll balk at paying more than 50 yuan for a hotel room yet complain about unreliable showers and hard mattresses. They'll order a feast at a local restaurant for the same price yet whine about loud patrons, unhygenic chopsticks, and little bones in their fish soup. And they'll order an Americano, for goodness sake, and wail at being supposedly cheated out of six yuan.
To be fair, most travelers I've encountered from the West are much more good-humored than the (rather uncharacteristic) Italian I met today. But it's funny how the same people who'll drop 100 euro on a dinner for two at home will cling to six yuan (60 cents) as if it were their life savings. While not realizing that six yuan, to a Chinese university student, means breakfast, lunch, and bottomless cups of tea.
A Very Important Post About La Duzi
In River Town, his account of spending two years teaching English in a small Sichuanese city, Peter Hessler recalled that he and his Peace Corps site mate began speaking an English/Chinese patois called "Fuling English". The logic was simple: the two would converse in English but would liberally sprinkle Chinese words into their conversation out of convenience. Far from pretension, this habit occurs among every foreigner in China who speaks even a little Mandarin. Some words, phrases, and expressions simply spring to mind faster in an adopted tongue.
For instance, the term 麻烦 (ma fan) in Chinese loosely means "trouble" but is used to describe any situation that might be difficult or irritating. (Come to think of it, 麻烦 and the Italian term "casino" mean roughly the same and are both better than any English equivalent). Often, conversations between foreigners will go like this:
"Should we take the bus?"
"Nah, too 麻烦. Let's grab a cab".
Another, of course, is 拉肚å (la duzi). Even foreigners fresh off the boat know this expression- I learned it in Lianyungang even before I could speak enough Chinese to order food in a restaurant. La duzi literally means "loose bowels" and rolls easily off the tongue of everyone in China, given its unfortunate prevalence in daily life. For such an unpleasant experience, "la duzi" is a rather pretty word- it could be the name of a fancy Italian coffee you buy at Whole Foods. Its efficacy is undeniable: say "la duzi", and no further explanation is needed. Why didn't you come into work this morning? "La duzi". Ah.
There just isn't any good way to express "la duzi" in English. There's diarrhea, of course, a disgusting word that makes even the coarsest among us recoil in horror. Then there's "the shits", which, in addition to containing an expletive, rather inelegantly describes the condition. "The runs" is slightly better but not particularly evocative. From 11th grade English I recall John Steinbeck referring to "the skitters" in The Grapes of Wrath, but the reference is too obscure for modern usage. Bashful Americans typically use a roundabout way to refer to "la duzi", offering something like "Well, my stomach isn't happy and so punished me a bit" or "a bit of a tummy bug".
Fortunately, in the US and other developed countries, "la duzi" doesn't happen very often, and when it does, there's usually a direct cause. Most sufferers can identify a glass of spoiled milk or a moldy bagel as the culprit, thus remedying the situation. Yet in China, and in other developing countries, "la duzi" can strike at any time and for any reason. Even those foreigners who avoid street food and brush their teeth with filtered water cannot evade it. Most simply accept "la duzi" as a fact of life, an almost monthly occurrence that must be endured.
An English friend of mine recalled a conversation he had with his newly-arrived English boss, a teacher at the school.
M: "Hello Robert, I won't be coming in to teach today, I'm very sorry."
R: "What's the matter?"
M: "拉肚å"
R: "What?"
M: "Oh, I've got diarrhea pretty bad..don't think I can leave home".
R: "Come on. That's your excuse?"
M: (getting annoyed), "Look, I've been on the toilet six times in the past half-hour. I can't risk anything happening during class."
R: "Well, this is bloody inconvenient".
M: "Can you put Mr. Li (Chinese boss) on?"
R: "Fine"
Mr Li: "ä½ å¥½ Mark. What's the matter."
M: "拉肚å. I can't come in today"
Mr Li: "Yes, fine, I understand. See you tomorrow."
(hangs up)
Pretty much sums it up.
(For obvious reasons, I deemed it prudent not to include any photos with this post).
A Memorial To Remember
Last August, a Kunming expat known as "Bike Mike" set off with his girlfriend on a river rafting trip not far from the city. Sadly, in an accident they (and a local river guide) were killed. The news sent shock waves throughout the Kunming community, as Mike was well-loved and respected. He had first arrived in Yunnan Province in the early 1990s while cycling through Asia, and liked the city so much that he decided to stay.
Everyone knew Mike- he was tall, gaunt, and long-haired with a beard that would have impressed even ZZ Top. As a relatively recent arrival, I only had the chance to meet Mike a handful of times, but in each instance he was always gracious and kind. At his memorial service, I knew I was far from the only one to have had that impression of him. He was a wonderfully idiosyncratic character- a man "more comfortable in his own skin than anyone else I've met" in the words of a mutual friend. The longer I sat and listened to stories of Mike, the better I wished I had known him.
At my birthday party two weeks ago, a friend of mine brought along a DVD memorial that Mike's brother had made in his memory. He lent it to a Chinese friend of mine, and she later showed it to me one evening.
The video contained several interviews with Mike's best friends, an international collection of Kunmingites who had known him best. Rather than reconstruct the events of Mike's life, or offer summary assessments of the man, those interviewed simply told "Mike stories". There was the time he rode into the countryside and dined with a local peasant family, the tale of how he was so deliberate when playing Risk he would sometimes take nearly an hour to complete his turn, of how he would gather his friends from all walks of life together for dinner and drinks, and of how he loved long, philosophical arguments. I felt, upon finishing the video, that I had a clear picture of the man. I knew little of his background, of his family, of his occupation, even, but from listening to these stories I somehow "knew" him well.
In an expat community, one is immediately classified by age, nationality, and occupation. These, after all, are the first questions anyone asks you when you meet. What made Mike's memorial video so moving, then, was its emphasis on his character, as related through anecdotes. It didn't matter that he was in his 40s, was from the US, or that he sold hemp products to make a living. Somehow, hearing about his prowess in trivia competitions or his love of costume parties conveyed so much more, and made his memorial video so poignant.