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Kaloingie
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Country: China
Metro: Shanghai
Birthday: 10/25/1983
Gender: Female
Interests: Finding gainful employment, travel, bubble tea, improvisational cooking, Mario Smash Bros., sleep.
Expertise: Slacking
Occupation: Student
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
7/28/2005
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| I am...ashamed by my recent negligence. I assure you, however, I
have the best of reasons for my long absence. I've been living a
piteously nomadic life the last six weeks, discharging various
responsibilities in such far-flung locations as Connecticut, Rhode
Island, southern Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. In between
cooking for rapacious hordes of relatives and driving my grandmother's
dog to the vet, I've been squeezing in visits to Boston, to take
advantage both of Harvard's Office of Career Services and of Korean
Drama Nite at MIT. I rarely stay in one place for more than two
or three days. It's been a bit of a nightmare, to be
honest. Sometimes I go days without access to my email
inbox. What an awful life. What an awful life!
However, I'm supposed to be finding a job, and that's difficult to do
whilst living out of a suitcase and/or making four pounds of hamburger
into meatballs for 20 people on a nightly basis. So for the last
four days, I've been in Boston looking for a) housing b) part time
employment to pay for said housing and c) full time gainful
employment. Yes, the last few days have been dark at times, as I
stare down long odds, a dearth of research assistant positions, and
what surely must be ten thousand ads for sublets on Craig's List...a
day.
Which brings me to my next rant, er, story. I know this Xanga is
supposed to be about the exotic, distant, and
environmentally-challenged place that is China, and that most of y'all
aren't overly interested (or even interested at all) in the minutae of
Craig's List. However, the frustrations of
housing in Shanghai--inflicted by my razy landlady, mothballs, nosy
neighbors, government surveillance, etc--constituted a major source of
Xanga material over the last ten months. I feel it is only fair
to China to report similar trials in the United States. You know,
in the interest of objectivity and all.
This afternoon, browsing despondantly through price-appropriate
postings, I came across a pleasant-sounding adverstisement for a place
nearby. I responded with a quick email.
"Hi there,
I'm writing in response to your ad about the 600 dollar Cambridge
sublet. I'm a recent college grad one year out, 22, back in town
after a year abroad in China. I'm looking for a room while I
participate in on-campus recruiting at Harvard. The room you
described sounds perfect. Do you think I could have a look at it?
Many thanks! I look forward to meeting you soon."
Pretty standard, right? I mean, I was going for a light,
pleasant, respectful tone, something that didn't sound too...intense,
or, well, desperate. Please, if I was off-base on this in any
way, relieve me of my misapprehensions, because the reply I got was
rather curt.
"Hi,
It is not a sublet, and it is not a room for rent. We are looking for a
compatible housemate to share our house. And we will be looking for someone
who might be around for a while.
If this fits you, please get back to me."
Silly me; here I was, thinking that any transaction of money for space
as demarcated by four walls was by definition a "rent" situation.
Especially when the original ad contains a line that reads "Rent will
be 600 dollars plus utilities." More to the point, however, I
think this fine fellow wrote "housemate" when he meant "soulmate" and
misplaced the ad under "rooms/shares" instead of the personals
section. At any rate, I dashed off an angry reply. I just
couldn't help myself.
"Hi [name deleted],
My apologies; I meant no offense by my casual application of the apparently-crass words "rent" and "sublet."
Good luck finding your housemate."
Perhaps I'm overreacting, but you have to understand that the response
rate to my inquiries has hovered at around 10 percent. It's a
long and tiring process, and I'm jobless and houseless, and some
self-important moron has to take me to task over semantics.
For next time...a less angry, more photo-tastic entry on fun times in Anhui. I promise. For real this time.
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| I’ve been suffering recently from a serious case of writer’s
block, and maybe an addiction to what Ze Frank calls "brain crack". Says Ze, "Each day I live in mortal fear that
I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna
run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can
tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em
right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later.
Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer
they wait, the more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea
should be executed. And they imagine it on a beautiful platter with
glitter and rose petals. And everyone's clapping for them." [watch the original segment if you don't mind a little profanity]
Compounding these psychological problems are several, shall we say,
more logistical matters, not the least of which is my family’s peerless commitment to cutting-edge
technology as manifested by our continuing and stubborn subscription
to dial-up Internet service, which hums along at the blistering speed of 44
kbps...on a good day, when FCG Networks is feeling generous. So despite my ideas for future Xanga entries--which, I assure
you, are both numerous and brilliant--and my burning desire to get them down on
e-paper, I’ve found myself full of good excuses not to.
Anyways, in the interest of battling this growing addiction to brain crack, I'd like to rewind the tape to three weeks ago, as I sat in my
apartment in Shanghai contemplating my last
seven days in China
and wondering how to best dispose of my remaining time.
Now, I love Shanghai,
and I loved living there...mostly.
Still, despite its diverse charms (or more accurately because of them) Shanghai
is not "typical China," and every so often it's good to get out of
the city limits to remind oneself of this fact, as well as to discover
all over again how awesome Shanghai is upon one's return home.
To this end, I finally accepted
a longstanding invitation to drop in on a small slice of Anhui Province
countryside. My destination: New Bridge Village, Dangtu
County, about a half-hour's drive from
the city Ma'anshan, which in turn is only about an hour's train ride from Nanjing.
I rolled into Ma'anshan around noon on Sunday. At first glance,
it seemed
like any other "third-tier" Chinese city, that is, the usual
hodge-podge of dilapidated Stalinist architecture, hastily-contructed
office
buildings (finished, of course, with a layer of exterior ceramic tiling
and
blue tinted windows), horrendous traffic and poor air quality.
Incidentally, by the time I left, Ma'anshan seemed much less
another intolerably boring provincial outpost and much more a shining
beacon of
cosmpolitan urban living...but I'm getting ahead of myself.
My host
was a teenage girl I had met during my first week in Shanghai
in a 24-hour wonton shop, where she
worked fearlessly delivering wontons on her bicycle. She lives
with her mother, father, older and younger sister, and kid
brother. Well, somebody decided
to ignore the one-child policy until they achieved a boy, didn't
they? They live on a narrow footpath unadulterated by the black stain of tarmac, and the cabbie driving us back to their house was none too pleased about
the nature of the country road taking us home.
Their house is the concrete-clapboard amalgam to the left
of the frame, and it’s exactly the type of house rural Chinese like to build
after they’ve made a bit of money in the big city. It was comissioned by her dad for
10,000RMB (USD 1,250), and like many rural houses I’ve observed from bus or
train windows, it’s very large, very concrete, and, as I soon discovered, also
very empty. Size seemed to be the
primary concern of its architect, as minimalist furnishings and unfinished
rooms dominate the interior.
The family would ride their sporty little motorbikes
through the front door into this multifunctional downstairs foyer, which
contained the fridge, the dinner table, and no fewer than three maps of Anhui province,
affording visitors ample, multicolored opportunity to acquaint themselves with
the province’s geography:
Also downstairs was a kitchen
And a bedroom, which my friend shows off here along with a bouquet of flowers from one of her boyfriends.
Upstairs was a cavernous room of unknown function and three
smaller bedrooms, one of which contained a TV as well. Given the plethora of bedrooms, sleeping
arrangements were casual. Based
solely
on my three night experience in Dangtu, as well as extensive
observations of the family's preferences, I’ve prepared this “Guide to
Summertime
Sleeping in the Chinese Countryside.”
Kaloingie's Guide to Summertime Sleeping in the Chinese Countryside
--Faced with oppressive heat at nightfall, retire to rooftop
to assume place on bamboo sleeping mat; augment natural breeze with two or
three oscillating fans
--Sleep fitfully as bones poke concrete through flimsy mat;
change position every forty minutes or so to minimize bruising.
--When night chill/dogs fighting/cocks crowing/mosquitos/blinding early
morning sun prove too uncomfortable to ignore, crawl off of mat, stumble
downstairs, find reansonably-unoccupied bedroom and resume sleep. If you still feel unrested, fear not; daytime
naps constitute a major hobby for Chinese peasants.
The astute reader might notice that I've made no
mention of any bathroom. Indeed, with no running water, functions
usually assigned to bathrooms in our comfortable Western (or
Shanghainese) world were delegated to:
An outhouse (discreetly veiled by corn plants);
An honest-to-goodness real-life chamber pot. Spolied by indoor
plumbing as I am, I had never seen a chamber pot outside of a museum
before arriving in Anhui. Having now used one, I can say with
authority that I much prefer the outhouse. There's something a
bit humiliating about squatting over everyone else's...OK, I think you
get the point. It is convenient at night, I suppose.
Finally:
We used the pond outside for hand-washing and showering, also used in
lieu of a
kitchen sink for cleaning meat and vegetables and washing dishes (sans
dishsoap). My friend's mother was actually going to haul water in for
me to bathe in at night, but I insisted on taking my turn at the pond
like everyone else. Naturally, she insisted on following
me out to the pond with a flashlight (for the exhibitionist in me) where she occupied half the
rickety pier shown above, leaving me to undress on the remaining
half. I managed to get one whole leg out of my jeans before I
lost my balance, toppling slowly and gracelessly into the muddy
water. I spent the rest of my "bath" in the pond hastily washing
up according to my friend's mother's worried instructions, or at least
my best guess at them through her Anhui dialect.
All this is well and good, you might say, but what does one actually DO
in the countryside? Well, stay tuned for further bulletins in the
days to come...
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| Well, as I had in my darker moments feared, my last three days in China
were far too hectic for anything so frivolous as a Xanga entry. I
made it out relatively unscathed, only moderately sleep-deprived, and
carrying all my bits and pieces in various suitcases which I somehow
successfully lugged through two taxis, three airports, and three houses
across half the globe. I swear the only reason I sidestepped
overweight luggage charges is that the woman checking me in was
distracted by the fact that my passport somehow had electronic
"comments" attached to it. She absentmindedly waved my luggage
down the conveyor belt without even weighing it--to my great
relief--while I patiently stood eavesdropping in on the Shanghainese
conversation between her and her manager, which was full of mysterious
English acronyms. Assuming I didn't speak Chinese, they responded
to my worried queries with a bright smile and "There's no
problem!" I'll never know what the comments were, or who put them
there, because eventually her manager suggest she delete them.
Whoever they were, I owe them a big thanks for saving me a small
fortune in overweight baggage fees.
The trip back was relatively uneventful, at least from my perspective,
although the American Airlines stewardesses seemed to see it
differently. I was near enough the back kitchens that I overheard
an amusing exchange between two of them as they surveyed the chaos that
was Chinese passengers boarding the plane and the subsequent mad rush
for overhead compartment space.
"This is ridiculous," said one, helplessly. "I've never seen it this bad."
"Well, it *could* be worse," said the other. "Just be happy you weren't
on that flight from Delhi. Take my word for it, that was worse
even than this."
I could have added "or any one of the domestic flights I've taken here," but I decided to mind my own business.
I slept for most of the way back, and during my waking hours I enjoyed
a final reprise in my role as "The Amazing Chinese Speaking Foreigner"
with my seatmates. The woman next to me (who hailed from my
favorite city ever, Fuzhou) fed me some tasty longyan, the remainder of
which she successfully smuggled in through customs in Chicago along
with some lychees and Asian pears. If a sudden lychee blight
descends on the United States, we'll know what happened.
All in all, I'd have to say
the highlight of the trip was observing a middle-aged, crewcut Chinese
man stroll into the bathroom proudly carrying nothing other than a DVD
player, movie keyed up and headphone ready in his ears as I loitered at
the back of the plane near the bathrooms. He didn't emerge
until I practically banged the door down knocking on behalf of a shy
girl who didn't seem to believe me when I told her the bathroom's
current occupant was watching a movie. She looked at me as if I
didn't quite understand the Chinese words I was saying. Can't
think why.
There's a lot to get used to back at home. Boston, for one, seems
less like an important American city than an elaborate life-sized
version of those electrified ceramic snowy villages I used to assemble
every Christmas. It's very clean--almost eerily so--and
underpopulated and very small, and on Sunday its inhabitents seemed
primarily occupied with quaint pasttimes like rollerblading and
recreational cycling in sporty spandex gear rather than more natural
activities such as chainsmoking, sitting on sidewalks in lawn chairs,
and attempting to rip off
innocent foreigners. It smells all wrong and there are almost no
tall buildings, and everyone speaks with these outrageous American
accents. I'm beginning to think my life during college there
might have been an episode of the Truman Show.
Anyways, I've been working on a monster entry about my time in Anhui. I
want to do it justice, so it might take a few more days, what with all
these family members to catch up with and so on. More later!
| | |
| Last Saturday, faced with one remaining week in Shanghai, and a
mountain of things to pack and take care of, I did what any sensible
person would do: I decided to embark on a last-minute jaunt around
provincial China. Now that I've returned to the happy land of
indoor plumbing, air conditioning, and public transportation, I have a
long list of things to do, people to see, and boxes to fill. I'm
wondering how I'm going to cope--not just with packing, but also with
the emotional upheaval of ending life as I've known in for ten
months. Like many of my fellow expats, I feel profoundly
ambivalent about returning home. Recently a host of little things
have reminded me that it's high time to get myself
back to the Western world. The other day, for example, Lutraaa
and I were channel surfing (as part of our neverending quest to improve
our Chinese) when we came across some sort of documentary featuring a
group of Western women decked out in full swimming gear. "Good
gravy," I thought to myself, disgusted, "those women are plump.
I've forgotten how fat Westerners are!" Just seconds later,
though, the whole lot of them plunged into a fountain to commence
nothing other than an impeccably-choreographed synchronized swimming
routine. I've grown so accustomed to the anorexic skin-and-bones
Chinese standard that I'd mistaken a troupe of muscular athletes for
McDonald's addicts. What's worse, Lutraaa had the exact same
reaction I did. Lordy, we've been here for too long.
Still, I've grown to appreciate life here, crazy as it is (never
boring!). Currently, I know Shanghai better than any other city
in the world. Yet I'm afraid that with the pace of change in this
city, by the time I next come back, whenever that may be, I won't
recognize anything. My neighborhood is certain to be torn down
sometime in the next few years; already, this spring, four of my
favorite old neighborhood haunts, along with all the little
hole-in-the-wall noodle joints have been condemned. The guest
house I stayed at for thesis research in 2004--along with the entire
block--is gone. Skyscrapers pop up with baffling speed. I'm
probably going to forget my Chinese and lose touch with my local
friends. And what on earth am I going to find to write about at
home, aside from tedious rants about the Bush Administration's various
ill-conceived domestic and foreign policies??
Well, all good things come to an end, and there's no use whinging about
it. For now, it's time to get packin'. Hopefully I'll be
able to wrangle enough time to write and post some pictures about my
Anhui adventure before I leave, so stay tuned...
| | |
| <<Moving briefly aside from all
the serious and high-handed talk about imperialism and the
always-tiresome matter of interracial dating...>>
As my time here grows ever shorter--I leave on August 5th!--I've been
preparing to answer a difficult question from inquisitive relatives,
prospective employers, and other curious souls: what have I learned in
my time here?
Obviously, I don't want to have to launch into an esoteric discussion
about the various ways maids find jobs (my research topic), so instead
I've been mulling over a lot of cultural differences that I've noticed
since I got here. Now, in my opinion, whenever the topic of
cultural differences comes up, you have to think carefully before you
speak. It's hard to avoid resorting to some hackneyed example of
"You say tomato, I say tomahto." It's hard to find something
entertaining, yet meaningful. Yes, I've been searching my soul,
looking for an answer...and I do believe I found one. Enter: the shiqing (事情).
According to any Chinese-English dictionary, a shiqing is defined as a "thing to do, a matter." Believe you me, though, behind this commonplace definition lurks a concept of
extroardinary power and depth. The word seems to be most
frequently used to excuse oneself from a commitment, prior or
potential, and it is positively fool-proof. Now, in the States,
for the most part if you're making an excuse--especially to get out of
a prior commitment--it better be a good one, or at least
creative. In China, though, invoke this word, say you have a shiqing,
a thing to do, and not even the nosiest taitai (who, in Western eyes,
usually seem to feel all too entitled to the gory details of your
personal life) will question you further. As Lutraaa says, in the
Monopoly game that is life in China, a shiqing is like a "get out of jail free" card.
Lutraaa offered this anecdote, a perfect example of how the concept of
shiqing works in China. Lutraaa spent the better part of her
spring semester at Fudan directing an English-language student
production of Ibsen's "A Doll's House," which was one long struggle
with incompetence, indifference, and, as it turns out, shiqing.
As the performance date approached, rehearsal time was at a premium;
the actors still had yet to memorize their lines, and most scenes
hadn't even been run through once, let alone perfected. However,
one of her actresses tried to worm her way out of a Saturday morning
rehearsal with this iron-clad excuse: "I need to arrive later...I have
a shiqing."
"A shiqing?? What shiqing," Lutraaa asked suspiciously. "Would this shiqing happen to be sleeping?"
All around her, her other actors were positively aghast that someone would question the nature of this girl's shiqing. Their attitude, she told me, was something along the lines of "Didn't you hear her? She has a shiqing,
for pete's sake! Is nothing sacred??" In the end, the
actress grudgingly showed up on time, but the example is telling.
If Lutraaa hadn't pressed her, trampling all over this sacrosanct
institution in the process, no one else involved in the play--not even
the drama club's student president--would have thought twice about the
validity of the so-called shiqing. So what if the performance is in one week? She has a shiqing! Have some respect.
A closely related concept is that time-honored Chinese phrase, "mei
banfa (没办法)." Literally, it means "There's no way to handle it,"
but it's more like a rhetorical "What can you do?," a gesture
indicating.helplessness (which, in turn, can be real or feigned).
When I ask my research subjects, for example, why they came to the city
to work as maids, they usually answer "Our town is poor...mei banfa."
Or, when I've asked people in Shanghai how they feel about their houses
being torn down to make way for new developments, they respond with a
shrug and a "Mei banfa." These are some of the more touching examples of resignation to fate, but as often as not "mei banfa" is used by someone to deflect responsibility. It's a common refrain in China, and as with shiqing, once it has been uttered,
no one bothers the speaker with any more pesky questions.
What? You've overcharged me for the hotel room at twice the
agreed rate? Oh, I see, mei banfa. That's alright, then. Don't worry about it.
When shiqing and mei banfa
join forces, they constitute an unstoppable cultural force of awesome
proportions. Like a lot of foreigners, I spent much of my time in
China being profoundly annoyed by people who insisted on using these
two phrases at me. It seemed impossible to get anything done;
half the plans I made with locals ended when they discovered they had,
regrettably, a shiqing, and when I complained, they would reproach me with "mei banfa." One day, though, I realized that we as foreigers could also harness the power of shiqing and mei banfa,
that we too could put them to use just as well as the next ill-tempered
petty bureacrat. I worked hard to spread the gospel. For
example, my American friend had agreed to meet his creepy downstairs
neighbor (who constantly pressed my friend to borrow selections from
his extensive DVD porn collection) for dinner, only to regret it later
when we invited him out. He was reluctant to reneg on his
commitment; what would he tell his neighbor? "Easy. Tell
him you have a shiqing," I suggested. "Tell him mei banfa." Needless to say, it worked, no further questions asked, just as I knew it would--I use it on my landlady all the time.
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