Chinglish

I was just helping a Chinese friend today to translate a menu into English. She'd had a go at it, and then I checked it and used my basic knowledge of Chinese characters to see if it made sense. It was pretty funny, but I tidied it up as much as I could. I must say though I felt really tempted to throw in the odd surprise word like 'penis' or 'nose' or something... mind you, those sort of delicacies could be pretty believable here anyway.

Anyway, I just did a quick google search on Chinglish menus and found this nice surprise!!

cute kids

These kids are so cute. These are my grade 4 students - there's 18 of them and I may only get to teach them one more time, so I thought I'd take a photo... My other group of school kids are grade 5 students, and I don't like them anywhere near as much - I'll be happy when that course ends. But this group is really special, they are cute and usually eager to learn English. And when they don't understand something, they have this funny looking confused look on their faces that is priceless.

I know this is an obvious statement, but it's fascinating observing them all and seeing their different personalities at such a young age... you can see the smart ones, the funny ones, the loner types, the ones that are quiet and studious, the ones who are bored, the ones who try to get the teacher's approval all the time... it's a tiny snapshot of society, which is pretty cool.

Merry Christmas

etc

people

All it takes is a trip to our biggest local supermarket, Auchan, to realise (in case I'd forgotten) that China has a lot of people. Too many people really - a ridiculously unfathomable amount of people actually... This supermarket is crammed... I was there on a Wednesday morning at 10.30 - evidently that was a peak hour. There's no way of knowing when peak hour is for this place, as its opened Monday to Friday until 9pm, but always seems to be overloaded. In certain places within the shop, trolleys were at a standstill, one massive traffic jam with people almost crushed in there.... that still doesn't stop the old people especially, from ramming their way through somehow...

I tried to do a rough estimate of people in the shop so that you could get an idea, I'd guess that in any 5 by 5 metre space in the shop, they'd be at least 30-50 people... I'm guessing there was probably over 5000 people in that shop when I was just there (that's far bigger than most concerts I've ever seen).... but who knows... people are trying to move everywhere, but it's a bit like a slowly moving stream of lava... once you enter the place, your direction is guided by those around you... you don't really have a lot of control.... it's incredibly frustrating for a non-shopper like me...

I'm just constantly thinking that it's unbelievably incredible the numbers of people here.... Suzhou itself - a city of 6 million + people is not even in the 20th largest cities of China... it's about an hours drive outside of Shanghai, which in most Western cities would make it an outer suburb of Shanghai... that's a scary thought considering that Shanghai itself is supposed to have anywhere between 13 million - 16 million people...

You see a lot of massive restaurants in China - 3-5 level restaurants that could probably fit about 500 + people on each floor... these restaurants are nearly always full - that's thousands of people all eating at the one place - how many cooks must they have??? Where does all the food come from???

blogs

(this is another picture from the Pudong area of Shanghai)... I don't feel I'm a blog person. I just don't feel this medium really suits me. I rarely read other people's blogs, although I have been reading some friends' blogs a bit more regularly, but that's probably because I'm no longer in Brisbane. I was just thinking about the format and type of audience a blog is devised for. It kinda feels like you're talking to no one... perhaps this is the part I find difficult. It's like you're an actor practising your lines in a big empty performance hall. Every now and then you see a cleaner in the back of the theatre walk in and out, but largely you're by yourself.

I contribute to a few forums as some of you will know - mostly music related... Actually mostly Stereolab related to be exact. And I'm still emailing some friends quite regularly - almost every day, just like I used to do in Brisbane. But even all of these electronic forms of communication are subtlely different. At a forum and via email, I'm used to getting quick responses, so it become quite like chatting. But here, there's really this monologue effect and no audience to receive it... but then sometimes people come in and leave comments - which is nice, but it's like someone going to see a performance, seeing that it's already happened and leaving a note for the performer...

It's not like I don't have much to say, as I'm seeing new things or thinking about things in a different way quite regularly. Actually most of the time, I feel like there is too much going on, that I can't properly explain it, and can't be bothered... I think other blogers will know this feeling. So you only capture little snippets here and there. When I flick through my blog, I feel that there is not much here to give a sense about my life here in China and many, many things I haven't mentioned at all that I would like to talk about (such as my view of Chinese people's attitudes to their government, their view of the West, and what's true and what's perhaps not true about the West's view of China)... Of course, there is never a way that an experience can be completely shared, it must always just be someone's interpretation of what it is like...

Any thoughts anyone? I guess I'm mostly talking to Matt, Murray, Nick, Jonno etc - who may be able to share my blog frustrations. There's been many times, when I think I might just end this blog, but then I change my mind.

Weekend in Shanghai

Trace and I had a weekend in Shanghai this weekend. It was pretty cool except for a few problems with trains and dealing with people hassling us in the street. In Shanghai, we managed to make it to Cloud 9, an exclusive bar/restaurant on the 87th floor of a building that is apparently the 4th largest building in the world. This was a highlight of the weekend.

We had problems getting to Shanghai, which is crazy as its only 1 hour away (by train), or slightly longer by car. Suzhou Train Station is a real sh*t hole... looks part like a war zone, part train station, part freak show... you get hassled lots and stared much much more than you do anywhere else in Suzhou. There's rubble, dirt and all kinds of other stuff all over the ground around the place and it's not clear whether they're rebuilding or destroying the place. Trying to find a taxi is harder than trying to explain why "The Office" is funny to a Chinese person - and that my friend, is pretty hard...

It took a while to even book tickets for the train. You can only do this 7 days in advance of the train leaving, and its advisable to prebook as Chinese trains can get packed. The problem is, the train system is convoluted and highly confusing - there are hard seat tickets, soft seat tickets, standing, and then there are fast trains, slow trains and the really fast trains. It's a bit of a guess as to which ticket you get, there doesn't seem to be any system to naming of trains, and no timetable available online or at the station. So, after being issued standing tickets we decided to arrive about 3 hours before our train left to see if we could exchange them for sitting ones. We couldn't - it was all booked. The military apparently decided to travel by trains all weekend. So we sat down on cold metal chairs and waited about 2 hours, and then found out that our train was delayed another hour... We had to be in Shanghai for an appointment, so then we had to negotiate with taxi drivers on the street to take us there. We paid 350 kuai (maybe about $60 Aust dollars) to then travel to Shanghai by cab... and half way there realised we'd both forgotten our passports (which are essential to stay anywhere here).

It's been frustrating. Frustrating that for a city that is an hour away, it can take all up about 4-5 hours to get there and a lot of money (about 450 kuai including all the taxi tickets to the train station in order to buy tickets that we then didn't use...). I think I'm going through my critical 3 month to 6 month period of culture shock (according to some theories)... This is the time more than any other when you're likely to completely lose it, because you're frustrated at how things work or don't work in your new environment...

Our weekend had some highs though - it was nice discovering upon the French Concession area of Shanghai - leafy European like streets with trendy restaurants and shops. We also saw some more interesting structures on the Pudong side of Shanghai (the new area).