Random Bits

When I was first being led around Zhuhai by Xiao An (who has been MIA since the first week of my stay), a t-shirt impressed me as one of the most memorable shirts I had ever laid eyes on. Large and black, it had a white design on it that looked like this:

This is the kind of design that once made me understood why artists would resist describing or explaining their artistic pieces. The art was their attempt to speak. If the art was not clear, then their words could do no better, and would, by their inferior nature, cheapen the message and effect of the artistic piece. Unless someone else starts a discussion on this, I will leave you with just the design.

(Mom: I am honestly trying to let the artwork speak for itself. I am not trying to passively let it tell you or anyone else that I think home is a small prison or anything else of the sort. I just love it when I think art is more articulate than my written words.)

China Dorm Life as an American Flashback

When I told a friend of mine that I lived in Tappan Hall my freshman year at Miami University, she was excited to tell me that she lived in Tappan back when it was new. She and I traded stories about Tappan, and I learned that there was a time when girls had to be back in their dorms before some curfew -- after which the doors were locked. I had a hard time imagining adhering to such a system. Like other Chinese universities, SYSU enacts such a policy to this day (or... night). 11pm is the curfew, and if students aren't in, then they are just out of luck and out of a bed for the night. (I, as a teacher, am bound by no such restriction, but still... I graduated recently enough that I sympathize with the student perspective...)

My new friends Marie and Elodie did not know about this curfew system. They are foreign exchange students from France here at SYSU. They returned to their dorm after we stayed up past 1am talking. Upon realizing that the doors were locked tight, they tried accessing the dorm through the basement, but to no avail.

They returned to my place. Since their dorm room was not air-conditioned, had no mattresses on the beds (What college student needs a mattress, anyway? My students, at least, are so dedicated to their studies that they seem to consider sleep a cruel necessity that must be delayed as long as possible! No mattress on the bed makes that easier...), and had a hole in the floor of the shower to serve as their toilet, I had offered that they sleep at my place at least for the night so that they wouldn't experience an overwhelming amount of culture shock and transitional stress in one night. They had declined, but I was happy to find them back at my apartment and ready to accept the offer. They slept on my bed, and I slept on my surprisingly comfy wooden couch, and I think we were all pretty happy about the whole arrangement.

More about Fruit, Veggies, and Rice

Have I mentioned how delicious the fruit is here? Maybe we have a good market, maybe I pick better produce here than in the States, maybe Chinese markets sell sweeter varieties – I dunno. But I love the fruit. I tried dragon fruit. It is an exotic explosion of tropical colors on the outside, and brilliant white with strawberry seed-sized black seeds on the inside. It is the only unimpressive fruit in terms of taste I have eaten thus far. But it is worth its aesthetic brilliance to keep around.

Commonly, I eat cherry tomatoes, papaya, and watermelon along with persimmons, plums, Asian pears and mangoes. My vegetables are various forms of leeks and green onions, bok choy, napa, eggplant (tender long varieties here), lots of carrots, long white radishes, long cucumbers, and I even bought some plain old white potatoes to cook for Marie, who says that is one of the things she misses most from home. I have garlic, red onion, and ginger to season foods, and I keep some fermented bean curd cubes around just to have the fridge to myself.

I cook a lot of flavored rice with beans. (I am trying to replace my old oatmeal habit just to ensure I do not live exactly like I did in the States but in China. It is hard to find the balance of what I know I love and works well for me and is healthy for me with what is new and wonderfully different. I am afraid of eating as much processed, sugary, oily food as my Chinese friends eat, but I do not want to seem or actually be resistant toward cultural differences that have beneficial aspects I can learn from.) The beans I used this last time made the rice taste a little peanut buttery. It was kind of amazingly fabulous. I would have been tempted to add fruit to make rice resembling a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I had already added soy sauce before I knew I would get a peanut flavor. Soy sauce on PB&J -- not so much.

8888

While riding a bus from Gongbei to Tangjia, I saw a really hot little car with “8888” on its license plate. Everyone else on the bus saw it, too, and said, “Oooooo.”

The word for 8 sounds the same as the word for rich in Chinese. People really pay a lot of money to get 8's in their phone numbers and license plates. The word for 4 sounds like death, though, so poor people get deathdeathdeath written all over their stuff, I guess. Cell phone numbers associated with SIM cards are priced based on how many 8's and 4's they have in them.

Actually, do – ray – mi – fa – so – la – ti – do has changed that for some. 4 = fa = far = travel or "you will go far in life". It is a great way to make the wonderfully affordable "4" socially acceptable and even desirable, but once it catches on as a truly popular phenomenon, it will be as restricted to the rich as 8 is now.