Reading Shock and Racists

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Reading anything tends to suck me into it. Whether it be a good book or a magazine or a good newspaper article (although I find there aren't too many of the last one in existence). I always get sucked in. This happened to me once again as I was sitting in the coffee shop across the street from our school on Thursday night reading The Advocate, a gay and lesbian newsmagazine I had bought in the US recently. I read for quite a long time and by the time I looked up and stopped I almost went through culture shock again getting used to the idea that I was in China. I spent quite some time thinking to myself how nice it would be to have a Gay Pride Day in China and would it ever be possible to organize. Then I woke up. Obviously such a thing would be close to impossible in a communist run country especially if run by a foreigner. It would get me kicked out of the country faster than you could say "Speedy Gonzalez". Over the next couple of minutes it really hit me hard where I was and how communism affects the things around me. I suppose in some ways I almost feel closeted, for the first time in my life. I don't choose to be a closeted bisexual here but the side of me that is attracted to women is definitely oppressed and forced to stay that way. All of the people that I live with and am close to here know that I'm bi - Cat, Craig, Kelvin, Russell, Michael and even Camillo Julia (my Chinese teacher) and Shina (Russell's girlfriend who I live with). But my boss doesn't know, none of my kids know, none of my teacher assistants know and I've done nothing to force them to know. I suppose my bisexuality is like Will Mouradian said in this June 20th Advocate "being is part of my identity, but it doesn't define me. It's sort of a bonus". When I was in the US I was able to celebrate it with others but here I can't really do that, except possibly with Cat. It's just one more of the things I can't do here that I can do at home.

Earlier on Thursday I made my second painting. There are a couple brush moves that I still am learning how to do but besides those I think the outcome itself wasn't too shabby. This time it was a picture of a bunch of flowers on a tree leaning over two crickets (at least I think they're crickets). I'm pretty proud, and the fact that I had a guy sitting there saying "No, that's not how you do it. No, that's not how you do it. Oh, now that on the other hand might be pretty good. No, not that way" the entire time (not my teacher, some random person). Just makes me prouder of the painting. I can't stand it when people do that in the middle of my trying to do something. It made me almost wish I didn't know any Chinese simply because I didn't want to hear him at all. My teacher on the other hand takes a different approach to it. If it's something that he knows I need work on or something that wasn't done so well he tends to keep his mouth shut, unless we both know it was horrible. Otherwise if he thinks it was a brushstroke really well done or I'm starting to pick something up I couldn't do before he sits there and praises me "See, how smart. And this is only her second painting." Fortunately for the guy who was badmouthing me I had to do some calligraphy on my first painting and it came out relatively well, all for one new character that I don't know well at all. I'm really enjoying painting and doing the calligraphy a lot. It's quite an art of concentration.

The Salon finally opened after a short while of being closed for renovatoins today. I got to go see it after a long hard day of work. Walking towards it I could see the two lights on in both of the doors to the Salon so I knew it was open. The first glance I got at it was the brightness of the lights and then the first glass doors came into view leaving me with a stunning image of three two sided mirrors set parallel to the glass doors with chairs on either side of them and three customers sitting in the chairs. There were long chains running all the way from the top of the glass doors near to the floor, at least fifty of them in all (not that I counted). It looked beautifully clean. As I kept going I finally saw the front welcoming desk. It was amazing. One of the things about the new salon that is truly shocking. It's a huge presence in the middle of what used to be the store next to them. Walking in I could see Hui's upper body as she stood behind the desk and Kast was leaning on the desk. It was like a true secretary's lounge in a big huge nice company and on the back of the desk it read "L-Salon" in huge letters. All I could say was "wow" it made me giddy to just look around the place. I sent text messages as soon as I got a chance to look around to all of my closest friends "This new salon is fing awesome!" they read. I could immediately tell the boys were happy to have the new place and really proud of it. Camillo couldn't stop grinning from ear to ear. He was in a great mood. Everything in the place was new, from the couches to the sinks and chairs to the mirror setups to the lockers to the back room. The only things old were the products, the people, the floor and some of the mirrors, chairs and pictures. There was so mcuh difference it was incredible. I hung around for a little while and then decided to go downstairs to read outside the movie theater. Camillo insisted I leave my stuff in one of the new lockers.

As I sat down outside I spread out to study my new characters Julia gave me yesterday. I wrote as I though of random things for a little while until I was rudely interrupted. The boys at the table across from me were making kissing noises at me. I've never had anyone do that. They were also staring at me every now and then throughout their game, making strange gestures and commenting about me. Of course some of it was in English (as they changed their language to suit me). After all I wouldn't know any Chinese. I just kept trying to concentrate on studying for a while. After a bit one of the boys peeked over my shoulder to see what I was doing and found I was studying characters. "Hey, look at this, she's writing Chinese" he commented to his buddy. "Come on over here, you're not going to be able to read those. After all foreigners don't write their characters like ours. You won't be able to read them," he went back over to sit with his bud and came over again a couple moments later. "No, really. I can read it. And look at this!" he pointed to the typed printout Julia had given me to study reading some sentences. His buddy decided to join them and they looked at them for a little while. They asked me where I was from in English and I answered in Chinese. One of them said my Chinese was good but the others continued to look at me as if I were crazy and went back to their game of cards. After a while of writing I couldn't handle it any more. I called Eason on his phone to see if he still wanted to go out to dinner with me and he said no. Towards the end of my conversation with him Camillo came and joined me. We chatted for a couple minutes, he corrected one of my characters and then he got up and left saying he was going back upstairs to the Salon. A little while after he left the boys came over again. "Who was that? Your teacher?" "No, my friend." "Oh." They left again and went back to their table. This time to leave me in peace. But I was hungry so I left to go upstairs. On the way upstairs I thought to myself how ironic it was that I had to say that Camillo wasn't my teacher. After all Camillo has been the best Chinese teacher I have ever and will ever have - in Chinese culture and language.

When I got upstairs I bumped into Yenson who invited me to have dinner with him. I think it's an unwritten Chinese rule that you're not supposed to sit with people who are eating if you're not eating but that just seems to be the recent trend. Yenson and I talked for a while and I told him about the stupid boys downstairs and their reaction to Camillo. He asked me when I was going home, hoping I wasn't going home for the following two years, and asked me why I wasn't at home workingg instead of in China. He complimented me on my Chinese but it's obviously been a while since he saw me before now. Yenson's English is no where near even Camillo's so our entire conversation was in Chinese and even though the waitresses were right next to us staring the whole time they got the drift from our conversation that I knew quite a bit of Chinese so that when Yenson did end up leaving they left me alone and did all their transations with me in polite Chinese. The benefits of having Chinese friends is sometimes amazing.

After chatting with Michael, and Gary, I went back to the Salon and got my hair done in the new chairs at the new sinks. I don't like them nearly as much as the old ones - they make the back of my head hurt and aren't designed for my back, but we shall see what happens with them. A couple people asked me my opinion. After I thanked Camillo for coming down and saying hi while I was outside the movie theater. At first Camillo was a bit confused but then I told him the story and he got a kick out of their reactions to things he obviously knew I coudl do and called them stupid a$%!h(MISSING)oles in the end. It really made me feel glad to have the old Camillo back again. After drying my hair he went to put some pictures up on the wall and I helped him a little. Then he went to do something else and I discovered his grandmother sitting outside. I went to say hi to her and we talked for a little while. I asked her what she thought of the Salon and whether she liked the new or the old one but she wasn't understanding me very much. Akun's brother was there and after a while I went over to him and asked him why she didn't understand me that well, thinking it might be my lack of Chinese. Instead he told me that older people never really had to learn Mandarin like younger people. She just learned the Hunan dialect which was what was taught and not Mandarin. He explained that the difference between Mandarin and the Hunan dialect is almost as severe as the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin and so while she could understand my simple conversation beyond that she couldn't understand me. Now think about that for a minute, I know more Mandarin than a Chinese woman. That's kind of incredible in some ways.

Akun's brother is trying to get a job at the Salon as a hairdresser so he's kind of apprenticing right now. Following Camillo around. He's cut hair before in Guandong - Zhuhai, Guanzhou and Daliang but now he wants to come to Dalian.

After that Hui started the meeting. I sat outside and did some planning for tomorrows classes until I tuned in to the fact that everyone in the Salon was laughing a lot. It took me a little bit to understand why they were laughing so much (as it is often very difficult to pick up the gist of a Chinese conversation in the middle of it) but I finally understood they were talking about the new TV I had seen in a box in the corner. It was an absolutely huge box. The boys were laughing over the rules that had been set for the TV and the rules they themselves were making for it. Some of which were pretty funny ideas and this new present was making them a bit giddy with joy. I had heard Camillo mention such a TV about a month back but at the time I thought he was joking around.

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