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Published: June 20th 2010
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Corn Flavored Potato Chips
Zidi brand potato chips. Flavor: "Countryside Corn." Sort of good? Kind of confusing to my mouth? Another few weeks of being unusually busy have now passed, and I'm finding myself scattered in the head. With no clear idea of what exactly to write about, I'll just catch up on some ideas that've been running around in there.
Qu Yuan and his Magical Weekend-Altering Powers
Dragon Boat Festival (in Chinese, 端午节, or "Duanwu Festival," which does not mean "dragon boat" but instead something along the lines of "Solar Maximus") is celebrated annually in accordance with the Chinese lunar calendar, usually falling in June of the Gregorian calendar. It's a traditional holiday celebrating an ancient royal scholar called Qu Yuan who was a super good guy, but was falsely accused of treason and threw himself into the Miluo River after his exile. The local peasants still liked him, and tried to save him by paddling around in boats. They couldn't retrieve him or his body, so they symbolically threw rice dumplings into the river for him to eat in the afterlife. Or possibly to satiate the fish so they wouldn't eat
him. Nobody agrees on what the original idea was.
But nowadays! We eat these
zongzi, or rice dumplings to celebrate his festival. I forgot to
Me and the Hosts
Look how popular I am! Actually, I co-hosted the YNNU International School's graduation variety show with these guys. The school rented me an evening gown! take a photo before I ate up the
zongzi I bought, but they are approximately the size of a small fist, wrapped with wide bamboo leaves into a roughly tetrahedronal shape, Some cities host races for a particular type of paddled boat called a "dragon boat."
This year, Dragon Boat Festival fell on a Wednesday. But that would've cut the week up, without a nice three-day weekend. What to do? Interesting questions, and as it turns out, one that does not have a clearly defined answer in China! It has only been recognized as a public holiday for a few years now, so the details haven't been ironed out about how exactly to define vacation time around it. It would stand to reason that maybe other festivals could set some sort of precedent for what to when a holiday falls in the middle of the week (day off in the middle of the week? observe it on Monday so as to have a three-day weekend?) but if you've been following along in this blog, a lot of things here
don't stand up to what I would call reason. It was not until nine days before the holiday that the
Hani Costume
Another event that filled up a good chunk of my schedule over the last few weeks: the school dressing up Western students in Chinese ethnic minority costumes and putting us on display. Because I'm not actually Asian, get it? What good fun for the audience! government announced when exactly we'd have vacation time. Get this: on a Monday, we were told that Saturday and Sunday of that very week were going to be school and work days, and that the weekend would fall on the following Monday and Tuesday, with Wednesday off. Not the first thing you want to hear on a Monday.
As usual, a lot of Westerners raised a stink. As usual, no real use, except to demonstrate to our direct authority figures that a lot of Westerners are raised to be pretty rebellious, especially when it comes to the government (NEVER!) telling us what to do. Anyway, I have learned to pick my battles, and I didn't mind the arrangement so much, mostly because I've learned that a lot of Chinese people are just as baffled by some of these arrangements as I am. However, I don't think moving the weekend would ever fly in the West, if only because of various religious treatments of the days.
Disabilities
There's a very old woman in my building who has
bound feet. She's probably 90 or so. She wears tiny little pointed-toe shoes that look to be made of some sort
Token Doctor
This is the "lithiasis complications collective," and they have put their grinning white doctor up front so you know you are in good hands. Good, Western medicine-y hands. of rigid plastic. I'm already slightly awed when I think about all the
stuff elderly people in China have seen and endured in their lifetimes. This woman went through all that stuff with a pretty major handicap to her mobility, not to mention the stigma of the imperial relic that was foot binding. The Communists denounced such things. I have seen people in the building--presumably strangers to her--treat her as they would a particularly enfeebled senior: they offer her an arm when she walks, hold doors for her.
Walking around the streets of any Chinese city, you'll encounter many more severely physically disabled people than you do in America. Part of the reason for this is that there are so many more people who simply can't afford some of the most basic health care; I'm not sure if part of the reason is also that some prenatal care is sub-par, because many of the disabilities I see are definitely congenital. But I think another reason you
see more disability is that these people are out and about. Everyone's got to make a living.
There's a man on my street with severe burns of some sort completely covering his
Beer at 6200 ft
At this high elevation, bottles of beer inevitably react this way when being opened. As modeled by one of Tom's fellow Fulbrighters! face and scalp. Truly, in the West his looks would not be out of place on the face of a villain from a slasher film. Here, however, he sells bananas. Another woman who suffers some sort of growth and bone disorder has very small arms, and non-functioning legs that sort of resemble pterodactyl wings. She sits on the sidewalk and crochets moccasins to sell.
There are beggars as well. There's a man who sits on the road near my school who has
no eyes and no hands. It looks as if his hands were severed cleanly at his cauterized wrists. If you have seen
Slumdog Millionaire and you remember the child beggars--the mutilation stuff is not just a legend. I suspect something similar may be the case with this man. He sits with his face and his wrists turned towards the sky and pleads the blessings of Amitabha to passers by.
Entertainment
I've made a spectacle of myself on several occasions recently, which I won't go into in too much detail. Three times in the past month I went on different stages for three entirely different reasons in three different pretty dresses, but all for the entertainment
Karaoke!
Look how artsy the karaoke place on my street looks when I use the long-exposure "fireworks" setting on my camera! of the Chinese people. The first was a Chinese speaking contest hosted by a TV network. I did alright, and won a little bit of money. The second was a costumey fashion-show. It was fun, and I think I might have gotten interviewed by a local culture magazine? The third was serving as a variety show host, bantering in utmost cheesiness with my co-hosts about the acts we were introducing. Each of these events managed to temporarily make my life an extremely hectic mess, and each has been a pretty fulfilling way to stretch the limits of my Chinese beyond the classroom.
When I'm not prancing around on stage for the benefit of Chinese audiences, there is some decent entertainment to take in as well. There's the University District, with its many bars that are frequented by the foreigners of the area(cheap beer!). Sometimes there are trivia nights, in English! We can also go right downstairs for some good "nightlife": every Thursday night the neighborhood administration plays an outdoor movie in the small park adjacent to our building. When it's not movie night, the park always has some sort of after-dark aerobics class going on, and during the day retired women participate in some sort of tennis racket-related calisthenics . . . don't ask me. The greatest of pastimes, though, is karaoke, or "KTV."
I think--I
think--the KTV stands for "karaoke television." China loves its karaoke on a level that could rival Japan. As in Japanese style karaoke, you don't perform on stage in a bar, but rather in a small private room with your friends. You rent the room for an hour or two, and it's complete with couches, tables, and a karaoke machine with a user-friendly (or not-so-friendly) interface to select your songs. There's no DJ to make requests from, only your friends to vie with for mic time. These KTV places are usually pretty huge, with many rooms to rent, different sizes to choose from. Some feature free buffets; some have room service. It's basically the most fitting way to wind down after an evening out. If you don't feel like lingering in the bar scene, you just get a comfy, fun place to hang out with your friends. You can make much more noise than you could at home, and there are
microphones!
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Cory
non-member comment
"China loves its karaoke on a level that could rival Japan." Ah, but what about KOREA?