the great wall

so tonight, i decided to enter into the world of chinese red wine. the first vehicle was a bottle of great wall wine. made from the grapes near the great wall near yantai. it is produced by the world renowned winery of china national cereals, oils, and foodstuffs import and export corporation. it just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? what kind of grapes? i have no idea. just grapes.

when i bought the bottle, i asked if i could get a corkscrew as well. to be honest, i just pointed to the top of the bottle and said "i open?" they nodded and grabbed what looked like a well used corkscrew from underneath the cashier's counter. as one clerk rang my purchase up, another took a knife to the bottle and started to tear the foil off. i tried to stop her, but she kept going. after the foil was off and i had paid for my goods, i grabbed the foiless wine and the much worn corkscrew and put it in my bag. the clerk shook her head no, and took both of them back from me. it turned out that i had not bought the corkscrew--it was used by the clerks to open the wine before you left the store. unfortunately, she didn't know how to use it. she was able to screw it in, but seemed to be it at a loss for what to do after. i told her i knew, took the bottle, and popped the cork out, by this time in front of about five chinese women. a student remarked, "wonderful," and i went on my way.

once i got home, i poured a glass into a plastic cup, and gave the wine some time to let it air. the bouquet smelled okay, better than i thought it would. but when i tasted it, boy oh boy. it turns out chinese beer is better than chinese wine. it's a shame really. now i have to finish a bottle of wine i don't like.

kuai zi

kuai zi is chinese for chopsticks. i've gotten quite used to them by now. and i've realized that eating with these two wooden sticks has its advantages. because there is the ability to squeeze with chopsticks, the tactile information available is greater. i can tell if there are bones, huajiao shells, or even stiff rice. chopsticks are used by just one hand. no need to lay a book down on the table to read during lunch, i can hold it and eat at the same time.

now it has taken me some time to get used to eating rice with chopsticks but it is doable. first off, in china, all rice is very sticky, so for the most part picking up big chunks of rice with the 'sticks is not an issue. but even at the end, when the rice becomes less cohesive, it is possible to get those lone grains of rice by holding the chopsticks parallel about a centimeter apart and scooping.

now last night i used a fork, as i usually do when i'm eating western. didn't even cross my mind that i wasn't using chopsticks. i guess old habits die hard.

a philosophy salon sans philosophy salon

well this evening i rode into chengdu on my fancy new bike. i had a few things i was going to pick up at the computer towers, and then make my way over to a philosophy discussion group where we talk about gilles delueze. if you don't know who he is, join the club. turns out he was a contemporary french philosopher best known for his thoughts on immanence and his critiques of kant, spinoza, and nietchze. sounds to me like he should be more famous!

i was psyched all day, reading about deleuze and his philosophy, and to meet some new people. i always say the best way to meet people you'll like is by doing something you like. so i rode down to the computer towers and got there about five minutes after six. now this was my first time parking my bike. you pay a guy two kuai, and he watches over your bike, and a hundred other bikes and scooters. so i pay the guy two kuai, and he says something to me, as always, quickly in chinese. i say good, good, and walk towards the store. the first two doors i try are locked, so i have to walk around to the main entrance in the front. while i'm walking, i notice that i'm a salmon swimming upstream in a rushing river of chinese. i figure this does not bode well for me, but i have to try. sure enough, there are security guys at the door making sure the crowd only goes one way. darn it.

so i walk back to the bike man, he smiles, and gives me my two kuai back. man, i wish i knew chinese.

this meant i was gonna be about forty-five minutes early for the salon, so i went down to stake out the restaurant, so i wouldn't have any problems. ha. i rode around in circles for a half hour. i even came down off my high horse and asked people where it was. no one knew. so finally around 7:05 i gave up, and sat down to have some western food, and a cold sam adams. this was my first american beer in china, and it was sure good. a nice full bodied beer. chinese beer is much more like miller light. (oliver, our school's liaison loves budweiser.) i relaxed and had my meal slowly. i am reading 36 children by herbert kohl (thanks to j and piper), and i read quietly, munching on chicken fingers.

after my delicious meal, i began to ride out of town. the bike is a thousand times better than the bus. my perspective on the bus is so restricted. i can only see to the left and to the right, and about sixty degrees vertically. i really enjoyed seeing the city approach as i rode in when it was light. in the dark, the overpass i have to go under is lit up with what seems to be a thousand feet of blue neon lights.
it lights up the sky to a deep dark blue. light pollution can be gorgeous. every time i've ridden the bus under it, i've wanted to tell the bus driver to stop so i could get out and take a picture. when i was riding my bike, i didn't have to ask anybody.

also, you can race people. i'm a very competitive person, even when the person i'm competing against has no idea. when i passed him the last time, i told him he was very fast. i'm not sure if he appreciated it.

after the overpass, i was in the country, so i put on my tunes, and my open-ear headphones (safety is a must, children) and cruised to the music. the dichotomy of rock and roll with my surroundings makes me feel like it's the soundtrack to my travelogue. pounding on my handlebars, singing along to the presidents of the united states of america, i drew a few stares. i smiled back, and sometimes i get a smile in return. i rolled in to my apartment to company in my back by wilco. it was awesome.

all in all, it was a great night. too bad i didn't get anything done.

i like to ride my bicycle, i like to ride my bike

at 9:30 this morning, i was crammed in with a 100 or so chinese people on a double decker bus. towards the back of the first level, the floor is raised to make room for the engine. when i boarded the bus, the woman in charge of tickets kept screaming, "go to the back! move to the back!" at each progressive stop, i moved closer and closer to the back of the bus, and eventually, there i was standing with my neck at a delightful 80 degree angle, feeling like a giant. i took this as a sign that the universe approved of my course.

i got off on renmin zhong lu (the people's center road) and began to browse. one of the great things about chengdu, is that the stores are all placed together. if you want a sign made, you go to a certain street, and there are about 20 sign shops all in a row, doing the exact same thing. if you want commercial cooking appliances, head north, and you'll find a whole line of them on the third ring road. here, at renmin zhong lu, they sold bikes and scooters.

ever since i lost my bike (i think using the word stolen might be going a bit too far...i left it unlocked in front of a restaurant. oops.) i've been thinking of getting a new one. to be honest while i had my old bike i was thinking of getting a new one. we were provided with shiny new one speeders. beach cruisers, basically. i needed more power. arargharghargharrr. (i've decided all posts from now on will have some type of home improvement reference.) just cruising is not my style. i need to be passing people. moving quickly. on the old bike i topped out at like 5 miles an hour, and that was with me standing on the pedals. so my subconscious made me let my bike get stolen, so i could get a new one.

and a new one i did get. a nice orange one, 18 gears, rack above the back tire, bell and lock included. not too bad for 600 kuai (75 bucks). i took her out on the street and began to put her through the paces. chengdu is a great bicycle town. there are no hills, just flat roads. i started moving out towards the suburbs in high gear. i was surprised as i began to pass electric scooters. i was the fastest thing by far in the bike lane inside the city. it was great, weaving in and out of bikes, pedicabs, scooters, and the occasional (and illegal) car, passing them all. once i passed the third ring road, which is where the city stops and the sprawl begins, motorscooters began to appear, and i couldn't keep up. to be honest, i could no longer keep up with the electric scooters, either. i need to learn how to pace myself. i finally arrived home out of breath and happy.

i feel like this is going to add a new dimension to my understanding of chinese. my experience thus far has been a bit two dimensional. i've been sticking to the bus routes and the places i have been shown by others. now i feel like i have the ability to explore. and explore i will.

i am a musical robot

so my lesson plan this week is about robots. (which is boring, i guess, because one of my best students told me after class today she wanted to do something interesting.) i asked them if they had a robot, what would they want it to do. the answers were very telling.

first we had the violent robots. these robots were to kill people my students didn't like, burn down the school, rob banks. one student wanted their robot to kill gwb, then make the student delicious food. an interesting diaspora there.

the next are the lonelibots. these are designed to be friends, keep secrets (that's a must), and play tennis, soccer, and computer games with the students. i tried to make the point that when they played computer games against enemies not controlled by humans, they already were playing with a robot, but for some reason that didn't fly with my eighth graders. one better student wanted to liberate her robot from mundane tasks, and for it to have emotions. "it would be just like a human, but its brain would be simpler."

studybots were the most prevalent. all the students wanted a robot that would do their homework, take their tests, etc. the most creative answer thus far is a shape shifting robot that could take tests for a student as well as taking the place of the parents when there were parent/teacher conferences.

finally, there were parental units. many of my kids wanted robots who would teach them about the world, go to work and give them pocket money, do the housework, and one girl went so far to want it to keep her on task. she mentioned that her parents were always at work, and she often watched television or played computer games when she should have been doing her homework. she thought a robot could solve her problem. another said she wanted a robot to do house work because her grandmother spent too much time cleaning and the student wanted her to have time to "play with other old people."

and finally, a few girls wanted a robot to play piano with them. god love those people and their musical robots.

(if you don't know what i'm talking about, rent spellbound. it's great.)

things i see regularly

rides outside stores for little children that play jingle bells.
bicycle tires burning on the sidewalk.
men with quarter-inch long fingernails. (it's a status symbol, showing that you don't work with your hands)
street sweepers playing happy birthday.
children relieving themselves on the street, sidewalk, supermarket or bus floor.
ducks' and chickens' heads, pig snouts, occasionally whole butchered yaks.
crowds of people standing around watching others scream at each other over a fenderbender.
live turtles and frogs at the supermarket.
police officers (or at least people in the drivers seat of police cars) reclined and passed out.

things i don't see regularly:
the sky
a good grilled cheese
uniformed police officers

here is a map of chengdu foreign languages school. the yellow thumbtack marks my building, on which i live on the second floor of sixteen. the five buildings above (northeast) my apartment are the "primary school" attached to the chengdu foreign languages school. what a mouthful. to the left of the primary school there are eight identical buildings. these are dorms that hold the 6,000 students in six grades, 7th to 12th. that means there are about 750 teenagers in each dorm. incredible. below the dorms is the giant square building with a courtyard that holds all the classrooms, as well as a tv and radio studio, computer labs, an infirmary, and a/v labs. on one side of the classroom buildings is the gym complex (that's that big oval building), and on the other side is the cafeteria and the library (no books to speak of).

so there's the tour. if you want to check out my neighborhood here are the coordinates. get google earth and check it out.

30°44'3.27"N
103°58'47.63"E