You should be studying Chinese right now

If you're reading this, I'm sorry, but you're probably wasting your time. You should be trying to learn Chinese-- if you already have, my respects to you, you can just keep reading without feeling any guilt, although you might get bored. Yeah, learning Chinese is a lot of fun but takes an inordinate amount of time to make progress in. Basically there are several challenges involved in it that maybe you've already thought about. First of all, there are no roman letters, so the characters all look like this: 我的中文不太好. Which is fine, but of course if you're used to deriving pronunciation hints from the written language like most of us literate people from the west, it gets annoying because it's really hard to remember which character sounds like what. Secondly Chinese is tonal, which means if you aren't careful, you can call your best friend's mother a horse by accident just because you breathed in at the wrong time. Thirdly, if you want to be able to write in Chinese by hand, you need to remember how to correctly write the characters, otherwise it's really difficult to look up characters that you don't know in the dictionary. But why do I say that you, Anglophile and reader of my "blog," should learn Chinese? "Why should I bother", you ask yourself. "Most people in China can speak a little bit of English, and if they can't, well, I can just talk with my hands. That usually works. And I will probably never go to China anyway." Sure. But if you do, you will find yourself in a tremendous advantage if you can at least speak a little Chinese. The crazy thing here is that while a lot of people here have learned some English, most of them, from what I can tell, have learned it astoundingly poorly. Now of course as someone who is far from a master of Chinese, I really appreciate the effort. But let me give you an example. I was in a bookstore the other day looking for Chinese learning materials. In the language learning section they had an English learning program for children that was basically a silent cartoon with English subtitles beneath it. But every sentence had at least one glaring mistake; I think the worst was when it highlighted the word "sister" as an important word for children to learn, but unfortunately, they spelled it "sisiter." Sigh. A dog house was referred to as a log cabin. It was a train wreck. Anyway, like I said, you can't criticize the effort; in China everyone wants to learn some English to help them get ahead. It's an impressive campaign. But there is obviously such a dearth of contact with real English that the mistakes get regurgitated over and over again. I will not bother with sharing some humorous mistakes here... they are everywhere. But to be honest I've completely stopped laughing at them... now I just find the English to be a distraction, because many times it doesn't truly represent the real intent behind the message.

Happy 61st Birthday PRC

October 1st is like the fourth of July in China in that it's the anniversary of the day the PRC was founded in 1949. To my surprise there were actually some shops closed yesterday, apparently in observation of this, but thankfully they had all seemingly opened again as the week-long holiday progressed. You simply cannot stop the freight train that is the Chinese economy, especially not if you're some puny little national holiday. If the shops had not opened again I don't know what would have happened, because there was a veritable swarm of people out there today trying to get on the bus, eat hot pot, or enjoy the weather, which was actually nice. We went to eat hot pot last night and there was a guy playing the electric guitar with an amplifier strapped to his back (not an uncommon sight at restaurants) signing "Happy Birthday" to no one in particular, or perhaps to all of us.

Speaking of the bus: Taking public transit in Chengdu is not always easy; the buses are sometimes really, really full. Still, it's by far the cheapest way to get around and they go just about everywhere. What's more fascinating though is the incredibly complex system they have for their bus passes though. Basically you get a card upon which there are two kinds of credit: one based on the number of rides -- which can only be used for the holder of the card -- and another bit of credit called an electronic wallet that can be used to purchase bus rides for a friend that doesn't have a public transit card. The weird thing is that purchasing the first variety of credit gets you a 50% discount and the second variety gets you an 80% discount. The catch is though, that the credits for the 50% discount expire at the end of the calendar month, regardless of how much is left on your card. So as you might expect, today, being the first day of the calendar month where the transit clerks were working, the line in front of the credit counters was about 50 people long. And in the end you don't even save that much money... a bus ride on the "quality" buses (meaning still stuffed to the gills but including a door that actually closes) is only about $0.25. Anyway, I asked a Chinese friend to justify this overly complicated system, and his sound explanation was that "Chinese people are good at math."

CCTV5 is by far the best sports network ever: I'm pretty convinced that nowhere else in the world can you watch women's weightlifting, world cup table tennis, one-legged martial arts competitions and snooker championships all without changing the channel. In the afternoon they like to show these obstacle course competitions that I think inspired or were inspired by the Nintendo games I used to play when I was younger and had infinitely more time to waste than I do today. Sometimes there are professional sports from Germany (Bundesliga) or the United States (NBA), but it's live and therefore on at the weirdest times of day, like at breakfast, or at 3:00 in the morning.

Who can ball and who can't: In another sure sign that the US is fading fast when it comes to all things important, I played a game of 4-on-4 pick up basketball two days ago, teamed with a German, a Swiss and a Canadian against four Americans that were all younger than us. The conventional wisdom suggests that we should have gotten dogged... but somehow we didn't just win the game, we dominated, despite the fact that I can't jump half as high as I used to be able to, and the Europeans on my squad never really learned how to take a jump shot. So it's worth noting that playing a lot of basketball video games might not actually bring you much when it comes to on-court skills. My old-man-sounding advice to the American youth: Get off your asses! If you're going to sit in front of the computer all day, do something useful instead of playing Resident Evil all the time and eating Cheetos or watching stupid Youtube videos. Learn Chinese, read the wikipedia entry about double-entry bookkeeping, or try to figure out how to use the public transportation network in your hometown so you don't have to beg your parents for a ride the next time you want to go to the mall. Christ.

More low quality mobile phone uploads

Comments from Sichuan...

Notes on Food: One of my classmates with considerably more China experience than me loves to shock people with the following observation: "Dog doesn't taste bad, in fact I would eat it again. But donkey meat is horrible." While I have yet to knowingly encounter a dish featuring man's best friend, in my humble opinion, it's pretty easy to adapt to some foods that visitors to China consider to be less orthodox. Pig stomach? Delicious. Duck throat? Wanted to try it, but I wasn't fast enough-- it was all gone before I got my piece. Chicken feet? A bit too crunchy for my tastes, but if you like the wings I don't understand what's stopping you.   Adventures in Chinese Plumbing: I have the tendency to botch perfectly good jokes, but bear with me on this. There's this one about how bad the world would be if the Germans ran all the police, the French the hotels, the English the kitchens, etc. I think you can probably add to that the Chinese as the world's plumbers. I mean it's really a tragedy sometimes what passes for drainage here. Do not get me wrong: I am not skilled in the ways of the toilet, of wastewater, or of sink repair and maintainence. But it certainly seems as though no one else here is either.   Anti-Marketing Campaign: I'm not going to go into too much detail about the way business is done in China, because half of it is cliche and the other half is not worth explaining. Suffice it to note that at times, because of seniority, tenure, being well-connected, or maybe just pity, sometimes a person ends up in a position where they really don't belong -- this of course happens in America and Germany as well. My class happened to encounter a particularly well-entrenched "marketing professor" here. After much deliberation, we voted as a class to ask the administration to provide us with a different lecturer, one who actually knows something about marketing, lets the students ask questions and whose mobile phone doesn't interrupt class every 15 minutes or so. And to our general surprise, we were successful in our request... except for the fact that they didn't tell the about-to-be-releived professor she was getting the sack until after the whole class already knew it. In order to save her face, we were asked to keep the fact to oursevles until this particular educator could be let down softly by the dean. So the whole last session felt like a three hour long breakup with a girlfriend/boyfriend who hasn't yet caught on. Why is only half the class here today? Why did only three of you do the homework? Don't you like me?

Update and Mobile phone pictures from Chengdu

We've been pretty busy getting settled in and exploring our new neighborhood and environs, so there hasn't been much chance for blogging and the like. But here are a couple of mobile phone uploads and a brief message from me (Nate). All is well and we're having a pretty good time. The weather is often raining but sometimes suprisingly beautiful... a couple of days ago we had blue skies and sunshine.   Will blog again soon with more and better pictures.

These are Conny's thoughts about our arrival in Chengdu (from Aug 17). Ja, wir haben es geschafft: mit Sack und Pack, und weder eine Tasche oder ein Kind verloren zu haben, sind wir genau nach Zeitplan in Chengdu (China, Provinz Sichuan) angekommen! Und uns gefällt es - allen eigenen und uneigenen Unkenrufen zum Trotz - bisher sehr gut. Der Flug verlief erstaunlich gut - Sophia und Emmi haben gut geschlafen und wir eigentlich auch. Für Sophia war das Tollste, dass sie an ihrem Sitz ihren eigenen Fernseher hatte, auf dem sie Sesamstraße und Miffi ansehen konnte. Und natürlich der Flughafen in Amsterdam mit geschenkten Luftballons und Laufbändern (wie heißen die eigentlich... Nate nennt sie "people movers") soweit das Auge reicht. Unser Freund Tang hat uns dann hier am Flughafen begrüßt und uns geholfen unser Gepäck (8 Koffer/ Taschen/ Rucksäcke) und uns in zwei Taxis zu buggsieren (wobei der Fahrer lässig im Auto sitzen blieb... die können sich das hier leisten). Dass wir dabei den Kinderwagen nicht verloren haben (ja, wir haben ihn doch mitgenommen...), ist ein kleines Wunder, denn der hing während der ganzen Fahrt (bei bis zu 100 km/h) halb aus dem Kofferraum, weil er zu sperrig ist. Achja, und natürlich hatte das Taxi Schonbezüge, aber keine Klicker für die Gurte (die waren ja darunter versteckt). Ihr könnt euch denken, wie ich mich mit Emmi auf dem Arm und Sophia neben mir gefühlt habe! Aber wir sind gut angekommen und müssen uns für zukünftige Taxifahren eine Strategie überlegen... Das Wetter hier ist wie angekündigt: schwülwarm und immer bedeckt. Uns erinnert es an das Klima in Housten, und es riecht auch so ähnlich hier (obwohl die Luft doch nicht so schlecht ist, wie ich befürchtet hatte - wir wurden bisher von Hustenanfällen u. ä. verschont). Sophia gab heute allerdings bekannt, dass sie "den Regen so mag" und "spazieren gehen" möchte... In der Nähe gibt es auch tatsächlich einen Park, den "Volkspark", der allerdings ziemlich unter der Verschmutzung und den vielen Spaziergängern zu leiden hat. An jeder Ecke gibt es etwas zu kaufen (Essen, Bücher, Spielzeug) und man findet Tai Chi, Meditation und - nicht immer zur Erholung geeignet - Karaoke, wobei hier besonders weibliche Talente auf eine Entdeckung hoffen, indem sie - mehr oder weniger gekonnt -  besonders hohe Töne anschlagen. Bei einem Spaziergang durch den Park werden wir schon eher verwundert oder neugierig angesehen, auch um Fotos gebeten (ein Angebot, das Sophia jedesmal ausschlägt...), aber im Großen und Ganzen auf sehr freundliche Art und Weise. Allerdings: am Flughafen in Amsterdam wurde Emmi von einer Frau Nates Armen entnommen und erst einmal eine Runde getragen, geknuddelt und geküsst (was sie eher mit Erstaunen hinnahm), und selbst meine Bitte, das Kind zurück zu geben wurde ignoriert. Erst als ich offensiv mein Baby der Frau wegnahm, waren wir wieder beruhigt, doch hätte ich sie vielleicht doch selbst halten sollen, denn schon 5 Minuten später wiederholte sich die Szene ;) Das war nicht schlimm, aber seither sind Nate und ich besser auf solche Situationen vorbereitet... Unser Treffen mit der "Grandma" im Hotel verlief auch ohne Probleme (sie war schon einen halben Tag länger da und konnte die Nachtzeit dort ausgiebig zum Schlafen nutzen), und sie und Sophia haben sich sofort (wieder) gut verstanden. Neue Spielsachen helfen bei sowas natürlich. Das ist sehr praktisch, denn die beiden teilen sich ein Zimmer. Das Hotel ist gut klimatisiert (hätte nicht gedacht, dass ich sowas mal schreibe...), was die Luft auch trocken hält. Anderfalls wäre es wirklich ziemlich ungemütlich hier. Wir wohnen ziemlich weit im Zentrum, und eine große Straße führt vor dem Hotel vorbei. Und als wäre nicht genug Platz, fahren auf dem Fußweg außer Fahrrädern auch gleich noch Mopeds. (Inzwischen ist die Mitte des Fußwegs also ein Rad-/ Mopedweg geworden.) Ein Foto davon habe ich leider noch nicht. Gestern waren Sophia und ich auch mal "einkaufen". Obwohl der Laden sehr klein war, gab es eine Unmenge an Knabbersachen und Getränken. Am Ende hatten wir eine lustige Sammlung davon, wobei Sophia die Reis-Puffs (wie heißt das auf Deutsch? wird "Puffreis" wirklich noch verwendet???) mit Weinbeergeschmack am liebsten mochte. Überhaupt ist sie sehr fröhlich und möchte alles ausprobieren: das Telefon natürlich, Essstäbchen, die grüne Seife, Parkbänke, Seifenblasenpuster, alle möglichen Knöpfe, den Wasserautomaten im Hotelzimmer ("Mama, möchtest du Wasser?" fragt sie mich sonst nie...) Thema Essen: Wir sind derzeit noch etwas konservativ, was unsere kulinarischen Abenteuer angeht. Reis und Nudeln, möglichst "bu la" (nicht scharf), sowie Hefeknödel ("bao zi") und Obst. Aber es ist ja erst unser 3. Tag... Wohnungssuche: Nate hat gestern den ganzen Tag damit zugebracht, zusammen mit Tang Wohnungen zu besichtigen (mit einer (chin.) Maklerin von "Century 21", einer amerikanischen Immobilienmakler-Kette), und wir sind jetzt schon ganz zufrieden mit der Auswahl. Heute schaut er sich noch eine Maisonettenwohnung an, was für die Zweiteilung zwischen Saunders-Familie und Grandma ganz praktisch. Aber es scheint so, dass wir wahrscheinlich sogar eine Wohnung mit Zentralheizung haben werden, was mich sehr erleichtert, weil der Winter hier so nasskalt sein soll. Ich hoffe, nun endlich alle eure ersten (ungestellten) Fragen beantwortet zu haben, und damit das "Schreib mal, wenn ihr da seid." erstmal getan zu haben.

Leaving for China tomorrow

So, after lengthy anticipation, we're leaving for Chengdu tomorrow. One of us will occasionally try to post updates here.

Since from China we can only add content to the blog but not so easily edit it, we apologize in advance for errors, bad spelling, etc.

a weekend in Shanghai

Nathan and Shanghai skyline

Nathan went to Shanghai over the weekend to visit a friend of ours that we met right around the time when Sophia was born. Since then, he got his PhD here at the TU Berlin, and then he returned to China. He was apparently the perfect host, showing Nathan around and refusing any kind of present or well-meant gesture. ;) At any rate, our friend and his wife will have a child soon... and Nathan suggested that'll be our time to reciprocate. Here is his account of the weekend:

Last night I went to dinner with Jianpei... it turned out that his wife had another engagement, so I didn't get to meet her, unfortunately. I guess he also isn't feeling all that well. I was totally surprised, because he sent me a text message just before we were supposed to meet saying that he was at the hospital getting "tropfen(be)handlung" and that he would meet me a little while later. (He of course showed up almost exactly on time.) Of course in Germany of the US, you only get an IV if you have a serious illness or something, but here it is far more commonplace. I guess he had a bad headache and decided to take himself to the clinic. I felt kind of bad, but he insisted there was no problem.

Before I met him I had bought a nice box of oranges to give him and his wife (here they take fruit and wrap it really nicely for giving as gifts) and he refused to take it. He also insisted on paying for just about everything we did together yesterday. He was too generous -- while I enjoyed the visit, he made it difficult to be on an equal level. For the last period of time I kept trying to find ways to get him to take the oranges, but he just wouldn't go for it. The guy is clever. Anyway, if he and/or his family ever visit Berlin again we need to reciprocate. When the baby is born we need to send something. By the way, the local tradition is eggs if it's a boy, chocolate if it's a girl. But I don't think that'll work via the mail...

flowers on a pond in Shanghai

rain without end

Yeah, so it's still raining like crazy here... I feel like Forrest Gump a little bit when he's in Vietnam and it starts to rain and it just never stops. Really it's been like that here... I think it's almost stopped at a couple of points but never completely. At least now I can say I've experienced the rainy season here.

I don't have any new pictures for you because it's raining all the time and it's no fun to take the camera out in that. Maybe this weekend though I will go out with my camera just before I have a shower... the problem is that if I get wet, there's no good chance to get warm and dry quickly here. None of the buildings have central heating, not that dormitory, not the classrooms, not the cafeteria. Part of what was so nice about the restaurant I went to last night was that it was a pleasant warm temperature. :)

picture factory visit

frame production

printing of the posters

American sports motives

These are pictures from the factory we visited on Wednesday. It was pretty interesting... essentially they make the pictures that you buy at Ikea or Walmart or Target or Costco that are framed prints, like roses or a bridge or whatever. They have high quality printing machines, make the frames themselves, put them together and then shrink wrap and label them. All the big box stores do is put it on the shelf. And we wonder where all the jobs go. Essentially, these guys make about $1 on every picture they sell. I asked the guy how many pictures he shipped in 2009... he said 10 million or something... pretty amazing stuff.