Also, I want to mention that in hindsight I totally realize my reaction to seeing the fake ID was quite the overreaction. But hey, I was gullible when younger and I guess some of it has stuck with me.
A Chinese McGriddle: (Actually it's just a homemade "sweetened bean paste" between two pancakey buns)
Well It's hard to remember everything from the past two weeks, but I'll give it a go. For one thing, this past Saturday we had the bluest sky ever since coming here almost two months ago. It was the deep blue that you can find most anywhere in America. Here though it's like some sort of buried treasure and you have to clear away all the crap to get to it. You could see the clouds in full white, and their wispy fingers as well. A plane's engine trail was also visible. Seeing the sky made me think of that Lion King verse: "But the sun rolling high / through the sapphire sky / keeps great and small through the endless round." I've talked about the sky before a couple times, but it really is something we totally take for granted. It's made me fall in love with the very concept of the EPA, even if for the past eight years ours has been amputated, castrated, curbstomped, and then shot like a post-race Eight Belles. At least it's not dead yet. Anyhow, blue skies are awesome.
Even when there is no pollution though, this place is hot. I had originally been told that it was comparable to a Madison summer, and it was not too bad the first couple weeks, but the temperature is really rising. Comparing the past couple weeks' Madison temperature vs. Tianjin with my iGoogle weather, Tianjin has been hotter virtually every day, and usually by significant margins. I went for a 30-minute walk at a very leisurely pace, 11:00 pm, and come back and my back was drenched with sweat. That is very uncomfortable (不舒服) and I do not appreciate it.
Part of this may be the fact that I have gained a noticeable amount of weight. After dropping a couple pounds, I have added that back and more. It is odd, but I think that even though I am eating 2.5 meals every day instead of 3, (my breakfast is usually two muffins and a carton of whole milk) and more importantly have virtually no snacking options, the food is simply laden with enough fat and oil to more than compensate. It drips out of everything. Jesus may have had the power to get water out of rocks or whatever, but if he was Chinese it would have been vegetable oil. Anyhow, I now have a few vanity pounds which are in no way unhealthy. In yet another perfect happenstance, this may make me more attractive here. I am not 100% sure on this, but it seems like a belly is admired here. Normally I would dismiss it out of hand. However, the first thing that came to mind is the scene in Pulp Fiction where Bruce Willis' girlfriend says she wants him to have a potbelly.
A dumb pop culture reference that is not in any way supported by facts, I know. But consider this: There are many guys with a paunch here that are with ridiculously attractive women. It is odd. Anyhow, I'm not worried about it and I still fit into all my shirts and shorts but it is interesting nonetheless. To make me feel a little less guilty about this, I went swimming last weekend. Because you have to wear one, I borrowed a swim cap...Last week we went to Beijing. In the true fashion of this program, we were notified only a day beforehand. We took a bus for 3 hours to an event that lasted 2 hours. This event was the filming of a TV game show that was a Chinese competition among foreign students. We were given FREE T-SHIRTS which is always great swag, but was even better for another reason I will get to later. At this filming, I was provided with a poster to cheer on a girl I had never heard of or seen before, similar to the pre-made posters they hand out at political rallies. Anyhow I was shown on the jumbotron a couple times, and usually broke into laughter when the dozen of my classmates around me pointed, poked and/or laughed. It was for the most part boring though, as we just watched some of them struggle through interpreting movie clips and other Chinese comprehension activities.
The shirt is awesome because it has Chinese characters on it. I mentioned earlier how ubiquitous English, or at least Romanized letter combinations are. Well, it's a little too much for my taste. I told my tutor I wanted a shirt with characters on it. We went to 3 separate shopping areas, and could not find a single one. It's simply not done. It's not even "nerdy" fashion, it just simply does not happen. The only place they exist is at Culture Street, which should be renamed "home of the gimmicky Chinese touristy crap."
Just a couple more things to update: my sandals broke, the fabric attaching the sole to the strap broke so I had to trash them. I bought a new pair today and am starting to break them in. Our hotel elevators are actually surprisingly safe. When overweight, they beep and refuse to move. I have never seen that in the US even though the weight limit may just be a lot higher. Another funny language thing is how some English words. I was trying to explain Britney Spears' "Oops I Did it Again" lyrics to Shino, and tried to explain "innocent." She thought it meant "not guilty" and it never actually occurred to me that that could be a way to hear it. I looked up naive in my cell phone and tried to tell her it was something similar but apparently it doesn't translate that well, and naive means child-like thinking. Shino also said I looked very ripe after I had not shaved for a couple days. This one took a while to figure out. Eventually she had to cellphone search it as well. I turns out one word in Chinese means ripe, grown-up, and mature. I explained to her that ripe was generally reserved for produce. I have never been called ripe before, and I am glad I can check that adjective off my list. Finally, I have tickets reserved to a pair of soccer games. August 8th and 10th, here in Tianjin, in the massive shiny Olympic stadium. US vs Japan and US vs Nigeria. Mom, when you read this, I could definitely use any sort of USA shirt or patch or flag-cape or Captain America shield sent out here when you can. If I can't get bombed while being belligerent at an Olympic soccer match sporting Freedomland apparel, there's nowhere I would really want to be bombed. Go big or go home I say.
This upcoming week is our field trip so I will be going to Inner Mongolia to sleep in a yurt and Xi'an to see the Terracotta army. It should rock. I'm not bringing my laptop to Inner Mongolia though I may take it to Xi'an (we have a day-long stop back in Tianjin before departing for Xi'an) and if I do I'll probably have some time to update. Otherwise I'm looking to give one more post before departing Friday night.
No comments:
Post a Comment