The Labor Day break was fantastic. As always with vacation time here, I planned to do much more than I actually accomplished, but it was still a great time. Met some new people, improved some old relationships, practiced my Chinese, and even got a bit of work done. All in all a satisfying break.
The bad news is that I realized today my bike was missing. I had left my keys inside my house yesterday and was forced to climb through the window in my living room. I was so happy that the window was left unlocked and I was able to enter the house that I forgot I had left the bike outside. Ashley was actually away still so if I hadn't been able to get in I would have been stuck on the street. Anyway I went to go meet Xiao Zhao today for lunch and as usual I decided to bike over, but as I looked around the house I quickly realized the bike wasn't there. I asked around the neighborhood if anyone had seen it but unfortunately it's safe to say it's gone. It wasn't even my bike either, a student lent me it a few months ago, and I promised nothing would happen to it. Some of my other students, Loopy primarily, hinted that I would either break it or lose it, but I said it would never happen. Ha. Never underestimate my power to lose something. It was a pretty poor quality bike, one that the student got for free, but I'll have to replace it nevertheless. I loved that little crap bike...
I bought a new cell phone the other day as well. I was doing a thorough cleaning of my house and had the phone tucked in under my shorts. I felt it vibrate so I reached to pick it up to see who was calling at which point I fumbled it and it fell into the well of the squat toilet, circled for a brief second and then dropped into the black abyss that is the squat toilet pipe. Luckily, someone at the last party had dropped a plastic cup into the pipe as well so the phone only entered the second stage of Chinese squat toilet hell. I reached in and grabbed it out, but it was missing its back, which cost 45 kuai to replace (the phone was only 200). I decided to pick up a non-toilet phone downtown. There were a number of sales for May Day and I got one for 400 that has a camera (won't use it) English/Chinese dictionary (doesn't work) and the greatest part: a calculator that I can punch in the dates and numbers of my last menstruation and the phone will tell me subsequent menses.
I'm thinking back to last week when, according to Sarah, I pulled off the greatest magic trick yet; the Li Jia Li Ting Ting switch. Guess it was kind of cool. They missed each other by mere seconds.
I actually went over to Ting Ting's house this afternoon. I met up with her after she got back from Beijing and we went to eat some noodles at this place near Unimart. We went back to her house for a bit so I could check out her place and meet her dog (a super energetic pug that loved me more than the family). Her parents were perhaps the most spontaneously kind Chinese people I've met here. The immediately made some watered-down coffee for me and gave me a tour of the house (smelled like moth balls). It was quite big and well furnished, but still strangely designed in that Chinese-house way. The dining room and couch area, as in most houses here, is the first area you walk into and usually isn't separated by wall, it's like one enormously long stretch of hallway. It sort of looks more appropriate in my house because I don't really have a dining room, but strange when it's fully decorated and there's no transition between each section.
Ting Ting's parents asked me if I enjoyed the coffee and of course I said I did, at which point they asked me if I drank coffee in America, and I said sometimes, but in China I don't usually. Why not?
Oh, because Chinese green tea is soooo good.
Really? Let's give you some green tea, here drink this!
Ok I'll drink it! Thanks!
An Wen is really good at doing magic tricks..
Not really (ok I'll do one....)
Wow, can you do that with our cards?
Yes! Here let me do one more.
The conversation continued like this until we talked about what the parents do. They were both teachers, but now work for the Nanchong government (I'm still not exactly sure in what capacity) but I explained that in some respect I also work for my government, but I'm not as enthusiastic about the policies of mine. They explained that China also was not very good and that there are a lot of poor people. I said that in 25-30 years, China would surpass the US (a line that I've recently used a lot here - cha bu duo 25-30 nian hou, zhong guo hui chao guao mei guo. zhong guo ren min de yi bei zi yi nian bi yi nian hao le <- also a good one). They disagreed but I explained the development of China's economy is faster than the US will ever be again. It's tough to believe that people who lived through the 60s and 70s in China (Ting Ting's parents and most Nanchongren for example) would ever doubt that times have improved, and will improve, so greatly in such a short period of time.
They ended up giving me a fan that the father had painted his own calligraphy on, and a few Nanchong tourist maps that Ting Ting had modeled for apparently. Ting Ting is older than I am, and she's not yet hit that point where she's visibly aging, but the pictures of her from when she was 20 or 21 are much more flattering.
My mom would be pleased to know this, too, as an advocate against bottle feeding infants. According to the Nanchong tourist map, "Jialing River, slowly flowing down to south from Qinling Mountains breast-feeds all living things on the bank like a kind mother." It continues.... "The people of Nanchong living by the side of Jialing River for generations, suckling prime and taking nimbus widely of the mother river, create Jialing River civilization and superinduce extraordinary splendour for the Chinese nation." <-- I can personally attest to taking nimbus in Nanchong...
Waited for a while to see Li Jia Li but she was working late. She works everyday. It's sort of egregious. It's incredibly interesting seeing the differences and similarities between the two though. Can't figure out which one is more with it. Pictures of both coming soon. Ugh.. So much to do tomorrow.
Also, congratulations to this blog, which now ranks #4 on google for searches of "gap catalogue".
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