Monday, September 22, 2014

3:31 AM - , No comments

Don't Go To China

The first piece of advice I can give anyone considering going to China is: don't.

 Unless studying or working in China has been your life-long dream, I honestly can't say that I'd recommend coming to China long-term, in any way, shape or form. Especially not if you're used to a country that has any semblance of a working system.

 Don't get me wrong: this scholarship is a great opportunity for me and I'm very grateful to have been given this chance. But there are so many things that make it just not worth it to come here under your own steam.

 Mainly, everything is incredibly disorganized. Jiao Tong University is supposed to be one of the absolute elite universities, not only in Shanghai but in all of China. However, I've already met a whole barrage of foreigners from all over the world tearing their hair because there is no organization whatsoever.

 Almost all the correct and relevant information I've gotten has been off other students, not the people who are supposed to be in charge. There's a great sense of community among students, but the flipside is that people have no chance but to open up and rely on each other, because we have nowhere else to turn. I learned how to eat at the canteen and get hot water from another student. I learned about the school's online account from another student. I learned how to (provisionally) send mail from another student. I double-check all the information about visa processes with other students. And if I hear something from an official channel, I don't trust it until I've heard it confirmed by another student.

 I still don't know what's going on with my residence permit, that I think the school is supposed to help me get. The process is basically "come to this place in a week to find out what the next step is." And sooner or later, my visa is going to expire.

 I still don't know what's going on with my bank account, that the school is supposed to set up for me. I have, however, received emails telling me to hurry up processes that no one told me about in the first place.

 I still don't know what's going on with the money I'm supposed to get each month from my scholarship. Well, besides the fact that a guy who had the scholarship before told me not to expect or count on that money, because the payments are "slow and irregular" at best.

 I still don't know how to pay my electricity bill. I still don't know the exact price of doing laundry, because there is no price list and it seems to get more expensive each time someone goes. I still don't know if they gave me the correct postal address after asking three times. I still don't know if people answer "no" to my questions because they mean no, or because they just don't feel like helping a foreigner.

 Googling doesn't help, because most information - even official information, about official procedure - is several years old, or poorly translated.

 I realize that it works this way in many parts of the world, and that what I'm actually experiencing right now is just what life is like when it's not super comfortable all the time, when your citizenship number opens up every door. Being able to deal with these situations is a great life skill to have. But I'm never going to willingly put myself through this bureaucratic labyrinth ever again.

 Talking to people who've been abroad before - Japan, Great Britain, America - they all agree that nothing is as disorganized as China. Sure, each country has its problems. But they don't tell you to fill out forms specifying "to be filled out by the school" yourself. They don't expect you to show up one day not knowing whether or not you'll have a place to live.

 I'm certain this year will give me loads of great experiences and let me meet tons of amazing people. But sorry, China - once this year is over, I won't be coming back.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

12:37 PM - , No comments

(Mis)adventure

So my hot water ran out this morning.

 I think this is an optimal time to tell you all about the sort of thing that one has to deal with on a near-daily basis here in China.

 When I registered at my dorm, I was given an envelope containing sundry items: keycard, air-con remote, desk key, and hot-water card. You stick the hot-water card into a machine in the bathroom, an ominous countdown begins, and you've got to take your shower before it reaches zero or the sun explodes. (OK, I lied about the sun, but not about the countdown.) But this morning, there was no countdown, and my shower was as cold as if the sun really had blown into a million pieces, never to warm my water-supply again.

 I figured fixing this would be a simple process of finding the right desk, giving them some money, and returning home to enjoy the warmth. I figured I could get all of this done before lunch. But no. Beware, ye who enter here, for the road is long and fraught with peril.

  • Dumped books in dorm, adventure commenced.
  • Went to Building 3, which turned out to be the wrong building. Was told by the rude attendant in very fast Chinese that I was in the wrong place; all I really understood was that I was supposed to go "over there."
  • Had a look "over there"; came up blank; saw another girl approaching the office and ran up to see if she had the same problem. She did; the man told her to go away as well, and this time I heard that he was saying "Building 1". Repeated Building 1 to confirm, was met by a snappy "That's what I told you."
  • Other girl and I joined forces and went to Building 1; lady at Building 1 said we were in the wrong place and should be at Building 3.
  • What the fuck.
  • We went back to the dorm to ask the help desk. Woman behind the counter made phone calls, figured out that the water cards we had been given were actually temporary ones (this was not mentioned when we were given them). International student she was helping informed us that the hot-water card is actually a different card, the "campus card."
  • Other girl already had this card, was told to get it when she asked how to pay for food at the canteen. She helped me get my own. Required a phone call to be made to the other campus to get a new student number, since the student number printed on the admission letter and student ID card was not applicable for this other card.
  • Got 20 RMB back from the front desk in exchange for the temporary water card.
  • Other girl showed me the building where she got her campus card. Handed passport, new student number, and registration form to lady behind counter, got picture taken (once again looked like unwashed criminal, or someone who had a cold shower that morning), received campus card.
  • Paid 20 RMB for campus card.
  • Other girl said that office for recharging card is closed according to info she's been given. I finally got lunch while waiting for it to re-open. It was almost 3 PM.
  • We asked two people and finally found office. Information was incorrect, office is open only from 10:00-13:00.
  • "At least we know where the office is."
  • Returned to dorm, still hot-water-less as of now.

I'm going to go back tomorrow, and then we'll see.

But what about electricity?????


12:03 PM - No comments

Bureaucracy, Bullshit, Bonding

So, I haven't been making myself known in real-time for a while. Sorry about that, there's been a lot going on with school starting and all.

 I have been going through some really awful bureaucratic/psychologically murderous stuff over these past few days. That is part of the reason I haven't been updating. Because everyone on the internet has a perfect life and I intend to uphold that facade. Nah, but I don't want this blog to turn into whining central (all my poor friends and family will have to bear with that part, sorry you guys!), so I'll talk about rough patches only once they've been cleared. Basically, just think a million forms, rude people, residual jetlag with a spoonful of loneliness and you're getting the picture.

 For example, my form from the Swedish board for students' financial support is supposed to be filled in by the school. The people at the school told me to fill it in myself because they "didn't have time". (Me: ???????? >:(((((( ) I refused to leave and told them I didn't have all the required information, they should because they're the school, and guess who made some time? Persistence, grasshopper.

 I was really, really upset the night everything seemed to be going wrong, but that rage gave me the steely motivation to get shit done the next day, and to some degree I actually managed. My advice to you all basically boils down to this:

Listen to Captain Shang, guys.

 Later the same day I went questing for a stationery store on the lovely street Fuzhou Lu. The Foreign Language Bookstore is also located here, along with a gazillion shops selling paintings and calligraphy tools. I goggled like a fascinated tourist (who am I kidding?) as savvy Shanghainese hurried by.

 Suddenly a Chinese girl came up to me and asked me where I was going, and if she could walk with me. Since I'm now slightly less stupid than before, I was wary of a scam, but if this girl is pulling a con on me, it's a real long one. We ended up walking together for a long time, talking in mixed English and Chinese about what it's like to be a student who's come alone to a new place with no family or friends -- she came to Shanghai a month ago from Dalian. Turns out we both like culture and reading (I guess those are the kind of people you get on Fuzhou Lu), and she showed me the location of Shanghai Grand Theatre. We exchanged phone numbers and decided we are going to go see a performance there at some point. 

 How cool is that???

 I consider myself a pretty introverted person. I'm not shy, but very careful about the people I choose to approach or deepen my relationships with. And all of a sudden I spontaneously made a friend.

 Oh, and she went with me back to the stationery store so I could do my shopping. (Shout-out to Nico who wanted to see!)

Monday, September 15, 2014

10:33 PM - , No comments

Beijing To-Do: Stick Close to Nature

This is one of several posts about my trip to Beijing in July, up on Mondays.

 You know the Great Wall and the Forbidden City already, but what else is there to do in Beijing? Well…

When you start feeling tired of concrete, steel and superhighways (but mostly concrete), it can be nice to withdraw for a moment into somewhere nice and green. Pay a modest entrance fee to wander around the picturesque waters of Beihai Park or the lively, shady park surrounding the Temple of Heaven. The middle-aged and senior populations come to parks like this one to dance, play kickarounds, and even sing live (and surprisingly well).

Of the standard Beijing attractions, I think my favorite one must be the Summer Palace. Having lived in lake-dotted, archipelago-famed Sweden all my life, I never really realized how isolated it feels to be inland and far away from the water, so the area around the Summer Palace became balm for my soul. You don’t even have to go up onto the palace hill: just sitting on the breezy rocks by Kunming Lake and watching the paddle-boats go by is pleasant (and much less sweaty) enough.


So there you have it. I don't normally take walks in the woods or, heaven forbid, do outdoor sports, but it's easy to take nature for granted until you lose the privilege. Have a glance at the smoggy skies in my pictures, for example. Take care of Mother Earth, yo.

Friday, September 12, 2014

11:00 AM - No comments

How to Climb the Language Barrier

Common situation that arises in China: your Chinese ranges from shit to none, and you are forced into a conversation with someone whose English ranges from shit to none. The language barrier is a Great Wall that you’re going to run into not just in China, but in foreign countries all over the world. Learning how to handle it can really help you relax, and being on the disadvantaged end of the situation will give you the understanding you need to help out foreigners in your own country.

1. Learn your basics
How do you say hello, goodbye and thank you? Learn these no matter where you’re traveling, even if you can manage there in English, as a sign of respect. The next level is learning how to say “this one”, “that one”, and “I want/I don’t want.” This will get you surprisingly far. Mastering numbers is another good one, since then you’ll be able to understand the answer to the most important question: “How much?” Coming equipped with these simple words and phrases, which should take no more than a couple of days to perfect, will really help alleviate the helplessness one feels when one doesn’t know how to say shit. (Optional: learn to say “shit” in the language of your choice.)

2. Use body language
No matter which language you and your conversational partner are using, universal gestures can get you a long way. But the key here is not to treat the other person like an idiot child. Just because someone doesn’t speak your language doesn’t mean they are somehow impaired (native English speakers pay special heed to this). Start by accepting that they possess basic human intellect, then use your body language to punctuate what you are saying. For example, if you’re saying “tall”, “round”, or “yellow”, use your hands to express the adjective or point to something that has that attribute or color. I had a very good experience buying makeup in Beijing, where the employee asked me what I was looking for and pointed to the part of her face each product corresponded to. This helped me be sure that I hadn’t misheard what I thought she was saying, and we managed pretty clear communication even though our grasp of each other’s languages was very shaky.

3. Speak clearly
It sounds sooo obvious, but I can’t overstate how important this is!!! After 7 years, I can read entire novels in German, but watching a movie without subtitles is still completely impossible. Slang words and natural slurring totally mess up everything you thought you learned in school. Again, your conversational partner isn’t an idiot, but they will definitely appreciate if you talk nice and slow.

4. No assumptions!
It's easy to overestimate the level of communication a second-language speaker is actually capable of. When you're the one who's fluent in the lingua franca of the day, it's easy to get carried away with your chatter. But once you've been incomprehensibly talked at by someone who figures you'll be able to follow, you will know how much that sucks.

Universal gestures. UNIVERSAL.
source, of course, pusheen.com.

5:54 AM - , 1 comment

chillin'

Taking the chance to just relax in my room now that registration is over with and classes haven't started yet.

 Registration was basically a process of being shunted from counter to counter, room to room, floor to floor in one of the lecture buildings, passing a form along for each clerk to OK. I didn't have to pay any tuition fees because of the scholarship, meaning I've saved 24,800 RMB on tuition alone. WOOP.

 I also had a 2-minute interview in Chinese where a man asked me how long I had studied and if I had done the HSK. When I told him I had passed HSK3, he estimated my level and sent me off to the testing room... where I did an impossible digital placement test on a completely empty stomach. By the reading part, I gave up even trying to concentrate and just guessed the answer to every question, but somehow I still managed to get 50/100 points. This put me at level 中二, or Intermediate level 2.

 I got to take a look at the books for this level and read a little bit out loud, to see whether or not the course was too hard or too easy, and magically it does seem like that bizarrely difficult test was somewhat accurate. I've been looking through my books (a total of 9!), and I'm hoping that the course level will be fine: challenging, but not impossibru.

 I'm supposed to have 10 classes a week, meaning 2 periods per day. The preliminary schedule looks awesome: classes from 8:30-12:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and from 13:10-16:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It takes me about 2 minutes to walk from the lecture building to my dorm. After 3 years of more or less terrible high school schedules with one-hour-door-to-door commuting, this is a huuuge deal for me.

 Also came home with some loot: a tourist map, useless student handbook telling me to study hard and not gamble in 4 different languages, and my official school tote bag and hoodie (in the lovely color "sweatpants grey").
me scratching the unsightly boil on the back of my neck being extremely adorable

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

11:00 AM - 2 comments

CRACKing Characters: A Mystery Story

At a bookshop in Beijing, I made a spur-of-the-moment purchase: a set of two thin books called Cracking Characters: The Ultimate Guide to the Most Frequently Used 300 Chinese Characters. What a great title, eh! Rolls right off the tongue.

After spending some time reading the books, I reached a verdict:

Something is cracky here all right.

Cracking Characters is written by Fu Qiang, aka Leo Fu, who holds a Masters degree in legal linguistics. His book aims to help foreign students understand Chinese ideograms in depth, by learning about their roots from the time of the earliest oracle bone inscriptions. Pretty straightforward, right? Occasionally, yes. All the standard explanations are there: the character for tree (木) is indeed a picture of a tree, and the character for up (上) is a representation of one thing above another thing. So far, gotcha!

The book is divided up into categories based on the type of root, or smallest unit of meaning, a group of characters uses (derived from bodies, animals, nature, et al.). Here’s where it gets mysterious: Fu Qiang’s research has led him to believe that a prominent category is “roots related to sex.”

Wait, you say, what the what? Because you never heard about any of this when you were learning to write mountain and river in the ancient, beautiful script of the far east. Yes, friend. I feel the same.

Fu Qiang proceeds to reveal that a lot of seemingly innocuous Chinese characters are in fact the earliest form of penis drawings (oracle BONE, amirite? :PppPPpPP). For grueling detail, feel free to click the images below:
贵 (expensive) = an erect penis
京 (capital) = an ejaculating penis
再 (again) = an erect penis (again)

And fear not, vagina-bearers: we’re included in the learned smut of old, as well!
不 (no) = period vagina
文 (culture) = "a vivid image of an inflamed vagina viewed from behind"
它 (it) = a vagina, aka the third person present while you're having sex, aka the noise you make while you're having sex

(My personal favorite here is 它 (ta), mostly because to my knowledge nobody moans "TAAA" while in throes of carnal ecstasy. But I'm not here to judge, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Moving on.)

As you might or might not imagine, I was a bit weirded out by these descriptions, so I decided to compare Cracking Characters’ descriptions with a few other sources.

Here's what they had to say: 京 is a picture of a house on a hill, a good location for building capital cities. 不 is actually supposed to be a sprouting seed or a root, related to the similar character 才 (which Cracking Characters also claims is a menstruating vagina). Most sources agree 它 is an adapted image of a snake. The origin of 文 is unclear, with guesses ranging from a tattoo to a man wearing clothing, but no one else made the immediate connection to this alleged “vivid image” of an inflamed vagina viewed from behind.

Since most literature seems to disagree with him, I wonder from what spring of arcane knowledge Fu Qiang drew his bucket of ancient porn. Who were his sources? What is his purpose? Is he a pervert? A practical joker? Or is he, in fact, showing us a seldom-spoken-of, secret truth?

Maybe this is why there are NO relevant search results for Cracking Characters, www.crackingcharacters.com, Chinese Educational Science Press Limited, Fu Qiang, or Leo Fu. Maybe he's been silenced. Maybe we are all in danger.

All I know is this: Information wants to be free. So thank you, Leo Fu, for sharing.

Ta ta for now, everyone.

Postscript: Cracking Characters contains many other, less sexually preoccupied, wonderfully weird explanations for why Chinese ideograms look the way they do. Thus, Leo Fu may or may not become a recurring presence on this blog. Cheers.

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