The changes that can happen in a week are really astounding. Last Friday was the Dragon Boat Festival, a nationally observed holiday that meant a three-day weekend for me. That Friday morning I woke up in a state of despair, though, having no weekend plans or people to meet. My attempts to tag along with my housemates, the two American guys, were quickly shut down:
*after knocking multiple times and clearing my throat*
"Hey, what are y'all up to today? Can I tag along?"
"Uh, well, I'm going to go get lunch with my girlfriend, and Matt is going to a friend's birthday party, so, uh, yeah..."
While that plan quickly fell apart, I was shamelessly undeterred by rejection and so texted Wilson to find out if I could crash his weekend plans. Sure enough, he graciously invited me to his friend's birthday celebration that evening, where I met a host of his friends, Chinese and non-Chinese alike. I spent a lot of the night talking with his girlfriend Wurihan and her friend Bai Dian Dian. They were a ton of fun to talk to, Bai Dian Dian (whose name literally translates as White Spot-Spot) putting on airs in a mock-British accent and Wurihan telling me about life in inner Mongolia, where she is from. The two also taught me some Chinese slang that would never come up in class--using 屄 (pronounced bī, meaning "vagina"--or a more colorful version of the word) as an intensifying suffix. For instance:
Declaring that someone is 很二 (hěn èr), or "very two", like the number, is to say that he or she is very stupid. To really emphasize how idiotic he or she is, though, you could call this person 二屄 (èr bī), or "double vagina". which is much like calling him or her a "stupid dumbass". There are a slew of other combinations, including 傻屄 (shǎ bī), meaning "stupid dumbass" and 装屄 (zhuāng bī), meaning "pretentious ass" or "poser".
My personal favorite, though, is 牛屄 (niú bī) or "cow c---".
"Cow c---?!" you exclaim in hushed tones, anxiously glancing at passerby. "What an appalling and deplorable thing to say!"
"No, my dear friend, in fact I think you are the biggest cow c--- I know," I cheerfully reply. "You amaze me."
In fact, niú bī is a wonderful thing to be, as it means a very confident, impressive, or daring person (think "total badass").
In fact, niú bī is a wonderful thing to be, as it means a very confident, impressive, or daring person (think "total badass").
As you can tell, it was a fun (and informative) evening, and I'm looking forward to seeing Wilson and my new friends again.
***
~ THE MOVE ~
While there's a very high chance a different writer could seamlessly integrate this into the flow of this blog post, moving out of my host family's home was so sudden that maybe this is appropriate.
In short: I moved, and I am glad of it!
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| The view from the apartment. The building that looks like it is leaning is the CCTV building, headquarters for China's national news station |
So when given the chance to have some privacy (and room I could take a full step in), I decided that my concern about offending my host family shouldn't take precedence. I dropped some hints that I would be moving out early, and when Saturday rolled around, Sha came over and helped me move out. My host family wasn't around, so I called to let them know I was leaving, but told them I would come over the next day to say goodbye. When I went over Sunday night after shopping at the outdoor market by their house, we had a really nice conversation over dinner, my hosts lauding my produce selection and telling me that I was welcome to come over anytime. I think this is the best possible outcome--we left on really great terms and still have a positive relationship, but are not encroaching on each other's space.
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| I can't say I'll miss the elevator. |
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| Especially when I'm trading it in for this. |
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| Sha with the groceries |
Speaking of space (and also autonomy), I am thrilled to now have tons of it! The apartment is lavish, in a word, with marble floors, beautiful decor, a king-sized bed--I am truly living high on the hog. I've certainly been eased into the perils of living alone. After I arrived on Saturday, Sha took me to Sanlitun, an enormous shopping district with high-end designer stores neighboring an enormous counterfeit goods market. After we explored the shops for hours, we stopped by a Westernized grocery, where I splurged on luxuries like olive oil and cheddar cheese, among a few other things, spending about $20 total. In contrast, I spent under $5 at the open-air food market by my host family's house the next day on broccoli, potatoes, garlic, onions, tomatoes, carrots, bananas, mangos, orange juice, dried noodles, and Chinese spices.
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| Isn't this food beautiful? |
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| Caught in the rain after gallivanting in Sanlitun |
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| I have since recreated the fateful "spaghetti" with non-vermicelli noodles, yielding much more delicious results |
The abundance and freshness of the food I bought with comparatively so little money has inspired me to experiment in the kitchen, so far with mostly positive results. I tried to make spaghetti with tomato sauce from scratch--in lieu of basil and oregano I threw in some Chinese spices, which actually were very delicious. Where I went wrong was with the noodles, though--it turns out that the noodles I bought were vermicelli, which did not mix well with the sauce at all. Still, I am optimistic that my trial and error will yield some interesting and fruitful results, if not a food blog (perhaps a "failed-food blog").
The craziest thing happened soon after the move--after the so-so swing dancing experience last time (so-so because I had to wander around dark alleyways in the dead of night) I realized one of the other (few) swing dancing venues in Beijing is a five-minute walk away from the apartment. So, Monday night I ventured out with very low expectations for what I might find. As soon as I arrived, I edged over the dance floor, working up the courage and energy to ask someone to dance. Glancing around, I noticed a girl about my age who also seemed to have come alone. We made knowing eye contact--the kind that says, "I don't know anyone here, but I'm friendly and not psychotic! Let's talk!" and so I ended up meeting Clare. There were so many coincidences that it seemed like destiny--Clare, who just graduated from Stanford, arrived in Beijing last week where she is interning and came to the swing place alone that night in search of dancing and friends. We ended up leaving together and discovered that she lives in the building next to mine, and that she will be going to Harvard for grad school--in other words, fate has intertwined us as friends! I was so thrilled to meet her, and we have since set a regular dance date. We went swing dancing again last night and met a bunch of new people, and our next plan is to try joining the public waltz group that happens in the park. We can't stop marveling at how friendly the dance scene is here, and I can't stop marveling that I met Clare!
While my workplace is about evenly split between Chinese and non-Chinese people, the language of the office is English, and so I haven't quite been getting the full immersion experience. I was discouraged that my Chinese hasn't been improving as quickly as I had hoped, so I took matters into my own hands and spent this last week contacting Chinese schools and tutors. I really wanted to find the best teacher possible, and so I had lessons with a few this week and called Chinese schools to learn more about their programs. I have trouble committing, especially to programs that require you to pay for hours and hours of classes at one time, if I feel that there might be a better option. Also complicating things is the fact that I am working full-time, so I don't have tons of free time to commute back and forth between the apartment, my workplace, and a school (while also managing to practice violin, work out, chill out...)
After meeting with two tutors who weren't up to snuff and still reluctant to commit to an inflexible class schedule, I was a bit disheartened. Then, out of the blue, a woman named Joyce I had previously written to texted me asking if I was still interested in working with her. I decided that there was no downside to meeting her for a trial lesson--after all, even if we didn't click I would still probably learn something. To my great surprise, she was anything but incompetent, having successfully tutored other students, and I got a sense that she was willing to work really hard to help me improve. She seems serious but kind, professional but understanding--perhaps the biggest sign that it was destiny is that we have identical work schedules, so it's easy to coordinate meetings. We had our first lesson last week, and I'm optimistic that I'm going to learn a lot!
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| Sha, Joyce, Tianzi, Jerry, me |
This last weekend I met Sha, Jerry, Tianzi and Joyce (all students from my high school) for dinner. After eating we wandered around Wangfujing, whose streets of tightly packed shops and vendors boast food not intended for the squeamish or faint of heart. While I had heard that China's cuisine includes a variety of delicacies not consumed in the West, nothing prepared me for turning the corner and suddenly coming face-to-face with a bucket of scorpions on a stick, still snapping mid-air. (Be forewarned that I have posted photographic and video evidence!) Next to the scorpions were some centipedes and crickets, and for the particularly famished, a few starfish and seahorses. While I pride myself on taking risks, I passed on the bug-kabobs (which they fry in front of you)--I am happy to remain simply a scorpion spectator.
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| The gang at Wangfujing |
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| These scorpions were still wriggling, a fact I try not to reflect on before bed. |
The other particularly unlikely element of this weekend was seeing an opera in Beijing--but not Beijing opera (which is a completely separate art form). Sha and I went to the National Centre for the Performing Arts and saw Wagner's Tannhäuser, sung by Chinese opera singers. It was a fun challenge for me to try to figure out what was going on in the Chinese-subtitled German-language opera. The singers were fantastic, and in a time when many American opera companies are struggling to make ends meet, seeing the huge cast in their elaborate costumes on the lavishly-designed set--coupled with Wagner's brilliant music--was an overwhelming experience.
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| At the National Centre for the Performing Arts |
Sha's friend Ricky, a rising sophomore at my old high school, is visiting Beijing for the next two weeks, so the two have moved into the apartment with me. While it's not quite the same solitude of living alone, they have (so far) greatly exceeded my expectations for teenage boy roommates--we haven't burned the place down yet, and if the apartment smells like anything, it's cologne, and thankfully not a locker room. I'm excited about this living arrangement--I feel that a crazy story or two is inevitable.
In the News:
Apple Pays $60 Million for iPad Name in China (I wrote this one!)
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