While I'm still thinking about it, I want to document this random encounter I had outside the metro stop on the way home. First, we got let out of work at 3 PM because it had been snowing all night and all day. w00t. It really is beautiful, but my shoes are soggy and mushy from walking in all the slush :-( Everyone is saying how rare this is and how it never snows in Shanghai. I must say I feel very lucky to be here for this, except by "lucky" I mean "sodden." Haha. No, really, I haven't seen snowfall like this in about five or six years. And I haven't gotten out of work/school for snow since my internship during winter break 2000. I can't wait to walk outside tomorrow when it'll be nice and frozen from the overnight chill! And whoopdie-doo, it's supposed to be like this for the next week.
So I had an earlier-than-expected tutoring lesson with one of my co-workers (yep, I've got two tutors) where I spent half an hour trying to say zao and zui correctly. Yes, it's that tough :-) It's all about where you put the tip of your tongue. Also I have realized that I'm forcing it too hard because I want to say it correctly. Often the extra effort causes me to flub a pronunciation. So I'm trying to relax more when I speak. But I did impress my coworkers this morning by grabbing some food from the snack table and saying Zhe ge shi wo de zaofan. ("This is my breakfast.")
But anyway, outside the metro plaza, I walked past three guys building a half-formed snowman. I laughed and asked Ne ge shi shenma? And they answered "Zhe ge shi snowman!" Hahaha, that was great. So I laughed and was walking away, then one of them starts going "Golf! Golf!" I was like -- wtf? Golf?? So he runs to his van and draws the door open. I'm thinking great, I'm gonna get wrapped up in a carpet and smuggled out into the countryside. Hahaha, not really. But the dude pulls out this giant golf club bag from the backseat. Of course, now it was time to say Bu yao.
Ah Shanghai - where anyone, any time will try to sell you a golf bag.
All this snow really makes me want to not leave the house ... I think I'll join the gym tomorrow. Since I took the tour on Thursday, the membership guy has been calling me nonstop asking me when I'm coming back. I really do want to join, and the price is good, so I will probably go tomorrow, assuming they're open.
Showing posts with label tutoring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tutoring. Show all posts
January 28, 2008
January 27, 2008
Little Red Wheaties
Today's adventure was the Shanghai Propaganda Art Museum. I kind of can't believe such a thing exists, but I'm really really happy that it does :-) I'm assuming that, because you can access the museum's web site from within China, and because the museum sells postcards intended to be mailed, it's kosher to post stuff like this. If you don't hear from me after a week, you'll know I was wrong :-)
The museum has hundreds of posters and art pieces dating from 1949 - 1979. They're displayed all over the walls in chronological order and with English translations of all the captions. The emphasis is on the art and the political/social situations surrounding each decade of posters. Unfortunately there are no photos allowed, so I bought 10 postcards and took them home to photograph. These 10 images are but a small sampling of the museum's treasure trove. The museum is insanely interesting, and the curator (whose face adorns the header of the web site) is really nice and knowledgeable.
There's a lot of anti-US stuff, of course, mostly from the 50s and 70s. You can see a couple of those in my collection here. There was one picture depicting the US as a wolf getting stabbed by the butt-end of flags wielded by the proletariat. Tied to the wolf's tail was a ripped US flag with a dollar sign in place of the stars. There also was one depicting the US as a paper tiger, again festooned with dollar signs. But most of the time the US was depicted as a skinny, craven, hunched man with a big nose and a paranoid or aggressive look on his face. Many times, as in the above wolf example, he was accompanied by a dollar sign and/or a small, pathetic-looking pistol. Throughout the 30-year period the collection covers, the posters advocated support for many foreign countries in resisting US intervention. I was surprised to see a poster, created during the 60s, advocating support for the Civil Rights movement.
Then of course there were the Great Leap Forward posters. One showed a picture of a HUGE pig with many suckling babies. The English caption read something like "Raise pigs to get more fertilizer to increase crop yield." Sounds logical to me. And lots and lots of pictures of Mao: with children, with workers in overalls, and even a couple alongside shadows of Marx, Lenin, Engels, and Stalin. Mao often was represented as a big red sun bringing light to sunflowers, which represented the people. There were many pictures that included his Little Red Book of quotations, and you even could buy copies in the museum's gift shop.
So yeah, it was a fun time. The Lonely Planet guide said the place would be hard to find, but it wasn't really. Especially not since I learned numerals this morning, so after getting out at the Jiangsu Lu metro stop, I was able to say to a cabbie, "Huashan Lu ba liu ba", or "868 Huashan Road". That puts you at an apartment complex. Once there, I showed the gate guards the Chinese characters for the museum, and one of them helpfully walked me through an underground parking garage to the museum, which is in the basement of building 4. The ceiling was extremely low, which elicited some chuckles from the guard and a nearby resident. Wo tai gao le, I exclaimed. "I'm too tall."
So it was pretty easy getting there. (I also could have told the cabbie "Huashan Lu ba bai liu shi ba", or Eight-Hundred-Sixty-Eight Huashan Road, but why make life more difficult?)
Rewinding a bit, I'd like to observe how helpful Yao Ming has been in my international interactions here. Whenever anyone asks me where I'm from, I say mei guo which, as we've learned, means "beautiful country" or the USA. If they want me to get more detailed, I just mention Yao Ming. Why? Because EVERYONE knows who Yao Ming is and that he plays for -- what team now, kids? -- the Houston Rockets. Austin is like 150 miles, or 240 km, west of Houston. So I can use Yao Ming to give people a better idea of where I live (assuming they could pick out Houston on a map, of course). Kind of makes me glad I'm not from Duluth, MN :-) Although I suppose I could say, "You know Houston, where Yao Ming plays? I live 2,224 km north of that." Somehow it doesn't have the same impact, though :-)
And speaking of impact, I was joking around with my tutor this morning. We were in my dining room and I hadn't had breakfast yet, so I fixed myself a breakfast of small rice cakes and Pocky. I then exclaimed "Ah, breakfast of champions!" I realized she had no idea what I was talking about, or why I thought that was funny, so I explained about Wheaties, Michael Jordan, and how the phrase has become (at least to me) something funny to say when I have a terrible meal for breakfast. We (by which I mean she) then deciphered the phrase in Chinese as guanjun de zaocan, or "Champion's Breakfast", which I don't think has the same impact, but hey, it works :-)
Seriously, this is how I spend my time. I also taught her "expatriate" and its shortened form, "expat".
Also, re: the haircut yesterday: I want to write about how there were like seven people hanging around my chair most of the time. And the reason was my ear piercings - the industrial and daith. Seriously, the barber and the greeter (every place of business has a greeter, here) called over a bunch of people to look at them. I'm sad I couldn't understand most of what they said. But it was hilarious and I could tell I was the first guy with an industrial and/or daith they'd seen. Not that this is a huge accomplishment - I get the same kind of looks when I sit in an unfamiliar barber's chair in the US - but somehow the fact that this is in China (and I couldn't understand them at all) made it that much more amusing to me. I did manage to point to my industrial and say, through some laughter, "Ni yao zhe ge ma?" Which means, "Do you want this?" Of course I got a very polite bu yao (I don't want) back :-)
I'd like to remark on how many people were there. There was the greeter, then the shampooer/ scalp massager, then the actual barber, then another girl who took me back to wash off all the cut hair pieces. So that's like four people, just for one customer. And again, there were at least 3 other employees who came over to my chair, not to do anything, but just to hang out and chat with the others. Nuts :-)
The museum has hundreds of posters and art pieces dating from 1949 - 1979. They're displayed all over the walls in chronological order and with English translations of all the captions. The emphasis is on the art and the political/social situations surrounding each decade of posters. Unfortunately there are no photos allowed, so I bought 10 postcards and took them home to photograph. These 10 images are but a small sampling of the museum's treasure trove. The museum is insanely interesting, and the curator (whose face adorns the header of the web site) is really nice and knowledgeable.
There's a lot of anti-US stuff, of course, mostly from the 50s and 70s. You can see a couple of those in my collection here. There was one picture depicting the US as a wolf getting stabbed by the butt-end of flags wielded by the proletariat. Tied to the wolf's tail was a ripped US flag with a dollar sign in place of the stars. There also was one depicting the US as a paper tiger, again festooned with dollar signs. But most of the time the US was depicted as a skinny, craven, hunched man with a big nose and a paranoid or aggressive look on his face. Many times, as in the above wolf example, he was accompanied by a dollar sign and/or a small, pathetic-looking pistol. Throughout the 30-year period the collection covers, the posters advocated support for many foreign countries in resisting US intervention. I was surprised to see a poster, created during the 60s, advocating support for the Civil Rights movement.
Then of course there were the Great Leap Forward posters. One showed a picture of a HUGE pig with many suckling babies. The English caption read something like "Raise pigs to get more fertilizer to increase crop yield." Sounds logical to me. And lots and lots of pictures of Mao: with children, with workers in overalls, and even a couple alongside shadows of Marx, Lenin, Engels, and Stalin. Mao often was represented as a big red sun bringing light to sunflowers, which represented the people. There were many pictures that included his Little Red Book of quotations, and you even could buy copies in the museum's gift shop.
So yeah, it was a fun time. The Lonely Planet guide said the place would be hard to find, but it wasn't really. Especially not since I learned numerals this morning, so after getting out at the Jiangsu Lu metro stop, I was able to say to a cabbie, "Huashan Lu ba liu ba", or "868 Huashan Road". That puts you at an apartment complex. Once there, I showed the gate guards the Chinese characters for the museum, and one of them helpfully walked me through an underground parking garage to the museum, which is in the basement of building 4. The ceiling was extremely low, which elicited some chuckles from the guard and a nearby resident. Wo tai gao le, I exclaimed. "I'm too tall."
So it was pretty easy getting there. (I also could have told the cabbie "Huashan Lu ba bai liu shi ba", or Eight-Hundred-Sixty-Eight Huashan Road, but why make life more difficult?)
Rewinding a bit, I'd like to observe how helpful Yao Ming has been in my international interactions here. Whenever anyone asks me where I'm from, I say mei guo which, as we've learned, means "beautiful country" or the USA. If they want me to get more detailed, I just mention Yao Ming. Why? Because EVERYONE knows who Yao Ming is and that he plays for -- what team now, kids? -- the Houston Rockets. Austin is like 150 miles, or 240 km, west of Houston. So I can use Yao Ming to give people a better idea of where I live (assuming they could pick out Houston on a map, of course). Kind of makes me glad I'm not from Duluth, MN :-) Although I suppose I could say, "You know Houston, where Yao Ming plays? I live 2,224 km north of that." Somehow it doesn't have the same impact, though :-)
And speaking of impact, I was joking around with my tutor this morning. We were in my dining room and I hadn't had breakfast yet, so I fixed myself a breakfast of small rice cakes and Pocky. I then exclaimed "Ah, breakfast of champions!" I realized she had no idea what I was talking about, or why I thought that was funny, so I explained about Wheaties, Michael Jordan, and how the phrase has become (at least to me) something funny to say when I have a terrible meal for breakfast. We (by which I mean she) then deciphered the phrase in Chinese as guanjun de zaocan, or "Champion's Breakfast", which I don't think has the same impact, but hey, it works :-)
Seriously, this is how I spend my time. I also taught her "expatriate" and its shortened form, "expat".
Also, re: the haircut yesterday: I want to write about how there were like seven people hanging around my chair most of the time. And the reason was my ear piercings - the industrial and daith. Seriously, the barber and the greeter (every place of business has a greeter, here) called over a bunch of people to look at them. I'm sad I couldn't understand most of what they said. But it was hilarious and I could tell I was the first guy with an industrial and/or daith they'd seen. Not that this is a huge accomplishment - I get the same kind of looks when I sit in an unfamiliar barber's chair in the US - but somehow the fact that this is in China (and I couldn't understand them at all) made it that much more amusing to me. I did manage to point to my industrial and say, through some laughter, "Ni yao zhe ge ma?" Which means, "Do you want this?" Of course I got a very polite bu yao (I don't want) back :-)
I'd like to remark on how many people were there. There was the greeter, then the shampooer/ scalp massager, then the actual barber, then another girl who took me back to wash off all the cut hair pieces. So that's like four people, just for one customer. And again, there were at least 3 other employees who came over to my chair, not to do anything, but just to hang out and chat with the others. Nuts :-)
January 24, 2008
Hen Hao
Just got back from my first Chinese lesson, and boy, is my mouth tired!
*hold for laughter... holding ... holding ...*
Yeah it was tough. But I think I did okay. The best part was that my tutor and I met in a KFC at the Longyang Rd. Metro stop. Yes, Hanyu gen KFC = good times!! I had a chicken sandwich before the lesson, haha. And of course people were staring at us the entire time. But after a couple minutes I didn't really pay attention to them. And the people who sad next to us didn't seem to be annoyed too much. In fact when they got up to leave I turned to them and said "Ni hao!" And the guy laughs and goes "Very good."
I could only take like an hour of speaking nonstop before I had to give it a rest, haha. Also, she insists on asking me things in Chinese. Which is good, I mean, getting exposure to the language and getting my brain used to interpreting faster. But it's frustrating to have her ask a question that I don't understand. I probably said Bu zhidao ("I don't know") about 30 times, hahaha. That, and shenma ("What?") were my mainstays. But again, it's good, because now I know how to say "I don't know". Also, Wo bu shuo Hanyu ("I don't speak Chinese") came in handy, haha.
But that's good because now I'll remember at least those couple phrases. What's tripping me up is the ch, sh, and zh sounds. Those are tough for me, especially when I combine them with the pinyin i. Because the i is pronounced differently depending on its antecedent. So yi ("one") is sounded like yee (with a very soft y). But chi ("eat") is not chee -- it's more like chur (with a ch like in chair), but not quite. I know English has rules like these, but you know, I hardly ever think about them :-) When you combine both pronunciations in a word like shiji (Century), you end up with something that sounds like shur-jee.
Also, the tones. At one point I said Wo yao shui which means "I want water", at least when you say shui in the third tone. But she heard shui in the fourth tone, which means "sleep". So she got confused for a second, lol.
But I was able to tell the taxi driver that I need a rest, and I asked him if he did too. He said dui which means "Right" or "OK", so I'm not sure if he understood me or if he was humoring the lao wai. Oh well, who knows, but I feel like I'm learning :-)
*hold for laughter... holding ... holding ...*
Yeah it was tough. But I think I did okay. The best part was that my tutor and I met in a KFC at the Longyang Rd. Metro stop. Yes, Hanyu gen KFC = good times!! I had a chicken sandwich before the lesson, haha. And of course people were staring at us the entire time. But after a couple minutes I didn't really pay attention to them. And the people who sad next to us didn't seem to be annoyed too much. In fact when they got up to leave I turned to them and said "Ni hao!" And the guy laughs and goes "Very good."
I could only take like an hour of speaking nonstop before I had to give it a rest, haha. Also, she insists on asking me things in Chinese. Which is good, I mean, getting exposure to the language and getting my brain used to interpreting faster. But it's frustrating to have her ask a question that I don't understand. I probably said Bu zhidao ("I don't know") about 30 times, hahaha. That, and shenma ("What?") were my mainstays. But again, it's good, because now I know how to say "I don't know". Also, Wo bu shuo Hanyu ("I don't speak Chinese") came in handy, haha.
But that's good because now I'll remember at least those couple phrases. What's tripping me up is the ch, sh, and zh sounds. Those are tough for me, especially when I combine them with the pinyin i. Because the i is pronounced differently depending on its antecedent. So yi ("one") is sounded like yee (with a very soft y). But chi ("eat") is not chee -- it's more like chur (with a ch like in chair), but not quite. I know English has rules like these, but you know, I hardly ever think about them :-) When you combine both pronunciations in a word like shiji (Century), you end up with something that sounds like shur-jee.
Also, the tones. At one point I said Wo yao shui which means "I want water", at least when you say shui in the third tone. But she heard shui in the fourth tone, which means "sleep". So she got confused for a second, lol.
But I was able to tell the taxi driver that I need a rest, and I asked him if he did too. He said dui which means "Right" or "OK", so I'm not sure if he understood me or if he was humoring the lao wai. Oh well, who knows, but I feel like I'm learning :-)
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