This is the 100th post on this blog. Yay!! I honestly thought that, after my insane post-up in January, I wouldn't be able to keep up the pace. And while it's dropped since then, I continually find things to post about. Good times.
This one post is just to say that the best part of last night was seeing a Chinese cover band doing a bluegrass version of "Something in the Way" (the best line of which is in Chinese in the subject of this post).
My ayi is here now and she continues to serve as a great way to learn Chinese. I rarely see her because she usually comes while I'm at work, but this week she is here on Sunday. I told her my grandpa (wai gong, or mother's father) passed away and so I had to go to America last week. I also managed to convey that he was happy that I was in Shanghai -- Ta xihuan wo zai Shanghai kuai le, if I'm not mistaken :-)
Like many things in life, my Chinese (spoken, understanding, and now even a little bit of reading) improves when I don't think about it. So I'm trying a new approach. The idea is still to surround myself with Chinese (which is not difficult to do, given the circumstances) but instead of concentrating on words and sending them straight to my conscious, I'm going to try letting my unconscious do most of the work. Things seem to work better when I do that, even if it might take longer to bring words to the forefront.
Showing posts with label grandpa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grandpa. Show all posts
May 18, 2008
May 11, 2008
Harry London, 1922 - 2008
Today's Sunday, and I'm in Maryland. On Tuesday morning at 10:30 AM, I got a call that my grandfather had passed away. Five hours later, I was on a flight from PVG --> ORD --> IAD and now I'm home in MD, thanks to the wonders of technology and this semi-flat world we live in. He was a wonderful man, in every way imaginable, and will be sorely missed.
Being back in the US is far less strange than I'd anticipated. Perhaps it's the comforts of family and/or the familiarity of the place where I grew up and spend 18 years of my life (22 if you count my time in VA before I moved to Austin). About the weirdest thing I experienced was realizing that I could drink the tap water and use it to brush my teeth. And buckling my seatbelt when getting into a car. And driving! And seeing flowing, green, manicured lawns accompanied by two-story houses, leafy trees, and spacious streets not clogged with traffic and insane drivers. And stores where you don't have to shove past people to get to the products you want or to get in and out of an aisle. Such are the trappings of suburban life in the US.
I also think that being home is not so strange because I had literally no time to, you know, build up to the fact that I'd be leaving China. It was like, phone call, and then thirty seconds into it I knew I'd be coming home. No time to wonder what it'd be like or worry about driving or jet lag. I just booked the tickets, ate lunch, and hopped on the plane. If I'd had a long time to think about it, like the several months I'll have before I'll be back again, I think it would have been stranger. Because then I would have gone over it a kajillion times in my head.
I also think that it would have been much stranger to back to Austin first instead of MD.
I've enjoyed the chance to speak Chinese twice since I've been back. Once to one of the ladies at the hair cut place on Saturday. I don't think she understood me too well, or I misinterpreted one of her questions, but the general idea was "hey, hello, I live in Shanghai ... etc.". But the women at Hunan Manor understood me perfectly when I asked for three pairs of chopsticks, said that I lived in Shanghai, and said there are a lot of people there. I also understood her when she said she'd never been :-)
I've been here since Wednesday night and I'll be leaving on Wednesday morning, so that's about a week. My jet lag is still present but going away slowly, as evidenced by the fact that it's 10:30 PM EST and I'm still awake. And also that I woke up at 6 AM this morning instead of 1:30 or 3 AM like the previous nights.
In addition to everything else that's going on over here, I also had a chance to buy some new books and upgrade my camera like I'd planned. So that's good.
I have been voraciously looking for anything on China that I can read about. Fortuantely, I don't have to look very hard. I picked up a copy of the latest Economist while at O'Hare, specifically for its cover story on China. And each day's Washington Post and Baltimore Sun are full of stories. The New Yorker had a small bit on an authentic Chinese restaurant that serves mapo doufu, chou doufu, and mala tang. And the latest Newsweek has one that quotes a study from Jiaotong University. When I read that, I was like -- "I've been there!!" Even a Vanity Fair at my aunt's house contained an article about weather in Xinjiang.
(Jeez, I just realized that you can tell a lot about me and my family by what reading materials we have lying around ...)
Funny, right now I'm looking at a map of the world, circa 1980, on my dad's wall. I see Shanghai, but also Hangchow (Hangzhou?), Ningpo (Ningbo), Chengtu (Chengdu), Chungking (maybe Chongqing?), Tientsin (Tianjin?), and Sinkiang (Xinjiang?). And of course Peking. Without doing much research, I'm going to assume this is Wade-Giles spelling since that was the dominant form until the late 20th century.
And I can hear dad practicing his tones in the next room. Awesome :-)
I understand that I picked up some new readers of this 'ol blog and met a couple of you in person. Thanks for all your kind words, your interest in my China adventures, and for the support you showed my family during this time. We really appreciate it. I look forward to making Grampaw proud by continuing my adventures in China for as long as I get the opportunity to do so :-) Since he was instrumental in my decision to go, I'm going to assume this is one of the best ways to honor his memory ;-) Funny how that works out, eh ...
Being back in the US is far less strange than I'd anticipated. Perhaps it's the comforts of family and/or the familiarity of the place where I grew up and spend 18 years of my life (22 if you count my time in VA before I moved to Austin). About the weirdest thing I experienced was realizing that I could drink the tap water and use it to brush my teeth. And buckling my seatbelt when getting into a car. And driving! And seeing flowing, green, manicured lawns accompanied by two-story houses, leafy trees, and spacious streets not clogged with traffic and insane drivers. And stores where you don't have to shove past people to get to the products you want or to get in and out of an aisle. Such are the trappings of suburban life in the US.
I also think that being home is not so strange because I had literally no time to, you know, build up to the fact that I'd be leaving China. It was like, phone call, and then thirty seconds into it I knew I'd be coming home. No time to wonder what it'd be like or worry about driving or jet lag. I just booked the tickets, ate lunch, and hopped on the plane. If I'd had a long time to think about it, like the several months I'll have before I'll be back again, I think it would have been stranger. Because then I would have gone over it a kajillion times in my head.
I also think that it would have been much stranger to back to Austin first instead of MD.
I've enjoyed the chance to speak Chinese twice since I've been back. Once to one of the ladies at the hair cut place on Saturday. I don't think she understood me too well, or I misinterpreted one of her questions, but the general idea was "hey, hello, I live in Shanghai ... etc.". But the women at Hunan Manor understood me perfectly when I asked for three pairs of chopsticks, said that I lived in Shanghai, and said there are a lot of people there. I also understood her when she said she'd never been :-)
I've been here since Wednesday night and I'll be leaving on Wednesday morning, so that's about a week. My jet lag is still present but going away slowly, as evidenced by the fact that it's 10:30 PM EST and I'm still awake. And also that I woke up at 6 AM this morning instead of 1:30 or 3 AM like the previous nights.
In addition to everything else that's going on over here, I also had a chance to buy some new books and upgrade my camera like I'd planned. So that's good.
I have been voraciously looking for anything on China that I can read about. Fortuantely, I don't have to look very hard. I picked up a copy of the latest Economist while at O'Hare, specifically for its cover story on China. And each day's Washington Post and Baltimore Sun are full of stories. The New Yorker had a small bit on an authentic Chinese restaurant that serves mapo doufu, chou doufu, and mala tang. And the latest Newsweek has one that quotes a study from Jiaotong University. When I read that, I was like -- "I've been there!!" Even a Vanity Fair at my aunt's house contained an article about weather in Xinjiang.
(Jeez, I just realized that you can tell a lot about me and my family by what reading materials we have lying around ...)
Funny, right now I'm looking at a map of the world, circa 1980, on my dad's wall. I see Shanghai, but also Hangchow (Hangzhou?), Ningpo (Ningbo), Chengtu (Chengdu), Chungking (maybe Chongqing?), Tientsin (Tianjin?), and Sinkiang (Xinjiang?). And of course Peking. Without doing much research, I'm going to assume this is Wade-Giles spelling since that was the dominant form until the late 20th century.
And I can hear dad practicing his tones in the next room. Awesome :-)
I understand that I picked up some new readers of this 'ol blog and met a couple of you in person. Thanks for all your kind words, your interest in my China adventures, and for the support you showed my family during this time. We really appreciate it. I look forward to making Grampaw proud by continuing my adventures in China for as long as I get the opportunity to do so :-) Since he was instrumental in my decision to go, I'm going to assume this is one of the best ways to honor his memory ;-) Funny how that works out, eh ...
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